Gillian Flynn - Gone Girl:

“I’ve been waiting outside your house with the rest of the world, and then at the police station, and then I decided I needed a drink. And here you walk in. It’s just too perfect. Too weird, right?” she said. She had little gold hoop earrings that she kept playing with, her hair tucked behind her ears.

“I should go,” I said. My words were sticky around the edges, the beginnings of a slur.

“But you never told me why you’re here,” Rebecca said. “I have to say, it takes a lot of courage, I think, for you to head out without a friend or some sort of backup. I bet you get a lot of shitty looks.”

I shrugged: No big deal .

“People judging everything you do without even knowing you. Like you with the cell-phone photo at the park. I mean, you were probably like me: You were raised to be polite. But no one wants the real story. They just want to … gotcha . You know?”

“I’m just tired of people judging me because I fit into a certain mold.”

She raised her eyebrows; her earrings jittered.

I thought of Amy sitting in her mystery control center, wherever the fuck she was, judging me from every angle, finding me wanting even from afar. Was there anything she could see that would make her call off this madness?

I went on, “I mean, people think we were in a rocky marriage, but actually, right before she disappeared, she put together a treasure hunt for me.”

Amy would want one of two things: for me to learn my lesson and fry like the bad boy I was; or for me to learn my lesson and love her the way she deserved and be a good, obedient, chastised, dickless little boy.

“This wonderful treasure hunt.” I smiled. Rebecca shook her head with a little-V frown. “My wife, she always did a treasure hunt for our anniversary. One clue leads to a special place where I find the next clue, and so on. Amy …” I tried to get my eyes to fill, settled for wiping them. The clock above the door read 12:37 A.M. “Before she went missing, she hid all the clues. For this year.”

“Before she disappeared on your anniversary.”

“And it’s been all that’s kept me together. It made me feel closer to her.”

Rebecca pulled out a Flip camera. “Let me interview you. On camera.”

“Bad idea.”

“I’ll give it context,” she said. “That’s exactly what you need, Nick, I swear. Context. You need it bad. Come on, just a few words.”

I shook my head. “Too dangerous.”

“Say what you just said. I’m serious, Nick. I’m the opposite of Ellen Abbott. The anti–Ellen Abbott. You need me in your life.” She held up the camera, its tiny red light eyeing me.

“Seriously, turn it off.”

“Help a girl out. I get the Nick Dunne interview? My career is made. You’ve done your good deed for the year. Pleeease? No harm, Nick, one minute. Just one minute. I swear I will only make you look good.”

She motioned to a nearby booth where we’d be tucked out of view of any gawkers. I nodded and we resettled, that little red light aimed at me the whole time.

“What do you want to know?” I asked.

“Tell me about the treasure hunt. It sounds romantic. Like, quirky, awesome, romantic.”

Take control of the story, Nick . For both the capital-P public and the capital-C wife. Right now , I thought, I am a man who loves his wife and will find her. I am a man who loves his wife, and I am the good guy. I am the one to root for. I am a man who isn’t perfect, but my wife is, and I will be very, very obedient from now on .

I could do this more easily than feign sadness. Like I said, I can operate in sunlight. Still, I felt my throat tighten as I got ready to say the words.

“My wife, she just happens to be the coolest girl I’ve ever met. How many guys can say that? I married the coolest girl I ever met .”

Youfuckingbitchyoufuckingbitchyoufuckingbitch. Come home so I can kill you .

AMY ELLIOTT DUNNE

NINE DAYS GONE

I wake up feeling immediately nervous. Off. I cannot be found here , that’s what I wake up thinking, a burst of words, like a flash in my brain. The investigation is not going fast enough, and my money situation is just the opposite, and Jeff’s and Greta’s greedy antennae are up. And I smell like fish.

There was something about Jeff and that race to the shoreline, toward my bundled dress and my money belt. Something about the way Greta keeps alighting on Ellen Abbott . It makes me nervous. Or am I being paranoid? I sound like Diary Amy: Is my husband going to kill me or am I imagining!?!? For the first time I actually feel sorry for her.

I make two calls to the Amy Dunne tip line, and speak to two different people, and offer two different tips. It’s hard to tell how quickly they’ll reach the police—the volunteers seem utterly disinterested. I drive to the library in a dark mood. I need to pack up and leave. Clean my cabin with bleach, wipe my fingerprints off everything, vacuum for any hairs. Erase Amy (and Lydia and Nancy) and go. If I go, I’ll be safe. Even if Greta and Jeff do suspect who I am, as long as I’m not caught in the flesh, I’m okay. Amy Elliott Dunne is like a yeti—coveted and folkloric—and they are two Ozarks grifters whose blurry story will be immediately debunked. I will leave today. That’s what I decide when I walk with my head bowed into the chilly, mostly uninhabited library with its three vacant computers and I go online to catch up on Nick.

Since the vigil, the news about Nick has been on repeat—the same facts on a circuit, over and over, getting louder and louder, but with no new information. But today something is different. I type Nick’s name into the search engine, and the blogs are going nuts, because my husband has gotten drunk and done an insane interview, in a bar, with a random girl wielding a Flip camera. God, the idiot never learns.

NICK DUNNE’S VIDEO CONFESSION!!!

NICK DUNNE, DRUNKEN DECLARATIONS!!!

My heart jumps so high, my uvula begins pulsing. My husband has fucked himself again.

The video loads, and there is Nick. He has the sleepy eyes he gets when he’s drunk, the heavy lids, and he’s got his sideways grin, and he’s talking about me, and he looks like a human being. He looks happy. “My wife, she just happens to be the coolest girl I’ve ever met,” he says. “How many guys can say that? I married the coolest girl I ever met .”

My stomach flutters delicately. I was not expecting this. I almost smile.

“What’s so cool about her?” the girl asks off-screen. Her voice is high, sorority-cheery.

Nick launches into the treasure hunt, how it was our tradition, how I always remembered hilarious inside jokes, and right now this was all he had left of me, so he had to complete the treasure hunt. It was his mission.

“I just reached the end this morning,” he says. His voice is husky. He has been talking over the crowd. He’ll go home and gargle with warm salt water, like his mother always made him do. If I were at home with him, he’d ask me to heat the water and make it for him, because he never got the right amount of salt. “And it made me … realize a lot. She is the only person in the world who has the power to surprise me, you know? Everyone else, I always know what they’re going to say, because everyone says the same thing. We all watch the same shows, we read the same stuff, we recycle everything. But Amy, she is her own perfect person. She just has this power over me.”

“Where do you think she is now, Nick?”

My husband looks down at his wedding band and twirls it twice.

“Are you okay, Nick?”

“The truth? No. I failed my wife so entirely. I have been so wrong. I just hope it’s not too late. For me. For us.”