Gone Girl

course.’
    She turned to me with an elegant shrug. ‘Just curious.’
    I shivered, was about to reach out toward the fireplace for warmth, but remembered that it was July. ‘It seems to me a rather strange devotion to keep up all these years,’ I said. ‘I mean, she didn’t write you back.’
    That lit up Desi’s eyes. ‘Oh’ was all he said, the sound of someone who spied a surprise firework.
    ‘It strikes me as odd, Nick, that you’d come here and ask Desi about his relationship – or lack thereof – with your wife,’ Jacqueline Collings said. ‘Are you and Amy not close? I can guarantee you: Desi has had no genuine contact with Amy in decades. Decades.’
    ‘I’m just checking in, Jacqueline. Sometimes you have to see something for yourself.’
    Jacqueline started walking toward the door; she turned and gave me a single twist of her head to assure me that it was time to go.
    ‘How very intrepid of you, Nick. Very do-it-yourself. Do you build your own decks too?’ She laughed at the word and opened the door for me. I stared at the hollow of her neck and wondered why she wasn’t wearing a noose of pearls. Women like these always have thick strands of pearls to click and clack. I could smell her, though, a female scent, vaginal and strangely lewd.
    ‘It was interesting to meet you, Nick,’ she said. ‘Let’s all hope Amy gets home safely. Until then, the next time you want to get in touch with Desi?’
    She pressed a thick, creamy card into my hands. ‘Call our lawyer, please.’

AMY ELLIOTT DUNNE
    AUGUST 17, 2011
    – Diary entry –
    I know this sounds the stuff of moony teenage girls, but I’ve been tracking Nick’s moods. Toward me. Just to make sure I’m not crazy. I’ve got a calendar, and I put hearts on any day Nick seems to love me again, and black squares when he doesn’t. The past year was all black squares, pretty much.
    But now? Nine days of hearts. In a row. Maybe all he needed to know was how much I loved him and how unhappy I’d become. Maybe he had a change of heart . I’ve never loved a phrase more.
    Quiz: After over a year of coldness, your husband suddenly seems to love you again. You:
    a) Go on and on about how much he’s hurt you so he can apologize some more.
    b) Give him the cold shoulder for a while longer – so he learns his lesson!
    c) Don’t press him about his new attitude – know that he will confide in you when the time comes, and in the meantime, shower him with affection so he feels secure and loved, because that’s how this marriage thing works.
    d) Demand to know what went wrong; make him talk and talk about it in order to calm your own neuroses.
    Answer: C
    It’s August, so sumptuous that I couldn’t bear any more black squares, but no, it’s been nothing but hearts, Nick acting like my husband, sweet and loving and goofy. He orders me chocolates frommy favorite shop in New York for a treat, and he writes me a silly poem to go with them. A limerick, actually:
    There once was a girl from Manhattan
    Who slept only on sheets made of satin
    Her husband slipped and he slided
    And their bodies collided
    So they did something dirty in Latin .
    It would be funnier if our sex life were as carefree as the rhyme would suggest. But last week we did … fuck ? Do it ? Something more romantic that have sex but less cheesy than make love . He came home from work and kissed me full on the lips, and he touched me as if I were really there. I almost cried, I’d been so lonely. To be kissed on the lips by your husband is the most decadent thing.
    What else? He takes me swimming in the same pond he’s gone to since he was a child. I can picture little Nick flapping around manically, face and shoulders sunburned red because (just like now) he refuses to wear sunscreen, forcing Mama Mo to chase after him with lotion that she swipes on whenever she can reach him.
    He’s been taking me on a full tour of his boyhood haunts, like I asked him to for ages. He walks me to the edge of the river, and he kisses me as the wind whips my hair (‘My two favorite things to look at in the world,’ he whispers in my ear). He kisses me in a funny little playground fort that he once considered his own clubhouse (‘I always wanted to bring a girl here, a perfect girl, and look at me now,’ he whispers in my ear). Two days before the mall closes for good, we ride carousel bunnies side by side, our laughter echoing through the empty miles.
    He takes me for a sundae at his