“I want to see you,” I said immediately, and I heard him go still on the other end of the line.
“I’m at work,” he said, the most Middle Western of excuses, and I decided to forgive it.
“I was thinking of doing some traveling,” I said, my voice falsely gay. “I was thinking, oh, wouldn’t it be fine to go somewhere now that the weather’s not so horrid?”
“Traveling?”
“Yes,” I said eagerly. “Montreal or Buenos Aires, or maybe even Paris … or Shanghai. You could show me around Paris, couldn’t you, darling?”
“Great God, Jordan!” Nick exclaimed and my cheeks went hot red.
I imagined both of us touching the broken edges of our relationship, trying to decide what could be mended and what might need to be jettisoned entire.
“You know, you weren’t so very nice to me last night,” I said finally.
Nick snorted.
“Because that’s what the world is about. People being nice to you.”
I gritted my teeth until I thought they would crack. He was obviously new at this sort of thing, because otherwise he would have hung up on that.
“It’s better than a world where they’re cruel and you stay anyway,” I said. “Keeping the line open for him, are you?”
I hung up, and because it was all rather too much, I went back to bed.
Two eyes, T. J. Eckleburg had told me, and in my shallow dreams, they opened and shut for me.
* * *
I had a busy week. Aunt Justine had another setback, and ridiculously enough, I had a match in Hempstead, where I performed abysmally. Nan Harper came back from Greece, and I had to break up with her, and then Aunt Justine wanted to speak to me about Shanghai.
“It’ll be an adventure for you,” she said from the bed at Bellevue, and I scowled.
“I don’t care for the idea of running away.”
“My dear one, you are rich. You don’t run away. You go on retreat. You holiday. You take the waters, and when things are better, you return if you wish to do so.”
When she tired, which never took long, I kissed her on the cheek to say goodbye and returned to the Park Avenue apartment to pick up Daisy’s car.
The drive out to East Egg had never taken longer. I held my breath passing the ash yard, and I noticed that T. J. Eckleburg’s billboard was worn quite away, great flaps of paper hanging almost down to the ground like broken wings.
As I drove east, I could tell that summer’s back was broken. That terrible day at the Plaza snapped to yield autumn, and though there was no hint of gold or crimson in the leaves, the air seemed clearer and colder, the sky hinting towards gray and the white that would come after.
I couldn’t see Gatsby’s mansion from the road of course, but it was too easy to imagine it as I passed West Egg. Would it be worse to find it pristine as if nothing had happened or to see it falling down into a ruin? I couldn’t say for sure, and I debated it with myself all the way to Daisy’s door.
I found the house in a turmoil of servants and groundsmen, people in uniform rustling back and forth with tarps and with boxes and crates large enough to ship me all the way over the sea. Most of the furniture had been covered up with white sheets, and instead of looking ghostly, it gave everything a strange air of anticipation, as if the whole place was just waiting for some lucky new owner to whip it all back in delight at her good fortune.
I finally found Daisy seated on the wicker swing on the veranda, where, to my surprise, she was dandling Pammy in her arms. The tiny girl looked exalted to be so close to Daisy, a terrified look on her face as if she was afraid she might ruin it. Behind them both was Pammy’s nurse, watching warily, eyes flickering from her charge to Daisy and back again.