Gone Girl

figured try Go’s.’
    Andie knew my habits, knew my habitats. We’ve been together a while. I have a pretty, very young mistress, and we’ve been together a while.
    ‘I was worried about you, Nick. Frantic . I’m sitting at Madi’s house, and the TV is, like, just on, and all of a sudden on the TV, I see this, like, guy who looks like you talking about his missing wife. And then I realize: It is you. Can you imagine how freaked out I was? And you didn’t even try to reach me?’
    ‘I called you.’
    ‘ Don’t say anything, sit tight, don’t say anything till we talk . That’s an order, that’s not you trying to reach me.’
    ‘I haven’t been alone much; people have been around me all the time. Amy’s parents, Go, the police.’ I breathed into her hair.
    ‘Amy’s just gone?’ she asked.
    ‘She’s just gone.’ I pulled myself from her and sat down on the couch, and she sat beside me, her leg pressed against mine, her arm brushing against mine. ‘Someone took her.’
    ‘Nick? Are you okay?’
    Her chocolatey hair fell in waves over her chin, collarbone, breasts, and I watched one single strand shake in the stream of her breathing.
    ‘No, not really.’ I gave her the shhh sign and pointed toward the hallway. ‘My sister.’
    We sat side by side, silent, the TV flickering the old cop show, the men in fedoras making an arrest. I felt her hand wriggle into mine. She leaned in to me as if we were settling in for a movie night, some lazy, carefree couple, and then she pulled my face toward her and kissed me.
    ‘Andie, no,’ I whispered.
    ‘Yes, I need you.’ She kissed me again and climbed onto my lap, where she straddled me, her cotton dress slipping up around her knees, one of her flip-flops falling to the floor. ‘Nick, I’ve been so worried about you. I need to feel your hands on me, that’s all I’ve been thinking about. I’m scared.’
    Andie was a physical girl, and that’s not code for It’s all about the sex . She was a hugger, a toucher, she was prone to running her fingers through my hair or down my back in a friendly scratch. She got reassurance and comfort from touching. And yes, fine, she also liked sex.
    With one quick tug, she yanked down the top of her sundress and moved my hands onto her breasts. My canine-loyal lust surfaced.
    I want to fuck you , I almost said aloud. You are WARM , my wife said in my ear. I lurched away. I was so tired, the room was swimming.
    ‘Nick?’ Her bottom lip was wet with my spit. ‘What? Are we not okay? Is it because of Amy?’
    Andie had always felt young – she was twenty-three, of course she felt young – but right then I realized how grotesquely young she was, how irresponsibly, disastrously young she was. Ruinously young. Hearing my wife’s name on her lips always jarred me. She said it a lot. She liked to discuss Amy, as if Amy were the heroine on a nighttime soap opera. Andie never made Amy the enemy; she made her a character. She asked questions, all the time, about our life together, about Amy: What did you guys do, together in New York, like what did you do on the weekends? Andie’s mouth went O once when I told her about going to the opera. You went to the opera? What did she wear? Full-length? And a wrap or a fur? And her jewelry and her hair? Also: What were Amy’s friends like? What did we talk about? What was Amy like, like, really like? Was she like the girl in the books, perfect? It was Andie’s favorite bedtime story: Amy.
    ‘My sister is in the other room, sweetheart. You shouldn’t even be here. God, I want you here, but you really shouldn’t have come, babe. Until we know what we’re dealing with.’
    YOU ARE BRILLIANT YOU ARE WITTY YOU ARE WARM. Now kiss me!
    Andie remained atop me, her breasts out, nipples going hard from the air-conditioning.
    ‘Baby, what we’re dealing with right now is I need to make sure we’re okay. That’s all I need.’ She pressed against me, warm and lush. ‘That’s all I need. Please, Nick, I’m freaked out. I know you: I know you don’t want to talk right now, and that’s fine. But I need you … to be with me.’
    And I wanted to kiss her then, the way I had that very first time: our teeth bumping, her face tilted to mine, her hair tickling my arms, a wet and tonguey kiss, me thinking of nothing but the kiss, because it would be dangerous to think of anything but how good it felt. The only thing that kept me from dragging her into the bedroom now was not how wrong