Gillian Flynn - Gone Girl:

“I mean, I love you, Nick,” Andie said, here, surreally, on my sister’s sofa. “No matter what happens. I don’t really know what else to say, I feel pretty …” She threw her hands up. “Stupid.”

“Don’t feel stupid,” I said. “I don’t know what to say either. There’s nothing to say.”

“You can say that you love me no matter what happens.”

I thought: I can’t say that out loud anymore . I’d said it once or twice, a spitty mumble against her neck, homesick for something. But the words were out there, and so was a lot more. I thought then of the trail we’d left, our busy, semi-hidden love affair that I hadn’t worried enough about. If her building had a security camera, I was on it. I’d bought a disposable phone just for her calls, but those voice mails and texts went to her very permanent cell. I’d written her a dirty valentine that I could already see splashed across the news, me rhyming besot with twat . And more: Andie was twenty-three. I assumed my words, my voice, even photos of me were captured on various electronica. I’d flipped through the photos on her phone one night, jealous, possessive, curious, and seen plenty of shots of an ex or two smiling proudly in her bed, and I assumed at one point I’d join the club—I kind of wanted to join the club—and for some reason that hadn’t worried me, even though it could be downloaded and sent to a million people in the space of a vengeful second.

“This is an extremely weird situation, Andie. I just need you to be patient.”

She pulled back from me. “You can’t say you love me, no matter what happens?”

“I love you, Andie. I do.” I held her eyes. Saying I love you was dangerous right now, but so was not saying it.

“Fuck me, then,” she whispered. She began tugging at my belt.

“We have to be real careful right now. I … It’s a bad, bad place for me if the police find out about us. It looks beyond bad.”

“That’s what you’re worried about?”

“I’m a man with a missing wife and a secret … girlfriend. Yeah, it looks bad. It looks criminal.”

“That makes it sound sleazy.” Her breasts were still out.

“People don’t know us, Andie. They will think it’s sleazy.”

“God, it’s like some bad noir movie.”

I smiled. I’d introduced Andie to noir—to Bogart and The Big Sleep , Double Indemnity , all the classics. It was one of the things I liked best about us, that I could show her things.

“Why don’t we just tell the police?” she said. “Wouldn’t that be better—”

“No. Andie, don’t even think about it. No.”

“They’re going to find out—”

“Why? Why would they? Have you told anyone about us, sweetheart?”

She gave me a twitchy look. I felt bad: This was not how she thought the night would go. She had been excited to see me, she had been imagining a lusty reunion, physical reassurance, and I was busy covering my ass.

“Sweetheart, I’m sorry, I just need to know,” I said.

“Not by name.”

“What do you mean, not by name?”

“I mean,” she said, pulling up her dress finally, “my friends, my mom, they know I’m seeing someone, but not by name.”

“And not by any kind of description, right?” I said it more urgently than I wanted to, feeling like I was holding up a collapsing ceiling. “Two people know about this, Andie. You and me. If you help me, if you love me, it will just be us knowing, and then the police will never find out.”

She traced a finger along my jawline. “And what if—if they never find Amy?”

“You and I, Andie, we’ll be together no matter what happens. But only if we’re careful. If we’re not careful, it’s possible— It looks bad enough that I could go to prison.”

“Maybe she ran off with someone,” she said, leaning her cheek against my shoulder. “Maybe—”

I could feel her girl-brain buzzing, turning Amy’s disappearance into a frothy, scandalous romance, ignoring any reality that didn’t suit the narrative.

“She didn’t run off. It’s much more serious than that.” I put a finger under her chin so she looked at me. “Andie? I need you to take this very seriously, okay?”

“Of course I’m taking it seriously. But I need to be able to talk to you more often. To see you. I’m freaking out, Nick.”

“We just need to sit tight for now.” I gripped both her shoulders so she had to look at me. “My wife is missing, Andie.”

“But you don’t even—”

I knew what she was about to say —you don’t even love her— but she was smart enough to stop.

She put her arms around me. “Look, I don’t want to fight. I know you care about Amy, and I know you must be really worried. I am too. I know you are under … I can’t imagine the pressure. So I’m fine keeping an even lower profile than I did before, if that’s possible. But remember, this affects me too. I need to hear from you. Once a day. Just call when you can, even if it’s only for a few seconds, so I can hear your voice. Once a day, Nick. Every single day. I’ll go crazy otherwise. I’ll go crazy.”

She smiled at me, whispered, “Now kiss me.”

I kissed her very softly.

“I love you,” she said, and I kissed her neck and mumbled my reply. We sat in silence, the TV flickering.

I let my eyes close. Now kiss me , who had said that?

I lurched awake just after five A.M. Go was up, I could hear her down the hall, running water in the bathroom. I shook Andie— It’s five A.M., it’s five A.M .—and with promises of love and phone calls, I hustled her toward the door like a shameful one-nighter.

“Remember, call every day,” Andie whispered.

I heard the bathroom door open.

“Every day,” I said, and ducked behind the door as I opened it and Andie left.

When I turned back around, Go was standing in the living room. Her mouth had dropped open, stunned, but the rest of her body was in full fury: hands on hips, eyebrows V’ed.

“Nick. You fucking idiot.”

AMY ELLIOTT DUNNE

JULY 21, 2011

DIARY ENTRY

I am such an idiot. Sometimes I look at myself and I think: No wonder Nick finds me ridiculous, frivolous, spoiled, compared to his mom . Maureen is dying. She hides her disease behind big smiles and roomy embroidered sweatshirts, answering every question about her health with: “Oh, I’m just fine, but how are you doing, sweetie?” She is dying, but she is not going to admit it, not yet. So yesterday she phones me in the morning, asks me if I want to go on a field trip with her and her friends—she is having a good day, she wants to get out of the house as much as she can—and I agree immediately, even though I knew they’d be doing nothing that particularly interested me: pinochle, bridge, some church activity that usually requires sorting things.

“We’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” she says. “Wear short sleeves.”

Cleaning. It had to be cleaning. Something requiring elbow grease. I throw on a short-sleeve shirt, and in exactly fifteen minutes, I am opening the door to Maureen, bald under a knitted cap, giggling with her two friends. They are all wearing matching appliquéd T-shirts, all bells and ribbons, with the words The PlasMamas airbrushed across their chests.

I think they’ve started a do-wop group. But then we all climb into Rose’s old Chrysler —old -old, one of those where the front seat goes all the way across, a grandmotherly car that smells of lady cigarettes—and off we merrily go to the plasma donation center .

“We’re Mondays and Thursdays,” Rose explains, looking at me in the rearview.