CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Then everything sort of stopped.
It was sticky, sickly August, the worst time to be trying to do anything. Aunt Justine had me throw all the windows of our apartment open, no matter what her nurse said, and I swung my bare legs out onto the ledge, leaning over my thighs to look down at the street below.
Nick had made himself scarce again, and I wondered a little at that. The party at Gatsby’s had lurched to a stop, or so said Margaret Dancy, who had gone over there with the Wellhurst crowd. They found the gate chained and the windows dark, and no matter how they shook the iron bars, it would not open for them. Just as they had left, Margaret said, a tall man in a sharp black suit had driven up. They’d watched as he stood at the gate for several long minutes, and then, without any expression, got back in his car and drove away again.
One lazy afternoon at Ripley’s, Margaret guessed that the man himself had gone abroad.
“Heat’s too hot even for him,” she said with a significant look down.
I doubted that. As far as I knew, Daisy still kept house in West Egg, though Tom, who was being noised a bit in the gossip pages for stepping out with some mysterious redhead friend, not so much. I couldn’t imagine Gatsby willingly leaving Daisy after having found her again. It just didn’t make sense.
The demons themselves were little seen in Manhattan lately. The Manchester Act was moving forward. The Democrats were pushing for a vote by the end of August, and even as little as I tried to care, it was everywhere. I wished Nick were around, variously because I wanted a snuggle or a distraction or a dance, but he was vaguer than ever. I told myself I didn’t care.
Daisy finally called up on Thursday, telling me to come out to West Egg. She and I disappeared from each other’s lives like this enough that it wasn’t suspicious, but I held back a little.
“There’s ever so much to do in the city right now…”
It wasn’t a lie. There was plenty to do; I just wasn’t doing it. She laughed a little, the sound cool in my ear.
“Oh, but isn’t that terrible, darling? There’s nothing to do here, and I would love to do it with you.”
“And what about the talented Mr. Gatsby?”
“Jay is for the afternoons,” she said primly. “I’m not permitted to intrude on his evening hours.”
On the other end of the line, I narrowed my eyes. That didn’t sound right to me, and even if I was trying hard not to think about the Manchester Act, it was hard to ignore the people who were pulling up stakes, setting out for parts east, west, and down. I figured if Gatsby were too busy to keep Daisy entertained, the only thing he could be busy with was feathering a little nest for her somewhere in Paris or Rome or Morocco.
“The truth is, Jordan, I miss you,” she said, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial tone. “Isn’t it just too awful? I really do delightfully and deliriously miss you. I’ve been so very lonely, and it’s been ever so long since you came out.”
“Being lonely is not the same as missing me,” I said dryly, though the wind and the water did sound just the faintest bit appealing.
“Oh but it is, dear,” she said coaxingly. “Let me bribe you. I know that Nick has been haunting his sad little shack like a ghost lately rather than taking you out as you deserve. If you come out, I’ll bring him over, just for you, wrapped up in string and pushed into whatever linen closet you like…”
I laughed at that, shaking my head because Daisy was talking faster now. If I let her, she’d start to promise me every star she could pluck down from the sky as if I were a boy whose attention she wanted. I wasn’t, though, and I gave in gracefully.