Gone Girl

it right, whatever it was.
    Andie brought me an apple one day. A Red Delicious (title of the memoir of our affair, if I were to write one). She asked me to give her story an early look. It was a profile of a stripper at a St. Louis club, and it read like a Penthouse Forum piece, and Andie began eating my apple while I read it, leaning over my shoulder, the juice sitting ludicrously on her lip, and then I thought, Holy shit, this girl is trying to seduce me , foolishly shocked, an aging Benjamin Braddock.
    It worked. I began thinking of Andie as an escape, an opportunity. An option. I’d come home to find Amy in a tight ball on the sofa, Amy staring at the wall, silent, never saying the first word to me, always waiting, a perpetual game of icebreaking, a constant mental challenge – what will make Amy happy today? I would think: Andie wouldn’t do that . As if I knew Andie. Andie would laugh at that joke, Andie would like that story . Andie was a nice, pretty, bosomy Irish girl from my hometown, unassuming and jolly. Andie sat in the front row of my class, and she looked soft, and she looked interested.
    When I thought about Andie, my stomach didn’t hurt the way it did with my wife – the constant dread of returning to my own home, where I wasn’t welcome.
    I began imagining how it might happen. I began craving her touch – yes, it was like that, just like a lyric from a bad ’80s single – I craved her touch, I craved touch in general, because my wife avoided mine: At home she slipped past me like a fish, sliding just out of grazing distance in the kitchen or the stairwell. We watched TV silently on our two sofa cushions, as separate as if they were life rafts. In bed, she turned away from me, pushed blankets and sheets between us. I once woke up in the night and, knowing she was asleep, pulled aside her halter strap a bit, and pressed my cheek and a palm against her bare shoulder. I couldn’t get back to sleepthat night, I was so disgusted with myself. I got out of bed and masturbated in the shower, picturing Amy, the lusty way she used to look at me, those heavy-lidded moonrise eyes taking me in, making me feel seen. When I was done, I sat down in the bathtub and stared at the drain through the spray. My penis lay pathetically along my left thigh, like some small animal washed ashore. I sat at the bottom of the bathtub, humiliated, trying not to cry.
    So it happened. In a strange, sudden snowstorm in early April. Not April of this year, April of last year. I was working the bar alone because Go was having a Mom Night; we took turns not working, staying home with our mother and watching bad TV. Our mom was going fast, she wouldn’t last the year, not even close.
    I was actually feeling okay right at that moment – my mom and Go were snuggled up at home watching an Annette Funicello beach movie, and The Bar had had a busy, lively night, one of those nights where everyone seemed to have come off a good day. Pretty girls were nice to homely guys. People were buying rounds for strangers just because. It was festive. And then it was the end of the night, time to close, everybody out. I was about to lock the door when Andie flung it wide and stepped in, almost on top of me, and I could smell the light-beer sweetness on her breath, the scent of woodsmoke in her hair. I paused for that jarring moment when you try to process someone you’ve seen in only one setting, put them in a new context. Andie in The Bar. Okay. She laughed a pirate-wench laugh and pushed me back inside.
    ‘I just had the most fantastically awful date, and you have to have a drink with me.’ Snowflakes gathered in the dark waves of her hair, her sweet scattering of freckles glowed, her cheeks were bright pink, as if someone had double-slapped her. She has this great voice, this fuzzy-duckling voice, that starts out ridiculously cute and ends up completely sexy. ‘Please, Nick, I’ve got to get that bad-date taste out of my mouth.’
    I remember us laughing, and thinking what a relief it was to be with a woman and hear her laugh. She was wearing jeans and a cashmere V-neck; she is one of those girls who look better in jeans than a dress. Her face, her body, is casual in the best way. I assumed my position behind the bar, and she slid onto a bar stool, her eyes assessing all the liquor bottles behind me.
    ‘Whaddya want, lady?’
    ‘Surprise me,’ she said.
    ‘Boo,’ I said, the word leaving my lips kiss-puckered.
    ‘Now surprise me