Gone Girl

totally.’
    ‘That’s the only thing.’
    Go shrugged: How can I believe you now? ‘You love her?’ She gave it a jokey spin to show how unlikely it was.
    ‘Yeah. I really think I do. I did. I do.’
    ‘You do realize, that if you actually dated her, saw her on a regular basis, lived with her, that she would find some fault with you, right? That she would find some things about you that drove her crazy. That she’d make demands of you that you wouldn’t like. That she’d get angry at you?’
    ‘I’m not ten, Go, I know how relationships work.’
    She shrugged again: Do you? ‘We need a lawyer,’ she said. ‘A good lawyer with some PR skills, because the networks, some cable shows, they’re sniffing around. We need to make sure the media doesn’t turn you into the evil philandering husband, because if that happens, I just think it’s all over.’
    ‘Go, you’re sounding a little drastic.’ I actually agreed with her, but I couldn’t bear to hear the words aloud, from Go. I had to discredit them.
    ‘Nick, this is a little drastic. I’m going to make some calls.’
    ‘Whatever you want, if it makes you feel better.’
    Go jabbed me in the sternum with two hard fingers. ‘Don’t you fucking pull that with me, Lance . “Oh, girls get so overexcited.” That’s bullshit. You are in a really bad place, my friend. Get your head out of your ass and start helping me fix this.’
    Beneath my shirt, I could feel the spot embering on my skin as Go turned away from me and, thank God, went back to her room. I sat on her couch, numb. Then I lay down as I promised myself I’d get up.
    I dreamed of Amy: She was crawling across our kitchen floor, hands and knees, trying to make it to the back door, but she was blind from the blood, and she was moving so slowly, too slowly. Her pretty head was strangely misshapen, dented in on the right side. Blood was dripping from one long hank of hair, and she was moaning my name.
    I woke and knew it was time to go home. I needed to see the place – the scene of the crime – I needed to face it.
    No one was out in the heat. Our neighborhood was as vacant and lonely as the day Amy disappeared. I stepped inside my front door and made myself breathe. Weird that a house so new could feel haunted, and not in the romantic Victorian-novel way, just really gruesomely, shittily ruined. A house with a history, and it was only three years old. The lab technicians had been all over the place; surfaces were smeared and sticky and smudged. I sat down on the sofa, and it smelled like someone, like an actual person, with a stranger’s scent, a spicy aftershave. I opened the windows despite the heat, get in some air. Bleecker trotted down the stairs, and I picked him up and petted him while he purred. Someone, some cop, had overfilled his bowl for me. A nice gesture, after dismantling my home. I set him down carefully on the bottom step, then climbed up to the bedroom, unbuttoning my shirt. I lay down across the bed and put my face in the pillow, the same navy blue pillowcase I’d stared into the morning of our anniversary, the Morning Of.
    My phone rang. Go. I picked up.
    ‘ Ellen Abbott is doing a special noon-day show. It’s about Amy. You. I, uh, it doesn’t look good. You want me to come over?’
    ‘No, I can watch it alone, thanks.’
    We both hovered on the line. Waiting for the other to apologize.
    ‘Okay, let’s talk after,’ Go said.
    Ellen Abbott Live was a cable show specializing in missing,murdered women, starring the permanently furious Ellen Abbott, a former prosecutor and victims’ rights advocate. The show opened with Ellen, blow-dried and lip-glossed, glaring at the camera. ‘A shocking story to report today: a beautiful, young woman who was the inspiration for the Amazing Amy book series. Missing . House torn apart . Hubby is Lance Nicholas Dunne, an unemployed writer who now owns a bar he bought with his wife’s money . Want to know how worried he is? These are photos taken since his wife, Amy Elliott Dunne, went missing July fifth – their five-year anniversary .’
    Cut to the photo of me at the press conference, the jackass grin. Another of me waving and smiling like a pageant queen as I got out of my car (I was waving back to Marybeth; I was smiling because I smile when I wave).
    Then up came the cell-phone photo of me and Shawna Kelly, Frito-pie baker. The two of us cheek to cheek, beaming pearly whites. Then the real Shawna appeared on-screen,