Gatsby was sodden from the light rain that had started to fall again, the dark spots showing clearly on his pale suit. He looked, I thought, like nothing so much as a cat who had endured a wetting in the garden, and now only cared about getting inside.
Daisy sat stock still, her hands twitching as he stalked by her to take a patently false pose at the mantel.
Seated with my feet together in the spindly needlepoint chair by the window, I didn’t dare move or make a sound, but Daisy trilled an unsteady laugh.
“I certainly am awfully glad to see you again,” she said, her words knocking against each other like marbles. She kept looking between me and Gatsby, as if hoping that I could at least somehow start to explain this disaster, or perhaps thinking that this was some kind of terrible joke I was playing on her.
Nick entered just as Gatsby uttered a diffident “We’ve met before,” making Daisy’s hands flutter a little in dismay. Nick and I exchanged a glance and tiny bewildered shrugs. This was why I preferred large parties to small ones. You couldn’t get away with being this unbearably odd at a large party, or if you did, no one would ever have cared. Now we were all trapped by the gravity of Jay Gatsby, locked in with fervent blooms of white flowers as if we were in some kind of fond memory box.
There was a restless quality about him, and suddenly I felt as if I were in a cage with something large, afraid, and hungry. I sat very still and straight in my chair as his eyes passed over me, my hands folded nicely in my lap. He looked at me more than he looked at Daisy; every time his eyes came to her, they seemed to skip, as if after years of not seeing her, he had to become accustomed to her brightness again. Daisy kept trying to meet his eyes, but I could see that her hands were fisted on her knees. She had no idea how to move things forward. Neither did Nick or I.
Some of Gatsby’s restless fidgeting sent the small clock on Nick’s mantelplace plummeting towards the floor. I cringed, anticipating the crash, but Gatsby caught it again, an indolent show of athleticism that another man would have taken care to point out. Instead he held the clock in his hands for a moment, muttering an apology.
Nick, acting out of instinct, I think, put his hand on Gatsby’s shoulder.
“It’s only an old clock,” he started, but Gatsby shook him off with a furious look and left the room entirely.
I caught the stricken expression on Nick’s face, and he trailed after Gatsby, dodging his servant as she came in with the tea. Something about her utterly impassive air struck me as hilarious, and I laughed, shaking my head. When the door shut behind her as well, I crossed over to Daisy, who was sitting as still as a statue, pale under her powder, not even laughing in that helpless way she had.
“All right, Daisy, do you want to leave?” I asked, but she shook her head.
“Of course not. That’s Jay Gatsby. That’s really him.”
“At least it used to be,” I said. “I don’t know what he is now.”
Daisy looked up at me, a calm in her eyes that didn’t reach the slightly manic smile on her lips. She had used a shade of lipstick to match her violet dress, tender and delicate and bruised. It looked unlucky to me, and when she smiled up at me, she looked ever so slightly monstrous.
“I want to find out,” she insisted, and then we both heard a step at the door. I hurried back to my seat, but I needn’t have worried.
Gatsby blew in like a barley seed on a storm wind, his hair rumpled, his eyes wide but sure. I saw that he had his left hand clasped loosely in a fist so that the black nail didn’t show. This time, he didn’t spare me a glimpse as he came in, going down on both knees at Daisy’s side, setting his free hand on her waist.
Daisy shrank back a bit at this sudden close contact. She was used to being courted from a distance. He started to talk to her, his voice low and urgent. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but Daisy’s face softened, her lips parted, and her hand came up, faltering and then stronger to touch Gatsby’s short dark hair.