The house had taken on more galleries and even grander aspirations since I had last been there. There was a hall made of glass where lush green plants wove together to scent the world with lemon, and bay and honey, and a hall roofed in what Gatsby told us was the longest night of the year in some town in Norway. We stood in that hall for several minutes, letting the Norwegian winter cool us down as shimmering green and violet lights danced above our heads. We could hear bells in that room, and the clacking of bone chimes hung up in lonely pine trees. I was pleased to leave it, though Daisy less so.
Daisy was an old hand at admiring the houses and lives of others, but I thought I heard a genuine delight in her voice. It was easy to be impressed by Gatsby, a man with rugs so intricate that they were known to send the twelve-year-old weavers blind and whose halls played a tender kind of music, not quite pipes and not quite violin, wherever we passed.
The thing he had not quite grasped yet, I thought, was that as the master of such a fine and notable place, he wasn’t meant to be impressed with them himself, and of course he was. As he pointed out this frieze or that memorial urn, I could hear a sense of wonder in his voice, as if in showing Daisy, he was showing himself as well. Maybe he hadn’t allowed himself to think that it was real until she was here to admire it.
He took us past a gallery I had spent some time in earlier that summer, a shallow hall full of marble statues of Gatsby’s Greek ancestors, and as we went by, I saw a strange flush of movement, someone darting behind one of the wide granite bases and standing very still after that.
A guest, I thought, because servants would know better. I wonder which one that is.
I walked on a few steps, and then let go of Nick’s arm. I was barefoot after leaving my shoes in Daisy’s suite and utterly silent as I slipped back to the gallery and peeked past the edge of the doorway.
The guest I had seen had come from his hiding place was now looking around as if he were at the art museum. He was dressed like a workman, without a jacket in gray duck trousers, his braces hanging down around his thighs, a flat cap stuck into his waistband and his shirt sleeves rolled up. When he turned, I saw that he was eating a sandwich, that he was surprised to see me, and that he … looked like me.
I blinked, drawing back a little in surprise to see a face round like mine and dark like mine. I felt an immediate rush of recognition and warmth followed by an almost equal amount of repulsion and panic. When you’re alone so much, realizing that you’re not is terribly upsetting.
Gatsby’s guest didn’t seem to suffer from my little crisis, instead focusing on looking at me desperately and pressing a finger to his mouth.
“Jordan?” called Nick from the corner. “Come on, they’re getting ahead of us.”
I looked for another moment at the boy in the gallery, for some reason unable to tear myself away even as he grew increasingly frantic.
“Coming,” I said finally. “I was only looking at the pretty things.”
I turned and tripped along towards Nick, who squired me away after Gatsby and Daisy’s disappearing shadows.
We were just examining a set of steel gates to the observatory （from some cloister filled with mad nuns, apparently） when his butler appeared like a jack-in-the-box.
“A call for you, sir.”
Gatsby gave him a puzzled look that hardened into something sharp and deadly.
“Now?”
“Yes, sir.”
Apparently, there were some calls that even Gatsby couldn’t ignore. We trailed after him like so many lost kittens as he retreated to his study, picking up the ivory and brass phone with an impatient gesture. Nick went to the window to give him some privacy, but Daisy and I ended up at his desk, her seated with her feet dangling at his leather chair, me more interested in the picture hanging next to the volumes of legal texts to one side.