Gone Girl

Part One: Boy Loses Girl Chapter Six
AMY ELLIOTT DUNNE

JULY 5, 2008

I am fat with love! Husky with ardor! Morbidly obese with devotion! A happy, busy bumblebee of marital enthusiasm. I positively hum around him, fussing and fixing. I have become a strange thing. I have become a wife. I find myself steering the ship of conversations  -  bulkily, unnaturally  -  just so I can say his name aloud. I have become a wife, I have become a bore, I have been asked to forfeit my Independent Young Feminist card. I don't care. I balance his checkbook, I trim his hair. I've gotten so retro, at one point I will probably use the word pocketbook, shuffling out the door in my swingy tweed coat, my lips painted red, on the way to the beauty parlor. Nothing bothers me. Everything seems like it will turn out fine, every bother transformed into an amusing story to be told over dinner. So I killed a hobo today, honey ... hahahaha! Ah, we have fun!

Nick is like a good stiff drink: He gives everything the correct perspective. Not a different perspective, the correct perspective. With Nick, I realize it actually, truly doesn't matter if the electricity bill is a few days late, if my latest quiz turns out a little lame. (My most recent, I'm not joking: 'What kind of tree would you be?' Me, I'm an apple tree! This means nothing!) It doesn't matter if the new Amazing Amy book has been well and duly scorched, the reviews vicious, the sales a stunning plummet after a limp start. It doesn't matter what color I paint our room, or how late traffic makes me, or whether our recycling really, truly does get recycled. (Just level with me, New York, does it?) It doesn't matter, because I have found my match. It's Nick, laid-back and calm, smart and fun and uncomplicated. Untortured, happy. Nice. Big penis.

All the stuff I don't like about myself has been pushed to the back of my brain. Maybe that is what I like best about him, the way he makes me. Not makes me feel, just makes me. I am fun. I am playful. I am game. I feel naturally happy and entirely satisfied. I am a wife! It's weird to say those words. (Seriously, about the recycling, New York  -  come on, just a wink.)

We do silly things, like last weekend we drove to Delaware because neither of us have ever had sex in Delaware. Let me set the scene, because now it really is for posterity. We cross the state line  -  Welcome to Delaware!, the sign says, and also: Small Wonder, and also: The First State, and also: Home of Tax-Free Shopping.

Delaware, a state of many rich identities.

I point Nick down the first dirt road I see, and we rumble five minutes until we hit pine trees on all sides. We don't speak. He pushes his seat back. I pull up my skirt. I am not wearing undies, I can see his mouth turn down and his face go slack, the drugged, determined look he gets when he's turned on. I climb atop him, my back to him, facing the windshield. I'm pressed against the steering wheel, and as we move together, the horn emits tiny bleats that mimic me, and my hand makes a smearing noise as I press it against the windshield. Nick and I can come anywhere; neither of us gets stage fright, it's something we're both rather proud of. Then we drive right back home. I eat beef jerky and ride with bare feet on the dashboard.

We love our house. The house that Amazing Amy built. A Brooklyn brownstone my parents bought for us, right on the Promenade, with the big wide-screen view of Manhattan. It's extravagant, it makes me feel guilty, but it's perfect. I battle the spoiled-rich-girl vibe where I can. Lots of DIY. We painted the walls ourselves over two weekends: spring green and pale yellow and velvety blue. In theory. None of the colors turned out like we thought they would, but we pretend to like them anyway. We fill our home with knickknacks from flea markets; we buy records for Nick's record player. Last night we sat on the old Persian rug, drinking wine and listening to the vinyl scratches as the sky went dark and Manhattan switched on, and Nick said, 'This is how I always pictured it. This is exactly how I pictured it.'

On weekends, we talk to each other under four layers of bedding, our faces warm under a sunlit yellow comforter. Even the floorboards are cheerful: There are two old creaky slats that call out to us as we walk in the door. I love it, I love that it is ours, that we have a great story behind the ancient floor lamp, or the misshapen clay mug that sits near our coffeepot, never holding anything but a single paper clip. I spend my days thinking of sweet things to do for him  -  go buy a peppermint soap that will sit in his palm like a warm stone, or maybe a slim slice of trout that I could cook and serve to him, an ode to his riverboat days. I know, I am ridiculous. I love it, though  -  I never knew I was capable of being ridiculous over a man. It's a relief. I even swoon over his socks, which he manages to shed in adorably tangled poses, as if a puppy carried them in from another room.

It is our one-year anniversary and I am fat with love, even though people kept telling and telling us the first year was going to be so hard, as if we were naive children marching off to war. It wasn't hard. We are meant to be married. It is our one-year anniversary, and Nick is leaving work at lunchtime; my treasure hunt awaits him. The clues are all about us, about the past year together:

Whenever my sweet hubby gets a cold

It is this dish that will soon be sold.

Answer: the torn yum soup from Thai Town on President Street. The manager will be there this afternoon with a taster bowl and the next clue.

Also McMann's in Chinatown and the Alice statue at Central Park. A grand tour of New York. We'll end at the Fulton Street fish market, where we'll buy a pair of beautiful lobsters, and I will hold the container in my lap as Nick jitters nervously in the cab beside me. We'll rush home, and I will drop them in a new pot on our old stove with all the finesse of a girl who has lived many Cape summers while Nick giggles and pretends to hide in fear outside the kitchen door.

I had suggested we get burgers. Nick wanted us to go out  -  fivestar, fancy  -  somewhere with a clockwork of courses and name-dropping waiters. So the lobsters are a perfect in-between, the lobsters are what everyone tells us (and tells us and tells us) that marriage is about: compromise!

We'll eat lobster with butter and have sex on the floor while a woman on one of our old jazz records sings to us in her far-side-of-the-tunnel voice. We'll get slowly lazy-drunk on good Scotch, Nick's favorite. I'll give him his present  -  the monogrammed stationery he's been wanting from Crane & Co. with the clean sans-serif font set in hunter green, on the thick creamy stock that will hold lush ink and his writer's words. Stationery for a writer, and a writer's wife who's maybe angling for a love letter or two.

Then maybe we'll have sex again. And a late-night burger. And more Scotch. Voila: happiest couple on the block! And they say marriage is such hard work.