You and I are made out of the same stuff, he seemed to be saying. Won’t we have fun?
I knew it was a white lie at best, but as we passed through his golden halls, the strains of music drifting up from the garden and smell of money in the air, I realized that he might not think it was.
My God, he thinks he’s sincere, I thought with wonder, and perhaps in that moment, I warmed to him just a little more. It was just a tiny crack in my defenses, but it was really all that was necessary.
He gestured in the air with long-fingered hands, an excitement in his voice for the brilliant new innovations of his house, for how big the world after the war could be. It was as if he was inviting me into his world, wanting to share all its pleasures with me.
And with Nick, of course, but as I watched his hands tracing gleaming patterns in front of us and the shape of his lips around his grandiose words, I decided that if I were asked properly, I would not mind sharing so very much.
The party was winding down into a graceless mess, something that had always irritated me. People are at their worst in transition, moving from one life to another. All of Gatsby’s beautiful people were being revealed for the sloppy, irritable, wayward, and human creatures they really were. There was a fight going on in the drive, not even magic could get everyone into the same coats and shoes they had when they first showed up, and the light suddenly seemed to reveal all manner of blemishes where before it had hid them.
In the crowded front hall, I was pressed against Gatsby by the common crush, and courteously, he put his arm around me to keep me from falling. The sudden push of our bodies together made me blush, and something in his gaze heated at that.
“Why, you’re lovely, Miss Baker,” he said softly, and I could tell in his surprise that he meant it.
“I am,” I said with a smile, and that won one in return from him.
Then Gatsby went stiff, something impatient on his face. I thought for a moment he had remembered himself, but then I followed his eyes and saw a pair of those tall men in dark suits approaching, expectant in their stance and their stride if not in their still faces.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to forgive me,” he said shortly, stepping away from me.
It didn’t look like a scene that he cared to have observed or that I cared to witness, and right about then, anyway, the ones I came with, thankfully minus the undergrad, started waving at me from the porch. Before I could grudgingly go to them, however, I nearly walked straight into Nick, who had been standing so close that I was surprised I hadn’t seen him. I wondered if there was something stiff about the way he looked at me; he had obviously seen my good-bye with Gatsby. I wavered between impatient and fond, and settled on intrigue instead.
I went up on tiptoe because he was surprisingly tall, and put my hand on his shoulder to steady myself.
“I’ve just heard the most amazing thing,” I whispered. “How long were we in there?”
He shivered a little with my breath so close to his ear, and his arm went around my waist as I had hoped it would.
“Why, about an hour.”
Of course it had been. The showoff.
“It was—simply amazing,” I murmured. “But I swore I wouldn’t say any more and here I am tantalizing you.”
He looked dubious, but I could tell that wouldn’t last. He had come to Gatsby’s party, he had eaten the food, he had fallen under Gatsby’s spell. It was already too late.
I told him to come find me when he liked. I was in the phone book under Aunt Justine, Mrs. Sigourney Howard. I thought he might, provided Gatsby didn’t snap him up like something good to eat. Nick didn’t strike me as the sort to make a good mistress, living off another man’s money and light in some little Park Avenue apartment, but he might flirt with the experience of it before running back to Minnesota.