That was too much to drag out on a Sunday night, so I only agreed, said my farewells, and gratefully took my aunt’s offer of the car and driver.
I dozed on the way over the bridge, not waking up until the first stars were coming out and the air was finally beginning to think of cooling down. Before I rang the bell, I looked out across the Sound to see that Gatsby’s place was lit up again, so bright that it shone a jagged path of light across the waves towards me. I wondered for a moment if it was possible to cross the Sound on that broken path, and at the same time, I realized that while I couldn’t, there was a better than average chance that Daisy might.
The butler opened the door for me with some slight resignation, and I was headed up to my usual room when I met Tom coming down the stairs. He was pulling on a pair of driving gloves with a distracted look. He gave me a rather befuddled look as we drew even on the steps.
“She call you already?”
“No, I’m just here to take advantage of your hospitality and your excellent food,” I said jauntily. “Why, should Daisy have called me?”
Tom sighed, dragging all ten fingers through his hair.
“She needs some sympathy,” he said, making a face. “I’m apparently being brutish again.”
“Oh, I see.”
He frowned when I didn’t immediately defend him to himself.
“Talk to her, make her see sense,” he said, a begging note in his voice. “You know how she gets.”
“Of course I do, Tom,” I said, sidestepping him. “Will you be back for breakfast?”
“No, some business is keeping me in the city,” he said. “Thank you, Jordan. You’re a star.”
I was, even if he had no reason at all to thank me. He went downstairs, and I went up, tired enough that I just wanted to strip out of my clothes and climb between my borrowed sheets.
Not so different from Louisville after all, I mused, and instead of going to bed, I continued on to Daisy’s suite, where I could see her shadow moving back and forth through the light from under the door. I tapped lightly on the door, and I was answered by a low wail.
“Oh do go away, I don’t want to see you,” she cried.
“I think you might,” I said, and she opened the door almost immediately, flying into my arms with a flutter of silk sleeves. In her hand-painted robe, she looked a bit like a magpie, the long bars of blue, black, and white calling to mind a rustle of feathers and the fan-spread of an elegant tail.
I let her hang on to me for a few moments, and then I pushed her back, bringing her back towards the light and turning her face this way and that by her chin.
“Do I just look too awful?” she asked, hiccupping slightly and offering me a nervous smile through her tears. “It’s not so bad, is it?”
I made a show of peering at her face, and then her throat and her shoulders. She was half out of her robe like a snowdrop unsheathed after the winter, fragile and more than a little raw. There was a small drinks cart where a small bottle of demoniac perched, and I shook a few drops onto my fingers, spreading them neatly over her eyelids and under her eyes. She freshened up right away, and I licked the demoniac from my fingers before I nodded.
“You look just fine, darling, just beautiful, I promise. And I saw that Tom is on his way out, so that will suit us very well.”
“Oh! Have you had word yet?”
I grinned, letting her take my hands in a surprisingly tight grip.
“I met with Nick today, the dear thing. He says that he will call to invite you to his place soon, and you can happen to meet Gatsby there.”
“Oh but why?” she asked. “I could fly into his arms. I could do it right now, just get up on the widow’s walk and take wing, float to him across the Sound…”