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It was nine o'clock when we finished breakfast and went out on the porch. The night had made a sharp difference in the weather and there was an autumn flavor in the air. The gardener, the last one of Gatsby's former servants, came to the foot of the steps.
"I'm going to drain the pool today, Mr. Gatsby. Leaves'll start falling pretty soon, and then there's always trouble with the pipes."
"Don't do it today," Gatsby answered. He turned to me apologetically. "You know, old sport, I've never used that pool all summer?"
I looked at my watch and stood up.
"Twelve minutes to my train."
I didn't want to go to the city. I wasn't worth a decent stroke of work, but it was more than that—I didn't want to leave Gatsby.
Gatsby smiled at me, sad and radiant. I removed my watch and set it on the table.
"Never mind," I said, and felt a great weight lifted. "There'd be no use in going. I'll call in sick and join you for a swim. They can fire me if they like."
"I doubt Walter Chase would do such a thing," Gatsby said, taking me by the elbow, and I let myself be led back inside. "He's a dependable man, an honorable one, and he knows you're no different. Come on, old sport, let's find you a bathing suit."
While Gatsby rummaged through the endless, splendid garments populating his shelves, I stammered down the wire with only half-feigned faintness to my boss's sympathetic secretary. I'd slept scarcely two hours in the past twenty-four, for which I was grateful; Lucinda prevailed upon me to take an aspirin and go back to bed.
As I thanked her and set the receiver back in its cradle, Gatsby handed me not only the bathing suit I'd borrowed on the afternoon he'd insisted Daisy and I come over after our rain-invaded tea service, but also a thick black cotton dressing gown.
"You chill easily, if I recall," Gatsby said, and with familiar, aching numbness I laid eyes on the fact that he'd already changed out of his clothes and into his swimming attire. His smile belied a transcendent weariness, our very own secret.
I'd seen far more of him that day in the changing tent, of course, with my back partly turned and my eyes less than tactfully averted. Even now, in the wake of all that had plagued us, my longing knew no bounds. I nodded and accepted the armful of fabric, unable to return his smile. It was in the flex of his arm, the turn of his calf, the unwitting grace of collarbone curve to shoulder: I watched him leave me to attend my own undressing, heard him say (a cool echo, already from some distance underwater) that he'd go fetch the pneumatic mattress and wait for me in the pool.
I stripped quickly, closed my eyes against a terse gust through the curtains, and cursed the memory of each time I'd craved more than casual touch. Naked, I turned and stared at his costly sheets and carelessly rucked coverlet. I put on the bathing suit and wrapped myself in his dressing gown, felt even more hopelessly exposed than before. I'd been fever-dreaming his body against mine, sequestered safe in his bed, since that ghostly brush of my wrist against his forearm in the tent.
Dazedly, I made my way barefoot up the spiral staircase and into sunlight.
I'd vowed long ago not to play the fool, not to hope for what lay beyond doors that could not be opened. My toes left damp imprints in dust on pale marble as I stalked the long halls, taking one, two, three wrong turns before at last I found the porch and the table and the French windows thrown wide. I trailed down the stairs and let my eyes fall below to where he drifted, sprawled on the mattress, serene features upturned to the sky even as a long and incongruous shadow fell across them . . .
I froze even as the shadow's owner raised one trembling, too-heavy hand.
"Hey!" I shouted, unthinking, and rushed toward the spectral figure of George Wilson even as terror flared cold and bright as steel in my chest at the realization that he was holding a gun. "Hey, what the hell do you think you're—"
There was a splash, and I tore my eyes away from Wilson—a fatal mistake, I was certain—in time to see Gatsby swimming with swift strokes for the side of the pool nearest to me and our assailant. It was all I could do not to scream: Jay, get back!
Wilson blinked, his pale eyes flicking from me to Jay, who had leapt up dripping onto the side. He must have put the events together in the wrong order, I thought, desperately trying to make sense of the situation with what brief life I assumed I had remaining. He'd come for Gatsby with some grief-stricken, misplaced blame, but, for the time being, I must have proved a more appealing target. He cocked the pistol and aimed it at my chest, his wet, empty gaze fixed all the while on Gatsby.
"Tell me something, at least," Wilson said, raising his ragged voice. "Why'd you kill her? Please, please tell me why you did it. Tell me why or I'll shoot your friend. Eye for an eye. God sees everything, remember? Even this. I swear I'll do it. Tell me."
Before Gatsby could even draw breath, I braced myself for the inevitable bullet and spoke.
"Gatsby didn't kill your wife, George," I said shakily, advancing on him. "It was an accident. He wasn't even the one driving. Do you know who Daisy Buchanan is? Listen to me. Daisy is Tom's wife. She was driving that night. In fact, Gatsby wasn't the one responsible for—for the rest of it, either. Think, George. It was always Tom who—"
"I don't want to think about Tom!" he shrieked; a bullet whistled past my ear. "I don't want to think about it, don't want to think . . . "
In the time it took him to squeeze off two more shots aimed just above my head and one shot that narrowly missed grazing Gatsby's shoulder, Gatsby and I had managed to lock eyes and exchange grave, frantic nods. Before either one of us could rush at him to close that insignificant distance, a fifth and final shot cracked the clear blue morning.
One of Wolfsheim's men, the taciturn butler whose name I'd forgot, stood poised and dispassionate on the stairs. He tucked his gun back inside his coat, nodded to Gatsby, and then went inside the house—presumably to call the police, or to alert Wolfsheim. Wilson, whose gun had gone skittering harmlessly into the pool when he'd lost his grip on it, lay crumpled in the grass with one eye socket blown and bleeding out profusely.
I staggered over to Gatsby, finding my legs less willing to support me than before, and I wondered in a haze of vague, exhausted hysteria if I'd overbalance and topple us both into the water. Gatsby? I thought, returning the wry, troubled quirk of the lips that he was trying very hard to pass off as a smile. That's not right at all. His eyes were dark and sharp, haunted, fixed on me seemingly to the exclusion of all else.
"Jay," I said, leaning hard into the sure, damp arm he slid around my waist.
"Don't do that again," Jay replied, steering me toward the steps, and it was obvious to me then, from the fine, taut tremor I could feel coursing through him, that he was as near to collapse as I was myself. "If you ever do that again, so help me . . . "
Whatever he'd meant to say was lost to our slow, stuttering progress up the stairs. We passed the butler in the drawing room; he gave Jay another curt nod, but, otherwise, ignored us with single-minded resolve as he made his way back outside. We shivered our way through the empty halls and almost stumbled down the spiral staircase.
"I won't do it again," I said, swaying where he'd set me on the edge of his mattress.
Jay peeled down one wet shoulder-strap, but thought better of it. He turned back to me, his expression one of exhausted concern. Then, he straightened the pillows and bent to give me a steady push, one hand at my shoulder, the other at my hip. I could have drawn him close to me, dragged us into a tangle of covers as surely as I could've dragged us underwater, but instead I flopped down and let him arrange the sheets.
"It's been a long day, old sport. You should get some sleep," he told me, so I did.
* * *
When I woke, the vast room was dim and lamp-lit, its heavy, sullen curtains drawn.
I wasn't surprised to find Jay dozing some little space away, curled on his side with his back to me as he slept. He was fully dressed, but shoeless; he'd undone a few buttons and loosened his tie. He must have dealt with the police or whomever had come while I was dead to the world, and he couldn't very well have done that in a bathing suit. Caught between a sense of strange contentment and the fierce knot of worry that had begun to tighten in my chest, I watched him. I wondered if he could sleep through just about anything owing to his years at sea with Cody; I couldn't imagine getting a restful night's slumber onboard a yacht. I wanted to touch his shoulder, his waist . . .
Jay rolled to face me with considerate deliberation, as if he'd been awake all along.
"Did you sleep at all?" I asked, ill at ease for having been caught. "What happened?"
"I told you before," said Jay, calm and cautious, "that Wolfsheim is a smart man."
My temper flared unexpectedly, fixing on him almost as fiercely as my desire.
"Yes, but what does that even mean? You can't hide both a car and a body."
"The car's gone," Jay said. "Wilson is the least of my concerns. The police are outside."
"They'll want a statement from me, I suppose," I sighed. "Should I go see them?"
Even before I'd begun to ask, Jay had caught my wrist. I sagged back onto the bed.
"Not at all," he said reassuringly. "That's not necessary. You weren't there, you see."
"They saw me sleeping here, Jay. Of course they'll expect me to make a statement."
"They didn't search this room, old sport," said Jay. "There's absolutely no need."
I turned my arm against the sheets, partly in an effort to see if he'd let go. He didn't.
"Oh, let me guess. It has to do with you flashing your little card at the Inspector."
Jay shrugged, or offered his best approximation of a shrug, given he was lying down.
"You didn't have any objections back then. Why on earth should you have them now?"
I settled back against the pillows, boneless, all too guiltily reveling in his touch.
"It's not necessarily that I have objections," I began, but shut my mouth again.
"Then what is it?" Jay asked, squeezing my wrist. "You were about to say—"
My eyes flicked down to his hand of their own accord. I was afraid.
"It's that I worry about you," I said, defeated. "All the goddamned time, Jay. It's exhausting. I've done my best to move heaven and earth just to shift this delusion of yours—which, don't misunderstand me, I was really hoping might work—but now two people are dead and Daisy's gone and why am I even telling you this? You'll just go on about how you've got to get her back, and I'll play along with it because I care too much about what happens to you. And then—"
Jay cleared his throat. For the first time, I noticed his pained, honest expression.
"Nick, what's the difference between a delusion and a dream?"
I blinked at the ceiling, willing the mist in my eyes to clear, but it persisted.
"Dreams, you can actually reach. Or, rather, you could if you'd just wake up," I said.
Jay loomed over me suddenly, propped up on one elbow, his eyebrows knit in fierce concentration.
"In exchange for our safety, I agreed to Wolfsheim's new racket," he said quietly. "With luck, it'll be a success. The trouble is, I don't think I can pull it off alone. Given how things have gone for both of us, and what with your background, I thought . . . "
The part of me that still disapproved wanted to glare at him pointedly and pull away. However, the truth of the matter was that I was sick of everything except for the weight of his gaze and his shoulder pressed firmly against mine.
"Stay with me," Jay implored. "Share—well, all of this. Think of what we could do."
There was a terrified urgency to his words—but there was fondness, too, and a desperate, sudden bloom of reciprocal yearning for which I'd waited so long. As he held his breath above me, tense and lingering, I couldn't help but remember what he'd said about what it had meant to fall. He'd given up the stars for inevitable ruin. If he'd prove to be my ruin in turn, then I could only hope that I deserved ruin so glorious.
Jay didn't pull away when I kissed him, didn't flinch when I wound both fists in his fine shirt just to make sure he couldn't. I found, slowly but surely, that it wasn't so difficult to relax my hold as he responded, his mouth warming to the persistence of mine with a kind of languorous wonder. If he'd thought no further than asking me to be his business partner, then his infinite creativity was, perhaps, to credit for the ease with which he seemed to accept my unapologetic half of the bargain.
"I would have agreed even if you'd wanted no part," Jay whispered against my cheek.
However long it had been since the last time—those wartime kisses and trysts with strangers seemed a lifetime ago, although somehow much nearer for the horror of what we'd endured that morning—I found surrendering no obstacle as his insistent hands parted the dressing gown. Sheer impatience permitted me the finishing of his shirt buttons; I got him clear of the irksome fabric before, in turn, he tugged the bathing suit straps off my shoulders. We paused, breathless, staring at each other.
"I can't bear to think how you've waited—on my account, even, what you've lost—"
"If you mean Jordan," I said, "she was no consolation prize. Believe me, she did try."
"Now, see here," Jay replied, shifting back just enough to tug the bathing suit down and indicate that I should lift my hips, "I don't want you to mistake this as some kind of attempt on my part at making do with second best. I want you to understand—"
My stomach flipped at the sudden, chilly exposure. Jay tossed the bathing suit aside and swallowed. I reached for his hips and steadied him. His trousers unfastened easily, buttons giving way like his held breath beneath my fingertips. At first sight of his exposed chest, I'd concluded that he'd been in too much of a rush to bother with underthings when he'd dressed. Now, I had reason to believe that he may have calculated this and deliberately gone without, what with the unobstructed ease of his exquisite, heated softness straining into my palm.
"I'm not stupid, Jay," I said, stroking him to offer comfort as much as pleasure.
"I loved you, too," he groaned. "Hypocrite that I am, the whole damned time."
Jay shuddered and pushed into my grasp, already close to undone. I marveled at how much power I had over him in that moment: how much he'd offered me, and how readily I'd accepted. Thinking back to that night on the lawn, when he'd first offered me a place in his world because he'd felt obliged, I wondered beneath the haze of want, beneath the slip of my fingers from where they'd been to coaxing the last of his clothing gone, what sooner turn we might have taken if I hadn't lacked courage.
"I don't care," I said, watching Jay shed his trousers on the floor. "For my part, I'm a coward," I admitted, "and I loved you from the start."
Jay came willingly to my arms, lost himself as I held him, and stayed—which, for my restless heart as he held me in turn, was enough.
* * *
The newspapers made a fuss about Wilson's intrusion and its implications for a month and a half, during the first week of which I learned that Jay ought not to be let within responding distance of even the most junior of reporters. Candid snapshots of him had landed on one too many front pages, and I'd watched him take one too many ominous, warning telephone calls from Wolfsheim as a result. I told Jay that I'd handle the circus from there on out. I aimed to kill them with curt kindness, and succeeded.
To claim that I wasn't absolutely terrified when Wolfsheim finally graced us with his presence would be a lie. I weathered my second introduction to this formidable figure wearing the poker face I'd developed courtesy of one too many late nights in the Yale boathouse and a quarter-bottle of Jay's best scotch. By the end of it, Jay looked less like he wanted to bolt and more like he wished we were conducting affairs at the restaurant instead of at home. I'd gotten the shape of what Wolfsheim wanted us to do—and, provided we could maintain discretion, it wasn't difficult.
Wolfsheim clapped me on the back as he left, told me he'd known I was the right man. He shook Jay's hand, suggesting he should lay off the parties and leave the bookkeeping to me. I agreed; keeping Jay's books proved restful after Probity Trust.
Six revel-free months out from the incident, public opinion held that Jay was a misunderstood eccentric who'd erroneously fallen prey to some unknowable (and, quite fortunately, foiled) pact between Wilson and Myrtle's lover's wife (the Buchanans, having gone to ground in Europe, proved unindictable). All the while, behind closed doors, Jay had me fitted for a wardrobe to rival his own—pieces of which, most evenings, ended up discarded with ceremony on the floor.
If Wolfsheim had any opinions about the nature of our partnership, he had the courtesy to keep them to himself. Occasionally, it was necessary to dismiss and replace a servant. Without fail, the task was accomplished with speed and discretion. By then, all but one of the dubious interim staff were gone. Herzog, the severe and capable butler, became a useful ally in more than just marksmanship.
As the months marched stolidly on, our cut of the profits increased. One evening after dinner, with my chin and a highball glass propped on Jay's chest, I suggested that a party or several throughout the summer couldn't go amiss. I pointed out that it would give his supporters a chance to reinforce their position, as well as see to it that he maintained favor in the public eye. Once a month would suffice, I reasoned, and come nowhere close to incurring the cost of throwing bashes weekend after weekend.
Jay had been hesitant to agree at first, pointing out, with one possessive hand splayed between my shoulder blades, that he hardly saw the point now that I was here. I coaxed him to finish my drink—he'd warmed to alcohol consumption, at least—and told him that I missed watching him from across a crowded room. He said he'd sleep on it, although in truth we slept very little that night and rose quite late the next morning.
I dined alone with Wolfsheim in the city late that afternoon. Jay had taken to leaving diplomacy in my hands, and I found that it wasn't such a hardship. The man wasn't as unpleasant as I'd judged him at first glance. Rather, his threatening and unusual sense of humor was reserved for those with whom he wasn't yet sure where he stood. He toasted the party to be held in two weeks' time and said he might even drop by for old times' sake. Detroit, I reassured him as I raised my own glass, was under wraps.
The party was billed as a Fourth of July spectacular even though it was to be held on Friday the sixth. While Jay oversaw the ordering and arranging of provisions with practiced ease, I paid each exorbitant tab with an unflinching sense of purpose. I trusted Wolfsheim's protection up to a point, but, in my own mind, I was looking after Jay to an all-consuming extent such as he'd never bothered to look after himself.
"It's been a whole year since we last saw any of these people," said Jay, pensively, pacing from bed to dressing table. He fetched his coat from where I'd arranged it over the back of a chair and donned it critically before the mirror. "For all we know, it'll be business as usual, and Klipspringer will move back into the west dining room."
"No boarders," I said reassuringly, stepping up to study our reflection. "I won't allow it."
"By some of our many esteemed guests," said Jay, "that's exactly what you'll be called."
Unperturbed, I adjusted his crisp collar. For my trouble, I earned an unhurried kiss.
"But many will know otherwise," I said, "and most won't dare to question. Let's go."
Seven o'clock came and went, and, by nine, arrivals that had begun as a hesitant trickle now lapped the front stair in steady waves. I hovered with Jay near the entrance for a while, welcoming both faces I recognized and those I did not. The diary I'd kept the summer before had proved invaluable to the remembrance of names; what I'd always been told was pedantry had paid off.
When I had tired of the endeavor, I nodded to Jay, who had become caught up in conversation with a publisher of considerable note (about this, I wondered: I had begun to toy with the notion of writing a book). Compelled by memory, I found my way to the drinks table and claimed a whiskey sour. Someone laid a firm hand on my shoulder, a vital, almost masculine touch I would have known anywhere.
"Nick," said Jordan, as I hesitantly turned. "Nick Carraway, whatever's become of you?"
"Oh!" I said, with forced cheer. "Good evening, Miss Baker. What a pleasant surprise."
"My, my," she said with haughty sarcasm, tilting up her chin. "How formal we are! Please don't tell me you're still renting that tip of a cottage next door. It'll break poor Daisy's heart to hear it next time I see her. They've been living in Paris, you know. I hop over to visit them twice a year."
"Good for them," I said, nursing my drink. "How nice to hear everything's worked out."
Jordan tipped her champagne glass up to her lips and narrowed her pale, sharp eyes. Her expression carried an air of perpetual disdain, but there was something fragile beneath that polished veneer. She waved one gloved hand at the orchid on my lapel.
"How tasteless," she said. "You know full well those were always Daisy's favorite."
"To answer your question," I said, as pleasantly as I could manage, "I live here."
"Still! I knew it," Jordan shot back. "You'd better get the roof repaired."
"No, Miss Baker," Jay said, abruptly at my side, "you misunderstand. He lives here." He reached for her hand and kissed it graciously, as I'd seen him do a dozen times. "It's always a pleasure to see you. Now, if there's anything you want, anything you need—"
"Mr. Carraway, sir," Herzog interrupted, tactfully hanging back. "Chicago's on the wire."
While Jordan downed her drink, Jay locked eyes with me and echoed, silently, Chicago?
"Trust me on this," I said lightly, setting a hand on his arm, and used it to pull him to one side. In lower tones, I added: "You trusted me on Detroit."
Jay nodded with a hesitant smile, briefly clasping my forearm. "I'll entertain Miss Baker."
"Help her find who she came with," I said, brushing his wrist, and went to take the call.