“Are we just going to go?” she objected. “Like this? Aren’t we going to let anyone smoke a cigarette first?”
“Everybody smoked all through lunch,” said Tom truculently.
“Oh, let’s have fun,” she begged him. “It’s too hot to fuss.”
Tom didn’t answer. She decided suddenly that it was best to go.
“Come on, Jordan.”
They went upstairs to get ready while we three men stood there shuffling the hot pebbles with our feet. A silver curve of the moon hovered already in the western sky.
“Have you got your stables here?” asked Gatsby.
“About a quarter of a mile down the road.”
“Oh.”
A pause.
“I don’t see the idea of going to town,” broke out Tom savagely. “Women get these ideas in their heads——”
“Shall we take anything to drink?” called Daisy from an upper window.
“I’ll get some whiskey,” answered Tom. He went inside.
Gatsby turned to me, his voice trembling.
“I can’t stand this,” he said, “it’s agony. I wanted to put my arms around her at luncheon when he began that talk. She’s got to tell him the truth.”
“She loves you. Her voice is full of it.”
“Her voice is full of money,” he said suddenly.
That was it. I had never understood before. It was full of money—that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals’ song of it… High in a white palace the king’s daughter, the golden girl…
Tom came out of the house wrapping a quart bottle in a towel, followed by Daisy and Jordan wearing small tight hats of metallic cloth and carrying light capes over their arms.
“Shall we all go in my car?” suggested Gatsby. He felt the hot green leather of the seat. “I should have left it in the shade.”
“Standard shift?” asked Tom, looking at him quickly.
“Yes.”
“Well, you take my coupe and let me drive your car to town.”
“Of course, if you like to,” said Gatsby stiffly. “I don’t know how much gas there is——”
“Come on, Daisy!” Tom slipped his hand around her waist. “I’ll take you in this circus wagon.”
He opened the door for her but she moved out from the circle of his arm.
“Nick and Jordan’ll go with you,” she said lightly. “I’ll take Gatsby for a thriller in the coupe.”
She stood close to Gatsby, touching his coat with her hand. Unwillingly Tom got into the yellow car, making room for Jordan and me in the front seat. He pushed the unfamiliar gears tentatively, and we moved off toward the city through the oppressive afternoon while they followed far out of sight behind.
“I wonder where that man Gatsby learned his manners,” broke out Tom suddenly.
“He went to Oxford,” said Jordan maliciously. “Ever hear of it?”
“He did!” Tom was incredulous. “Like hell he did! He wears a pink suit.”
“Nevertheless he’s an Oxford man.”
“Oxford, South Dakota,” snorted Tom contemptuously, “Oxford, New Mexico, or something like that.”
“Listen, Tom, if you’re such a snob why did you invite him to lunch?” demanded Jordan crossly.
“Daisy invited him. She knew him before we were married—God knows where!”
We were all irritable now with the fading ale and, aware of it, we drove for awhile in silence. Then as Dr. T. J. Eckleburg’s faded eyes came into sight down the road I remembered Gatsby’s caution about gasoline.
“We’ve got half a gallon,” said Tom carelessly, glancing at the gauge. “That’ll probably get us to town.”
“But there’s a garage right here,” objected Jordan. “I don’t want to get stalled in this baking heat.”
Tom threw on both brakes angrily and we slid to an abrupt dusty stop under Wilson’s sign. After a moment the proprietor emerged from the interior of his establishment and gazed hollow-eyed at the car.
“Let’s have some gas!” cried Tom boisterously. “What do you think we stopped for—to admire the view?”
“I’m sick,” said Wilson without moving. “I’ve been sick all day.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I’m all run down.”
“Well, shall I help myself?” demanded Tom impatiently. “You sounded well enough on the phone.”
With an effort Wilson left the shade and support of the doorway and, breathing hard, unscrewed the cap of the tank. In the sunlight his face was green.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt your lunch,” he said. “But I need money pretty bad and I was wondering what you were going to do with your old car.”
“How do you like this one?” inquired Tom. “I bought it last week.”
“It’s a nice yellow one,” answered Wilson, straining at the handle.
“Like to buy it?”
“Big chance,” Wilson smiled faintly. “No, but I could make some money on the other.”
“What do you want money for all of a sudden?”
“I’ve been here too long. I want to get away. My wife and I want to go west.”
“Your wife does!” exclaimed Tom, startled.
“She’s been talking about it for ten years.” He rested for a moment against the pump, shading his eyes. “And now she’s going whether she wants to or not. I’m going to get her away.”
The coupe flashed by us with a flurry of dust and the flash of a waving hand.
“What do I owe you?” demanded Tom harshly.
“I just got wised up to something funny the last two days,” remarked Wilson. “That’s why I want to get away. That’s why I’ve been bothering you about the car.”
“What do I owe you?”
“Dollar twenty.”
It was evident that so far Wilson’s suspicions hadn’t alighted on Tom. He had discovered that Myrtle had some sort of life apart from him in another world and the shock had made him physically sick. I looked at him and then at Tom, who had made a parallel discovery less than an hour before—and it occurred to me that there was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as the difference between the sick and the well. Wilson was so sick that he looked guilty, unforgivably guilty—as if he had just got some poor girl with child.
“I’ll let you have that car,” said Tom. “I’ll send it over tomorrow afternoon.”
That locality always filled me with vague disquiet even in the broad glare of afternoon and now I turned my head as though I had been warned of something behind. Over the ashheaps the giant eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg kept their vigil but I perceived, after a moment, that other eyes were regarding us with peculiar intensity from less than twenty feet away.
In one of the windows over the garage the curtains had been moved aside a little and Myrtle Wilson was peering down at the car. So engrossed was she that she had no consciousness of being observed and one emotion after another crept into her face like objects into a slowly developing picture. Her expression was curiously familiar—it was an expression I had often seen on women’s faces, but on Myrtle Wilson’s face it seemed purposeless and inexplicable until I realized that her eyes, wide with jealous terror, were fixed not on Tom but on Jordan Baker, whom she took to be his wife.
There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind and as we drove away Tom was feeling the hot whips of panic. His wife and his mistress, until an hour ago secure and inviolate, were slipping precipitately from his control. Instinct made him step on the accelerator with the double purpose of overtaking Daisy and leaving Wilson behind, and we sped along toward Astoria at fifty miles an hour until, among the iron girders of the elevated, we came in sight of the easygoing blue coupe.
“Those big movies around Fiftieth Street are cool,” suggested Jordan. “Anyhow, I love New York on hot summer afternoons when everyone’s away. There’s something very sensuous about it—overripe, as if all sorts of funny fruits were going to fall into your hands.”
This had the effect of further disquieting Tom but before he could invent a protest the coupe came to a stop and Daisy’s hand signalled us to draw up alongside.
“Where are we going?” Daisy cried.
“The movies I suppose.”
“It’s so hot,” she complained. “You go. We’ll ride around and meet you after.”
“We can’t argue about it here,” said Tom impatiently, as a truck gave out a cursing whistle behind us. “You follow me to the south side of Central Park, in front of the Plaza.”
Several times he turned his head and looked back for their car, and if the traffic delayed them he slowed up until they came into sight. I think he was afraid they would dart down a side street and out of his life forever.
“Women are funny people,” he exclaimed, as we reached the Plaza. “By God, they’ll do anything for a little excitement.”
After a moment the coupe rolled by us with insolent leisure and parked ahead. Daisy and Gatsby showed no tendency to move so we got out and went up to them, and immediately the Buchanans were engaged in a restrained discussion as to who had suggested the trip to New York. Jordan and I bought popcorn at the park gate and sat munching it on the low wall.
“It was a mistake to come,” she remarked. “It looks like a row to me.
We waited. It was so hot that truck-horses left deep hoof-prints in the pavement, so hot that my underwear kept climbing like a damp snake around my legs and intermittent beads of sweat raced cool across my back. There was something special about the day that I kept trying to remember, some anniversary or an important thing that I should do. But it hid itself persistently in the overpowering heat.
“Come on over!” called Daisy. “Everybody’s got to help decide. Tom says I haven’t any common sense.”
We went over to the car.
“The nearest place is the Plaza,”
