Gillian Flynn - Gone Girl:

When Amy and I moved in, our only neighbors descended on us: one middle-aged single mom of three, bearing a casserole; a young father of triplets with a six-pack of beer (his wife left at home with the triplets); an older Christian couple who lived a few houses down; and of course, Carl from across the street. We sat out on our back deck and watched the river, and they all talked ruefully about ARMs, and zero percent interest, and zero money down, and then they all remarked how Amy and I were the only ones with river access, the only ones without children. “Just the two of you? In this whole big house?” the single mom asked, doling out a scrambled-egg something.

“Just the two of us,” I confirmed with a smile, and nodded in appreciation as I took a mouthful of wobbly egg.

“Seems lonely.”

On that she was right.

Four months later, the whole big house lady lost her mortgage battle and disappeared in the night with her three kids. Her house has remained empty. The living-room window still has a child’s picture of a butterfly taped to it, the bright Magic Marker sun-faded to brown. One evening not long ago, I drove past and saw a man, bearded, bedraggled, staring out from behind the picture, floating in the dark like some sad aquarium fish. He saw me see him and flickered back into the depths of the house. The next day I left a brown paper bag full of sandwiches on the front step; it sat in the sun untouched for a week, decaying wetly, until I picked it back up and threw it out.

Quiet. The complex was always disturbingly quiet. As I neared our home, conscious of the noise of the car engine, I could see the cat was definitely on the steps. Still on the steps, twenty minutes after Carl’s call. This was strange. Amy loved the cat, the cat was declawed, the cat was never let outside, never ever, because the cat, Bleecker, was sweet but extremely stupid, and despite the LoJack tracking device pelleted somewhere in his fat furry rolls, Amy knew she’d never see the cat again if he ever got out. The cat would waddle straight into the Mississippi River—deedle-de-dum—and float all the way to the Gulf of Mexico into the maw of a hungry bull shark.

But it turned out the cat wasn’t even smart enough to get past the steps. Bleecker was perched on the edge of the porch, a pudgy but proud sentinel—Private Tryhard. As I pulled in to the drive, Carl came out and stood on his own front steps, and I could feel the cat and the old man both watching me as I got out of the car and walked toward the house, the red peonies along the border looking fat and juicy, asking to be devoured.

I was about to go into blocking position to get the cat when I saw that the front door was open. Carl had said as much, but seeing it was different. This wasn’t taking-out-the-trash-back-in-a-minute open. This was wide-gaping-ominous open.

Carl hovered across the way, waiting for my response, and like some awful piece of performance art, I felt myself enacting Concerned Husband. I stood on the middle step and frowned, then took the stairs quickly, two at a time, calling out my wife’s name.

Silence.

“Amy, you home?”

I ran straight upstairs. No Amy. The ironing board was set up, the iron still on, a dress waiting to be pressed.

“Amy!”

As I ran back downstairs, I could see Carl still framed in the open doorway, hands on hips, watching. I swerved into the living room, and pulled up short. The carpet glinted with shards of glass, the coffee table shattered. End tables were on their sides, books slid across the floor like a card trick. Even the heavy antique ottoman was belly-up, its four tiny feet in the air like something dead. In the middle of the mess was a pair of good sharp scissors.

“Amy!”

I began running, bellowing her name. Through the kitchen, where a teakettle was burning, down to the basement, where the guest room stood empty, and then out the back door. I pounded across our yard onto the slender boat deck leading out over the river. I peeked over the side to see if she was in our rowboat, where I had found her one day, tethered to the dock, rocking in the water, her face to the sun, eyes closed, and as I’d peered down into the dazzling reflections of the river, at her beautiful, still face, she’d suddenly opened her blue eyes and said nothing to me, and I’d said nothing back and gone into the house alone.

“Amy!”

She wasn’t on the water, she wasn’t in the house. Amy was not there.

Amy was gone.

AMY ELLIOTT

SEPTEMBER 18, 2005

DIARY ENTRY

Well, well, well. Guess who’s back? Nick Dunne, Brooklyn party boy, sugar-cloud kisser, disappearing act. Eight months, two weeks, couple of days, no word, and then he resurfaces, like it was all part of the plan. Turns out, he’d lost my phone number. His cell was out of juice, so he’d written it on a stickie. Then he’d tucked the stickie into his jeans pocket and put the jeans in the washer, and it turned the stickie into a piece of cyclone-shaped pulp. He tried to unravel it but could only see a 3 and an 8. (He said.)

And then work clobbered him and suddenly it was March and too embarrassingly late to try to find me. (He said.)

Of course I was angry. I had been angry. But now I’m not. Let me set the scene. (She said.) Today. Gusty September winds. I’m walking along Seventh Avenue, making a lunchtime contemplation of the sidewalk bodega bins—endless plastic containers of cantaloupe and honeydew and melon perched on ice like the day’s catch—and I could feel a man barnacling himself to my side as I sailed along, and I corner-eyed the intruder and realized who it was. It was him . The boy in “I met a boy!”

I didn’t break my stride, just turned to him and said:

a) “Do I know you?” (manipulative, challenging)

b) “Oh, wow, I’m so happy to see you!” (eager, doormatlike)

c) “Go fuck yourself.” (aggressive, bitter)

d) “Well, you certainly take your time about it, don’t you, Nick?” (light, playful, laid-back)

Answer: D

And now we’re together. Together, together. It was that easy. It’s interesting, the timing. Propitious, if you will. (And I will.) Just last night was my parents’ book party. Amazing Amy and the Big Day . Yup, Rand and Marybeth couldn’t resist. They’ve given their daughter’s namesake what they can’t give their daughter: a husband! Yes, for book twenty, Amazing Amy is getting married! Wheeeeeee. No one cares. No one wanted Amazing Amy to grow up, least of all me. Leave her in kneesocks and hair ribbons and let me grow up, unencumbered by my literary alter ego, my paper-bound better half, the me I was supposed to be.

But Amy is the Elliott bread and butter, and she’s served us well, so I suppose I can’t begrudge her a perfect match. She’s marrying good old Able Andy, of course. They’ll be just like my parents: happy-happy.

Still, it was unsettling, the incredibly small order the publisher put in. A new Amazing Amy used to get a first print of a hundred thousand copies back in the ’80s. Now ten thousand. The book-launch party was, accordingly, unfabulous. Off-tone. How do you throw a party for a fictional character who started life as a precocious moppet of six and is now a thirty-year-old bride-to-be who still speaks like a child? ( “Sheesh,” thought Amy, “my dear fiancé sure is a grouch-monster when he doesn’t get his way …” That is an actual quote. The whole book made me want to punch Amy right in her stupid, spotless vagina.) The book is a nostalgia item, intended to be purchased by women who grew up with Amazing Amy , but I’m not sure who will actually want to read it. I read it, of course. I gave the book my blessing—multiple times. Rand and Marybeth feared that I might take Amy’s marriage as some jab at my perpetually single state. (“I, for one, don’t think women should marry before thirty-five,” said my mom, who married my dad at twenty-three.)