Gone-Girl-by-Gillian-Flynn

on me, and I’d been telling her the story of how we first met, the party in
Brooklyn, my awful opening line, just one olive, that embarrassed me every
time Amy mentioned it. I talked about our exit from the oversteamed
apartment out into the crackling cold, with her hand in mine, the kiss in the
cloud of sugar. It was one of the few stories we told the same way. I said it all
in the cadence of a bedtime tale: soothing and familiar and repetitive. Always
ending with Come home to me, Amy.
I turned off the camera and sat back on the couch (I always filmed while
sitting on the couch under her pernicious, unpredictable cuckoo clock,
because I knew if I didn’t show her cuckoo clock, she’d wonder whether I had
finally gotten rid of her cuckoo clock, and then she’d stop wondering whether
I had finally gotten rid of her cuckoo clock and simply come to believe it was
true, and then no matter what sweet words came out of my mouth, she’d
silently counter with: ‘and yet he tossed out my cuckoo clock’). The cuckoo
was, in fact, soon to pop out, its grinding windup beginning over my head – a
sound that inevitably made my jaw tense – when the camera crews outside
emitted a loud, collective, oceanic wushing. Somebody was here. I heard the
seagull cries of a few female news anchors.
Something is wrong, I thought.
The doorbell rang three times in a row: Nick-nick! Nick-nick! Nick-nick!
I didn’t hesitate. I had stopped hesitating over the past month: Bring on
the trouble posthaste.
I opened the door.
It was my wife.
Back.
Amy Elliott Dunne stood barefoot on my doorstep in a thin pink dress that
clung to her as if it were wet. Her ankles were ringed in dark violet. From one
limp wrist dangled a piece of twine. Her hair was short and frayed at the ends,
as if it had been carelessly chopped by dull scissors. Her face was bruised, her
lips swollen. She was sobbing.
When she flung her arms out toward me, I could see her entire midsection
was stained with dried blood. She tried to speak; her mouth opened, once,
twice, silent, a mermaid washed ashore.
‘Nick!’ she finally keened – a wail that echoed against all the empty
houses – and fell into my arms.