Gillian Flynn - Gone Girl:

“I actually— I was going to come see you guys,” I say, trying to sound flippant, harried. “I’m leaving tonight—tomorrow or tonight. Got a call from back home, got to get going back home.”

“Home Louisiana or home Savannah?” Greta says. She and Jeff have been talking about me.

“Louisi—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jeff says, “let us in for a second, we come to say goodbye.”

He steps toward me, and I think about screaming or slamming the door, but I don’t think either will go well. Better to pretend everything is fine and hope that is true.

Greta closes the door behind them and leans against it as Jeff wanders into the tiny bedroom, then the kitchen, chatting about the weather. Opening doors and cabinets.

“You got to clear everything out; Dorothy will keep your deposit if you don’t,” he says. “She’s a stickler.” He opens the refrigerator, peers into the crisper, the freezer. “Not even a jar of ketchup can you leave. I always thought that was weird. Ketchup doesn’t go bad.”

He opens the closet and lifts up the cabin bedding I’ve folded, shakes out the sheets. “I always, always shake out the sheets,” he says. “Just to make sure nothing is inside—a sock or underwear or what have you.”

He opens the drawer of my bedside table, kneels down, and looks all the way to the back. “Looks like you’ve done a good job,” he says, standing up and smiling, brushing his hands off on his jeans. “Got everything.”

He scans me, neck to foot and back up. “Where is it, sweetheart?”

“What’s that?”

“Your money.” He shrugs. “Don’t make it hard. Me ’n her really need it.”

Greta is silent behind me.

“I have about twenty bucks.”

“Lie,” Jeff said. “You pay for everything, even rent, in cash. Greta saw you with that big wad of money. So hand it over, and you can leave, and we all never have to see each other again.”

“I’ll call the police.”

“Go ahead! My guest.” Jeff waits, arms crossed, thumbs in his armpits.

“Your glasses are fake,” Greta says. “They’re just glass.”

I say nothing, stare at her, hoping she’ll back down. These two seem just nervous enough they may change their minds, say they’re screwing with me, and the three of us will laugh and know otherwise but all agree to pretend.

“And your hair, the roots are coming in, and they’re blond, a lot prettier than whatever color you dyed it —hamster —and that haircut is awful, by the way,” Greta says. “You’re hiding—from whatever. I don’t know if it really is a guy or what, but you’re not going to call the police. So just give us the money.”

“Jeff talk you into this?” I ask.

“I talked Jeff into it.”

I start toward the door that Greta’s blocking. “Let me out.”

“Give us the money.”

I make a grab for the door, and Greta swings toward me, shoves me against the wall, one hand smashed over my face, and with the other, she pulls up my dress, yanks off the money belt.

“Don’t, Greta, I’m serious! Stop!”

Her hot, salty palm is all over my face, jamming my nose; one of her fingernails scrapes my eye. Then she pushes me back against the wall, my head banging, my teeth coming down on the tip of my tongue. The whole scuffle is very quiet.

I have the buckle end of the belt in my hand, but I can’t see to fight her, my eye is watering too much, and she soon rips away my grip, leaving a burning scrape of fingernails on my knuckles. She shoves me again and opens the zipper, fingers through the money.

“Holy shit,” she says. “This is like”—she counts—“more’n a thousand, two or three. Holy shit. Damn, girl! You rob a bank?”

“She may have ,” Jeff says. “Embezzlement.”

In a movie, one of Nick’s movies, I would upthrust my palm into Greta’s nose, drop her to the floor bloody and unconscious, then roundhouse Jeff. But the truth is, I don’t know how to fight, and there are two of them, and it doesn’t seem worth it. I will run at them, and they will grab me by the wrists while I pat and fuss at them like a child, or they will get really angry and beat the crap out of me. I’ve never been hit. I’m scared of getting hurt by someone else.

“You going to call the police, go ahead and call them,” Jeff says again.

“Fuck you,” I whisper.

“Sorry about this,” Greta says. “Next place you go, be more careful, okay? You gotta not look like a girl traveling by herself, hiding out.”

“You’ll be okay,” Jeff says.

He pats me on the arm as they leave.

A quarter and a dime sit on the bedside table. It’s all my money in the world.

NICK DUNNE

NINE DAYS GONE

Good morning! I sat in bed with my laptop by my side, enjoying the online reviews of my impromptu interview. My left eyeball was throbbing a bit, a light hangover from the cheap Scotch, but the rest of me was feeling pretty satisfied. Last night I cast the first line to lure my wife back in. I’m sorry, I will make it up to you, I will do whatever you want from now on, I will let the world know how special you are .

Because I was fucked unless Amy decided to show herself. Tanner’s detective (a wiry, clean-cut guy, not the boozy noir gumshoe I’d hoped for) had come up with nothing so far—my wife had disappeared herself perfectly. I had to convince Amy to come back to me, flush her out with compliments and capitulation.

If the reviews were any indication, I made the right call, because the reviews were good. They were very good:

The Iceman Melteth!

I KNEW he was a good guy .

In vino veritas!

Maybe he didn’t kill her after all .

Maybe he didn’t kill her after all .

Maybe he didn’t kill her after all .

And they’d stopped calling me Lance.

Outside my house, the cameramen and journalists were restless, they wanted a statement from the guy who Maybe Didn’t Kill Her After All. They were yelling at my drawn blinds: Hey, Nick, come on out, tell us about Amy. Hey, Nick, tell us about your treasure hunt . For them it was just a new wrinkle in a ratings bonanza, but it was much better than Nick, did you kill your wife?

And then, suddenly, they were yelling Go’s name—they loved Go, she had no poker face, you knew if Go was sad, angry, worried; stick a caption underneath, and you had a whole story. Margo, is your brother innocent? Margo, tell us about … Tanner, is your client innocent? Tanner—

The doorbell rang, and I opened the door while hiding behind it because I was still disheveled; my spiky hair and wilted boxers would tell their own story. Last night, on camera, I was adorably smitten, a tad tipsy, in vino veritastic. Now I just looked like a drunk. I closed the door and waited for two more glowing reviews of my performance.

“You don’t ever —ever —do something like that again,” Tanner started. “What the hell is wrong with you, Nick? I feel like I need to put one of those toddler leashes on you. How stupid can you be?”

“Have you seen all the comments online? People love it. I’m turning around public opinion, like you told me to.”

“You don’t do that kind of thing in an uncontrolled environment,” he said. “What if she worked for Ellen Abbott? What if she started asking you questions that were harder than What do you want to say to your wife, cutie-pumpkin-pie? ” He said this in a girlish singsong. His face under the orange spray tan was red, giving him a radioactive palette.

“I trusted my instincts. I’m a journalist, Tanner, you have to give me some credit that I can smell bullshit. She was genuinely sweet.”