How It All Goes Down
Amy Elliott Dunne—August 23, 2010
- Back in Amy's diary, the scene at the Dunne house hasn't improved. In fact, things are way worse. As he predicted, Nick has been laid off, and as a bonus, so has Amy. Amy tries to remember that things could be worse—they could, for instance, live in Darfur—while bumbling around in her pajamas feeling sorry for herself.
- At first Nick seems to be handling things pretty well. He starts making a list of stuff he's wanted to do, like replacing watch and clock batteries and repainting parts of the house, and he learns new languages to make him more marketable and reads War and Peace. But gradually he loses motivation, until he eventually ends up spending his days watching television, checking out porn sites, and generally ignoring Amy—so when she loses her job, he doesn't even care. He also stops cleaning the house and goes on a shopping spree buying high-priced men's wear for the job interviews he isn't going on.
- Nick is right, though, when he says that they at least have Amy's trust fund to fall back on. She checks her bank account balance every once in awhile just to remind herself that they still have something, even if it's not enough to bank on for their whole lives.
- One day, the Elliotts call and say they need to come over and talk to Nick and Amy. Amy's first thought is that someone has cancer, but this isn't the case. Instead her parents show up dressed to the hilt to tell them that they've been spending recklessly for the last ten years even as Amazing Amy sales went into the tank—as a result, they're broke, they need money, and like Nick and Amy, they need to figure out what to do with the rest of their lives. They ask to borrow almost everything in the trust fund. They even have homemade charts and graphs illustrating their poor financial status, which Amy finds pathetic; she feels awful for them.
- Nick obviously wants to talk to Amy about this, but she agrees to wire the money to her parents' account out of sympathy for their situation—and because even though they've basically made money off of her for years, she can't say no to them.