LITMIR.BIZ

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you doing, Nick?”

      “I’m a bond man16.”

      “Who with?”

      I told him.

      “Never heard of them,” he remarked decisively.

      This annoyed me.

      “You will,” I answered shortly. “You will if you stay in the East.”

      “Oh, I’ll stay in the East, don’t you worry,” he said, glancing at Daisy. “I’d be a God damned fool to live anywhere else.”

      At this point Miss Baker said: “Absolutely!” with such suddenness that I started17 – it was the first word she had said since I came into the room. I think it surprised her as much as it did me because she yawned and stood up into the room.

      “I’m stiff,” she complained, “I’ve been lying on that sofa for as long as I can remember.”

      I looked at Miss Baker. I enjoyed looking at her. She was a slim, small-breasted girl. Her gray sun-strained eyes looked back at me with polite curiosity out of a charming, discontented face.18 It seemed to me now that I had seen her, or a picture of her, somewhere before.

      “You live in West Egg,” she remarked contemptuously. “You must know Gatsby.”

      “Gatsby?” asked Daisy. “What Gatsby?”

      Before I could answer that he was my neighbor dinner was announced. The two young women showed us the way onto a rosy-colored porch, open toward the sunset, where four candles were lit on the table.

      “Why candles?” objected Daisy, frowning. She snapped them out with her fingers. “In two weeks it’ll be the longest day in the year.”

      “We ought to plan something,” yawned Miss Baker, sitting down at the table as if she were getting into bed.

      “All right,” said Daisy. “What’ll we plan?” She turned to me helplessly: “What do people plan?”

      Before I could answer her eyes focused on her little finger.

      “Look!” she complained; “I hurt it. You did it, Tom,” she said accusingly. “I know you didn’t want to, but you did do it. That’s what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a great, big, hulking physical specimen19 of a —”

      “I hate that word hulking,” objected Tom angrily, “even in kidding.”

      “Hulking,” insisted Daisy.

      Sometimes she and Miss Baker talked at once, but that was never quite chatter, that was as cool as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all desire. They were here, and they accepted Tom and me, making only a polite pleasant effort to entertain or to be entertained20.

      “You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy,” I confessed on my second glass of impressive wine. “Can’t you talk about crops or something?” I meant nothing special by this phrase, but the reaction was unexpected.

      “Civilization’s going to pieces,” said Tom violently. “I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. If we don’t look out the white race will be – will be completely underwater. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.”

      “Tom’s getting a very deep thinker,” said Daisy, with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. “He reads deep books with long words in them.”

      “Well, these books are all scientific,” insisted Tom, glancing at her impatiently. “This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It’s up to us21, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things.”

      “We’ve got to beat them down,” whispered Daisy, winking ferociously toward the fervent sun22. Suddenly, the telephone rang inside and the butler left the porch. Daisy leaned toward me.

      “I’ll tell you a family secret,” she whispered enthusiastically. “It’s about the butler’s nose. Do you want to hear about the butler’s nose?”

      “That’s why I came over tonight.”

      “Well, he wasn’t always a butler; he used to be the silver polisher for some people in New York that had a silver service for two hundred people. He had to polish it from morning till night, until finally it began to affect his nose. Things went from bad to worse, until finally he had to give up his position.”

      The butler came back and murmured something close to Tom’s ear; Tom frowned, pushed back his chair, and without a word went inside. As if his absence quickened something within her, Daisy leaned forward again, her voice enthusiastic and singing.

      “I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a – of a rose, an absolute rose. Doesn’t he?” She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation: “An absolute rose?”

      This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose. She was only improvising. Then suddenly she threw her napkin on the table, excused herself and went into the house.

      Miss Baker and I exchanged a short glance without any meaning. I was about to speak when she said “Sh!” in a warning voice. A subdued murmur was audible23 in the room beyond, and Miss Baker leaned forward unashamed, trying to hear. The murmur trembled on the verge of understandability, sank down, mounted excitedly, and then ended altogether.

      “Is something happening?” I asked innocently.

      “You mean to say you don’t know?” said Miss Baker, honestly surprised. “I thought everybody knew. Tom’s got some woman in New York. She might have the decency24 not to telephone him at dinner time. Don’t you think?”

      Almost before I had understood her meaning there was the flutter of a dress and the crunch of leather boots, and Tom and Daisy were back at the table. Daisy sat down and cried with tense gayety: “I looked out-doors for a minute. There’s a nightingale singing away —” Her voice sang: “It’s romantic, isn’t it, Tom?”

      “Very romantic,” he said, and then miserably to me: “If it’s light enough after dinner, I want to take you down to the stables.”

      The telephone rang inside, startlingly, and, as Daisy shook her head decisively at Tom, the subject of the stables and all other subjects, disappeared into air. I realized that I wanted to look directly at every one, and yet to keep off all eyes. I couldn’t guess what Daisy and Tom were thinking, but I doubt if even Miss Baker was able to put the fifth guest out of mind.

      The horses, needless to say, were not mentioned again. Tom and Miss Baker walked back into the library, while, trying to look pleasantly interested, I followed Daisy to the porch in front, where we sat down side by side on a wicker settee25.

      Daisy took her face in her hands and her eyes moved gradually out into the velvet twilight. I saw that unquiet emotions possessed her, so I asked what I thought would be some calming questions about her little girl.

      “We don’t know each other very well, Nick,” she said suddenly. “Even if we are cousins. You didn’t come to my wedding.”

      “I wasn’t back from the war.”

      “That’s true.” She hesitated. “Well, I’ve had a very bad time, Nick, and I’m pretty cynical about everything.”

      Evidently she had reason to be. I waited but she didn’t say any more, and after a moment I returned rather weakly to the subject of her daughter.

      “I suppose she talks, and – eats, and everything.”

      “Oh,

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