Gone Girl

credit card linked to my bank account. Nick will have a grand old time on our anniversary, which he didn’t even mention in the message. Instead, he said, I know we had plans but …
    I am being a girl. I just thought it’d be a tradition: All across town, I have strewn little love messages, reminders of our past year together, my treasure hunt. I can picture the third clue, fluttering from a piece of scotch tape in the crook of the V of the Robert Indiana love sculpture up near Central Park. Tomorrow, some bored twelve-year-old tourist stumbling along behind his parents is going to pick it off, read it, shrug, and let it float away like a gum wrapper.
    My treasure-hunt finale was perfect, but isn’t now. It’s an absolutely gorgeous vintage briefcase. Leather. Third anniversary is leather. A work-related gift may be a bad idea, given that work isn’t exactly happy right now. In our kitchen, I have two live lobsters, like always. Or like what was supposed to be like always. I need to phone my mom and see if they can keep for a day, scrambling dazedly around their crate, or if I need to stumble in, and with my wine-lame eyes, battle them and boil them in my pot for no good reason. I’m killing two lobsters I won’t even eat.
    Dad phoned to wish us happy anniversary, and I picked up the phone and I was going to play it cool, but then I started crying when I started talking – I was doing the awful chick talk-cry: mwaha-waah-gwwahh-and-waaa-wa – so I had to tell him what happened, and he told me I should open a bottle of wine and wallow in it for a bit. Dad is always a proponent of a good indulgent sulk. Still, Nick will be angry that I told Rand, and of course Rand will do his fatherly thing, pat Nick on the shoulder and say, ‘Heard you had some emergency drinking to do on your anniversary, Nicky.’ And chuckle. So Nick will know, and he will be angry with me because he wants my parents to believe he’s perfect – he beams when I tell them stories about what a flawless son-in-law he is.
    Except for tonight. I know, I know, I’m being a girl.
    It’s five a.m. The sun is coming up, almost as bright as the streetlights outside that have just blinked off. I always like that switch, when I’m awake for it. Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I’ll pull myself out of bed and walk through the streets at dawn, and when the lights click off, all together, I always feel like I’ve seen something special. Oh, there go the streetlights! I want to announce. In New York it’snot three or four a.m. that’s the quiet time – there are too many bar stragglers, calling out to each other as they collapse into taxis, yelping into their cell phones as they frantically smoke that one last cigarette before bed. Five a.m., that’s the best time, when the clicking of your heels on the sidewalk sounds illicit. All the people have been put away in their boxes, and you have the whole place to yourself.
    Here’s what happened: Nick got home just after four, a bulb of beer and cigarettes and fried-egg odor attached to him, a placenta of stink. I was still awake, waiting for him, my brain ca-thunking after a marathon of Law and Order . He sat down on our ottoman and glanced at the present on the table and said nothing. I stared at him back. He clearly wasn’t going to even graze against an apology – hey, sorry things got screwy today . That’s all I wanted, just a quick acknowledgment.
    ‘Happy day after anniversary,’ I start.
    He sighs, a deep aggrieved moan. ‘Amy, I’ve had the crappiest day ever. Please don’t lay a guilt trip on me on top of it.’
    Nick grew up with a father who never, ever apologised, so when Nick feels he has screwed up, he goes on offense. I know this, and I can usually wait it out, usually.
    ‘I was just saying happy anniversary.’
    ‘Happy anniversary, my asshole husband who neglected me on my big day.’
    We sit silent for a minute, my stomach knotting. I don’t want to be the bad guy here. I don’t deserve that. Nick stands up.
    ‘Well, how was it?’ I ask dully.
    ‘How was it? It was fucking awful. Sixteen of my friends now have no jobs. It was miserable. I’ll probably be gone too, another few months.’
    Friends. He doesn’t even like half the guys he was out with, but I say nothing.
    ‘I know it feels dire right now, Nick. But—’
    ‘It’s not dire for you, Amy. Not for you, it never will be dire. But for the rest of us? It’s very different.’
    The same old. Nick