I didn’t end up going to sleep when I got home after all, and I made myself some very strong Turkish coffee to compensate. The harshness of the drink made me feel as if I was vibrating two inches beyond the barrier of my skin, and I knew my mouth would taste dark and a little gritty all day, but that was fine.
I ended up on the first train to East Egg, and in a plain cotton dress in Oxford blue, I curled up next to a window to watch the world go by. The tall buildings of Manhattan gave way to smaller residences, marble and glass to brick and wood, and I felt something in me ease up slightly, as if relieved to see more of the watercolor blue sky.
With a slightly superstitious air, I crossed my fingers as the train surged through Willets Point in Queens, where all the city’s ash came to rest. Even this early in the morning, fine light white sediment billowed up from the ground in a feathery fury, curling up into the air like some kind of secret. Wind cut the tallest and broadest heaps with intricate desert-like ridges, making me think of the far-off deserts of the Sahara or the Atacama, and watching over all of this was a perfectly horrid, perfectly tacky billboard of some long-defunct spectacle maker, two great eyes staring down with lurid interest over what went on below.
Down among the ashes, their faces and hands turned gray and grimy with the refuse of New York, I could see the men who lived and worked in the ash. It was their lot to shovel the ash that came in. It was a titanic struggle that I imagined they could only cope with by realizing that they were after an impossible goal and therefore were free to ignore it. Their shapes flickered among the little shanties that they had put together, made from spare pieces of wood and the odd bit of cast-off wealth of the city. From my spot on the train, as we pulled into the station for a brief and pointless stop, I could see them plodding with a kind of dull and frustrated purpose among the ash heaps, armed with shovels and clothed in grime. I imagined their lungs were protected in their youth by keeping their mouths shut tight. Then as they grew older themselves, more prone to voice their opinions, more eager to make sure that the world did not go one second longer without their words than it absolutely had to, the ash won over, sliding over their skin and then into their open mouths.
As we pulled away, I saw an unlikely woman with flaming red hair dressed in lemon yellow. She came out of a garage door, a cigarette between two stiff fingers, and a dark fingerprint smudging of ash already on her skirt. She watched after the train with something I could only term a contemptuous longing, and I swore for a moment that our eyes met.
I forgot all about her when we pulled into the station stop at Lilac Hill, still a mile away from Daisy’s house. I thought about ringing her to send a car for me, but I summoned up a cab instead. Lilac Hill was a little more stiff-necked about such things than we were in the city. It took almost twenty minutes before I could find a cab that would take me, and when I did, I tipped the driver, a silver-haired Black man, as extravagantly as I could.
I should have called, I thought, as I made my way up the broad front steps. I don’t even know if she’s in.
The Buchanans’ butler, at least, did not look surprised to see me, and he had one of the men take my small bag to the guest room I customarily used before escorting me to the blue and ivory solar that was generally kept for Daisy’s use.
The room’s tall windows were open to the Sound, and I looked out over the water. From where I stood, I realized with some discomfort that I could easily see Gatsby’s mansion, the white walls gleaming even across the misty distance, the glittering gold beach and the pier that stretched out from it.
He stands on that pier, I thought suddenly. He stands there, and he looks across the water, and he looks across the years to when she was his and when she will be his.
I was startled from my strange thoughts by a crash, followed by an outraged shriek. I flew to the door, throwing it open just as the butler appeared again with an icy glass of limeade and a small plate of water crackers and cucumber slices. He wasn’t a big man, but he wore his importance like a barred gate, and there was no getting around him.
“Madame will be with you shortly,” he told me, his face serene. “In the meantime, I have brought you some refreshments. Would you care for some reading materials?”
“Just the Post,” I said reluctantly, and I sat back down. I had no doubt that if I tried to leave the solar again that he would be there like magic, hemming me in.
He brought me the Post, and I thumbed through it impatiently until Daisy made an appearance, blowing in like a gale from some wild place. She moved so lightly, her color so high, that I had to glance down to make sure that her kid slippers touched the ground.
“Oh Jordan, what a delight, what a wonder!” she cried, reaching for me. “I had thought you had quite forsaken me! Now that Tom has thrown me over, I must look to my real friends, mustn’t I?”
I was usually quite immune to Daisy’s flights of fancy, but this one made me blink twice. Before she appeared, I had heard a great stomping and slamming, followed by an inarticulate shout of the kind I associated with football matches.
“Thrown you over…?”
Her hands fluttered like shot birds, her mouth red and smiling. She couldn’t be bothered to tell me the details, so she told me the very heart of it instead.
“Oh he will go out with that girl this evening. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about me.”
This then was why Daisy kept me. Unlike her other friends, I didn’t tell her that it would be all right or swear vengeance or offer her a way to be so beautiful he would never turn from her again. It wouldn’t be all right, there was precious little vengeance a woman like Daisy might have against her man, and she was already so beautiful. Instead, I offered her something else.
“Listen,” I said, looking around. “Take me someplace safe. Someplace you trust.”
Her eyes shone, and she took my hand.
“Oh, an adventure? Jordan, you dear, you always know what I need.”
“Maybe,” I said.
She took me out in her midnight-blue roadster, tearing around the hills of East Egg as if they had personally offended her. We went past the paddock where Tom’s ponies grazed, through a small copse of trees where Daisy told me the last witch of Long Island had been hung, and then we stopped at the high and sandy dunes on the undeveloped side of the peninsula. She parked us overlooking the water, nothing in view but blue and the encroaching creep of Briarwood Island, and then she slumped over, her head on my shoulder and both her hands playing with one of mine.
“So what’s the crisis, darling?” she asked, her voice conspiratorial. “Have you fallen in love with Nick after all? I had so many plans to bring you two together, but you both keep on in the city as if there’s anything there.”
“There’s nothing but sand and sea here,” I said. “Daisy … Gatsby wants you.”
She went still, her head a weight on my shoulder, her hands suddenly squeezing mine tight before letting go. She didn’t move.
“Oh?” she asked. Her voice sounded as well-balanced as a throwing knife, but she had no target at the moment, only me in her car with her, overlooking the glittering water.
“Yes … look.”
I told her all of it, starting from the night I had met Nick at Gatsby’s party, through to what had happened last night at the Cendrillon. I spared nothing, not the love bites on Nick’s throat or how Gatsby had looked after his expensive Amherst boy. I might have been telling her a fairy tale, none of it real enough to reach her where she was huddled against my side.
I came to a stop, because the story had run out for the moment, and I prodded her so she would finally sit up. She did so reluctantly, and to my shock, my complete and utter shock, her eyes were full of tears.
“My God, my God,” she said in a fascinated whisper. “He loves me.”
“I don’t know if he does,” I said. “There was … I don’t know, Daisy.”
“He does,” she said, her hand tightening into small fists. “He does, he does.”
Over the Sound, dark clouds were forming, and a cold breeze chilled the sweat on my bare arms. An ache came to rest between my eyes and through my temples as the clouds rolled like a croupier’s dice.
“Daisy…”
“Tell me again,” she demanded, turning to me. The Sound and the sky had gone to match her eyes, and I told her again.
The words sank into her, and as I finished, fat drops of water fell on us, wide-spaced and hard, leaving us speckled rather than soaked in our light dresses.
When she finally looked away from me, I fell back against the seat, wisps of my hair stuck to my face from the falling water. Almost as an afterthought, Daisy raised the roadster’s roof and lit us both cigarettes. We smoked together in silence, and her hand covered mine, possessively and almost afraid.
It’ll be fine, I thought to myself. I remembered the last time she had held my hand like that, and it had been fine then too.