You might think that finding a place to sleep at 24 Hour FitClub would be an issue, but it’s really not that hard. Just go into a shower stall and close the curtain, turn on the water and leave it running, and boom, you’ve got your eight hours of privacy.
After a couple of days of living large at 24 Hour FitClub, I start wondering why more people don’t do this. I mean geezus, your rent can be 45 bucks a month! But as I begin to see the same faces at the gym more and more, I realize I’m not the first person to have had this idea. Next time you’re in a 24 Hour FitClub at midnight, look around. Nine out of every ten people you see are living there.
Oh and by the way, if you’re a member of 24 Hour FitClub and not living there, a word of advice: please don’t sing in the shower. Some of us are trying to sleep.
NICK DUNNE: Seven Days Gone
I’d had to phone my world famous lawyer, hours after I’d hired him, and say the words that I was sure would make him regret ever taking my case: “I think my wife is framing me.” But all Tanner said in response was, “Did you get any naked pictures of the college girl yet?”
Tanner also wanted to talk some strategy, but I told him that I needed to get off the phone because that college girl was actually on her way over to have sex. “What?” Tanner said. “Nick fucking Dunne, you need to end this shit right now!”
“But she said we could do babysitter role play,” I pleaded. Tanner wasn’t having it, though. And he was right. I had to end it tonight.
A few minutes later, Andie arrived, greeting me at the door by saying, “Hi, I’m here for the babysitting job?”
“Uh, Andie,” I said, “we need to talk.”
“Right, about my rates,” she said. “Normally it’s $15 an hour. But for $30 an hour I’ll give you the deluxe babysitting package.” And then she started unbuttoning my pants.
“No Andie, we have to talk, for real.”
“What’s wrong?” she said.
As Tanner had advised me, this needed to be handled exactly right. The key was to break up with her without getting her so pissed that she’d go public. I started reciting the scripted words Tanner had made me memorize.
“What up what up girl! Yo you be da shiznit, but things are gettin’ all crazy up in here and you gotta step off, aight?”
“What? Why are you talking like that?” Andie said.
It wasn’t working. Thanks a lot, Tanner. I’d just have to improvise.
“Look Andie, what I’m trying to say is, we can’t see each other right now.”
Andie’s lip quivered. “For how long?” she said.
“For a lonnnnng time,” I said. “At least until this all blows over.”
She looked like she was about to cry.
“Look Nick, I need to know: once this is over, are you still committed to me? At least until I get all the required credits for my major?”
“Yes,” I said, taking her hands. “I’m completely committed to you.”
My other disposable phone vibrated loudly. I looked at it and read the text message:
Hey babe open the door I’m outside
“Who’s that?” Andie said.
“Uhhhhh,” I said, “it’s a text from you, on the disposable phone I bought to talk to you! Nothing to worry about.”
Andie opened the front door, and was face to face with another girl her same age.
“Katie?”
“Andie?”
“What are you doing here?”
“What are you doing here?”
This was not good. “You guys like three-ways?” I asked. Andie gave me her answer by kicking me in the face, one of those power-kicks she’d learned in CrossFit, which is a name hot girls gave “working out” so they could make themselves feel special.
When I came to, Andie and Katie were long gone and my face felt like a balloon. When I looked in the mirror, I saw my cheek now had a large welt that said “NIKE.”
I replayed the conversation with Andie in my mind and smacked myself. Why had I been so incompetent? I should’ve at least gotten a bj before I broke up with her.
Stupid, Nick. Stupid.
AMY ELLIOTT DUNNE: Five Days Gone
Even though I’m 75 miles outside of Carthage, I’m as up-to-date on the situation there as if I were still at home, thanks to the wall-to-wall cable news coverage. At one point this morning when I was riding the exercise bike, my face was simultaneously on all six of the TVs in the cardio area. Unfortunately I have to watch the coverage with captions rather than sound, because the club still has that sound system only health clubs have where you have to listen to the TVs through an FM radio. WHO HAS AN FM RADIO ANYMORE?
I’m not surprised Andie hasn’t broken yet and gone to the press. If she goes public, that means she’ll actually have to do schoolwork to pass her classes. But she’ll break eventually. I know Andie’s a sharer because I’m one of her Facebook friends, and I see what she posts. Actually, I’m two of her Facebook friends: I created two fake accounts that look like college students, and she was only too happy to increase her friend numbers when I friended her. Now my two fake Facebook personalities get into drawn-out arguments in the comments of Andie’s posts. It’s hilarious.
I seem to have made a couple of friends at the club. I hadn’t planned on talking to anyone during my stay here, but it’s kind of hard to stay completely under the radar when you’re living with people 24 hours a day.
My two new friends are clearly both doing what I’m doing and living here round the clock. First, there’s Jeff. Jeff supports himself by stealing from the lockers in the men’s locker room. I know this because I see him wearing articles of clothing that I remember other gym members wearing the day before.
My other friend is Greta. Greta joined the gym a few days ago, and I’d noticed her because she reminded me of me: a hot girl looking a bit disheveled and clearly not in her normal environment. One day we were on the ellipticals next to each other, and my hot girl instinct to bond superficially with other hot girls took over and I decided to say something.
“So, you faking your own murder too?”
“Huh?” she said, clearly having no idea what I was talking about.
I really need to be more careful.
NICK DUNNE: Eight Days Gone
“Seen it. Seen it. Seen it. Haven’t seen it. Seen it. Seen it…”
Tanner and I were at the woodshed, which I’d just shown Tanner for the first time, and he was going through my porn.
“Seen it, seen it, seen it on VHS…Nick, you do realize the cops are gonna find this place eventually? And that when they do, they’ll go after Go?”
“Great! We can blame it all on her! We’re in the clear!”
“Not exactly,” Tanner said. “There’s still a lot of other stuff we’ve gotta deal with if we’re gonna get you off. For example, your alibi for the morning Amy disappeared. Where were you, Nick? I really need to know.”
I chewed on my cheek.
“Nick, I’m your lawyer. You gotta tell me.”
“It’s not relevant,” I said.
“Nick!”
“Okay, okay: that morning I was making plans to kill Amy.”
“What?”
“The night before, I’d been really depressed about how Amy had been treating me, so I’d stayed late at the cafe after work and did a bunch of shots of espresso. I probably had at least 20, and didn’t sleep at all, so by the morning I was basically a crazy person. I got this insane idea in my head that I needed to kill Amy before she completely destroyed me. So I went home and spent a few hours researching on the internet how to murder someone.”
“Let me get this straight,” Tanner said. “There’s now a computer trail—which the cops could find—of your internet searches on the morning of the murder about how to kill someone.”
“Well to be more specific, the searches were about how to kill one’s wife.”
“Wonderful.”
“Oh one other little thing I forgot,” I said. “I also w
rote a note explaining why I was going to kill Amy that day.”
“Please tell me you burned it.”
“I can’t really burn it because it’s on Google Docs.”
Tanner exhaled loudly. “We still might be okay here,” he said. “Are there any witnesses who can attest to the amount of espresso you had that night?”
“Just cats.”
He stood there thinking for a moment. “We might not be okay here.”
AMY ELLIOTT DUNNE: Eight Days Gone
There’s a bit of a problem that’s cropped up living at the health club: I brought $15,000 with me to live on when I disappeared, but where do you keep $15,000 in a 24 Hour FitClub? There’s no place to keep ten cents safe in a 24 Hour FitClub, or in any other health club. I guarantee at least five members of every health club join just to steal stuff, and 90% of the staff probably works there because they know they can supplement their crappy salary by pilfering the lockers. (Does anyone really think personal trainers make enough to live on by personal training?)
My initial solution was to store my money in a money belt, which I kept wrapped around me at all times. But as I started spending the money and breaking my 100s and getting change, I had more twenties, tens, fives, and ones, not to mention the coins. So the physical amount of money multiplied and eventually I needed a second money belt. Then a third. Now I’m up to eight.
This creates a couple of problems. First, I look really fat, because I wear the money belts under my clothes. A person who’s working out at a gym 24 hours a day but getting consistently fatter might raise a little suspicion.
Second, when I sweat while working out, the sweat is blocked by the money belts, so after a workout I have horizontal-striped sweat stains. Jeff and Greta have definitely noticed. They asked me about it yesterday, and I told them I’d donated half my sweat glands to Glands for Good, a nonprofit that gives sweat glands to people who don’t have them.
The money news isn’t all bad, though. My overall financial situation is way better than I anticipated. I thought I’d be spending a lot on food, but people who use the weights at the club are constantly throwing away uneaten pieces of their protein bars. A quarter of a PowerPlexMegaBlast bar contains a day’s worth of nutrients for the average human. So hunger was the least of my problems. I now think it’s strange when I see a news story where they’re flying planes of rice to starving people in Africa. Instead of a plane of rice, they could just send like two boxes of protein bars.
Making my financial situation even better is the fact that I’ve actually started earning some money, thanks to Jeff. A couple days ago we were on the treadmills when Jeff said, “Hey Amy, how’d you like to make some extra cash tonight?”
I thought about it for a second. I hadn’t wanted to do this, but it would be nice to make some more money. “Fine,” I said, “but it’s 100 for an hj, 250 for a beej.”
“No no,” he said. “I thought you might help me do a little locker room cleaning.” And he held up the master key to all the women’s lockers. “We’ll split what you find 50-50.”
I grabbed the key and headed to the locker room. My first cleaning session was a success: after Jeff’s cut I made $243.61. And I also made $100 more when Jeff ended up taking an hj!
NICK DUNNE: Eight Days Gone
After my talk with Tanner, I needed a drink. And not an espresso, a drink drink. So I headed to a bar that Andie’s younger crowd liked to go to: cheap booze, and everyone hopefully too drunk to recognize me.
I sat down at the bar and ordered a scotch. The bartender stared at me for a little too long, then shook his head and walked away.
I couldn’t believe it. It had gotten to a point where I couldn’t get a drink in my own hometown.
“What’re you drinking, scotch?”
It was an Asian girl, college-aged, cute. Although I couldn’t tell if she was cute because she was college-aged or cute because she was cute.
“Trying to,” I said. “I have no idea why this guy won’t serve me—”
She was gone…and then 30 seconds later she was back with two scotches. She handed me one.
“Cheers,” she said.
This was too easy. “Are you a tranny?” I said. “Oh wait, I guess since you’re Asian, the proper term would be ladyboy?”
“No, Nick Dunne, I’m not a tranny or a ladyboy. What I am is the one person in this bar who’s rooting for you. I think you’ve been getting a bad rap.”
“Oh come on,” I said. “You’re clearly just saying this so I’ll take you home, and then when I pull your pants down I’ll be shocked to see a penis, but then I’ll be like ‘what the heck’ and hook up with you anyway.”
“I’m serious!” she said. “I really think you’re innocent! Have you heard of the CSI Effect, where the public watches so much CSI that they think science can solve any crime?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Well I think there’s something called the Overwhelming Evidence Effect: the public has seen so many true crime shows where the person who did it is the same one who the overwhelming evidence suggests did it, that any time there’s overwhelming evidence that a person committed a crime, the public automatically assumes that person is guilty.”
“Yes! That’s totally it! Thank you. Now if only Dr. Rupta—”
“Fuck Dr. Rupta and his focus on evidence!” my new friend said, and ordered us another round of scotch.
My new friend turned out to be Rebecca, a senior at Fordham University who was interning at the New York Post. She’d flown to Missouri just to see if she could find a scoop about the missing Amy story that could help her career. I admired her chutzpah, and also her college-aged boobs.
After a few more rounds of drinks, Rebecca pulled out a Flip camera. “Nick, let’s do an interview, right now,” she said. “You’ll finally get a chance to tell your side of the story.”
I was tempted, but Tanner would never approve of it. “Thanks for the offer, but I can’t,” I said.
“How about this,” she said. “First I’ll interview you, and then my hand will interview your penis.”
It had become an offer I couldn’t refuse.
AMY ELLIOTT DUNNE: Ten Days Gone
I’ve come to two decisions. 1) I’ve decided to leave the health club. 2) I’ve decided to go back home to Nick.
I know, it’s a lot to throw at you, so let’s just take them one at a time. First, why am I leaving the health club? Because Jeff and Greta are onto me. They strongly suspect I’m carrying money on my body, and are constantly saying things like, “My, you’re getting toned!” and feeling around my body for where I’m keeping it. And yesterday, when I was standing near them, one of my money belts with coins stuffed in it burst and change came pouring out of my shirt onto the floor.
Given that Jeff and Greta are living at a 24 Hour FitClub, I have no doubt that they’ll try to rob me if they get the chance. So I need to leave, now. Before I do, though, I have to wipe down all the exercise machines I’ve used to remove my fingerprints. But I can’t remember which machines I’ve used, so I’ve got to wipe down every single machine in the club. It takes forever. I’ll stand in line waiting for an elliptical machine, and then when it’s my turn I’ll wipe it down and never even get on it. As if I weren’t attracting enough attention already.
But I’m almost finished, and in a couple hours I’ll be on my Segway again, heading back home. Which brings us to decision 2. Why am I going home?
For the past week the news coverage of Nick has pretty much been the same stuff on repeat. But today there was something different. I saw the headlines on TV:
NICK’S VIDEO CONFESSION!
NICK’S DRUNKEN DECLARATION!
But the TV networks didn’t have the actual interview. For that, I had to pull out my iPad and go to the New York Post website. The video loaded up, and there was my husband. He was at a bar, clearly tipsy, and was speaking to a girl holding a portable camera.
“All right all right, I’ve got a confess
ion to make,” he said. “I plotted to kill my wife. The morning of the day she disappeared, I spent all morning researching how to kill her. But I didn’t do it! Honest to God I didn’t! I also want to give a shout-out to all the ladies out there age 23 and below. Hit me up on Facebook!”
Well this wasn’t part of my plan.
Ok, I’ve got a confession to make, too. My plan wasn’t actually for Nick to go to jail. I originally thought that’d be fun, but on the Segway ride out from Carthage I realized what would be even better is if Nick became really famous through a long televised trial, and then right before the trial was over I’d miraculously return and get back together with him, and my status with my friends would go through the roof. But by coming out with this video, Nick is making himself as famous as any trial would make him. So there’s no need to wait for a trial, and I’m tired of sleeping in the shower and eating PowerPlexMegaBlast bars.
It’s time to go home.
NICK DUNNE: Nine Days Gone
Good morning! I sat in bed with my laptop to one side and Rebecca to the other. It turned out she did indeed have a penis, but it was fun so whatever.
I’d spent the last hour enjoying the reviews of my impromptu interview. If the reviews were any indication, it had been a success: while ugly women wanted me locked up, hot girls loved me ‘cause I seemed like a jerk, and a number of them had Facebooked me already.
The doorbell rang, and I got up and opened the door.
“Don’t you ever—ever—do something like that again!” said Tanner. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Hate to break it to you, Tanner, but hot girls seem to have loved it.”
“Juries are not made up of hot girls!” said Tanner. “Nick, here’s a rule for dealing with the press when you’re being investigated for murder: don’t tell them you plotted the murder.”
“Well technically, the murder I plotted wasn’t the same murder as the one that happened,” I said.
“Look, giving that interview was idiotic,” Tanner said. “But I’m actually glad you did it, because it gave me an idea. We need to do an interview with Dr. Rupta and go public with everything. All of it.”
“Everything?” I said.
Gone Bitch Page 7
