“You McKees have something to drink,” he said. “Get some more ice and mineral water, Myrtle.”
Myrtle raised her eyebrows, then she kissed the dog and went to the kitchen.
“I’ve done some nice things out on Long Island,” said Mr. McKee.
Tom looked at him.
“Two of them we have downstairs.”
“Two what?” demanded Tom.
“Two pictures. One of them I call ‘Montauk Point—the Gulls,’ and the other I call ‘Montauk Point—the Sea.’”
The sister Catherine sat down beside me on the couch.
“Where do you live? On Long Island, too?” she inquired.
“I live at West Egg.”
“Really? I was down there at a party about a month ago. At a man named Gatsby’s. Do you know him?”
“I live next door to him.”
“Well, they say he’s a nephew or a cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm’s. That’s where all his money comes from.”
“Really?”
She nodded.
“I’m scared of him.”
Mr. McKee said, “I’d like to do more work on Long Island. All I need is a start.”
“Ask Myrtle,” said Tom. “She’ll give you a letter of introduction, won’t you, Myrtle?”
“What?” she asked, startled.
“You’ll give McKee a letter of introduction to your husband, so he can make some pictures of him.” His lips moved silently. “‘George B. Wilson at the Gasoline Pump,’ or something like that.”
Catherine leaned close to me and whispered in my ear: “Neither of them can stand the person they’re married to.”
“Can’t they?”
“Can’t STAND them.” She looked at Myrtle and then at Tom. “But why do they live with them if they can’t stand them? I would get a divorce and get married to each other right away.”
“Doesn’t she like Wilson either?”
The answer to this was unexpected. It came from Myrtle who had heard my question and it was violent and obscene, “Of course, not.”
“You see?” cried Catherine triumphantly. She lowered her voice again. “It’s really his wife that’s keeping them apart. She’s a Catholic and they don’t believe in divorce.”
Daisy was not a Catholic and I was a little shocked at this lie.
“When they get married,” continued Catherine, “they’re going West to live for a while there.”
“Why not to Europe?”
“Oh, do you like Europe?” she exclaimed surprisingly. “I just got back from Monte Carlo.”
“Really?”
“Just last year. I went over there with a girl friend.”
“Stay long?”
“No, we just went to Monte Carlo and back. We had more than twelve hundred dollars when we started but we lost everything. God, how I hated that town!”
“I almost made a mistake, too,” Mrs. McKee declared vigorously. “I almost married a man who was below me. Everybody was saying to me: ‘Lucille, that man’s below you!’ But luckily I met Chester!”
“Yes, but listen,” said Myrtle Wilson, nodding her head up and down, “at least you didn’t marry him.”
“I know I didn’t.”
“And I married him,” said Myrtle, ambiguously. “And that’s the difference between your case and mine.”
“Why did you, Myrtle?” demanded Catherine. “Nobody forced you to.”
“I made a mistake,” she declared vigorously. “I married him because I thought he was a gentleman, but he wasn’t fit to lick my shoe.”
“You were crazy about him for a while,” said Catherine.
“Crazy about him!” cried Myrtle incredulously. “Who said I was crazy about him? I never was any more crazy about him than I was about that man there.”
She pointed suddenly at me, and every one looked at me. I tried to smile.
“I was crazy only when I married him. He borrowed somebody’s best suit to get married in, and never even told me about it, and the man came to take it back when he was out.”
She looked around to see who was listening: “‘Oh, is that your suit?’ I said. But I gave it to him and then I lay down and was crying all afternoon.”
“She really must divorce,” resumed Catherine to me. “They’ve been living over that garage for eleven years.”
The bottle of whiskey—a second one—appeared. I wanted to get out and walk away but each time I tried to go I became entangled in some wild argument.
Myrtle pulled her chair close to mine, and suddenly told me the story of her first meeting with Tom.
“We were sitting on the train, facing each other. I was going up to New York to see my sister and spend the night. Tom had on a dress suit and patent leather shoes and I couldn’t keep my eyes off him. When we came into the station he was next to me—and so I told him I’d call a policeman, but he knew I lied. I was so excited when I got into a taxi with him. My only thought was ‘You can’t live forever, you can’t live forever.’ “
She turned to Mrs. McKee and gave an artificial laughter.
“My dear,” she cried, “I’m going to give you this dress one day. I’ll buy another one tomorrow. I’m going to make a list of all the things I have to do. A massage, and a collar for the dog, and one of those cute little ashtrays, and a wreath with a black silk bow for mother’s grave.”
It was ten o’clock. Mr. McKee was asleep on a chair. The little dog was sitting on the table looking with blind eyes through the smoke. People disappeared, reappeared, made plans to go somewhere, and then lost each other, searched for each other, found each other. At midnight Tom Buchanan and Mrs. Wilson stood face to face discussing whether Mrs. Wilson had any right to mention Daisy’s name.
“Daisy! Daisy! Daisy!” shouted Mrs. Wilson. “I’ll say it whenever I want to! Daisy! Dai…”
Making a short movement Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand.
Then there were bloody towels upon the bathroom floor, and women’s voices. Mr. McKee awoke from his sleep and went toward the door. I took my hat and followed him.
“Come to lunch some day,” he suggested.
“Where?”
“Anywhere.”
“All right,” I agreed, “I’ll be glad to.”
Then I was lying half asleep on the bench at the Pennsylvania Station, and waiting for the four o’clock train.
Chapter 3
There was music from my neighbour’s house through the summer nights. In his gardens men and girls came and went like moths. In the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city. And on Mondays eight servants toiled all day with mops and brushes and hammers, repairing the ravages of the night before.
Every Friday five boxes of oranges and lemons arrived from New York. There was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour.
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