Gone Girl

Carthage. People lost their jobs, they lost their houses. No one could see anything good coming anytime soon. We never get to see the end . Except it looked like this time Go and I would. We all would.
    The bankruptcy matched my psyche perfectly. For several years, I had been bored. Not a whining, restless child’s boredom (although I was not above that) but a dense, blanketing malaise. It seemed to me that there was nothing new to be discovered ever again. Our society was utterly, ruinously derivative (although the word derivative as a criticism is itself derivative). We were the first human beings who would never see anything for the first time. We stare at the wonders of the world, dull-eyed, underwhelmed. Mona Lisa, the Pyramids, the Empire State Building. Jungle animals on attack, ancient icebergs collapsing, volcanoes erupting. I can’t recall a single amazing thing I have seen firsthand that I didn’t immediately reference to a movie or TV show. A fucking commercial. You know the awful singsong of the blasé: Seeeen it . I’ve literally seen it all, and the worst thing, the thing that makes me want to blow my brains out, is: The secondhand experience is always better. The image is crisper, the view is keener, the camera angle and the soundtrack manipulate my emotions in a way reality can’t anymore. I don’t know that we are actually human at this point, those of us who are like most of us, who grew up with TV and movies and now the Internet. If we are betrayed, we know the words to say; when a loved one dies, we know the words to say. If we want to play the stud or the smart-ass or the fool, we know the words to say. We are all working from the same dog-eared script.
    It’s a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless automat of characters.
    And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don’t have genuine souls.
    It had gotten to the point where it seemed like nothing matters, because I’m not a real person and neither is anyone else.
    I would have done anything to feel real again.
    Gilpin opened the door to the same room where they’d questioned me the night before. In the center of the table sat Amy’s silvery gift box.
    I stood staring at the box sitting in the middle of the table, so ominous in this new setting. A sense of dread descended on me. Why hadn’t I found it before? I should have found it.
    ‘Go ahead,’ Gilpin said. ‘We wanted you to take a look at this.’
    I opened it as gingerly as if a head might be inside. I found only a creamy blue envelope marked first clue.
    Gilpin smirked. ‘Imagine our confusion: A missing persons case, and here we find an envelope marked first clue.’
    ‘It’s for a treasure hunt that my wife—’
    ‘Right. For your anniversary. Your father-in-law mentioned it.’
    I opened the envelope, pulled out a thick sky-blue piece of paper – Amy’s signature stationery – folded once. Bile crept up my throat. These treasure hunts had always amounted to a single question: Who is Amy? (What is my wife thinking? What was important to her this past year? What moments made her happiest? Amy, Amy, Amy, let’s think about Amy.)
    I read the first clue with clenched teeth. Given our marital mood the past year, it was going to make me look awful. I didn’t need anything else that made me look awful.
    I picture myself as your student ,
    With a teacher so handsome and wise
    My mind opens up (not to mention my thighs!)
    If I were your pupil, there’d be no need for flowers
    Maybe just a naughty appointment during your office hours
    So hurry up, get going, please do
    And this time I’ll teach you a thing or two .
    It was an itinerary for an alternate life. If things had gone according to my wife’s vision, yesterday she would have hovered near meas I read this poem, watching me expectantly, the hope emanating from her like a fever: Please get this. Please get me .
    And she would finally say, So? And I would say:
    ‘Oh, I actually know this! She must mean my office. At the junior college. I’m an adjunct professor there. Huh. I mean, it must be, right?’ I squinted and reread. ‘She took it easy on me this year.’
    ‘You want me to drive you over?’ Gilpin asked.
    ‘Nah, I’ve got Go’s car.’
    ‘I’ll follow you then.’
    ‘You think it’s important?’
    ‘Well, it shows her movements the day or two