Beautiful Little Fools(65)

“You know a lot about it?” His voice took on an edge of excitement. His arrogance faded, and he leaned closer, remarkably eager, like a little boy. I wished I did know something about it. I had a feeling I might like him more if we discussed polo. But I shook my head, and he frowned and sat back down.

“The dog! Cath, you have to meet him. He’s a little doll,” Myrtle exclaimed and rushed back into the bedroom. She returned with a wiry-haired gray-and-black puppy with white paws. He might have made a good farm dog, except the bright red bow tied around his neck made him look small-headed, gauche, and ridiculous.

“What’s his name?” I asked, because it seemed a more pleasant question than the obvious, How will you possibly take care of him?

“I don’t know yet. Tom? What do you think a good name for him is? I like Duke, maybe. It sounds regal.”

Tom shrugged, uncaring. Myrtle sighed happily, settled herself back onto Tom’s lap, with Duke, maybe on her own lap. “Yes,” Myrtle murmured, stroking the dog’s head, softly scratching his chin. “Duke is a very nice name for you, isn’t it, puppy?”

Tom suddenly reached around, grabbed her hard, and kissed her so boldly on the mouth that it occurred to me he was jealous of the dog. I tried to suppress a giggle at that thought. But then their kiss went on and on, and on. I began to feel like a voyeur, and I turned my head away.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like a drink?” Nick asked quietly. He’d moved closer and now sat just a few inches away from me. His face revealed the sort of bold distaste for Tom and Myrtle’s display that I was feeling inwardly. I tried to put my finger on what bothered me about it exactly, because nothing would make me happier than if Myrtle left George. But Tom was holding her now too tightly, like a possession. And worse, one he may not ever admit to having, outside this room. “Whiskey?” Nick offered again.

I shook my head and took a chair next to him. “No thanks.”

“Ah, you’re a teetotaler.”

“Not at all.” I laughed. “My roommate and I had quite a time last night at the Monte Carlo. Do you know it?” He shook his head. It was our favorite little speakeasy, just two blocks from our apartment. But it was deliciously dark and maybe a little seedy and probably not the kind of establishment where Tom and his friends would gather. “Anyway”—I wanted to change the subject—“tell me where you’re from, Nick. And how do you know Tom?”

“It’s… a… Tom and I… Well, we were both at Yale at the same time. I’m living out in a little rental in West Egg this summer, and Tom is in East Egg and we reconnected. But I was born and raised in Minnesota.”

“The Midwest.” I smiled at him, feeling a little more at ease. “Myrtle and I grew up in Illinois. So how’s West Egg treating you?”

“It’s a strange little place, but I like it all right.” He downed his whiskey, poured himself some more.

“I actually know a man out in West Egg.” I kept my voice light, nonchalant. “Jay Gatsby, you know him?”

Nick’s brown irises swam around, his pupils already glassy. “I do. He’s my next-door neighbor,” he slurred. Then he laughed a little and spit out a more sober sentence: “I mean, if anyone really knows Gatsby.”

I did. There were so many things I could tell Nick right now about Jay: the way the skin on his stomach felt soft against my fingers, like a baby’s, or the way he kissed me hungrily, like he was always searching for something I could never give him. Or perhaps, most notably, that he had an unhealthy fixation on Tom Buchanan’s wife. But with that thought, I bit my lip.

“You’ve been out to one of his parties?” Nick was saying now.

Parties? That’s what Jay was doing this summer now in West Egg, throwing parties?

“Sure,” I lied, not wanting Nick to ask any other questions about how I knew Jay.

Myrtle had finished kissing Tom, and she suddenly stumbled across the room and plopped drunkenly on my lap. She told Nick the same story she’d told me, about meeting Tom on the train. But she left out the part about anyone sending her there. She had rewritten it all in her mind, a truly, lovely romance, bounded by fate and destiny.

“Daisy’s Catholic, and she doesn’t want to give him a divorce,” Myrtle was saying to Nick now, her words stringing together in one drunken loop. “But she will and then we’ll go out west for a while until everything settles down.”

Out west? That was news to me, and it sank in my stomach, a cold, hard lump.

Myrtle and Nick were still talking, but I looked around the room. Voices rose and fell, drunken and strung together and tangled with laughter. I had the strangest, dizzying feeling that the entire room was upside down, swirling and drunk and smoky. I was the only one sitting still, right side up, the only one sober. The only one who would remember any of this tomorrow.

Myrtle kissed my cheek and then sashayed across the room to talk to Tom. She said something to him, and his face instantly reddened. “I don’t want you to say her name,” Tom yelled, his voice cutting above the din.

“I’ll say it if I want to,” Myrtle yelled back, drunkenly obstinate. “Daisy,” she shouted loud enough now that the rest of the room stopped talking. It got so quiet I could practically hear the rage simmering up inside of Tom. It was red hot on his face, and he arched his hulking shoulders, standing like a linebacker. “Daisy, Daisy, Daisy!” Myrtle shouted in his face.