With reluctance, we rose from our place on the marble stairs. I noticed that we had left a heat-imprint of our bodies there with our sweat and the oil of our skin and the oil of our perfumes. I hoped that those impressions would last in the marble, some kind of permanent snow angel that Daisy and I could leave behind to haunt the house long after we were both gone.
We decided on matching white. Daisy thought of brides, I thought of Iphigenia, the virgin sacrifice on the shores of Aulis, and then was roundly mocked for it. We found, willy-nilly, the pot of lip color that Daisy had discovered above the wardrobe that day. It had made its way back to her. I had my own color, something plum and pretty from Macy’s, but I paused when Daisy held the little pot out to me between her finger and thumb, her other fingers fanned out like a peacock’s tail.
“Wear this for good luck,” she said warmly. “It’s what you were wearing when you met Nick for the first time.”
I let her smooth the color over my lips, but it didn’t feel like good luck. It felt like a bookend, in that we had started something that day in June and today we were capping it off. I shook the thought off. It was far too Protestant for words, and I was an irreligious modern girl after all. No gods or idols for me.
We waited for Gatsby and Nick in a dim and cavernous room, curled together on a marvelous round couch as if we were boneless Siamese cats. When the butler showed them in, we looked up in unison, making Nick smile as he came to kneel down next to me.
“You’re a lovely thing, Jordan,” he murmured, kissing my fingertips.
“Not that you’ve been around to see,” I teased.
Gatsby was looking around with such curiosity you had to assume he had come through the whole house that way. I could almost hear things being dropped on the great scales that served for his mind, the house Daisy shared with Tom against the one she would share with him, the windows against his windows, the finery of Tom’s servants versus his own.
We all four looked up at the strident shriek of the telephone, and from the next room, we heard Tom’s voice, loud even when it was trying to be discreet, conciliatory in a way he never had to be with his own wife.
Nick had learned something at least because he didn’t ask who it was. Daisy, on the other hand, had crossed some kind of Rubicon of her own, and glanced disdainfully through the wall at where Tom stood.
“That’s Tom with his girlfriend,” she said. “Isn’t she a doll?”
I glanced at Gatsby, who had acquired a vicious sort of look. For a moment, I thought he might storm into the hallway and challenge Tom to a duel or something equally ridiculous. Daisy had gotten a hold of his hand, however, and was hanging on. Indiscreet, perhaps, careless definitely, but she did like to keep what was hers close by.
Nick was saying something in defense of Tom, and then the man himself came in, bringing Nick to his feet. Gatsby took his hand from Daisy’s more slowly.
“Ah, at last, at last,” said Daisy, her tone as relaxed as an overcooked noodle. “Tom, do see about mixing us a drink, won’t you?”
“I brought something to pass around,” said Gatsby, offering a dark and dusty bottle. With no label, I guessed it must be some more of that powerful demoniac from Warsaw, but Tom turned away and was gone from the room so brusquely it stayed in his hand. Gatsby shrugged and set it on the floor by the fireplace. Later that night, I would find it and be grateful, but right then, I was more concerned with the fact that Daisy had risen, going to push Gatsby back down on the divan by the window. I caught a glimpse of his startled face, the surprised O of his mouth, and then she was straddling his lap, her dress in meringue ruffles around him.
“Oh how I do love you,” Daisy purred, sliding her fingers through his short hair before she kissed him. I had never seen her kiss anyone like that before. It was languid, entirely for her, and as pretty as it was, as much as I liked Gatsby’s shock at her aggression, I liked my own shock a little less. I was meant to be Daisy’s best friend, and I didn’t know this version of her. This version of her felt like a gun primed to fire.