Nick appeared uncharacteristically late for lunch that next Sunday, hair ruffled and a summery red flush on his cheeks. The only reason he was wearing his jacket was because going without at the Plaza tea-garden was simply not done. He slid into the chair opposite from me with a muttered apology, and I excused him because I was probably going to ruin his summer.
“Gatsby?” I asked, and he looked down, nodding.
“He brought me into the city,” he said, and I waved him away.
“Darling, you must know by now that I do not care.”
He looked uncertain about that, but he took my hand gratefully when I offered it. I had chosen a discreet spot in the tea-garden for our meeting, one sheltered by tall Boston ferns, almost invisible from the main room. It gave everything an Eden-like green glow, and barring the gentle clink of silverware on china, the murmur of the other patrons, and the distant wail of the automobiles motoring by, it was a private kind of place.
Risking a quick look around, I brought his hand up to my lips for a quiet kiss, but before he could smile too much at me, I shook his head.
“Business before pleasure, I’m afraid. Let me tell you a story, and at the end, you shall tell me how it ends.”
“Is this a game?” he asked with a slight and willing smile.
“Of course it is, dear heart,” I lied. “Now shush and listen.”
I told him three stories.
The first was set in October of 1917, the time I had come walking down the road and seen, all unlooked for, Daisy with her arms around a dashing soldier, someone so poor and so unrefined that there was no way to predict the creature he would become. It had taken a war to change him, or a murder, or a deal with the devil, but whatever he was in October of 1917, he looked at Daisy as if she were his heart left his chest, as if he didn’t care where she went so long as he could follow.
“He looked at her,” I told Nick, “like every girl longs to be looked at.”
“Do you?” Nick asked, but I waved him away impatiently.
“I haven’t the time for that kind of nonsense,” I said, sidestepping the question, and then I went on to tell him about what had happened the night before Daisy’s wedding, though of course I gave him the version that Daisy wanted told, the one where she wept and then was ready to join the bridal dinner in half an hour. I could see that Nick believed an eighteen-year-old new drunk, heartbroken and half-mad, could pull herself together inside of half an hour, and it told me that he didn’t know his cousin very well. Some girls could do it. I could likely do it, though I preferred to make sure that I was never in such a situation in the first place. Daisy wasn’t good for that sort of thing. She could only lash out, quick and potentially deadly, but for anything that required a sustained effort, she was at a loss.
Neither Daisy nor Gatsby asked me to tell him the third story.
“They honeymooned in Hawaii for three months, and then they returned to Santa Barbara just after Christmas. By that time, I was living with Aunt Justine, and she could never bear a New York winter. We were out in Santa Barbara too, so she could catch up with her California friends, and all by chance, we were at the same hotel where Daisy and Tom were staying.
“You never saw a girl so in love, or I hadn’t, anyway. She would sit on the beach with him by the hour, his head on her legs, petting his face as if he were the dearest thing. She never liked to let him out of her sight, and I thought they were on their way to becoming one of those couples joined at the hip and the lip.”
“Jealous?” Nick asked, and I gave him my best withering glance.
“Never of Tom,” I said. “Aunt Justine wanted to go on to Colorado after Santa Barbara, so we left, and I had it by way of Denver Post that Tom had been in a wretched smashup, his car against a wagon on the Ventura Road. They named him, and they named Pilar Velazquez as well.”
“Who’s—”
“The girl who worked at that hotel where he and Daisy were staying.”
Nick shifted, looking uncomfortable.
“Surely he was just taking her home?”
I gave him a long look, and he colored, shaking his head.
“I sound like a fool, don’t I?”
“Of all the people in the world to defend without question, I should think that Tom would not be very high on that list,” I said archly.
“You’re … likely right about that.”
“I am. About nine months after that, in April, little Pammy was born. Then they were off to France for a year, and then it was back to Chicago to set up housekeeping close by Tom’s people. And that … didn’t last, though I don’t know the details of it.”
I frowned at that, and Nick chucked me lightly under the chin.
“Though not for want of digging?”
I smiled at him, wrinkling my nose.
“You’re getting to know me a little better. I never heard much about it, except from Daisy. She never drank like she did that night again, you know, and Chicago’s a hard-drinking town. I know they were planning to stay and then suddenly came East. I know that Tom doesn’t want to go back, but Daisy maybe does. But they’ve settled in the East now, and they’re as snug as oysters in a bucket. Or at least, they were until you showed up.”
“Me?”
“Yes. You and Gatsby.”
He went as pale as paper at that statement, and I made a face, reaching over to squeeze his hand.
“No, not like that. Gatsby’s in love with Daisy. He wants you to invite her over to your house so he can meet her there.”
Nick’s face took on a wondering look.
“He wants to … have an affair with my cousin at my house? My house?”
“Oh … Oh no. No one wants to have an affair there. No. He wants you to bring her over so he can meet her there. Since you’re right next door, you know? He wants it to be … I don’t know. Some kind of beautiful happenstance. A chance meeting where they meet each other through luck and fate.”
“Luck and fate that he asked us to set up.”
I lifted my champagne glass to him in acknowledgment.
He convinced me to go for a ride in a victoria around Central Park before I returned home to prepare for dinner with Aunt Justine. I would have said no, but after lunch and the morning I knew he must have had with Gatsby, I was feeling closer to him. The privacy of the covered carriage driving through the shady paths of Central Park was more appealing than I had ever found it to be before.
Settled in the curve of his arm, I tipped us a drop each of demoniac from the crystal bottle in my purse. He licked his droplet off my finger, making me giggle a little. He was handsome when he wasn’t going on about his Middle Western manners and morals. I pulled down the voile curtain that separated us from the driver, and twitched open his collar, where I found what I thought I would, a dark bite mark from a wide mouth.
“Jordan…”
“You must know by now I don’t mind,” I said.
“Maybe I do.”
“If you mind, then you ought not do it,” I said smartly, and then I hesitated. “You … do want to, right? He isn’t…”
Nick colored to the tips of his ears. I knew that he probably wouldn’t tell me one way or another. I sighed, petting his soft, dark hair.
“Never mind,” I said. “You’re a dear. I don’t care about that.”
“Do you care about anything?”
It wasn’t an accusation, but an actual question. I hesitated, and he took my hand, kissing the palm gently. It sent a shiver through me, and I pressed closer to him. Even in the heat, he felt good, and I buried my face in the crook of his neck, pretending at a shyness I never had.
“I care about a lot of things,” I said. “How much fun I have. What people think about me. My aunt. Daisy.”
I hesitated.
“You.” It wasn’t exactly true, not the way I suspected he wanted it to be, but it wasn’t not true either.
He smiled as if the sun had come out, and it made me swallow hard, blushing a little.
“Anyway, Daisy ought to have something in her life,” I said, looking away. “Will you arrange the meeting?”
“Does she want to see Gatsby?”
Of course she did. The moment I had told her he existed, the moment she knew he wanted her, she had been ready to fly to him. The only thing that stopped her was the fact that Gatsby wanted things done just so, fitting into some story that made me wary and intrigued Daisy.
“She’s not to know about it,” I said, sidestepping neatly. “Gatsby doesn’t want her to know. You’re just supposed to invite her to tea.”
Nick made an agreeable noise, and as the victoria made its way through the shadows of the lowering sun, I curled a little closer to him, letting him cup my face and lean down to kiss me. In that moment, I knew that he had put all thoughts of Daisy and Gatsby and the rest of the world aside.
I reached up to ruffle my fingers through his hair, making him laugh a little.
“You’re going to make me look a wreck when we get out,” he murmured.
“Good. I want you utterly ruined, completely wrecked.”
I kissed him harder until I could feel him rouse, his hips shifting a little as his kisses became more urgent.
“No marks,” I murmured in his ear. “I don’t have the benefit of high collars like you do.”
In response, he slid the scanty strap of my dress aside slightly, and I felt the nip of his teeth against the humid skin there. I clung to him as he put a discreet but credible bite on my skin, and then just as the victoria pulled out of the trees and onto the busier thoroughfare alongside Sixty-Fifth Street, I pushed him away, sitting up straight with my knees together, almost trapping his hand between my thighs before he pulled back.
Nick grinned at me, looking quite debauched with his hair sticking up in all directions and his mouth red, and I decided that perhaps I did love him after all.
“Wicked thing,” he said with some delight.
“Of course,” I replied, pleased.