AMY ELLIOTT DUNNE
NINE DAYS GONE
I am penniless and on the run. How fucking noir. Except that I am sitting in my Festiva at the far end of the parking lot of a vast fast-food complex on the banks of the Mississippi River, the smell of salt and factory-farm meat floating on the warm breezes. It is evening now – I’ve wasted hours – but I can’t move. I don’t know where to move to. The car gets smaller by the hour – I am forced to curl up like a fetus or my legs fall asleep. I certainly won’t sleep tonight. The door is locked, but I still await the tap on the window, and I know I will peek up and see either a crooked-toothed, sweet-talking serial killer (wouldn’t that be ironic, for me to actually be murdered?) or a stern, ID-demanding cop (wouldn’t that be worse, for me to be discovered in a parking lot looking like a hobo?). The glowing restaurant signs never go off here; the parking lot is lit like a football field – I think of suicide again, how a prisoner on suicide watch spends twenty-four hours a day under lights, an awful thought. My gas tank is below the quarter mark, an even more awful thought: I can drive only about an hour in any direction, so I must choose the direction carefully. South is Arkansas, north is Iowa, west is back to the Ozarks. Or I could go east, cross the river into Illinois. Everywhere I go is the river. I’m following it or it’s following me.
I know, suddenly, what I must do.
NICK DUNNE
TEN DAYS GONE
We spent the day of the interview huddled in the spare bedroom of Tanner’s suite, prepping my lines, fixing my look. Betsy fussed over my clothes, then Go trimmed the hair above my ears with nail scissors while Betsy tried to talk me into using makeup – powder – to cut down on shine. We all spoke in low voices because Sharon’s crew was setting up outside; the interview would be in the suite’s living room, overlooking the St. Louis Arch. Gateway to the West. I’m not sure what the point of the landmark was except to serve as a vague symbol of the middle of the country: You Are Here.
‘You need at least a little powder, Nick,’ Betsy finally said, coming at me with the puff. ‘Your nose sweats when you get nervous. Nixon lost an election on nose sweat.’ Tanner oversaw it all like a conductor. ‘Not too much off that side, Go,’ he’d call. ‘Bets, be very careful with that powder, better too little than too much.’
‘We should have Botoxed him,’ she said. Apparently, Botox fights sweat as well as wrinkles – some of their clients got a series of underarm shots before a trial, and they were already suggesting such a thing for me. Gently, subtly suggesting, should we go to trial.
‘Yeah, I really need the press to get wind that I was having Botox treatments while my wife was missing,’ I said. ‘Is missing.’ I knew Amy wasn’t dead, but I also knew she was so far out of my reach that she might as well be. She was a wife in past tense.
‘Good catch,’ Tanner said. ‘Next time do it before it comes out of your mouth.’
At five p.m., Tanner’s phone rang, and he looked at the display. ‘Boney.’ He sent it to voice mail. ‘I’ll call her after.’ He didn’t want any new bit of information, interrogation, gossip to force us to reformulate our message. I agreed: I didn’t want Boney in my head just then.
‘You sure we shouldn’t see what she wants?’ Go said.
‘She wants to fuck with me some more,’ I said. ‘We’ll call her. A few hours. She can wait.’
We all rearranged ourselves, a mass group reassurance that the call was nothing to worry about. The room stayed silent for half a minute.
‘I have to say, I’m strangely excited to get to meet Sharon Schieber,’ Go finally said. ‘Very classy lady. Not like that Connie Chung.’
I laughed, which was the intention. Our mother had loved Sharon Schieber and hated Connie Chung – she’d never forgiven her for embarrassing Newt Gingrich’s mother on TV, something about Newt calling Hilary Clinton a b-i-t-c-h. I don’t remember the actual interview, just our mom’s outrage over it.
At six p.m. we entered the room, where two chairs were set up facing each other, the Arch in the background, the timing picked precisely so the Arch would glow but there would be no sunset glare on the windows. One of the most important moments of my life, I thought, dictated by the angle of the sun. A producer whose name I wouldn’t remember clicked toward us on dangerously high heels and explained to me what I should expect. Questions could be asked several times, to make the interview seem as smooth as possible, and to allow for Sharon’s reaction shots. I could not speak to my lawyer before giving an answer. I could rephrase an answer but not change the substance of the answer. Here’s some water, let’s get you miked.
We started to move over to the chair, and Betsy nudged my arm. When I looked down, she showed me a pocket of jellybeans. ‘Remember …’ she said, and tsked her finger at me.
Suddenly, the suite door swung wide and Sharon Schieber entered, as smooth as if she were being borne by a team of swans. She was a beautiful woman, a woman who had probably never looked girlish. A woman whose nose probably never sweated. She had thick dark hair and giant brown eyes that could look doelike or wicked.
‘It’s Sharon!’ Go said, a thrilled whisper to imitate our mom.
Sharon turned to Go and nodded majestically, came over to greet us. ‘I’m Sharon,’ she said in a warm, deep voice, taking both of Go’s hands.
‘Our mother loved you,’ Go said.
‘I’m so glad,’ Sharon said, managing to sound warm. She turned to me and was about to speak when her producer clicked up on high heels and whispered in her ear. Then waited for Sharon’s reaction, then whispered again.
‘Oh. Oh my God,’ Sharon said. When she turned back to me, she wasn’t smiling at all.