Chapter 5

When I got home to West Egg that night, I was totally freaked out for a second - I thought my house was on fire. It was two in the morning, and the whole corner of the peninsula was lit up like crazy, the light felt weird on the bushes and made these long, stretched-out glints on the power lines.

Turning a corner, I realized it was Gatsby’s house, blazing from the top floor to the basement.

At first, I thought it was another party, a wild bash that had turned into some kind of game like "hide-and-go-seek" or "sardines. But there wasn’t a sound. Just the wind in the trees, which made the power lines sway and made the lights flicker on and off, like the house was winking in the dark.

As my taxi pulled away, I saw Gatsby walking toward me across his lawn.

"Your place looks like the World’s Fair," I said.

"Does it?"

He glanced at it absently.

"I’ve been checking out some of the rooms. Let’s go to Coney Island, old sport. In my car."

"It’s way too late."

"Okay, well, how about we take a dip in the swimming pool? I haven’t even used it all summer."

"I’m going to bed."

"Fine."

He waited, looking at me with barely contained excitement.

"I talked with Miss Baker," I said after a moment. "I’m going to call Daisy tomorrow and invite her over for tea."

"Oh, that’s cool," he said casually. "I don’t want to put you out of your way."

"What day would work for you?"

"What day would work for you?" he corrected me quickly.

"I don’t want to put you out of your way, you know."

"How about the day after tomorrow?"

He thought about it for a second. Then, reluctantly: "I want to get the grass cut," he said.

We both looked down at the grass - there was a really sharp line where my messy lawn ended and his perfectly kept yard began. I had a feeling he meant my grass.

"There’s another little thing," he said uncertainly, and paused.

"Would you rather put it off for a few days?" I asked.

"Oh, it isn’t about that. At least - " He started a bunch of different things.

"Why, look here, old sport, are you making much money, really?"

"Not a ton."

That seemed to put him at ease, and he went on more confidently.

"I thought...you know, I run a little business on the side, a little side hustle, you understand. And I thought, if you’re not rolling in dough - You’re selling bonds, right, old sport?"

"Trying to."

"Well, this could be interesting for you. It wouldn’t take up much of your time, and you could probably make a good chunk of change. It’s a pretty hush-hush kind of thing."

I realize now that under different circumstances that conversation could have been a major turning point in my life. But because the offer was obviously and awkwardly about doing him a favor, I had no choice but to shut it down.

"I’m swamped," I said. "I appreciate it, but I couldn’t take on any more work."

"You wouldn’t have to deal with Wolfshiem."

Clearly, he thought I was backing off because of the "connection" we’d mentioned at lunch, but I assured him he was wrong. He waited a beat longer, hoping I’d start a conversation, but I was too caught up to respond, so he went home, looking bummed.

The evening had me feeling lightheaded and happy; I think I just crashed into a deep sleep when I walked in my front door. So I don’t know if Gatsby went to Coney Island, or for how many hours he "glanced into rooms" while his house blazed so brightly.

I called Daisy from the office next morning, and invited her to come over for tea.

"Don’t bring Tom," I warned her.

"What?"

"Don’t bring Tom."

"Who’s ‘Tom’?" she asked, all innocent.

The day we’re talking about was pouring rain. At eleven o’clock, a guy in a raincoat, lugging a lawnmower, knocked on my front door and said Mr. Gatsby sent him over to cut the grass.

That reminded me I totally forgot to tell Finn to come back, so I drove over to West Egg Village to find her, dodging soggy, whitewashed alleys, and to grab some cups, lemons, and flowers.

The flowers were kinda unnecessary, because around two o’clock, a greenhouse showed up from Gatsby’s, loaded with tons of containers. An hour later, the front door opened nervously, and Gatsby walked in, looking stressed. He was wearing a white flannel suit, a silver shirt, and a gold tie.

He looked pale, and you could see he hadn’t slept well.

"Is everything okay?" he asked right away.

"The grass looks good, if that’s what you mean."

"What grass?" he asked, looking confused. "Oh, the grass in the yard."

He looked out the window, but judging by his face, I don’t think he saw a thing.

"Looks really good," he said vaguely. "One of the papers said the rain would stop around four. I think it was The Journal. Do you have everything you need, like - like tea?"

I led him into the pantry, where he looked a little disappointed at Finn. Together, we checked out the twelve lemon cakes from the deli.

"Will those work?" I asked.

"Of course, of course! They’re perfect!" and he added softly, "...old sport."

The rain cooled down around half-past three to a damp mist, with little drops of water floating around.

Gatsby stared blankly through a copy of Clay’s Economics, jumped at every creak the Finn made on the kitchen floor, and kept peeking out the blurry windows like something crazy was happening outside. Finally, he got up and told me, in a shaky voice, that he was heading home.

"Why’s that?"

"Nobody’s coming for tea. It’s too late!"

He glanced at his watch, like he had somewhere else to be.

"I can’t wait around all day."

"Don’t be silly; it’s only two minutes to four."

He slumped down, like I’d pushed him, and then I heard a car pull into my driveway. We both jumped, and I went out into the yard, feeling a little freaked out.

Under the dripping lilac trees, a huge open car was driving up the drive. It stopped. Daisy’s face, tilted under a lavender hat, looked at me with a bright, excited smile.

"Is this really where you live, my dearest one?"

Her voice was a wild, amazing rush in the rain. I had to just listen to it for a second, up and down, with my ear alone, before I could even understand the words.

A streak of wet hair lay across her cheek like a splash of blue paint, and her hand was dripping as I took it to help her out of the car.

"Are you in love with me," she whispered in my ear, "or why did I have to come alone?"

"That’s the secret of Castle Rackrent. Tell your chauffeur to go far away and chill for an hour."

"Come back in an hour, Ferdie."

Then, in a serious tone: "That’s his name."

"Does the gas mess with his nose?"

"I don’t think so," she said innocently. "Why?" We went inside.

To my total surprise, the living room was empty.

"Well, that’s weird," I said.

"What’s weird?"

She turned her head as there was a polite knock at the front door. I went out and opened it. Gatsby, pale as a ghost, with his hands shoved deep in his coat pockets, was standing in a puddle of water, staring sadly into my eyes.

With his hands still in his pockets, he walked past me into the hall, turned sharply like he was walking a tightrope, and disappeared into the living room. It wasn’t funny at all. Feeling my own heart pounding, I slammed the door shut against the rain.

For a good half-minute, it was dead silent. Then, from the living room, I heard this weird choked-up sound, mixed with a bit of a laugh, and then Daisy’s voice, totally fake and high-pitched:

"I’d really love to see you again."

A long, awkward pause. It felt like forever. I didn’t have anything to do in the hallway, so I just wandered into the room. Gatsby, still with his hands in his pockets, was leaning against the fireplace, trying way too hard to look relaxed, even bored.

He’s got his head tilted back so far it was resting against this old, broken clock, and his eyes - they looked totally stressed - were staring down at Daisy, who was sitting on the edge of a stiff chair, looking scared but still graceful.

"We’ve met before," Gatsby mumbled.

His eyes flickered over to me for a second, and his lips opened like he was about to laugh, but then the clock started tilting dangerously because of his head. Luckily, he caught it with shaky fingers and set it back in place.

Then he sat down, super stiff, his elbow on the sofa arm and his chin in his hand.

"Sorry about the clock," he said.

My face was totally sunburned. I couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

"It’s an old clock," I blurted out, feeling dumb.

I think we all thought for a second that it had just shattered on the floor.

"It’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other," Daisy said, trying to sound casual.

"Five years, almost to the day in November."

The way Gatsby just automatically answered just froze everything for another minute. I got them both up and suggested we make tea in the kitchen when Finn brought in the tray. With all the craziness of the cups and cake, things started to feel a little more normal.

Gatsby slipped into the shadows and, while Daisy and I were talking, he kept looking from one of us to the other with these tense, unhappy eyes. But, you know, being calm wasn’t the goal, so I made an excuse and headed out.

"Where are you going?" Gatsby asked, sounding panicked.

"I’ll be right back."

"I need to talk to you about something before you leave."

He followed me like a crazy person into the kitchen, shut the door, and whispered, "Oh, man!" in this really sad way.

"What’s wrong?"

"This is a total disaster," he said, shaking his head. "A really bad, terrible disaster."

"You’re just embarrassed, that’s all," I said, and luckily, I added, "Daisy is embarrassed too."

"She’s embarrassed?" he repeated, sounding shocked.

"Just as much as you are."

"Don’t talk so loud."

"You’re acting like a little kid," I snapped, getting annoyed.

"And you’re being rude. Daisy’s sitting in there all alone."

He raised his hand to stop me, looked at me with this look I’m not going to forget, and then cautiously opened the door and went back into the other room.

I slipped out the back way - just like Gatsby did when he did his nervous walk around the house half an hour earlier - and ran to this huge, gnarled tree, whose thick leaves made a wall against the rain.

It was pouring again, and Gatsby’s perfectly manicured lawn was full of little muddy puddles and swampy spots. There wasn’t much to look at from under the tree except Gatsby’s huge house, so I just stared at it, like Kant staring at his church steeple, for a good half-hour.

Some brewer had built it during that whole "period" thing, a decade before, and I heard a story that he’d promised to pay five years of taxes on all the houses next door if the owners would thatch their roofs with straw.

Maybe their refusal just crushed his dream of starting a family - he just fell apart. His kids sold his house with the black wreath still on the door. Americans are down for being workers, even eager for it, but they always put their foot down about being peasants.

After about half an hour, the sun came out, and the grocer’s car pulled up to Gatsby’s driveway with the stuff for his staff’s dinner - I was pretty sure he wouldn't even taste a bite.

A maid started opening the upper windows of his house, popping up in each one for a second, and leaning from the big window in the center, spitting thoughtfully into the garden. It was time for me to head back.

While it was raining, it had sounded like their voices, rising and swelling a bit with emotion now and then. But in the new quiet, I felt like the house itself had gone silent too.

I went inside - after making a ton of noise in the kitchen, short of knocking over the stove - but I don’t think they heard a thing. They were sitting at either end of the couch, looking at each other like someone had asked a question, or was about to, and all the awkwardness was gone.

Daisy’s face was smeared with tears, and when I came in, she jumped up and started wiping it with her handkerchief in front of a mirror. But there was a change in Gatsby that was just crazy.

He was practically glowing; without saying a word or making a move, a new sense of well-being just radiated from him and filled the whole room.

"Oh, hey, old sport," he said, like he hadn’t seen me in forever.

For a second, I thought he was gonna shake my hand.

"It stopped raining."

"Did it?"

When he realized what I was talking about, that the sun was shining in the room, he smiled like a weatherman, like a super-happy fan of sunshine, and repeated the news to Daisy.

"Can you believe it? It stopped raining."

"I’m glad, Jay."

Her voice, full of sadness and beauty, just showed how surprised she was to be happy.

"I want you and Daisy to come over to my place," he said. "I’d love to show her around."

"You’re sure you want me to come?"

"Absolutely, old sport."

Daisy went upstairs to wash her face - I felt so embarrassed thinking about my towels - while Gatsby and I waited on the lawn.

"My house looks good, right?" he asked. "See how the whole front catches the light?" I agreed that it was amazing.

"Yeah."

His eyes went over it, every arched door and square tower.

"It took me just three years to earn the money to buy it."

"I thought you inherited your money."

"I did, old sport," he said automatically, "but I lost most of it in the big panic - the panic of the war."

I don’t think he really knew what he was saying, because when I asked him what he did for a living, he answered, "That’s my business," before he realized it was a weird thing to say.

"Oh, I’ve done a bunch of things," he corrected himself.

"I was in the drug business and then the oil business. But I’m not in either one now."

He looked at me with more attention.

"You’re thinking about what I suggested the other night, aren’t you?"

Before I could answer, Daisy came out of the house, and the two rows of shiny buttons on her dress sparkled in the sunlight.

"That huge place?" she cried, pointing.

"Do you like it?"

"I love it, but I don’t see how you live there all alone."

"I keep it always full of interesting people, night and day. People who do interesting things. Famous people."

Instead of taking the shortcut along the Sound, we went down to the road and went in through the big gate.

With excited little sounds, Daisy loved this or that about the old-fashioned look against the sky, admired the gardens, the fresh smell of jonquils, the sweet smell of hawthorn and plum blossoms, and the soft, golden smell of kiss-me-at-the-gate flowers.

It was weird to get to the marble steps and not see any bright dresses going in and out the door, and only hear the sound of birds in the trees.

We wandered through Marie Antoinette-style music rooms and fancy party spaces, and I felt like guests were hiding behind every couch and table, told to stay completely silent until we passed by.

When Gatsby shut the door to what he called the "Merton College Library," I could have sworn I heard that owl-eyed guy let out a crazy, ghostly laugh.

We went upstairs, through bedrooms decked out in rose and lavender silk and overflowing with fresh flowers, through dressing rooms and a pool room, and bathrooms with sunken tubs - basically crashing into one room where a totally disheveled guy in pajamas was doing some weird floor exercises.

It was Mr. Klipspringer, the "boarder." I’d seen him wandering around the beach, looking hungry, that morning.

Finally, we got to Gatsby’s own apartment: a bedroom, a bathroom, and a study in the Adam’s style, where we sat down and had a drink of some Chartreuse he grabbed from a cupboard in the wall.

He hadn’t taken his eyes off Daisy once, and I think he judged everything in his house based on how much it seemed to make her happy. Sometimes he’s just stare at his stuff, totally spaced out, like in her presence, none of it felt real. Once he almost tripped down a whole flight of stairs.

His bedroom was the simplest of all - except the dresser was covered in a toilet set made of solid, dull gold. Daisy grabbed a brush and started smoothing her hair, and then Gatsby sat down, shaded his eyes, and burst out laughing.

"It’s the funniest thing, old sport," he said, practically cracking up. "I can’t - when I try to - "

He’s visibly gone through two moods and was entering a third. After being embarrassed and overjoyed, he was just stunned by her being there. He’s been thinking about it for so long, dreaming it all the way through, waiting with all his energy focused on this one moment.

Now, it was like he was winding down, like an over-wound clock.

Gathering himself in a minute, he opened up two huge, custom cabinets filled with his suits, dressing gowns, and ties, and his shirts - piled up like bricks, stacked a dozen high.

"I’ve got a guy in England who buys my clothes. He sends over a selection of things at the start of each season, spring and fall."

He pulled out a stack of shirts and started tossing them at us, one by one: sheer linen shirts, thick silk shirts, fine flannel shirts - they unfolded as they fell, covering the table in a riot of color.

While we were checking them out, he kept bringing more, and the soft, rich pile just kept getting higher - shirts with stripes, scrolls, and plaids in coral, apple-green, lavender, and faint orange, with monograms in indian blue.

Suddenly, with a choked sound, Daisy bent her head into the shirts and started crying - really hard.

"They’re such beautiful shirts," she sobbed, her voice muffled by the fabric.

"It makes me sad because I’ve never seen anything so - so beautiful before."

After the house, we were supposed to see the grounds, the swimming pool, and the hydroplane, and the midsummer flowers - but it started raining again outside Gatsby’s window, so we just stood in a line, staring at the choppy water of the Sound.

"If it wasn’t for the mist, you could see your home across the bay," said Gatsby. "You always have a green light that shines all night at the end of your dock."

Daisy put her arm through his suddenly, but he seemed lost in what he’s just said. Maybe he realized that the huge importance of that light had disappeared forever. Compared to the massive distance that had separated him from Daisy, it had seemed close - almost touching her.

It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now, it was just a green light on a dock. His collection of magical things had shrunk by one.

I started wandering around the room, checking out random stuff in the dim light. A big photo of an older dude in sailing clothes caught my eye - it was hanging over his desk.

"Who’s that?"

"That’s Mr. Dan Cody, old sport."

The name sounded vaguely familiar.

"He’s gone now. He used to be my best friend years ago."

There was a small picture of Gatsby on the dresser too - Gatsby in sailing clothes, head thrown back, defiant - taken, I guess, when he was about eighteen.

"I love it!" Daisy exclaimed. "That pompadour! You never told me you had a pompadour - or a yacht!"

"Check this out," Gatsby said quickly. "Here’s a bunch of articles - about you."

They stood side by side looking at them. I was about to ask to see the rubies when the phone rang, and Gatsby grabbed it.

"Yes... Well, I can’t talk now... I can’t talk now, old sport... I said a small town... He’s gotta know what a small town is... Well, he’s no help if Detroit is his idea of a small town..."

He hung up.

"Come here quick!" Daisy yelled from the window.

The rain was still falling, but the darkness had cleared out in the west, and there was a pink and golden cloud bank over the water.

"Look at that," she whispered, then after a moment: "I just want to grab one of those pink clouds and put you in it and push you around."

I tried to leave then, but they wouldn’t let me; maybe my being there made them feel more alone together.

"I know what we’ll do," said Gatsby. "We’ll have Klipspringer play the piano."

He went out of the room calling "Ewing!" and came back a few minutes later with an embarrassed, kind of worn-out young guy - shell-rimmed glasses, patchy blond hair. He was dressed decently now in a polo shirt, open at the neck, sneakers, and some weird-colored pants.

"Did we interrupt your workout?" Daisy asked politely.

"I was sleeping," Mr. Klipspringer blurted out, looking totally mortified.

"I mean, I’d been asleep. Then I woke up..."

"Klipspringer plays the piano," said Gatsby, cutting him off. "Don’t you, Ewing, old sport?"

"I don’t play well. I don’t - hardly play at all. I’m totally out of prac - "

"Let’s go downstairs," interrupted Gatsby.

He flipped a switch. The dark windows vanished as the house lit up.

In the music room, Gatsby turned on a single lamp next to the piano. He lit Daisy’s cigarette with a shaky match, and they sat down on a couch far across the room, where there was barely any light except what the shiny floor reflected from the hallway.

When Klipspringer finished playing "The Love Nest," he turned around on the bench and looked around unhappily for Gatsby in the shadows.

"I’m totally out of practice, you see. I told you I couldn’t play. I’m totally out of prac - "

"Don’t talk so much, old sport," commanded Gatsby.

"Play!"

"In the morning, In the evening, Ain’t we got fun - "

Outside, the wind was howling, and there was a low rumble of thunder over the Sound. All the lights were coming on in West Egg now; the electric trains, packed with people heading home from New York, were speeding through the rain.

It was a time of big changes, and you could feel the excitement in the air.

"One thing’s for sure and nothing’s surer: The rich get richer and the poor get - kids. In the meantime, In between time - "

As I went to say goodbye, I noticed that confused look was back on Gatsby’s face, like he suddenly wasn't so sure about how happy he really was. Almost five years!

There must’ve been moments, even that afternoon, when Daisy didn’t quite live up to his dreams - not because of anything she did, but because his whole idea of her was just so huge. It was bigger than her, bigger than everything.

He’d thrown himself into it completely, adding to it constantly, piling on every bright thing that came his way. Nothing - no matter how exciting or fresh - could beat what a person could build up inside their heart.

I watched him, and he straightened up a little, you could tell. His hand reached for hers, and when she whispered something in his ear, he turned toward her with a surge of feeling. I think her voice got to him the most, with its wavering, excited energy - you could never dream it up.

That voice was like a song that would last forever.

They’d totally forgotten about me, but Daisy looked up and held out her hand; Gatsby didn’t even recognize me. I took one last look at them, and they glanced back, distant, totally lost in their own world.

Then I headed out of the room and down the fancy marble steps into the rain, leaving them together.