“Jordan,” he finally spoke, when he stopped the car in front of Jay’s house. He reached his hand up to touch my hair, his fingers lingering on the diamonds on Daisy’s pin. “I…”
“Please don’t,” I said, pulling away. I was tired and not in the mood. And I definitely couldn’t muster up the will to kiss him back if he kissed me. “Why don’t you go on home, Nick. I’ll go in and talk to Jay and then I’ll telephone you in the morning. I’ll get a taxicab back to East Egg.”
“But… I…” A mild protest sputtered out of him, but then he gave up and simply nodded. We stared at each other another moment, not speaking, but from the look in his eyes it seemed like he finally understood me. He knew there was no way in hell I was telephoning him in the morning.
* * *
“YOU LIED TO me,” Jay said, the second I stepped foot in his study. He sat behind his desk, nursing a whiskey. From the way he strung his words together, I suspected it wasn’t his first.
“Me? Lie? Never.” It was warm in here and I let out a little laugh and fanned myself as I sat in the empty chair across from him. “Don’t you know I’m a respectable southern lady, Mr. Gatsby?” He snorted a little, and I was annoyed I’d listened to Nick, come here at all. I leaned back into the leather of the chair and sighed. “What do you want, Jay?”
“You told me you’d help me get Daisy back.”
I shook my head. That wasn’t what I’d said at all. A few weeks earlier, I’d come to one of his parties with Nick. Jay had summoned me into his study that night and had begged me, drunkenly, to help him see Daisy again. I’d finally relented, told him I’d get Nick to set something up at his house, if only to get Jay to leave me alone that night. And I had done that much. I’d had Nick arrange a tea. I’d kept my promise. It wasn’t my fault that Daisy wasn’t interested.
“Look,” I said quite firmly now. “You have to face the facts. She doesn’t want you. She’s moved on.” I spoke the words to him, about him, but as I talked, tears rose up inside of me and I bit my lip to keep them at bay. She didn’t want me. She’d moved on. Mary Margaret was getting married. How could she be getting married?
“I can’t accept that, Jordan. I won’t.” He slammed his fist on his desk so hard, the noise startled me and I jumped. Then he paced his study, making circles around me.
“You can’t make a woman love you,” I said softly. If there was a magical way, I wished I would’ve found it myself.
Jay walked to his window, stared out. I knew he was looking at the green light in the distance, Daisy’s light. He turned back to face me. “Look, Jordan. If you help me, I’ll help you.”
I laughed again. “I don’t need your help. Nick and I are…” What were Nick and I exactly? A whole heap of nothing.
“Not Nick. Golf,” he said. He turned to stare out the window another moment, then looked back at me, sneering a little. “I went up to Westchester a few weeks ago. Thought I’d watch you play, but imagine my surprise when you weren’t there on the tour at all.”
My heart suddenly pulsed too hard in my chest. “I was feeling ill that day.” Another lie popped out of me. Plant one seed and then, it grew and bloomed and fluttered all over until there were a million, like a field of dandelions in the late spring in Louisville.
“Were you?” He was still talking. “Because my boss, Mr. Wolfsheim, actually knows Mr. Hennessey quite well. And Hennessey has some… very interesting things to say about you, Jordan.”
Mr. Hennessey. I remembered the look on his portly face that last day in Atlanta when I’d hugged Mary Margaret on the course. Mrs. Pearce, whispering in his ear. His voice the next afternoon when he insisted that he saw me do it himself. He saw me move the ball. “He thinks I moved a ball,” I said contritely.
Jay turned, looked me in the eyes. His eyes were a piercing shade of green, so bright, even in the darkness it felt as though they could see straight inside of me, into the very depths of my soul, which already felt emptied, hollowed with a Mary Margaret–sized chasm. “Sure…” Jay said slowly. “The ball. But there was another matter, too. With a girl, a teammate of yours. A Mary, from… Nashville.”
I swallowed hard and looked away. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” I said.
Jay shook his head. “Look, I won’t tell anyone your secret, Jordan,” he said. “In fact, I think Mr. Hennessey could even be persuaded to overlook it too. To take you back on the tour, with a generous donation from me.” He paused, finished off his whiskey. “But you have to help me get Daisy back. See… we can help each other, you and I.”
It was a threat thinly veiled inside a shiny promise. Do what Jay wanted and I could have golf back. But if I didn’t, he’d tell everyone about me and Mary Margaret. Ruin my entire life. And maybe hers, too.
“Jordan,” he interrupted my thoughts now. He’d walked closer to me. “I love her so much,” he whispered, his hot whiskey breath against my neck.
“You’re drunk,” I said. But his threats still shot around in my head like sparks.
“I want you to bring her here to me on Saturday afternoon,” Jay said. I stared at him, shook my head a little. “Yes, Jordan. I need your help. And you need my help.” And though he smiled, as he spoke, his green eyes were dark now, electric, and I didn’t doubt for a second that he’d ruin me if he ever had the chance.
Catherine August 1922
NEW YORK CITY
I HELD MY ANGER FOR Jay quietly inside of me and tried to push it down, ignore it. It was too strange to feel such a hatred brewing for this man I’d held so intimately close to me for months. And better, I told myself, not to think about him at all any longer. Instead I thought a lot about my sister; I worried desperately for my sister.
Myrtle had telephoned me only once since that Sunday when Tom punched her, and it was just, she said, to check on her dog. As far as I’d known, she hadn’t been back into the city at all. And Duke now seemed to live with me and Helen, which I swore to Helen was only temporary, though I couldn’t explain to her exactly how that might be true or when Myrtle might come to take him back. I’d formed a strange attachment to the little mutt, even letting him sleep at the foot of my bed and looking forward to his happy tail wags after work.
Then, the first week of August, Myrtle telephoned me out of the blue and summoned me up to 158th Street. She was sobbing on the other end of the line, saying it was an emergency. And she made no mention of her dog.
“Myrtle, are you hurt?” I cried out into the telephone.
“Cath, come right away,” she sobbed on the other end of the line.