By the time I hit the ground, I was exhausted. I could barely move, and it took all the strength I had to make it back to Daisy’s roadster. I knew that the state I was in, I would never make it back to East Egg, so I simply crawled into the back, getting the white seat filthy with ash, with everything I had picked up on my sojourn through Willets Point. I thought briefly about smearing everything I had learned all over the leather upholstery, but I couldn’t figure out how to do that, so instead, I fell asleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I could ignore the soft tapping sound on the glass, rolling over and pressing my face to the leather under my face, but the harder rapping that rattled the window finally convinced me to look up. My eyes burned like two eggs left too long on the skillet, and when I yanked the door handle, I spilled halfway out of the car. I would have hit the filthy ground face-first if strong arms hadn’t pulled me back up.
“There you are,” Khai said, and then I rewarded him by almost throwing up on him. He stepped back just in time, and crouched beside me as I heaved in the car’s shadow.
At first he tried to stroke my shoulders and say encouraging things, but after a while, he simply stood back and let me empty out what felt like the entire contents of my stomach on the ground. It seemed to take forever, and then I was down to dry heaves, and then I was finally able to stand up.
It was just a little before dawn, and the heat had diminished in the night, leaving the day a little more bearable. I looked at the lightening sky until I felt more human, and then I turned to Khai.
He was in his shirt sleeves with dark rings under his eyes, and he looked at me with a mixture of curiosity and dismay.
“Couldn’t stay away, could you?” I asked with a wink. I looked ghastly, but sometimes I could brazen it right out.
“You came looking for me,” Khai said shortly. “Last night.”
“I … did?”
“Through a dream about green parrots that run a Shanghai bar. I heard you, and I saw that damned billboard that you mutilated. I remembered it coming back and forth to Gatsby’s parties. You said you wanted me, and then I woke up.”
“How very rude of me…” I murmured, but Khai glared at me. I had cost him some serious sleep.
“Stop it! Can’t you just stop it? What do you want? Just tell me!”
People were stirring in the garage and, dead wife or no, I hardly wanted to have a run-in with George Wilson in my state. He wouldn’t care for me or Khai, so I found the keys to the roadster thrown carelessly on the passenger’s seat and thrust them at Khai.
“Here,” I said. “Drive.”
It wasn’t until we passed under the ruined billboard of T. J. Eckleburg that I realized we were going to New York rather than back to East Egg. I started to protest, but then I shook my head. I wanted to go home.
“Oh!” I said. “Just so you know, I think this car is stolen.”
Khai shot me a dark look as he edged the car forward on the crowded motorway. Somewhere in this mess would be Nick, making his way to work if he hadn’t cried off after the night he had had.
“I don’t have the money for a bribe,” Khai warned me. “It’ll have to be you.”
We sat in silence for a moment, and I almost fell asleep before he spoke again.
“We’re leaving on Friday,” he said. “Bai found us a berth aboard the Princess Titania, and we’re out.”
I felt very strangely hurt.
“So soon? You told me…”
“They vote on the Manchester Act today, and they’re going to pass it,” Khai said. “Bai’s parents still remember when the exclusion acts rolled through. She lost almost all of her uncles. She wants us gone.”