Gone Girl(10)

“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.)

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.