BOY MEETS GIRL

Title Page

Epigraph

Part One: Boy Loses Girl

Nick Dunne: The Day of

Amy Elliott: January 8, 2005

Nick Dunne: The Day of

Amy Elliott: September 18, 2005

Nick Dunne: The Day of

Amy Elliott Dunne: July 5, 2008

Nick Dunne: The Night of

Amy Elliott Dunne: April 21, 2009

Nick Dunne: One Day Gone

Amy Elliott Dunne: July 5, 2010

Nick Dunne: One Day Gone

Amy Elliott Dunne: August 23, 2010

Nick Dunne: Two Days Gone

Amy Elliott Dunne: September 15, 2010

Nick Dunne: Three Days Gone

Amy Elliott Dunne: October 16, 2010

Nick Dunne: Four Days Gone

Amy Elliott Dunne: April 28, 2011

Nick Dunne: Four Days Gone

Amy Elliott Dunne: July 21, 2011

Nick Dunne: Five Days Gone

Amy Elliott Dunne: August 17, 2011

Nick Dunne: Five Days Gone

Amy Elliott Dunne: October 21, 2011

Nick Dunne: Six Days Gone

Amy Elliott Dunne: February 15, 2012

Nick Dunne: Six Days Gone

Amy Elliott Dunne: June 26, 2012

Nick Dunne: Seven Days Gone

Part Two: Boy Meets Girl

Amy Elliott Dunne: The Day of

Nick Dunne: Seven Days Gone

Amy Elliott Dunne: The Day of

Nick Dunne: Seven Days Gone

Amy Elliott Dunne: Five Days Gone

Nick Dunne: Eight Days Gone

Amy Elliott Dunne: Seven Days Gone

Nick Dunne: Eight Days Gone

Amy Elliott Dunne: Eight Days Gone

Nick Dunne: Eight Days Gone

Amy Elliott Dunne: Nine Days Gone

Nick Dunne: Nine Days Gone

Amy Elliott Dunne: Nine Days Gone

Nick Dunne: Ten Days Gone

Amy Elliott Dunne: Ten Days Gone

Nick Dunne: Ten Days Gone

Amy Elliott Dunne: Ten Days Gone

Nick Dunne: Ten Days Gone

Amy Elliott Dunne: Eleven Days Gone

Nick Dunne: Fourteen Days Gone

Amy Elliott Dunne: Twenty-Six Days Gone

Nick Dunne: Thirty-Three Days Gone

Amy Elliott Dunne: Forty Days Gone

Part Three: Boy Gets Girl Back (Or Vice Versa)

Nick Dunne: Forty Days Gone

Amy Elliott Dunne: The Night of the Return

Nick Dunne: The Night of the Return

Amy Elliott Dunne: The Night of the Return

Nick Dunne: The Night of the Return

Amy Elliott Dunne: Five Days after the Return

Nick Dunne: Thirty Days after the Return

Amy Elliott Dunne: Eight Weeks after the Return

Nick Dunne: Nine Weeks after the Return

Amy Elliott Dunne: Ten Weeks after the Return

Nick Dunne: Twenty Weeks after the Return

Amy Elliott Dunne: Ten Months, Two Weeks, Six Days after the Return

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by Gillian Flynn

Copyright

Love is the world’s infinite mutability; lies, hatred, murder even, are all knit up in it; it is the inevitable blossoming of its opposites, a magnificent rose smelling faintly of blood.

Tony Kushner, THE ILLUSION

PART ONE

BOY LOSES GIRL

NI

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THE DAY OF

When I think of my wife, I always think of her head. The shape of

it, to begin with. The very first time I saw her, it was the back of

the head I saw, and there was something lovely about it, the angles

of it. Like a shiny, hard corn kernel or a riverbed fossil. She had

what the Victorians would call a finely shaped head. You could

imagine the skull quite easily.

I’d know her head anywhere.

And what’s inside it. I think of that, too: her mind. Her brain, all

those coils, and her thoughts shuttling through those coils like fast,

frantic centipedes. Like a child, I picture opening her skull,

unspooling her brain and sifting through it, trying to catch and pin

down her thoughts. What are you thinking, Amy? The question

I’ve asked most often during our marriage, if not out loud, if not to

the person who could answer. I suppose these questions

stormcloud over every marriage: What are you thinking? How are

you feeling? Who are you? What have we done to each other?

What will we do?

My eyes flipped open at exactly six a.m. This was no avian

fluttering of the lashes, no gentle blink toward consciousness. The

awakening was mechanical. A spooky ventriloquist-dummy click

of the lids: The world is black and then, showtime! 6-0-0 the clock

said – in my face, first thing I saw. 6-0-0. It felt different. I rarely

woke at such a rounded time. I was a man of jagged risings: 8:43,

11:51, 9:26. My life was alarmless.

At that exact moment, 6-0-0, the sun climbed over the skyline of

oaks, revealing its full summer angry-God self. Its reflection flared

across the river toward our house, a long, blaring finger aimed at

me through our frail bedroom curtains. Accusing: You have been

seen. You will be seen.

I wallowed in bed, which was our New York bed in our new house,

which we still called the new house, even though we’d been back

here for two years. It’s a rented house right along the Mississippi

River, a house that screams Suburban Nouveau Riche, the kind of

place I aspired to as a kid from my split-level, shag-carpet side of

town. The kind of house that is immediately familiar: a generically

grand, unchallenging, new, new, new house that my wife would –

and did – detest.

‘Should I remove my soul before I come inside?’ Her first line

upon arrival. It had been a compromise: Amy demanded we rent,

not buy, in my little Missouri hometown, in her firm hope that we

wouldn’t be stuck here long. But the only houses for rent were

clustered in this failed development: a miniature ghost town of

bank-owned,

recession-busted,

price-reduced

mansions,

a

neighborhood that closed before it ever opened. It was a

compromise, but Amy didn’t see it that way, not in the least. To

Amy, it was a punishing whim on my part, a nasty, selfish twist of

the knife. I would drag her, caveman-style, to a town she had

aggressively avoided, and make her live in the kind of house she

used to mock. I suppose it’s not a compromise if only one of you

considers it such, but that was what our compromises tended to

look like. One of us was always angry. Amy, usually.

Do not blame me for this particular grievance, Amy. The Missouri

Grievance. Blame the economy, blame bad luck, blame my parents,

blame your parents, blame the Internet, blame people who use the

Internet. I used to be a writer. I was a writer who wrote about TV

and movies and books. Back when people read things on paper,

back when anyone cared about what I thought. I’d arrived in New

York in the late ’90s, the last gasp of the glory days, although no

one knew it then. New York was packed with writers, real writers,

because there were magazines, real magazines, loads of them. This

was back when the Internet was still some exotic pet kept in the

corner of the publishing world – throw some kibble at it, watch it

dance on its little leash, oh quite cute, it definitely won’t kill us in

the night. Think about it: a time when newly graduated college

kids could come to New York and get paid to write. We had no

clue that we were embarking on careers that would vanish within

a decade.

I had a job for eleven years and then I didn’t, it was that fast. All

around the country, magazines began shuttering, succumbing to a

sudden infection brought on by the busted economy. Writers (my

kind of writers: aspiring novelists, ruminative thinkers, people

whose brains don’t work quick enough to blog or link or tweet,

basically old, stubborn blowhards) were through. We were like

women’s hat makers or buggy-whip manufacturers: Our time was

done. Three weeks after I got cut loose, Amy lost her job, such as it

was. (Now I can feel Amy looking over my shoulder, smirking at

the time I’ve spent discussing my career, my misfortune, and

dismissing her experience in one sentence. That, she would tell

you, is typical. Just like Nick, she would say. It was a refrain of

hers: Just like Nick to … and whatever followed, whatever was just

like me, was bad.) Two jobless grown-ups, we spent weeks

wandering around our Brooklyn brownstone in socks and pajamas,

ignoring the future, strewing unopened mail across tables and

sofas, eating ice cream at ten a.m. and taking thick afternoon

naps.

Then one day the phone rang. My twin sister was on the other end.

Margo had moved back home after her own New York layoff a year

before – the girl is one step ahead of me in everything, even shitty

luck. Margo, calling from good ole North Carthage, Missouri, from

the house where we grew up, and as I listened to her voice, I saw

her at age ten, with a dark cap of hair and overall shorts, sitting on

our grandparents’ back dock, her body slouched over like an old

pillow, her skinny legs dangling in the water, watching the river

flow over fish-white feet, so intently, utterly self-possessed even as

a child.

Go’s voice was warm and crinkly even as she gave this cold news:

Our indomitable mother was dying. Our dad was nearly gone – his

(nasty) mind, his (miserable) heart, both murky as he meandered

toward the great gray beyond. But it looked like our mother would

beat him there. About six months, maybe a year, she had. I could

tell that Go had gone to meet with the doctor by herself, taken her

studious notes in her slovenly handwriting, and she was teary as

she tried to decipher what she’d written. Dates and doses.

‘Well, fuck, I have no idea what this says, is it a nine? Does that

even make sense?’ she said, and I interrupted. Here was a task, a

purpose, held out on my sister’s palm like a plum. I almost cried

with relief.

‘I’ll come back, Go. We’ll move back home. You shouldn’t have to

do this all by yourself.’

She didn’t believe me. I could hear her breathing on the other end.

‘I’m serious, Go. Why not? There’s nothing here.’

A long exhale. ‘What about Amy?’

That is what I didn’t take long enough to consider. I simply

assumed I would bundle up my New York wife with her New York

interests, her New York pride, and remove her from her New York

parents – leave the frantic, thrilling futureland of Manhattan

behind – and transplant her to a little town on the river in

Missouri, and all would be fine.

I did not yet understand how foolish, how optimistic, how, yes,

just like Nick I was for thinking this. The misery it would lead to.

‘Amy will be fine. Amy …’ Here was where I should have said,

‘Amy loves Mom.’ But I couldn’t tell Go that Amy loved our

mother, because after all that time, Amy still barely knew our

mother. Their few meetings had left them both baffled. Amy

would dissect the conversations for days after – ‘And what did she

mean by …,’ – as if my mother were some ancient peasant

tribeswoman arriving from the tundra with an armful of raw yak

meat and some buttons for bartering, trying to get something from

Amy that wasn’t on offer.

Amy didn’t care to know my family, didn’t want to know my

birthplace, and yet for some reason, I thought moving home

would be a good idea.

My morning breath warmed the pillow, and I changed the subject

in my mind. Today was not a day for second-guessing or regret, it

was a day for doing. Downstairs, I could hear the return of a

long-lost sound: Amy making breakfast. Banging wooden

cupboards (rump-thump!), rattling containers of tin and glass

(ding-ring!), shuffling and sorting a collection of metal pots and

iron pans (ruzz-shuzz!). A culinary orchestra tuning up, clattering

vigorously toward the finale, a cake pan drumrolling along the

floor, hitting the wall with a cymballic crash. Something

impressive was being created, probably a crepe, because crepes

are special, and today Amy would want to cook something special.

It was our five-year anniversary.

I walked barefoot to the edge of the steps and stood listening,

working my toes into the plush wall-to-wall carpet Amy detested

on principle, as I tried to decide whether I was ready to join my

wife. Amy was in the kitchen, oblivious to my hesitation. She was

humming something melancholy and familiar. I strained to make

it out – a folk song? a lullabye? – and then realized it was the

theme to M.A.S.H. Suicide is painless. I went downstairs.

I hovered in the doorway, watching my wife. Her yellow-butter

hair was pulled up, the hank of ponytail swinging cheerful as a

jumprope, and she was sucking distractedly on a burnt fingertip,

humming around it. She hummed to herself because she was an

unrivaled botcher of lyrics. When we were first dating, a Genesis

song came on the radio: ‘She seems to have an invisible touch,

yeah.’ And Amy crooned instead, ‘She takes my hat and puts it on

the top shelf.’ When I asked her why she’d ever think her lyrics

were remotely, possibly, vaguely right, she told me she always

thought the woman in the song truly loved the man because she

put his hat on the top shelf. I knew I liked her then, really liked

her, this girl with an explanation for everything.

There’s something disturbing about recalling a warm memory and

feeling utterly cold.

Amy peered at the crepe sizzling in the pan and licked something

off her wrist. She looked triumphant, wifely. If I took her in my

arms, she would smell like berries and powdered sugar.

When she spied me lurking there in grubby boxers, my hair in full

Heat Miser spike, she leaned against the kitchen counter and said,

‘Well, hello, handsome.’

Bile and dread inched up my throat. I thought to myself: Okay, go.

I was very late getting to work. My sister and I had done a foolish

thing when we both moved back home. We had done what we

always talked about doing. We opened a bar. We borrowed money

from Amy to do this, eighty thousand dollars, which was once

nothing to Amy but by then was almost everything. I swore I

would pay her back, with interest. I would not be a man who

borrowed from his wife – I could feel my dad twisting his lips at

the very idea. Well, there are all kinds of men, his most damning

phrase, the second half left unsaid, and you are the wrong kind.

But truly, it was a practical decision, a smart business move. Amy

and I both needed new careers; this would be mine. She would

pick one someday, or not, but in the meantime, here was an

income, made possible by the last of Amy’s trust fund. Like the

McMansion I rented, the bar featured symbolically in my

childhood memories – a place where only grown-ups go, and do

whatever grown-ups do. Maybe that’s why I was so insistent on

buying it after being stripped of my livelihood. It’s a reminder that

I am, after all, an adult, a grown man, a useful human being, even

though I lost the career that made me all these things. I won’t

make that mistake again: The once plentiful herds of magazine

writers would continue to be culled – by the Internet, by the

recession, by the American public, who would rather watch TV or

play video games or electronically inform friends that, like, rain

sucks! But there’s no app for a bourbon buzz on a warm day in a

cool, dark bar. The world will always want a drink.

Our bar is a corner bar with a haphazard, patchwork aesthetic. Its

best feature is a massive Victorian backbar, dragon heads and

angel faces emerging from the oak – an extravagant work of wood

in these shitty plastic days. The remainder of the bar is, in fact,

shitty, a showcase of the shabbiest design offerings of every

decade: an Eisenhower-era linoleum floor, the edges turned up

like burnt toast; dubious wood-paneled walls straight from a ’70s

home-porn video; halogen floor lamps, an accidental tribute to my

1990s dorm room. The ultimate effect is strangely homey – it

looks less like a bar than someone’s benignly neglected

fixer-upper. And jovial: We share a parking lot with the local

bowling alley, and when our door swings wide, the clatter of

strikes applauds the customer’s entrance.

We named the bar The Bar. ‘People will think we’re ironic instead

of creatively bankrupt,’ my sister reasoned.

Yes, we thought we were being clever New Yorkers – that the

name was a joke no one else would really get, not get like we did.

Not meta-get. We pictured the locals scrunching their noses:

Why’d you name it The Bar? But our first customer, a gray-haired

woman in bifocals and a pink jogging suit, said, ‘I like the name.

Like in Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Audrey Hepburn’s cat was

named Cat.’

We felt much less superior after that, which was a good thing.

I pulled into the parking lot. I waited until a strike erupted from

the bowling alley – thank you, thank you, friends – then stepped

out of the car. I admired the surroundings, still not bored with the

broken-in view: the squatty blond-brick post office across the

street (now closed on Saturdays), the unassuming beige office

building just down the way (now closed, period). The town wasn’t

prosperous, not anymore, not by a long shot. Hell, it wasn’t even

original, being one of two Carthage, Missouris – ours is technically

North Carthage, which makes it sound like a twin city, although

it’s hundreds of miles from the other and the lesser of the two: a

quaint little 1950s town that bloated itself into a basic midsize

suburb and dubbed it progress. Still, it was where my mom grew

up and where she raised me and Go, so it had some history. Mine,

at least.

As I walked toward the bar across the concrete-and-weed parking

lot, I looked straight down the road and saw the river. That’s what

I’ve always loved about our town: We aren’t built on some safe

bluff overlooking the Mississippi – we are on the Mississippi. I

could walk down the road and step right into the sucker, an easy

three-foot drop, and be on my way to Tennessee. Every building

downtown bears hand-drawn lines from where the river hit during

the Flood of ’61, ’75, ’84, ’93, ’07, ’08, ’11. And so on.

The river wasn’t swollen now, but it was running urgently, in

strong ropy currents. Moving apace with the river was a long

single-file line of men, eyes aimed at their feet, shoulders tense,

walking steadfastly nowhere. As I watched them, one suddenly

looked up at me, his face in shadow, an oval blackness. I turned

away.

I felt an immediate, intense need to get inside. By the time I’d

gone twenty feet, my neck bubbled with sweat. The sun was still

an angry eye in the sky. You have been seen.

My gut twisted, and I moved quicker. I needed a drink.

AM

A

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JANUARY 8, 2005

– Diary entry –

Tra and la! I am smiling a big adopted-orphan smile as I write this.

I am embarrassed at how happy I am, like some Technicolor

comic of a teenage girl talking on the phone with my hair in a

ponytail, the bubble above my head saying: I met a boy!

But I did. This is a technical, empirical truth. I met a boy, a great,

gorgeous dude, a funny, cool-ass guy. Let me set the scene,

because it deserves setting for posterity (no, please, I’m not that

far gone, posterity! feh). But still. It’s not New Year’s, but still very

much the new year. It’s winter: early dark, freezing cold.

Carmen, a newish friend – semi-friend, barely friend, the kind of

friend you can’t cancel on – has talked me into going out to

Brooklyn, to one of her writers’ parties. Now, I like a writer party,

I like writers, I am the child of writers, I am a writer. I still love

scribbling that word – WRITER – any time a form, questionnaire,

document asks for my occupation. Fine, I write personality

quizzes, I don’t write about the Great Issues of the Day, but I think

it’s fair to say I am a writer. I’m using this journal to get better: to

hone my skills, to collect details and observations. To show don’t

tell and all that other writery crap. (Adopted-orphan smile, I mean,

that’s not bad, come on.) But really, I do think my quizzes alone

qualify me on at least an honorary basis. Right?

At a party you find yourself surrounded by genuine talented

writers, employed at high-profile, respected newspapers and

magazines.

You merely write quizzes for women’s rags. When someone asks

what you do for a living, you:

a) Get embarrassed and say, ‘I’m just a quiz writer, it’s silly stuff!’

b) Go on the offense: ‘I’m a writer now, but I’m considering

something more challenging and worthwhile – why, what do you

do?’

c) Take pride in your accomplishments: ‘I write personality

quizzes using the knowledge gleaned from my master’s degree in

psychology – oh, and fun fact: I am the inspiration for a beloved

children’s-book series, I’m sure you know it, Amazing Amy? Yeah,

so suck it, snobdouche!

Answer: C, totally C

Anyway, the party is being thrown by one of Carmen’s good

friends who writes about movies for a movie magazine, and is very

funny, according to Carmen. I worry for a second that she wants to

set us up: I am not interested in being set up. I need to be

ambushed, caught unawares, like some sort of feral love-jackal.

I’m too self-conscious otherwise. I feel myself trying to be

charming, and then I realize I’m obviously trying to be charming,

and then I try to be even more charming to make up for the fake

charm, and then I’ve basically turned into Liza Minnelli: I’m

dancing in tights and sequins, begging you to love me. There’s a

bowler and jazz hands and lots of teeth.

But no, I realize, as Carmen gushes on about her friend: She likes

him. Good.

We climb three flights of warped stairs and walk into a whoosh of

body heat and writerness: many black-framed glasses and mops of

hair; faux western shirts and heathery turtlenecks; black wool

pea-coats flopped all across the couch, puddling to the floor; a

German poster for The Getaway (Ihre Chance war gleich Null!)

covering one paint-cracked wall. Franz Ferdinand on the stereo:

‘Take Me Out.’

A clump of guys hovers near a card table where all the alcohol is

set up, tipping more booze into their cups after every few sips, all

too aware of how little is left to go around. I nudge in, aiming my

plastic cup in the center like a busker, get a clatter of ice cubes and

a splash of vodka from a sweet-faced guy wearing a Space

Invaders T-shirt.

A lethal-looking bottle of green-apple liqueur, the host’s ironic

purchase, will soon be our fate unless someone makes a booze run,

and that seems unlikely, as everyone clearly believes they made

the run last time. It is a January party, definitely, everyone still

glutted and sugar-pissed from the holidays, lazy and irritated

simultaneously. A party where people drink too much and pick

cleverly worded fights, blowing cigarette smoke out an open

window even after the host asks them to go outside. We’ve already

talked to one another at a thousand holiday parties, we have

nothing left to say, we are collectively bored, but we don’t want to

go back into the January cold; our bones still ache from the

subway steps.

I have lost Carmen to her host-beau – they are having an intense

discussion in a corner of the kitchen, the two of them hunching

their shoulders, their faces toward each other, the shape of a heart.

Good. I think about eating to give myself something to do besides

standing in the center of the room, smiling like the new kid in the

lunchroom. But almost everything is gone. Some potato-chip

shards sit in the bottom of a giant Tupperware bowl. A

supermarket deli tray full of hoary carrots and gnarled celery and

a semeny dip sits untouched on a coffee table, cigarettes littered

throughout like bonus vegetable sticks. I am doing my thing, my

impulse thing: What if I leap from the theater balcony right now?

What if I tongue the homeless man across from me on the subway?

What if I sit down on the floor of this party by myself and eat

everything on that deli tray, including the cigarettes?

‘Please don’t eat anything in that area,’ he says. It is him (bum

bum

BUMMM!),

but

I

don’t

yet

know

it’s

him

(bum-bum-bummm). I know it’s a guy who will talk to me, he

wears his cockiness like an ironic T-shirt, but it fits him better. He

is the kind of guy who carries himself like he gets laid a lot, a guy

who likes women, a guy who would actually fuck me properly. I

would like to be fucked properly! My dating life seems to rotate

around three types of men: preppy Ivy Leaguers who believe

they’re characters in a Fitzgerald novel; slick Wall Streeters with

money signs in their eyes, their ears, their mouths; and sensitive

smart-boys who are so self-aware that everything feels like a joke.

The Fitzgerald fellows tend to be ineffectively porny in bed, a lot of

noise and acrobatics to very little end. The finance guys turn

rageful and flaccid. The smart-boys fuck like they’re composing a

piece of math rock: This hand strums around here, and then this

finger offers a nice bass rhythm … I sound quite slutty, don’t I?

Pause while I count how many … eleven. Not bad. I’ve always

thought twelve was a solid, reasonable number to end at.

‘Seriously,’ Number 12 continues. (Ha!) ‘Back away from the tray.

James has up to three other food items in his refrigerator. I could

make you an olive with mustard. Just one olive, though.’

Just one olive, though. It is a line that is only a little funny, but it

already has the feel of an inside joke, one that will get funnier with

nostalgic repetition. I think: A year from now, we will be walking

along the Brooklyn Bridge at sunset and one of us will whisper,

‘Just one olive, though,’ and we’ll start to laugh. (Then I catch

myself. Awful. If he knew I was doing a year from now already,

he’d run and I’d be obliged to cheer him on.)

Mainly, I will admit, I smile because he’s gorgeous. Distractingly

gorgeous, the kind of looks that make your eyes pinwheel, that

make you want to just address the elephant – ‘You know you’re

gorgeous, right?’ – and move on with the conversation. I bet dudes

hate him: He looks like the rich-boy villain in an ’80s teen movie –

the one who bullies the sensitive misfit, the one who will end up

with a pie in the puss, the whipped cream wilting his upturned

collar as everyone in the cafeteria cheers.

He doesn’t act that way, though. His name is Nick. I love it. It

makes him seem nice, and regular, which he is. When he tells me

his name, I say, ‘Now, that’s a real name.’ He brightens and reels

off some line: ‘Nick’s the kind of guy you can drink a beer with, the

kind of guy who doesn’t mind if you puke in his car. Nick!’

He makes a series of awful puns. I catch three fourths of his movie

references. Two thirds, maybe. (Note to self: Rent The Sure Thing.)

He refills my drink without me having to ask, somehow ferreting

out one last cup of the good stuff. He has claimed me, placed a flag

in me: I was here first, she’s mine, mine. It feels nice, after my

recent series of nervous, respectful post-feminist men, to be a

territory. He has a great smile, a cat’s smile. He should cough out

yellow Tweety Bird feathers, the way he smiles at me. He doesn’t

ask what I do for a living, which is fine, which is a change. (I’m a

writer, did I mention?) He talks to me in his river-wavy Missouri

accent; he was born and raised outside of Hannibal, the boyhood

home of Mark Twain, the inspiration for Tom Sawyer. He tells me

he worked on a steamboat when he was a teenager, dinner and

jazz for the tourists. And when I laugh (bratty, bratty New York

girl who has never ventured to those big unwieldy middle states,

those States Where Many Other People Live), he informs me that

Missoura is a magical place, the most beautiful in the world, no

state more glorious. His eyes are mischievous, his lashes are long.

I can see what he looked like as a boy.

We share a taxi home, the streetlights making dizzy shadows and

the car speeding as if we’re being chased. It is one a.m. when we

hit one of New York’s unexplained deadlocks twelve blocks from

my apartment, so we slide out of the taxi into the cold, into the

great What Next? and Nick starts walking me home, his hand on

the small of my back, our faces stunned by the chill. As we turn the

corner, the local bakery is getting its powdered sugar delivered,

funneled into the cellar by the barrelful as if it were cement, and

we can see nothing but the shadows of the deliverymen in the

white, sweet cloud. The street is billowing, and Nick pulls me close

and smiles that smile again, and he takes a single lock of my hair

between two fingers and runs them all the way to the end, tugging

twice, like he’s ringing a bell. His eyelashes are trimmed with

powder, and before he leans in, he brushes the sugar from my lips

so he can taste me.

NI

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THE DAY OF

I swung wide the door of my bar, slipped into the darkness, and

took my first real deep breath of the day, took in the smell of

cigarettes and beer, the spice of a dribbled bourbon, the tang of

old popcorn. There was only one customer in the bar, sitting by

herself at the far, far end: an older woman named Sue who had

come in every Thursday with her husband until he died three

months back. Now she came alone every Thursday, never much

for conversation, just sitting with a beer and a crossword,

preserving a ritual.

My sister was at work behind the bar, her hair pulled back in

nerdy-girl barrettes, her arms pink as she dipped the beer glasses

in and out of hot suds. Go is slender and strange-faced, which is

not to say unattractive. Her features just take a moment to make

sense: the broad jaw; the pinched, pretty nose; the dark globe eyes.

If this were a period movie, a man would tilt back his fedora,

whistle at the sight of her, and say, ‘Now, there’s a helluva broad!’

The face of a ’30s screwball-movie queen doesn’t always translate

in our pixie-princess times, but I know from our years together

that men like my sister, a lot, which puts me in that strange

brotherly realm of being both proud and wary.

‘Do they still make pimento loaf?’ she said by way of greeting, not

looking up, just knowing it was me, and I felt the relief I usually

felt when I saw her: Things might not be great, but things would

be okay.

My twin, Go. I’ve said this phrase so many times, it has become a

reassuring mantra instead of actual words: Mytwingo. We were

born in the ’70s, back when twins were rare, a bit magical: cousins

of the unicorn, siblings of the elves. We even have a dash of twin

telepathy. Go is truly the one person in the entire world I am

totally myself with. I don’t feel the need to explain my actions to

her. I don’t clarify, I don’t doubt, I don’t worry. I don’t tell her

everything, not anymore, but I tell her more than anyone else, by

far. I tell her as much as I can. We spent nine months back to back,

covering each other. It became a lifelong habit. It never mattered

to me that she was a girl, strange for a deeply self-conscious kid.

What can I say? She was always just cool.

‘Pimento loaf, that’s like lunch meat, right? I think they do.’

‘We should get some,’ she said. She arched an eyebrow at me. ‘I’m

intrigued.’

Without asking, she poured me a draft of PBR into a mug of

questionable cleanliness. When she caught me staring at the

smudged rim, she brought the glass up to her mouth and licked

the smudge away, leaving a smear of saliva. She set the mug

squarely in front of me. ‘Better, my prince?’

Go firmly believes that I got the best of everything from our

parents, that I was the boy they planned on, the single child they

could afford, and that she sneaked into this world by clamping

onto my ankle, an unwanted stranger. (For my dad, a particularly

unwanted stranger.) She believes she was left to fend for herself

throughout

childhood,

a

pitiful

creature

of

random

hand-me-downs and forgotten permission slips, tightened budgets

and general regret. This vision could be somewhat true; I can

barely stand to admit it.

‘Yes, my squalid little serf,’ I said, and fluttered my hands in royal

dispensation.

I huddled over my beer. I needed to sit and drink a beer or three.

My nerves were still singing from the morning.

‘What’s up with you?’ she asked. ‘You look all twitchy.’ She flicked

some suds at me, more water than soap. The air-conditioning

kicked on, ruffling the tops of our heads. We spent more time in

The Bar than we needed to. It had become the childhood

clubhouse we never had. We’d busted open the storage boxes in

our mother’s basement one drunken night last year, back when

she was alive but right near the end, when we were in need of

comfort, and we revisited the toys and games with much oohing

and ahhing between sips of canned beer. Christmas in August.

After Mom died, Go moved into our old house, and we slowly

relocated our toys, piecemeal, to The Bar: a Strawberry Shortcake

doll, now scentless, pops up on a stool one day (my gift to Go). A

tiny Hot Wheels El Camino, one wheel missing, appears on a shelf

in the corner (Go’s to me).

We were thinking of introducing a board game night, even though

most of our customers were too old to be nostalgic for our Hungry

Hungry Hippos, our Game of Life with its tiny plastic cars to be

filled with tiny plastic pinhead spouses and tiny plastic pinhead

babies. I couldn’t remember how you won. (Deep Hasbro thought

for the day.)

Go refilled my beer, refilled her beer. Her left eyelid drooped

slightly. It was exactly noon, 12–00, and I wondered how long

she’d been drinking. She’s had a bumpy decade. My speculative

sister, she of the rocket-science brain and the rodeo spirit,

dropped out of college and moved to Manhattan in the late ’90s.

She was one of the original dot-com phenoms – made crazy

money for two years, then took the Internet bubble bath in 2000.

Go remained unflappable. She was closer to twenty than thirty;

she was fine. For act two, she got her degree and joined the

gray-suited world of investment banking. She was midlevel,

nothing flashy, nothing blameful, but she lost her job – fast – with

the 2008 financial meltdown. I didn’t even know she’d left New

York until she phoned me from Mom’s house: I give up. I begged

her, cajoled her to return, hearing nothing but peeved silence on

the other end. After I hung up, I made an anxious pilgrimage to

her apartment in the Bowery and saw Gary, her beloved ficus tree,

yellow-dead on the fire escape, and knew she’d never come back.

The Bar seemed to cheer her up. She handled the books, she

poured the beers. She stole from the tip jar semi-regularly, but

then she did more work than me. We never talked about our old

lives. We were Dunnes, and we were done, and strangely content

about it.

‘So, what?’ Go said, her usual way of beginning a conversation.

‘Eh.’

‘Eh, what? Eh, bad? You look bad.’

I shrugged a yes; she scanned my face.

‘Amy?’ she asked. It was an easy question. I shrugged again – a

confirmation this time, a whatcha gonna do? shrug.

Go gave me her amused face, both elbows on the bar, hands

cradling chin, hunkering down for an incisive dissection of my

marriage. Go, an expert panel of one. ‘What about her?’

‘Bad day. It’s just a bad day.’

‘Don’t let her worry you.’ Go lit a cigarette. She smoked exactly

one a day. ‘Women are crazy.’ Go didn’t consider herself part of

the general category of women, a word she used derisively.

I blew Go’s smoke back to its owner. ‘It’s our anniversary today.

Five years.’

‘Wow.’ My sister cocked her head back. She’d been a bridesmaid,

all in violet – ‘the gorgeous, raven-haired, amethyst-draped dame,’

Amy’s mother had dubbed her – but anniversaries weren’t

something she’d remember. ‘Jeez. Fuck. Dude. That came fast.’

She blew more smoke toward me, a lazy game of cancer catch. ‘She

going to do one of her, uh, what do you call it, not scavenger

hunt—’

‘Treasure hunt,’ I said.

My wife loved games, mostly mind games, but also actual games of

amusement, and for our anniversary she always set up an

elaborate treasure hunt, with each clue leading to the hiding place

of the next clue until I reached the end, and my present. It was

what her dad always did for her mom on their anniversary, and

don’t think I don’t see the gender roles here, that I don’t get the

hint. But I did not grow up in Amy’s household, I grew up in mine,

and the last present I remember my dad giving my mom was an

iron, set on the kitchen counter, no wrapping paper.

‘Should we make a wager on how pissed she’s going to get at you

this year?’ Go asked, smiling over the rim of her beer.

The problem with Amy’s treasure hunts: I never figured out the

clues. Our first anniversary, back in New York, I went two for

seven. That was my best year. The opening parley:

This place is a bit of a hole in the wall,

But we had a great kiss there one Tuesday last fall.

Ever been in a spelling bee as a kid? That snowy second after the

announcement of the word as you sift your brain to see if you can

spell it? It was like that, the blank panic.

‘An Irish bar in a not-so-Irish place,’ Amy nudged.

I bit the side of my lip, started a shrug, scanning our living room

as if the answer might appear. She gave me another very long

minute.

‘We were lost in the rain,’ she said in a voice that was pleading on

the way to peeved.

I finished the shrug.

‘McMann’s, Nick. Remember, when we got lost in the rain in

Chinatown trying to find that dim sum place, and it was supposed

to be near the statue of Confucius but it turns out there are two

statues of Confucius, and we ended up at that random Irish bar all

soaking wet, and we slammed a few whiskeys, and you grabbed

me and kissed me, and it was—’

‘Right! You should have done a clue with Confucius, I would have

gotten that.’

‘The statue wasn’t the point. The place was the point. The moment.

I just thought it was special.’ She said these last words in a

childish lilt that I once found fetching.

‘It was special.’ I pulled her to me and kissed her. ‘That smooch

right there was my special anniversary reenactment. Let’s go do it

again at McMann’s.’

At McMann’s, the bartender, a big, bearded bear-kid, saw us come

in and grinned, poured us both whiskeys, and pushed over the

next clue.

When I’m down and feeling blue

There’s only one place that will do.

That one turned out to be the Alice in Wonderland statue at

Central Park, which Amy had told me – she’d told me, she knew

she’d told me many times – lightened her moods as a child. I do

not remember any of those conversations. I’m being honest here, I

just don’t. I have a dash of ADD, and I’ve always found my wife a

bit dazzling, in the purest sense of the word: to lose clear vision,

especially from looking at bright light. It was enough to be near

her and hear her talk, it didn’t always matter what she was saying.

It should have, but it didn’t.

By the time we got to the end of the day, to exchanging our actual

presents – the traditional paper presents for the first year of

marriage – Amy was not speaking to me.

‘I love you, Amy. You know I love you,’ I said, tailing her in and

out of the family packs of dazed tourists parked in the middle of

the sidewalk, oblivious and openmouthed. Amy was slipping

through

the

Central

Park

crowds,

maneuvering

between

laser-eyed joggers and scissor-legged skaters, kneeling parents

and toddlers careering like drunks, always just ahead of me,

tight-lipped, hurrying nowhere. Me trying to catch up, grab her

arm. She stopped finally, gave me a face unmoved as I explained

myself, one mental finger tamping down my exasperation: ‘Amy, I

don’t get why I need to prove my love to you by remembering the

exact same things you do, the exact same way you do. It doesn’t

mean I don’t love our life together.’

A nearby clown blew up a balloon animal, a man bought a rose, a

child licked an ice cream cone, and a genuine tradition was born,

one I’d never forget: Amy always going overboard, me never, ever

worthy of the effort. Happy anniversary, asshole.

‘I’m guessing –five years – she’s going to get really pissed,’ Go

continued. ‘So I hope you got her a really good present.’

‘On the to-do list.’

‘What’s the, like, symbol, for five years? Paper?’

‘Paper is first year,’ I said. At the end of Year One’s unexpectedly

wrenching treasure hunt, Amy presented me with a set of posh

stationery, my initials embossed at the top, the paper so creamy I

expected my fingers to come away moist. In return, I’d presented

my wife with a bright red dime-store paper kite, picturing the park,

picnics, warm summer gusts. Neither of us liked our presents;

we’d each have preferred the other’s. It was a reverse O. Henry.

‘Silver?’ guessed Go. ‘Bronze? Scrimshaw? Help me out.’

‘Wood,’ I said. ‘There’s no romantic present for wood.’

At the other end of the bar, Sue neatly folded her newspaper and

left it on the bartop with her empty mug and a five-dollar bill. We

all exchanged silent smiles as she walked out.

‘I got it,’ Go said. ‘Go home, fuck her brains out, then smack her

with your penis and scream, “There’s some wood for you, bitch!”

We laughed. Then we both flushed pink in our cheeks in the same

spot. It was the kind of raunchy, unsisterly joke that Go enjoyed

tossing at me like a grenade. It was also the reason why, in high

school, there were always rumors that we secretly screwed.

Twincest.

We

were

too

tight:

our

inside

jokes,

our

edge-of-the-party whispers. I’m pretty sure I don’t need to say this,

but you are not Go, you might misconstrue, so I will: My sister and

I have never screwed or even thought of screwing. We just really

like each other.

Go was now pantomiming dick-slapping my wife.

No, Amy and Go were never going to be friends. They were each

too territorial. Go was used to being the alpha girl in my life, Amy

was used to being the alpha girl in everyone’s life. For two people

who lived in the same city – the same city twice: first New York,

now here – they barely knew each other. They flitted in and out of

my life like well-timed stage actors, one going out the door as the

other came in, and on the rare occasions when they both inhabited

the same room, they seemed somewhat bemused at the situation.

Before Amy and I got serious, got engaged, got married, I would

get glimpses of Go’s thoughts in a sentence here or there. It’s

funny, I can’t quite get a bead on her, like who she really is. And:

You just seem kind of not yourself with her. And: There’s a

difference between really loving someone and loving the idea of

her. And finally: The important thing is she makes you really

happy.

Back when Amy made me really happy.

Amy offered her own notions of Go: She’s very … Missouri, isn’t

she? And: You just have to be in the right mood for her. And: She’s

a little needy about you, but then I guess she doesn’t have anyone

else.

I’d hoped when we all wound up back in Missouri, the two would

let it drop – agree to disagree, free to be you and me. Neither did.

Go was funnier than Amy, though, so it was a mismatched battle.

Amy was clever, withering, sarcastic. Amy could get me riled up,

could make an excellent, barbed point, but Go always made me

laugh. It is dangerous to laugh at your spouse.

‘Go, I thought we agreed you’d never mention my genitalia again,’

I said. ‘That within the bounds of our sibling relationship, I have

no genitalia.’

The phone rang. Go took one more sip of her beer and answered,

gave an eyeroll and a smile. ‘He sure is here, one moment, please!’

To me, she mouthed: ‘Carl.’

Carl Pelley lived across the street from me and Amy. Retired three

years. Divorced two years. Moved into our development right after.

He’d been a traveling salesman – children’s party supplies – and I

sensed that after four decades of motel living, he wasn’t quite at

home being home. He showed up at the bar nearly every day with

a pungent Hardee’s bag, complaining about his budget until he

was offered a first drink on the house. (This was another thing I

learned about Carl from his days in The Bar – that he was a

functioning but serious alcoholic.) He had the good grace to accept

whatever we were ‘trying to get rid of,’ and he meant it: For one

full month Carl drank nothing but dusty Zimas, circa 1992, that

we’d discovered in the basement. When a hangover kept Carl

home, he’d find a reason to call: Your mailbox looks awfully full

today, Nicky, maybe a package came. Or: It’s supposed to rain,

you might want to close your windows. The reasons were bogus.

Carl just needed to hear the clink of glasses, the glug of a drink

being poured.

I picked up the phone, shaking a tumbler of ice near the receiver

so Carl could imagine his gin.

‘Hey, Nicky,’ Carl’s watery voice came over. ‘Sorry to bother you. I

just thought you should know … your door is wide open, and that

cat of yours is outside. It isn’t supposed to be, right?’

I gave a non-commital grunt.

‘I’d go over and check, but I’m a little under the weather,’ Carl said

heavily.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘It’s time for me to go home anyway.’

It was a fifteen-minute drive, straight north along River Road.

Driving into our development occasionally makes me shiver, the

sheer number of gaping dark houses – homes that have never

known inhabitants, or homes that have known owners and seen

them

ejected,

the

house

standing

triumphantly

voided,

humanless.

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 kettle 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.

AM

A

Y

M

EL

E L

L I

L OT

I

T

OT

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

paperbound 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

fianceśure 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.)

My parents have always worried that I’d take Amy too personally

– they always tell me not to read too much into her. And yet I can’t

fail to notice that whenever I screw something up, Amy does it

right: When I finally quit violin at age twelve, Amy was revealed as

a prodigy in the next book. (‘Sheesh, violin can be hard work, but

hard work is the only way to get better!’) When I blew off the

junior tennis championship at age sixteen to do a beach weekend

with friends, Amy recommitted to the game. (‘Sheesh, I know it’s

fun to spend time with friends, but I’d be letting myself and

everyone else down if I didn’t show up for the tournament.’) This

used to drive me mad, but after I went off to Harvard (and Amy

correctly chose my parents’ alma mater), I decided it was all too

ridiculous

to

think

about.

That

my

parents,

two

child

psychologists,

chose

this

particular

public

form

of

passive-aggressiveness toward their child was not just fucked up

but also stupid and weird and kind of hilarious. So be it.

The book party was as schizophrenic as the book – at Bluenight,

off Union Square, one of those shadowy salons with wingback

chairs and art deco mirrors that are supposed to make you feel like

a Bright Young Thing. Gin martinis wobbling on trays lofted by

waiters with rictus smiles. Greedy journalists with knowing smirks

and hollow legs, getting the free buzz before they go somewhere

better.

My parents circulate the room hand in hand – their love story is

always part of the Amazing Amy story: husband and wife in

mutual creative labor for a quarter century. Soul mates. They

really call themselves that, which makes sense, because I guess

they are. I can vouch for it, having studied them, little lonely only

child, for m