Gone Girl

with a drink.’ She leaned forward so her cleavage was leveraged against the bar, her breasts pushed upward. She wore a pendant on a thin gold chain; the pendant slid between her breasts down under her sweater. Don’t be that guy , I thought. The guy who pants over where the pendant ends .
    ‘What flavor you feel like?’ I asked.
    ‘Whatever you give me, I’ll like.’
    It was that line that caught me, the simplicity of it. The idea that I could do something and it would make a woman happy, and it would be easy. Whatever you give me, I’ll like . I felt an overwhelming wave of relief. And then I knew I didn’t love Amy anymore.
    I don’t love my wife anymore , I thought, turning to grab two tumblers. Not even a little bit. I am wiped clean of love, I am spotless . I made my favorite drink: Christmas Morning, hot coffee and cold peppermint schnapps. I had one with her, and when she shivered and laughed – that big whoop of a laugh – I poured us another round. We drank together an hour past closing time, and I mentioned the word wife three times, because I was looking at Andie and picturing taking her clothes off. A warning for her, the least I could do: I have a wife. Do with that what you will .
    She sat in front of me, her chin in her hands, smiling up at me.
    ‘Walk me home?’ she said. She’d mentioned before how close she lived to downtown, how she needed to stop by The Bar some night and say hello, and did she mention how close she lived to The Bar? My mind had been primed: Many times I’d mentally strolled the few blocks toward the bland brick apartments where she lived. So when I suddenly was out the door, walking her home, it didn’t seem unusual at all – there wasn’t that warning bell that told me: This is unusual, this is not what we do .
    I walked her home, against the wind, snow flying everywhere, helping her rewrap her red knitted scarf once, twice, and on the third time, I was tucking her in properly and our faces were close, and her cheeks were a merry holiday-sledding pink, and it was the kind of thing that could never have happened in another hundred nights, but that night it was possible. The conversation, the booze, the storm, the scarf.
    We grabbed each other at the same time, me pushing her up against a tree for better leverage, the spindly branches dumping a pile of snow on us, a stunning, comical moment that only made me more insistent on touching her, touching everything at once, one hand up inside her sweater, the other between her legs. And her letting me.
    She pulled back from me, her teeth chattering. ‘Come up with me.’
    I paused.
    ‘Come up with me,’ she said again. ‘I want to be with you.’
    The sex wasn’t that great, not the first time. We were two bodies used to different rhythms, never quite getting the hang of each other, and it had been so long since I’d been inside a woman, I came first, quickly, and kept moving, thirty crucial seconds as I began wilting inside her, just long enough to get her taken care of before I went entirely slack.
    So it was nice but disappointing, anticlimactic, the way girls must feel when they give up their virginity: That was what all the fuss was about? But I liked how she wrapped herself around me, and I liked that she was as soft as I’d imagined. New skin. Young , I thought disgracefully, picturing Amy and her constant lotioning, sitting in bed and slapping away at herself angrily.
    I went into Andie’s bathroom, took a piss, looked at myself in the mirror, and made myself say it: You are a cheater. You have failed one of the most basic male tests. You are not a good man . And when that didn’t bother me, I thought: You’re really not a good man .
    The horrifying thing was, if the sex had been outrageously mind-blowing, that might have been my sole indiscretion. But it was only decent, and now I was a cheater, and I couldn’t ruin my record of fidelity on something merely average. So I knew there would be a next. I didn’t promise myself never again. And then the next was very, very good, and the next after that was great. Soon Andie became a physical counterpoint to all things Amy. She laughed with me and made me laugh, she didn’t immediately contradict me or second-guess me. She never scowled at me. She was easy. It was all so fucking easy. And I thought: Love makes you want to be a better man – right, right. But maybe love, real love, also gives you permission to just be the man you are .
    I was going to