Gone Girl(145)

I feel a gust of warmth toward Nick because he’s wearing my favorite tie that I bought for him, that he thinks, or thought, was too girly-bright. It’s a peacocky purple that turns his eyes almost violet. He’s lost his satisfied-asshole paunch over the last month: His belly is gone, the fleshiness of his face has vanished, his chin is less clefty. His hair has been trimmed but not cut—I have an image of Go hacking away at him just before he went on camera, slipping into Mama Mo’s role, fussing over him, doing the saliva-thumb rubdown on some spot near his chin. He is wearing my tie and when he lifts his hand to make a gesture, I see he is wearing my watch, the vintage Bulova Spaceview that I got him for his thirty-third birthday, that he never wore because it wasn’t him, even though it was completely him.

“He’s wonderfully well groomed for a man who thinks his wife is missing,” Desi snipes. “Glad he didn’t skip a manicure.”

“Nick would never get a manicure,” I say, glancing at Desi’s buffed nails.

“Let’s get right to it, Nick,” Sharon says. “Did you have anything to do with your wife’s disappearance?”

“No. No. Absolutely, one hundred percent not,” Nick says, keeping well-coached eye contact. “But let me say, Sharon, I am far, far from being innocent, or blameless, or a good husband. If I weren’t so afraid for Amy, I would say this was a good thing, in a way, her disappearing—”

“Excuse me, Nick, but I think a lot of people will find it hard to believe you just said that when your wife is missing.”

“It’s the most awful, horrible feeling in the world, and I want her back more than anything. All I am saying is that it has been the most brutal eye-opener for me. You hate to believe that you are such an awful man that it takes something like this to pull you out of your selfishness spiral and wake you up to the fact that you are the luckiest bastard in the world. I mean, I had this woman who was my equal, my better, in every way, and I let my insecurities—about losing my job, about not being able to care for my family, about getting older—cloud all that.”

“Oh, please—” Desi starts, and I shush him. For Nick to admit to the world that he is not a good guy—it’s a small death, and not of the petite mort variety.

“And Sharon, let me say it. Let me say it right now: I cheated. I disrespected my wife. I didn’t want to be the man that I had become, but instead of working on myself, I took the easy way out. I cheated with a young woman who barely knew me. So I could pretend to be the big man. I could pretend to be the man I wanted to be—smart and confident and successful—because this young woman didn’t know any different. This young girl, she hadn’t seen me crying into a towel in the bathroom in the middle of the night because I lost my job. She didn’t know all my foibles and shortcomings. I was a fool who believed if I wasn’t perfect, my wife wouldn’t love me. I wanted to be Amy’s hero, and when I lost my job, I lost my self-respect. I couldn’t be that hero anymore. Sharon, I know right from wrong. And I just— I just did wrong.”

“What would you say to your wife, if she is possibly out there, able to see and hear you tonight?”

“I’d say: Amy, I love you. You are the best woman I have ever known. You are more than I deserve, and if you come back, I will spend the rest of my life making it up to you. We will find a way to put all this horror behind us, and I will be the best man in the world to you. Please come home to me, Amy.”

Just for a second, he places the pad of his index finger in the cleft of his chin, our old secret code, the one we did back in the day to swear we weren’t bullshitting each other—the dress really did look nice, that article really was solid. I am absolutely, one hundred percent sincere right now—I have your back, and I wouldn’t fuck with you.

Desi leans in front of me to break my contact with the screen and reaches for the Sancerre. “More wine, sweetheart?” he says.

“Shhh.”

He pauses the show. “Amy, you are a good-hearted woman. I know you are susceptible to … pleas. But everything he is saying is lies.”

Nick is saying exactly what I want to hear. Finally.

Desi moves around so he is staring at me full-face, completely obstructing my vision. “Nick is putting on a pageant. He wants to come off as a good, repentant guy. I’ll admit he’s doing a bang-up job. But it’s not real—he hasn’t even mentioned beating you, violating you. I don’t know what kind of hold this guy has on you. It must be a Stockholm-syndrome thing.”