“Daisy…” I said, but she threw her napkin on the table and stalked after Tom without a single excuse, leaving Nick and me alone.
“So you mentioned my neighbor Gatsby,” Nick started, but I held up my hand.
“Shush.”
My spine and shoulders felt as stiff as wood, my ear strained like piano wire as I listened for something from the next room where the telephone was kept.
“What in the world is happening?” Nick asked, apparently bewildered. Perhaps things were not done like this in St. Paul, or perhaps he was better at playing the innocent than any debutante I had ever met. I didn’t much care.
“What happens when a man’s girlfriend calls for him while he’s at dinner with his wife,” I said shortly. “He might have the decency to keep from answering her at mealtimes, don’t you think?”
Nick shut up.
Tom and Daisy returned, Tom like a storm cloud and Daisy with her hands fluttering like trapped songbirds. I studied her carefully as she came in. Her color was too high, but her hair hadn’t been pulled out of its careful style, and there was no handprint on her face.
“Oh, it couldn’t be helped,” she cried, her eyes glossy and her cheeks pink. “And I looked outdoors for a minute, and it’s very romantic outdoors. There’s a bird on the lawn that I think must be a nightingale come over on the Cunard or White Star Line. He’s singing away … It’s romantic, isn’t it, Tom?”
Tom muttered something in agreement and then something about his damned horses, and then the phone rang again. This time he stayed in the wreckage of dinner, face brick red and Daisy as bright and brittle as glass. I—and to his credit, Nick—tried to fill the rest of dinner with chatter about the people we both knew （many）， and the things we had in common （fairly few）。
The phone rang once more as we finished dessert, but then it was silent as we stood from the table. As Tom pointed Nick towards the stable, Daisy took my cool hand in her hot one.
“Remember,” she hissed like an oracle from a Gothic, and I nodded.
“Have you seen that new piece from Edgar Wallace that was meant to be in the Post today, Tom?” I asked. “I’ve not yet, and I was hoping to get to it before I need to sleep tonight.”
He hadn’t, of course, and we made our way to the library while Nick and Daisy went around to the wide front porch. He looked after them for a moment, and you could almost feel sorry for the baffled look on his face. One got the idea that at some point, something in his marriage had gotten away from him, but damned if he could say what, or if he should miss it, or if he missed it at all.
We settled down on either end of the long couch in the dim ruby light of the library lamps. We had done this a time or two. Daisy couldn’t abide the short stories that Tom and I favored, and even the radio gave her a headache. Tom slumped on his end of the couch, and I sat up straight at mine, the Saturday Evening Post spread crisply on my lap. I had a good voice for reading out loud. My first tutors at the Willow Street house believed in recitation, and though my voice was higher and softer than Daisy’s, it was steady.
I was through one story, and halfway through the next when Tom sighed.
“You’re a good girl, Jordan. I’m glad Daisy has you. It’s hard for her, with women, you know. She doesn’t get on with them. You’re different.”
“I think she gets along with women just fine,” I said, straight-faced.
“She thinks the world of you. So do I. And Nick, well. Dull sort, a bit, but that’s a good thing in these irregular days. He’s good-looking enough, isn’t he?”
I allowed that he was, and Tom nodded as if the matter was decided.
“We’ll see you settled before the end of the summer, see if we don’t. You know, you’re already older than Daisy when she and I tied the knot. Don’t know what a pretty girl like you is waiting for, but I’m not a petty tyrant. You can afford to wait for a decent man, with your prospects. Daisy worries, but I know better. You’re only waiting for a good match, the best, and what’s the matter with that?”