Chapter 6

About that time, a young reporter from New York showed up at Gatsby’s door one morning and asked if he had anything to say.

"Anything to say about what?" Gatsby asked politely.

"Like, any statement you wanted to put out there?"

It turned out, after a confusing five minutes, that the guy had heard Gatsby’s name around his office, but he wasn’t sure what it meant or didn't want to say. It was his day off, and he’s taken the initiative to "check it out."

It was a total shot in the dark, but the reporter’s gut was right. Gatsby’s reputation - spread by the hundreds of people who's had his hospitality and now considered themselves experts on his past - had been building all summer, but he was just shy of becoming actual news.

Crazy stories started circulating, like an "underground pipeline to Canada," and there was this persistent rumor that he didn’t even live in a house, but in a boat that looked like a house and was secretly moved up and down the Long Island shore.

It’s hard to say why all these stories made James Gatz from North Dakota feel good.

James Gatz - that was his real name, or at least the one on his legal documents. He changed it when he was seventeen, at the exact moment his career started, when he saw Dan Cody’s yacht anchor in the most dangerous spot on Lake Superior.

It was James Gatz who’s been hanging out on the beach that afternoon in a ripped green shirt and canvas pants, but it was already Jay Gatsby who borrowed a rowboat, pulled out to the Tuolomee, and told Cody that a storm could smash him apart in half an hour.

I guess he's had the name picked out for a long time, even then. His parents were struggling farmers - he never really accepted them as his parents in his head. The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, came from his ideal version of himself.

He was like a son of God - and if that means anything, it means exactly that - and he had a mission: to serve a huge, flashy, and fake kind of beauty. So he created the kind of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would invent, and he stayed true to that vision until the very end.

For over a year, he’d been working his way along the south shore of Lake Superior as a clam-digger, salmon-fisher, or anything that gave him food and a place to sleep. His body grew strong through the tough, but sometimes easy, work of the days.

He knew women early on, and since they spoiled him, he started looking down on them - young women because they were clueless, and others because they were dramatic about things he just took for granted.

But his heart was always in a crazy, chaotic state. Wild and unbelievable ideas haunted him at night. A world of over-the-top, flashy stuff spun around in his brain while the clock ticked on the washstand and the moonlight soaked his clothes on the floor.

Every night he added to this pattern of fantasies until sleep finally took over with a total blackout. For a while, these daydreams gave his imagination an outlet; they were a satisfying hint that reality wasn’t real, a promise that the world was built on something as fragile as a fairy’s wing.

An instinct for his future greatness had led him, a few months before, to the small Lutheran College of St. Olaf’s in southern Minnesota.

He stayed there for two weeks, feeling totally ignored by the school’s lack of interest in his dreams - or destiny itself - and hating the janitor work he had to do to pay his way.

Then he drifted back to Lake Superior, and he was still looking for something to do the day that Dan Cody’s yacht dropped anchor in the shallows.

Cody was fifty years old then, a product of the Nevada silver fields, the Yukon, every metal rush since seventy-five. Making millions in Montana copper left him physically strong but heading towards being kind of soft. Knowing this, tons of women tried to get their hands on his money.

Everyone knew about Ella Kaye, the newspaper woman, who played it smart with his weaknesses and sent him sailing off on a yacht - it was all over the gossip columns in nineteen oh two. He’d been coasting along on super-nice shores for five years when he showed up as James Gatz’s destiny in Little Girl Bay.

To young Gatz, resting on his oars and looking up at the deck, that yacht was everything - beauty, glamour, the whole deal. I guess he smiled at Cody - he probably figured out people liked him when he smiled.

At any rate, Cody asked him a few questions (one of them got him his new name) and found that he was quick and seriously ambitious. A few days later, he took him to Duluth and bought him a blue coat, six pairs of white duck pants, and a yachting cap.

When the Tuolomee headed for the West Indies and the Barbary Coast, Gatsby went along for the ride.

He worked in a kind of personal role - while he was with Cody, he was in turn a steward, mate, skipper, secretary, and even a jailer. Dan Cody sober knew what crazy things Dan Cody drunk might do, so he trusted Gatsby more and more to handle things.

The arrangement lasted five years, during which the boat sailed around the continent three times. It could’ve gone on forever, except Ella Kaye showed up on board one night in Boston, and a week later, Dan Cody unexpectedly died.

I remember the portrait of him hanging in Gatsby’s bedroom - a gray, florid guy with a hard, empty face - the original party animal who, during one phase of American life, brought the wildness of the frontier brothel and saloon back to the East Coast.

It was indirectly thanks to Cody that Gatsby barely drank at all. Sometimes, at his fancy parties, women would rub champagne into his hair; he got in the habit of just avoiding alcohol altogether.

And it was from Cody that he inherited money - a legacy of twenty-five thousand dollars. He didn’t actually get it. He never understood the legal stuff that was used against him, but what remained of the millions went to Ella Kaye.

He was left with his seriously impressive education; the vague idea of Jay Gatsby filled out into a real, solid man.

He told me all this much later, but I’m putting it down here to shut down those first crazy rumors about his background - they weren’t even close to true. Plus, he told it to me at a confusing time, when I was starting to believe everything and nothing about him.

So, I’m taking advantage of this brief pause, while Gatsby, so to speak, caught his breath, to clear up these misconceptions.

It was a pause in my involvement with his affairs, too. For a few weeks, I didn’t see him or hear his voice on the phone - I was mostly in New York, hanging out with Jordan and trying to get on good terms with her ancient aunt - but finally, I went over to his house one Sunday afternoon.

I hadn’t even been there two minutes when someone brought Tom Buchanan in for a drink. I was surprised, obviously, but the really shocking thing was that it hadn’t happened sooner.

They were a group of three on horseback - Tom, a guy named Sloane, and a pretty woman in a brown riding habit, who’d been there before.

"I’m so glad to see you," said Gatsby, standing on his porch. "I’m thrilled you stopped by."

As if they even cared!

"Sit right down. Have a cigarette or a cigar."

He paced around the room quickly, ringing bells.

"I’ll get you something to drink in just a minute."

He was seriously thrown by the fact that Tom was there. But he’s been feeling uneasy anyway until he gave them something, realizing vaguely that’s all they were after. Mr. Sloane didn't want anything. A lemonade? Nah, thanks. A little champagne? Not really, thanks... Sorry -

"Did you have a good ride?"

"Yeah, the roads around here are pretty decent."

"I guess the cars - "

"Totally."

Moved by a sudden urge, Gatsby turned to Tom, who’d accepted the introduction like he was a stranger.

"I think we’ve met before, Mr. Buchanan."

"Oh, yeah," said Tom, polite but kind of rough, clearly not remembering. "Right, we did. I remember that really well."

"About two weeks ago."

"That’s right. You were with Nick here."

"I know your wife," continued Gatsby, almost aggressively.

"Really?" Tom turned to me.

"You live around here, Nick?"

"Right next door."

"No way."

Mr. Sloane didn’t join the conversation, just leaned back in his chair like he owned the place; the woman said nothing either - until, unexpectedly, after a couple of highballs, she warmed up.

"We’ll all swing by your next party, Mr. Gatsby," she suggested.

"What do you say?"

"Definitely; I’d love to have you."

"Be ver’ nice," said Mr. Sloane, without a thank you. "Well - we should probably head home."

"Please don’t rush," urged Gatsby.

He had himself under control now, and he wanted to see more of Tom.

"Why don’t you - why don’t you stay for dinner? I wouldn’t be surprised if some other people showed up from New York."

"You guys come to dinner with us," said the lady enthusiastically. "Both of you."

That included me. Mr. Sloane got to his feet.

"Let’s go," he said - but to her only.

"I’m serious," she insisted.

"I’d love to have you. Plenty of room."

Gatsby looked at me questioningly. He wanted to go, but he didn’t realize Mr. Sloane had decided he wasn’t going.

"I’m afraid I can’t," I said.

"Well, you come," she urged, focusing on Gatsby.

Mr. Sloane murmured something close to her ear.

"We won’t be late if we leave now," she insisted aloud.

"I don’t have a horse," said Gatsby. "I used to ride in the army, but I’m never bought a horse. I’ll have to follow you in my car. Excuse me for just a sec."

The rest of us walked out onto the porch, where Sloane and the lady started an intense conversation aside.

"My God, I think the guy’s coming," said Tom. "Doesn’t he know she doesn’t want him?"

"She says she does want him."

"She’s throwing a huge dinner party and he won’t know a single person there."

He frowned.

"I wonder where in the world he met Daisy. By God, I might be old-fashioned, but women run around too much these days for my taste. They meet all kinds of weird people."

Suddenly Mr. Sloane and the lady walked down the steps and hopped onto their horses.

"Let’s go," said Mr. Sloane to Tom, "we’re late. We’ve got to go."

And then to me: "Tell him we couldn’t wait, okay? Tom and I shook hands, the rest of us exchanged a quick nod, and they trotted quickly down the drive, disappearing into the August trees just as Gatsby, with his hat and light overcoat in hand, came out the front door.

Tom was clearly bothered by Daisy wandering around alone, so on the following Saturday night he came with her to Gatsby’s party. Maybe his presence made the night feel so heavy - it really sticks out in my memory compared to Gatsby’s other parties that summer.

There were the same people, or at least the same type of people, tons of champagne, and the usual crazy, chaotic vibe, but I felt this weird tension in the air, a harshness that hadnn't been there before.

Or maybe I’d just gotten used to it, accepted West Egg as its own world, with its own rules and big shots, feeling like nothing because it didn’t even realize it was anything, and now I was seeing it again, through Daisy’s eyes.

It's always a little sad to look at things with new eyes after you’ve adjusted to them.

They arrived at twilight, and as we strolled through the sparkling crowd, Daisy’s voice was doing these soft, playful tricks in her throat.

"These things are so exciting," she whispered. "If you want to kiss me anytime tonight, Nick, just let me know and I’ll make it happen. Just say my name. Or show me a green card. I’m handing them out - "

"Look around," suggested Gatsby.

"I am looking around. I’m having a fantastic - "

"You’re bound to see a bunch of faces you’ve heard about."

Tom’s arrogant eyes scanned the crowd.

"We don’t get out much," he said; "honestly, I don’t know a single person here."

"Maybe you know that woman."

Gatsby pointed to this stunning, almost unreal woman who looked like an orchid and was sitting under a white-plum tree. Tom and Daisy stared, with that strange, unreal feeling you get when you recognize a movie star you’d only seen on screen.

"She’s gorgeous," said Daisy.

"The guy leaning over her is her director."

He took them around, introducing them to group after group:

"Mrs. Buchanan... and Mr. Buchanan - " After a quick pause, he added: "the polo player."

"Oh, come on," objected Tom quickly, "not me."

But it seemed to please Gatsby, so Tom remained "the polo player" for the rest of the night.

"I’ve never seen so many famous people," Daisy exclaimed. "I liked that guy - what was his name? - with the blue nose."

Gatsby identified him, adding that he was a small producer.

"Well, I liked him anyway."

"I’d rather not be the polo player," said Tom playfully, "I’d rather just watch all these famous people disappear into - into nothingness."

Daisy and Gatsby danced. I was surprised by his graceful, classic foxtrot - I’d never seen him dance before. Then they wandered over to my house and sat on the steps for half an hour, while at her request I stayed watchfully in the garden.

"Just in case there’s a fire or a flood," she explained, "or any act of God."

Tom popped out of nowhere as we were sitting down to supper.

"Mind if I eat with some people over here?" he said. "A guy’s telling some wild stories."

"Go right ahead," answered Daisy cheerfully, "and if you need any numbers, here’s my little gold pencil."...

She glanced around after a moment and told me the girl was "kind of basic but cute," and I knew that except for the half-hour she’d spent alone with Gatsby, she wasn’t really having a good time.

We were at a particularly buzzed table. That was my fault - Gatsby had been called to the phone, and I’d enjoyed these same people just two weeks before. But what had amused me then felt totally off now.

"How are you feeling, Miss Baedeker?"

The girl being addressed was trying, unsuccessfully, to slump against my shoulder. At that question, she sat up and opened her eyes.

"Huh?"

A big, sluggish woman, who had been pushing Daisy to play golf with her at the local club tomorrow, spoke in Miss Baedeker’s

"She’s fine now. After a few drinks, she always starts yelling like that. I tell her to just drop it."

"I am dropping it," the accused said, sounding totally drained.

"We heard you going off, so I told Doc Civet here, ‘Someone needs your help, Doc.’ "

"She appreciates it, I’m sure," another friend said, not sounding grateful at all. "But you soaked her dress when you shoved her head in the pool."

"Seriously, I hate getting my head stuck in a pool," Miss Baedeker mumbled.

"They almost drowned me once in New Jersey."

"Then you should just leave it alone," Doctor Civet countered.

"Speak for yourself!" Miss Baedeker yelled. "Your hands shake! I wouldn’t let you operate on me!"

Things were like that. The last thing I remember was standing with Daisy and watching the movie director and his star. They were still under the white-plum tree, and their faces were touching, except for a thin ray of moonlight between them.

I realized he’s been leaning in toward her all night to get closer, and even as I watched, I saw him bend a little further and kiss her cheek.

"I like her," Daisy said. "I think she’s gorgeous."

But the rest of it bothered her - and it was obvious because it wasn’t a gesture, it was a feeling.

She was freaked out by West Egg, this brand-new "place" that Broadway had created on a Long Island fishing village - freaked out by its raw energy that clashed with old ways of talking and by how quickly everyone seemed to be rushing from nothing to nothing.

She saw something unsettling in the simple things she couldn't quite understand.

I sat on the front steps with them while they waited for their car. It was dark here in front; only the bright doorway sent a small square of light spilling out into the soft, dark morning.

Sometimes a shadow moved across the dressing-room curtain above, gave way to another shadow, an endless parade of shadows, who put on makeup in an invisible mirror.

"Who is this Gatsby anyway?" Tom suddenly demanded.

"Some big bootlegger?"

"Where did you hear that?" I asked.

"I didn’t hear it. I just figured it. A lot of these new-money people are just big bootleggers, you know."

"Not Gatsby," I said quickly.

He was quiet for a moment. The pebbles on the driveway crunched under his feet.

"Well, he definitely had to work hard to get all this together."

A breeze stirred the grey haze of Daisy’s fur collar.

"At least they’re more interesting than the people we know," she said with some effort.

"You didn’t seem that interested."

"Well, I was."

Tom laughed and turned to me.

"Did you notice Daisy’s face when that girl asked her to go under a cold shower?"

Daisy started to sing along with the music in a low, rhythmic whisper, pulling meaning out of every word that it never had before and would never have again.

When the melody rose, her voice broke up sweetly, in a way that contralto voices do, and each note released a little bit of her warm, human magic into the air.

"Lots of people come who haven’t been invited," she said suddenly. "That girl wasn’t invited. They just push their way in, and he’s too polite to say anything."

"I want to know who he is and what he does," Tom insisted.

"And I’m going to find out."

"I can tell you right now," she answered. "He owned some drugstores, a bunch of drugstores. He built them all himself."

The fancy car pulled up the driveway.

"Good night, Nick," Daisy said.

Her gaze drifted away from me, drawn to the brightly lit top of the steps, where "Three O’Clock in the Morning," a sweet, sad little waltz from that year, was floating out the open door.

After all, even with how chill Gatsby’s party was, there were totally different romantic vibes than what she was used to. What was it about the song that seemed to be calling her back inside? What would happen now in the hazy, unpredictable hours ahead?

Maybe some seriously amazing guest would show up - someone rare and unforgettable, a glowing young girl who, with just one look at Gatsby, one magical moment, could erase those five years of devotion.

I stayed pretty late that night. Gatsby asked me to hang out until he was free, and I chilled in the garden until the inevitable pool party had come back, shivering and totally hyped, from the dark beach, until the lights went out upstairs.

When he finally came down the steps, his tan skin looked unusually tight, and his eyes were bright and tired.

"She didn’t like it," he said right away.

"Of course she did."

"She didn’t like it," he insisted.

"She didn’t have a good time."

He fell silent, and I could tell he was super bummed.

"I feel so far away from her," he said. "It’s hard to get her to understand."

"You mean about the dance?"

"The dance?" He brushed off all the dances he's thrown with a flick of his hand.

"Old sport, the dance doesn’t matter."

He wanted nothing less than for Daisy to go to Tom and say, "I never loved you." Once she said that and wiped out four years with that one sentence, they could figure out what to do next.

One thing was for sure: after she was free, they were going back to Louisville to get married from her house - like it was five years ago again.

"And she doesn’t get it," he said. "She used to be able to understand. We’d sit for hours - "

He stopped mid-sentence and started pacing back and forth down a lonely path covered in fruit rinds, discarded party favors, and crushed flowers.

"I wouldn’t push her too hard," I said. "You can’t relive the past."

"Can’t repeat the past?" he cried, sounding shocked. "Why, of course you can!"

He looked around wildly, like the past was hiding here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach.

"I’m going to fix everything exactly how it was before," he said, nodding determinedly. "She’ll see."

He talked a lot about the past, and I got the feeling he wanted to recover something - maybe an idea of himself that had faded while he was in love with Daisy.

His life had been a mess ever since, but if he could go back to a certain starting point and go over everything slowly, he could figure out what that thing was...

...One autumn night, five years earlier, they had been walking down the street when the leaves were falling, and they came to a place where there were no trees and the sidewalk was glowing white in the moonlight. They stopped right there and turned to face each other.

Now it was a cool night, buzzing with that mysterious excitement that comes with the changing seasons. The quiet lights in the houses were humming out into the darkness, and there was a stir and bustle among the stars.

Out of the corner of his eye, Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalk really formed a ladder, leading to a secret place above the trees - he could climb it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could tap into the best parts of life, gulp down the incredible wonder of it all.

His heart beat faster as Daisy’s white face came closer to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever tied his wildest dreams to her fleeting breath, his mind would never be as carefree as a god's.

So he waited, listening for just a moment longer to the sound of a tuning fork struck on a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch, she blossomed for him like a flower, and the moment was complete.

Everything he said, even his seriously over-the-top feelings, brought something to mind - a vibe, a piece of a song I’d heard ages ago. For a sec, a line tried to pop out, and my lips opened like I was speechless, like something was fighting to get out, more than just a little puff of air.

But nothing came out, and whatever I almost remembered was lost forever.