“Jay,” I tried again. “If I ever meant anything to you… please. I’m begging you, you have to help Myrtle.”
Jay cocked his head to the side, and I could see the green of his eyes catching a hint of summer sunlight. They sparkled, emeralds, like the grass of the lawn behind him. “The thing is, Cath,” he said, matter-of-factly, coldly, “you never really did mean anything to me.”
Jordan August 1922
WEST EGG
AFTER I DROPPED DAISY AT Jay’s house, I drove around west Egg for a while. There was a golf course a few miles down the road, and the car eventually took me there without me really thinking about it. It was a piping hot Saturday, but a summer Saturday nonetheless, and the course was swarming with men in pink pants and white golf polos. I parked my car and walked down as far as I could to the course without actually stepping on it. And then I just stared at those men, feeling something swell in my chest that I hadn’t felt for so long: desire. Not for another person at all, but for a game. Oh, sweet, beautiful golf! I missed the way my arms felt when they were slicing balls through the air, the way my mind felt when I was calculating the distance to the hole, the precise amount of spin to add to my swing. I missed the smell of the green, the solid feel of the trim grass beneath my feet.
“Looking for your husband, miss?” A man’s voice broke into my thoughts. I turned and an unfamiliar man stood behind me, his clubs strapped to his back. “Are you looking for your husband, out on the course?”
I frowned. Of course he would think the only thing I might be doing here, watching, would be looking for my husband. I had half a mind to take his nine iron from his bag and beat him silly with it. “I’m just a fan of the game,” I huffed. “Just watching, that’s all.”
“Lady,” he said, laughing at me as he shook his head, “this is a private club. Get out of here.”
Before I could think of an appropriate insult to say back to him （and later, I would think of several）， he walked off. He disappeared onto the course and blended in with all the others. They were terrible golfers—I could see from here. Money might’ve offered them access to the nouveau riche club of West Egg, but it certainly didn’t buy them any talent. That thought raged endlessly in my head, sounding stupidly snobbish like Tom. Tom. Daisy. I’d forgotten about Daisy!
Nearly two hours had passed since I’d left her, and I sped the whole way back to Jay’s. But when I hurtled down his drive, I caught no sight of her at all. Jay was standing outside on his porch, all alone, shoeless, looking downtrodden and forlorn.
“Where is she?” I asked, upon pulling the brake and hopping out.
He shrugged. And he looked so out of sorts that I had this terrible feeling that something had happened to her.
“What did you do to her, Jay?”
His eyes shot cool, green daggers at me before he sat down on the stoop, put his head in his hands, and sighed heavily. “She’s fine, Jordan. She left a while ago. I suppose she went to Nick’s.”
I took a deep breath and I could still feel the sharp, cool smell of newly cut grass from the course lingering in my nose. “All right. Well, I did what you asked.” I swallowed hard, pushing back the guilt I felt about having left Daisy here earlier and then forgotten her, too. “I brought Daisy here today. And you promised you’d help me, with golf.”
He ran his hands through his hair, agitated, messing it up, making him look a little wild. I pictured him again as that soldier the first night I met him, sweeping into a summer party in Louisville and whisking Daisy away, holding her too desperately close, a possession. “No, no, you have to help me get Daisy back first,” he said now, sounding petulant, like a child.
It occurred to me that we were playing this dangerous game, Jay and I, and neither one of us was likely to win in any way we found satisfying. Jay would never have Daisy. I could pretend to help him, set up more meetings, but I’d sabotage them all the same. Wasn’t that what I’d done today by letting Tom know of this little endeavor? And the more we went round and round in this precarious circle, the more I’d want golf, and the further it would be from my reach. That thought made me so angry, I could barely breathe.
“Did you know Tom has another woman on the side?” Jay was saying now.
“Of course.” I sighed, exhaling and letting the anger out. “Everyone knows that, Jay. Daisy even knows that.”
“Yes, but did you know she wants to run away with him? Wants him to take her out west?”