Rating: ★★★★☆ Tags: Mystery Detective, General, Fiction

What did you guys do,
together in New York, like what did you do on the
weekends?
Andie’s mouth went O once when I told her
about going to the opera. 
You went to the
opera? 
What did
she wear? Full-length? And a wrap or a fur? And her
jewelry and her hair?
Also: What were Amy’s friends like?

---

What did we talk about? What was Amy like, like, 
really
like? Was she like the girl in the books, perfect? It was
Andie’s favorite bedtime story: Amy.
‘My sister is in the other room, sweetheart. You
shouldn’t even be here. God, I want you here, but you really
shouldn’t have come, babe. Until we know what we’re
dealing with.’
YOU ARE BRILLIANT YOU ARE WITTY YOU ARE
WARM. Now kiss me!
Andie remained atop me, her breasts out, nipples
going hard from the air-conditioning.
‘Baby, what we’re dealing with right now is I need to
make sure we’re okay. That’s all I need.’ She pressed
against me, warm and lush. ‘That’s all I need. Please, Nick,
I’m freaked out. I know you: I know you don’t want to talk
right now, and that’s fine. But I need you … to be with me.’
And I wanted to kiss her then, the way I had that very
first time: our teeth bumping, her face tilted to mine, her hair
tickling my arms, a wet and tonguey kiss, me thinking of
nothing but the kiss, because it would be dangerous to
think of anything but how good it felt. The only thing that kept
me from dragging her into the bedroom now was not how
wrong it was – it had been many shades of wrong all along
– but that now it was actually dangerous.
And because there was Amy. Finally, there was Amy,
that voice that had made its home in my ear for half a
decade, my wife’s voice, but now it wasn’t chiding, it was
sweet again. I hated that three little notes from my wife
could make me feel this way, soggy and sentimental.
I had absolutely no right to be sentimental.
Andie was burrowing into me, and I was wondering if

---

the police had Go’s house under surveillance, if I should be
listening for a knock at the door. I have a very young, very
pretty mistress.
My mother had always told her kids: If you’re about to
do something, and you want to know if it’s a bad idea,
imagine seeing it printed in the paper for all the world to
see.
Nick Dunne, a onetime magazine writer still pride-
wounded from a 2010 layoff, agreed to teach a journalism
class for North Carthage Junior College. The older
married man promptly exploited his position by launching
a torrid fuckfest of an affair with one of his impressionable
young students
.
I was the embodiment of every writer’s worst fear: a
cliche´.
Now let me string still more cliche´s together for your
amusement: It happened gradually. I never meant to hurt
anyone. I got in deeper than I thought I would. But it was
more than a fling. It was more than an ego boost. I really
love Andie. I do.
The class I was teaching – ‘How to Launch a Magazine
Career’ – contained fourteen students of varying degrees
of skill. All girls. I’d say women, but I think 
girls
is factually
correct. They all wanted to work in magazines. They weren’t
smudgy newsprint girls, they were glossies. They’d seen
the movie: They pictured themselves dashing around
Manhattan, latte in one hand, cell phone in the other,
adorably breaking a designer heel while hailing a cab, and
falling into the arms of a charming, disarming soul mate
with winningly floppy hair. They had no clue about how
foolish, how ignorant, their choice of a major was. I’d been

---

planning on telling them as much, using my layoff as a
cautionary tale. Although I had no interest in being the tragic
figure. I pictured delivering the story nonchalantly, jokingly –
no big deal. More time to work on my novel.
Then I spent the first class answering so many
awestruck questions, and I turned into such a preening
gasbag, such a needy fuck, that I couldn’t bear to tell the
real story: the call into the managing editor’s office on the
second round of layoffs, the hiking of that doomed path
down the long rows of cubicles, all eyes shifting toward me,
dead man walking, me still hoping I was going to be told
something different – that the magazine needed me