Gillian Flynn - Gone Girl:

We’ve discussed having our husbands drop by to join us for the drinks portion. So there we are, post-dinner, tucked into our nook, mojitos and martinis and my bourbon delivered to us by a waitress who could be auditioning for the small role of Fresh-faced Girl Just Off the Bus.

We are running out of things to say; it is a Tuesday, and no one is feeling like it is anything but. The drinks are being carefully drunk: Insley and Campbell both have vague appointments the next morning, and I have work, so we aren’t gearing up for a big night, we are winding down, and we are getting dull-witted, bored. We would leave if we weren’t waiting for the possible appearance of the men. Campbell keeps peeking at her BlackBerry, Insley studies her flexed calves from different angles. John arrives first—huge apologies to Campbell, big smiles and kisses for us all, a man just thrilled to be here, just delighted to arrive at the tail-end of a cocktail hour across town so he can guzzle a drink and head home with his wife. George shows up about twenty minutes later—sheepish, tense, a terse excuse about work, Insley snapping at him, “You’re forty minutes late,” him nipping back, “Yeah, sorry about making us money.” The two barely talking to each other as they make conversation with everyone else.

Nick never shows; no call. We wait another forty-five minutes, Campbell solicitous (“Probably got hit with some last-minute deadline,” she says, and smiles toward good old John, who never lets last-minute deadlines interfere with his wife’s plans); Insley’s anger thawing toward her husband as she realizes he is only the second-biggest jackass of the group (“You sure he hasn’t even texted, sweetie?”).

Me, I just smile: “Who knows where he is—I’ll catch him at home.” And then it is the men of the group who look stricken: You mean that was an option? Take a pass on the night with no nasty consequences? No guilt or anger or sulking?

Well, maybe not for you guys.

Nick and I, we sometimes laugh, laugh out loud, at the horrible things women make their husbands do to prove their love. The pointless tasks, the myriad sacrifices, the endless small surrenders. We call these men the dancing monkeys .

Nick will come home, sweaty and salty and beer-loose from a day at the ballpark, and I’ll curl up in his lap, ask him about the game, ask him if his friend Jack had a good time, and he’ll say, “Oh, he came down with a case of the dancing monkeys—poor Jennifer was having a ‘real stressful week’ and really needed him at home.”

Or his buddy at work, who can’t go out for drinks because his girlfriend really needs him to stop by some bistro where she is having dinner with a friend from out of town. So they can finally meet. And so she can show how obedient her monkey is: He comes when I call, and look how well groomed!

Wear this, don’t wear that. Do this chore now and do this chore when you get a chance and by that I mean now. And definitely, definitely, give up the things you love for me, so I will have proof that you love me best . It’s the female pissing contest—as we swan around our book clubs and our cocktail hours, there are few things women love more than being able to detail the sacrifices our men make for us. A call-and-response, the response being: “Ohhh, that’s so sweet .”

I am happy not to be in that club. I don’t partake, I don’t get off on emotional coercion, on forcing Nick to play some happy-hubby role—the shrugging, cheerful, dutiful taking out the trash, honey! role. Every wife’s dream man, the counterpoint to every man’s fantasy of the sweet, hot, laid-back woman who loves sex and a stiff drink.

I like to think I am confident and secure and mature enough to know Nick loves me without him constantly proving it. I don’t need pathetic dancing-monkey scenarios to repeat to my friends; I am content with letting him be himself.

I don’t know why women find that so hard.

When I get home from dinner, my cab pulls up just as Nick is getting out of his own taxi, and he stands in the street with his arms out to me and a huge grin on his face—“Baby!”—and I run and I jump up into his arms and he presses a stubbly cheek against mine.

“What did you do tonight?” I ask.

“Some guys were playing poker after work, so I hung around for a bit. Hope that was okay.”

“Of course,” I say. “More fun than my night.”

“Who all showed up?”

“Oh, Campbell and Insley and their dancing monkeys. Boring. You dodged a bullet. A really lame bullet.”

He squeezes me into him—those strong arms—and hauls me up the stairs. “God, I love you,” he says.

Then comes sex and a stiff drink and a night of sleep in a sweet, exhausted rats’ tangle in our big, soft bed. Poor me.

NICK DUNNE

ONE DAY GONE

I didn’t listen to Go about the booze. I finished half the bottle sitting on her sofa by myself, my eighteenth burst of adrenaline kicking in just when I thought I’d finally go to sleep: My eyes were shutting, I was shifting my pillow, my eyes were closed, and then I saw my wife, blood clotting her blond hair, weeping and blind in pain, scraping herself along our kitchen floor. Calling my name. Nick, Nick, Nick!

I took repeated tugs on the bottle, psyching myself up for sleep, a losing routine. Sleep is like a cat: It only comes to you if you ignore it. I drank more and continued my mantra. Stop thinking , swig, empty your head , swig, now, seriously, empty your head, do it now , swig. You need to be sharp tomorrow, you need to sleep ! Swig. I got nothing more than a fussy nap toward dawn, woke up an hour later with a hangover. Not a disabling hangover, but decent. I was tender and dull. Fuggy. Maybe still a little drunk. I stutter-walked to Go’s Subaru, the movement feeling alien, like my legs were on backward. I had temporary ownership of the car; the police had graciously accepted my gently used Jetta for inspection along with my laptop—all just a formality, I was assured. I drove home to get myself some decent clothes.

Three police cruisers sat on my block, our very few neighbors milling around. No Carl, but there was Jan Teverer—the Christian lady—and Mike, the father of the three-year-old IVF triplets—Trinity, Topher, and Talullah. (“I hate them all, just by name,” said Amy, a grave judge of anything trendy. When I mentioned that the name Amy was once trendy, my wife said, “Nick, you know the story of my name.” I had no idea what she was talking about.)

Jan nodded from a distance without meeting my eyes, but Mike strode over to me as I got out of my car. “I’m so sorry, man, anything I can do, you let me know. Anything. I did the mowing this morning, so at least you don’t needta worry about that.”

Mike and I took turns mowing all the abandoned foreclosed properties in the complex—heavy rains in the spring had turned yards into jungles, which encouraged an influx of raccoons. We had raccoons everywhere, gnawing through our garbage late at night, sneaking into our basements, lounging on our porches like lazy house pets. The mowing didn’t seem to make them go away, but we could at least see them coming now.

“Thanks, man, thank you,” I said.

“Man, my wife, she’s been hysterical since she heard,” he said. “Absolutely hysterical.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that,” I said. “I gotta—” I pointed at my door.

“Just sitting around, crying over pictures of Amy.”

I had no doubt that a thousand Internet photos had popped up overnight, just to feed the pathetic needs of women like Mike’s wife. I had no sympathy for drama queens.