A swift look around for Tom found him at another table nearby, using his bulk and his boyish smile to impress a silly-looking young girl who I thought must be the daughter of the cultural attaché from France. I could almost hear Daisy call her pretty but common.
Even from where I sat, I could see that Daisy wasn’t having a good time. She had put on that lolling, rolling manner of hers, the one that so many people simply assumed meant that she was drunk. Nick leaned close to try to snap her out of it, and I realized that at some point, Gatsby had disappeared.
“Another one of your mysterious phone calls,” I muttered to myself, taking a scornful sip from my drink.
“Well, yes.”
I choked, corpse reviver going down the wrong pipe, and Gatsby had to steady me with an arm around my waist so I wouldn’t go toppling off the staircase.
“You startled me,” I said, trying to brazen it out.
“You’re in my spot,” he responded good-naturedly.
“I don’t mind that,” I said, and then daring a little, “was I right? Was that another call with one of your drugstores?”
That was a story that I had heard more and more lately, that all of this glamour was paid for with headache pills, cheap glamours that were ever so much more dignified than paint, and boxes of school supplies. It wasn’t true, but it gave people who wanted something to believe in something to believe in.
Gatsby looked at me steadily, long enough to make me uncomfortable.
“You don’t like me,” he said.
“Is there a reason I should?” I asked.
“Well, you’re important to Daisy. We should get along, don’t you think?”
I laughed because it felt like such a quaint thing to say. One would almost think that we were normal people.
“I get along with everyone,” I said, and he decided to believe me. He came a little closer, close enough that I could smell his cologne, see the black nail on his left hand. Recklessly, I reached out to tweak his tie a little, straightening it. It surprised a laugh out of him. This close, I could see the tiny wrinkles at the corner of his eyes.
“I can be a very good friend to you too, just as I am to Nick,” he murmured quietly. “Nick likes me so much. It’s only Tom that doesn’t. Tom and you.”
“Maybe,” I said deliberately, “it’s because you like to fuck people who don’t belong to you.”
The smile froze on his face, jagged like slips of lake ice. I couldn’t tell where my recklessness had come from, only that the corpse reviver was strong enough that I didn’t regret it yet.
“I think you’ll find that I only fuck people who belong to me,” he said. “But think about it, won’t you? I’ve a lot of friends, here and in DC. It could be that in a short while you could use some friends.”
“Think about it yourself,” I said with a smile. “They don’t want you any more than they want me, or weren’t you paying attention?”
There was something raw in his gaze right then, something trapped, something that was suddenly aware that its camouflage was not nearly as good as it had imagined it to be. I had stepped on some secret, obviously, but he had no idea which one, and no idea that I had no idea either. He forced a shrug and a smile.
“Fine. Be that way. Shall we keep it civil for Daisy’s sake, or would you like to make your distaste public?”
“I don’t think of you enough to care about any of that,” I said. “And just because I don’t like you is no reason we shouldn’t be friends.”
He shoved his hands in his pockets, ruining the line of his slacks, regarding me with his head tilted to one side.