Anything can happen now that weve slid over this bridge, I thought; anything at all
Even Gatsby could happen, without any particular wonder.
* * *Roaring noon. In a well-fanned Forty-second Street cellar I met Gatsby for lunch. Blinking away the brightness of the street outside, my eyes picked him out obscurely in the anteroom, talking to another man.
Mr. Carraway, this is my friend Mr. Wolfshiem.
A small, flat-nosed Jew raised his large head and regarded me with two fine growths of hair which luxuriated in either nostril. After a moment I discovered his tiny eyes in the half-darkness.
So I took one look at him, said Mr. Wolfshiem, shaking my hand earnestly, and what do you think I did?
What? I inquired politely.
But evidently he was not addressing me, for he dropped my hand and covered Gatsby with his expressive nose.
I handed the money to Katspaugh and I said: All right, Katspaugh, dont pay him a penny till he shuts his mouth. He shut it then and there.
Gatsby took an arm of each of us and moved forward into the restaurant, whereupon Mr. Wolfshiem swallowed a new sentence he was starting and lapsed into a somnambulatory abstraction.
Highballs[64]? asked the head waiter.
This is a nice restaurant here, said Mr. Wolfshiem, looking at the Presbyterian nymphs on the ceiling. But I like across the street better!
Yes, highballs, agreed Gatsby, and then to Mr. Wolfshiem: Its too hot over there.
Hot and small yes, said Mr. Wolfshiem, but full of memories.
What place is that? I asked.
The old Metropole.
The old Metropole, brooded Mr. Wolfshiem gloomily. Filled with faces dead and gone. Filled with friends gone now forever. I cant forget so long as I live the night they shot Rosy Rosenthal there. It was six of us at the table, and Rosy had eaten and drunk a lot all evening. When it was almost morning the waiter came up to him with a funny look and says somebody wants to speak to him outside. All right, says Rosy, and begins to get up, and I pulled him down in his chair.
Let the bastards come in here if they want you, Rosy, but dont you, so help me, move outside this room.
It was four oclock in the morning then, and if wed of raised the blinds wed of seen daylight.
Did he go? I asked innocently.
Sure he went. Mr. Wolfshiems nose flashed at me indignantly. He turned around in the door and says:
Dont let that waiter take away my coffee! Then he went out on the sidewalk, and they shot him three times in his full belly and drove away.
Four of them were electrocuted, I said, remembering.
Five, with Beeker. His nostrils turned to me in an interested way. I understand youre looking for a business gonnegtion.
The juxtaposition of these two remarks was startling. Gatsby answered for me:
Oh, no, he exclaimed, this isnt the man.
No? Mr. Wolfshiem seemed disappointed.
This is just a friend. I told you wed talk about that some other time.
I beg your pardon, said Mr. Wolfshiem, I had a wrong man.
A succulent hash arrived, and Mr. Wolfshiem, forgetting the more sentimental atmosphere of the old Metropole, began to eat with ferocious delicacy. His eyes, meanwhile, roved very slowly all around the room he completed the arc by turning to inspect the people directly behind. I think that, except for my presence, he would have taken one short glance beneath our own table.
Look here, old sport, said Gatsby, leaning toward me, Im afraid I made you a little angry this morning in the car.
There was the smile again, but this time I held out against it.
I dont like mysteries, I answered, and I dont understand why you wont come out frankly and tell me what you want. Why has it all got to come through Miss Baker?
Oh, its nothing underhand, he assured me. Miss Bakers a great sportswoman, you know, and shed never do anything that wasnt all right.
Suddenly he looked at his watch, jumped up, and hurried from the room, leaving me with Mr. Wolfshiem at the table.
He has to telephone, said Mr. Wolfshiem, following him with his eyes. Fine fellow, isnt he? Handsome to look at and a perfect gentleman.
Yes.
Hes an Oggsford man.
Oh!
He went to Oggsford College in England. You know Oggsford College?
Ive heard of it.
Its one of the most famous colleges in the world.
Have you known Gatsby for a long time? I inquired.
Several years, he answered in a gratified way. I made the pleasure of his acquaintance just after the war. But I knew I had discovered a man of fine breeding after I talked with him an hour. I said to myself: Theres the kind of man youd like to take home and introduce to your mother and sister. He paused. I see youre looking at my cuff buttons.
I hadnt been looking at them, but I did now. They were composed of oddly familiar pieces of ivory.
Finest specimens of human molars, he informed me.
Well! I inspected them. Thats a very interesting idea.
Yeah. He flipped his sleeves up under his coat. Yeah, Gatsbys very careful about women. He would never so much as look at a friends wife.
When the subject of this instinctive trust returned to the table and sat down Mr. Wolfshiem drank his coffee with a jerk and got to his feet.
I have enjoyed my lunch, he said, and Im going to run off from you two young men before I outstay my welcome.
Dont hurry, Meyer, said Gatsby, without enthusiasm. Mr. Wolfshiem raised his hand in a sort of benediction.
Youre very polite, but I belong to another generation, he announced solemnly. You sit here and discuss your sports and your young ladies and your He supplied an imaginary noun with another wave of his hand. As for me, I am fifty years old, and I wont impose myself on you any longer.
As he shook hands and turned away his tragic nose was trembling. I wondered if I had said anything to offend him.
He becomes very sentimental sometimes, explained Gatsby. This is one of his sentimental days. Hes quite a character around New York a denizen of Broadway.
Who is he, anyhow, an actor?
No.
A dentist?
Meyer Wolfshiem? No, hes a gambler. Gatsby hesitated, then added cooly: Hes the man who fixed the Worlds Series[65] back in 1919.
Fixed the Worlds Series? I repeated.
The idea staggered me. I remembered, of course, that the Worlds Series had been fixed in 1919, but if I had thought of it at all I would have thought of it as a thing that merely happened, the end of some inevitable chain. It never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people with the single mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe.
How did he happen to do that? I asked after a minute.
He just saw the opportunity.
Why isnt he in jail?
They cant get him, old sport. Hes a smart man.
I insisted on paying the check. As the waiter brought my change I caught sight of Tom Buchanan across the crowded room.
Come along with me for a minute, I said; Ive got to say hello to someone.
When he saw us Tom jumped up and took half a dozen steps in our direction.
When he saw us Tom jumped up and took half a dozen steps in our direction.
Whereve you been? he demanded eagerly. Daisys furious because you havent called up.
This is Mr. Gatsby, Mr. Buchanan.
They shook hands briefly, and a strained, unfamiliar look of embarrassment came over Gatsbys face.
Howve you been, anyhow? demanded Tom of me.
Howd you happen to come up this far to eat?
Ive been having lunch with Mr. Gatsby.
I turned toward Mr. Gatsby, but he was no longer there.
* * *One October day in nineteen-seventeen
(said Jordan Baker that afternoon, sitting up very straight on a straight chair in the tea-garden at the Plaza Hotel)
I was walking along from one place to another, half on the sidewalks and half on the lawns. I was happier on the lawns because I had on shoes from England with rubber nobs on the soles that bit into the soft ground. I had on a new plaid skirt also that blew a little in the wind, and whenever this happened the red, white, and blue banners in front of all the houses stretched out stiff and said tut-tut-tut-tut, in a disapproving way.
The largest of the banners and the largest of the lawns belonged to Daisy Fays house. She was just eighteen, two years older than me, and by far the most popular of all the young girls in Louisville. She dressed in white, and had a little white roadster, and all day long the telephone rang in her house and excited young officers from Camp Taylor demanded the privilege of monopolizing her that night. Anyways, for an hour!
When I came opposite her house that morning her white roadster was beside the curb, and she was sitting in it with a lieutenant I had never seen before. They were so engrossed in each other that she didnt see me until I was five feet away.
Hello, Jordan, she called unexpectedly. Please come here.
I was flattered that she wanted to speak to me, because of all the older girls I admired her most. She asked me if I was going to the Red Cross and make bandages. I was. Well, then, would I tell them that she couldnt come that day? The officer looked at Daisy while she was speaking, in a way that every young girl wants to be looked at sometime, and because it seemed romantic to me I have remembered the incident ever since. His name was Jay Gatsby, and I didnt lay eyes on him again for over four years even after Id met him on Long Island I didnt realize it was the same man.
That was nineteen-seventeen.
By the next year I had a few beaux myself, and I began to play in tournaments, so I didnt see Daisy very often. She went with a slightly older crowd when she went with anyone at all. Wild rumours were circulating about her how her mother had found her packing her bag one winter night to go to New York and say goodbye to a soldier who was going overseas. She was effectually prevented, but she wasnt on speaking terms with her family for several weeks. After that she didnt play around with the soldiers any more, but only with a few flat-footed, shortsighted young men in town, who couldnt get into the army at all.
By the next autumn she was gay again, gay as ever. She had a debut after the armistice, and in February she was presumably engaged to a man from New Orleans. In June she married Tom Buchanan of Chicago, with more pomp and circumstance than Louisville ever knew before. He came down with a hundred people in four private cars, and hired a whole floor of the Muhlbach Hotel, and the day before the wedding he gave her a string of pearls valued at three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.