We passed a barrier of dark trees, and then the facade of Fifty-ninth Street, a block of delicate pale light, beamed down into the park. Unlike Gatsby and Tom Buchanan I had no girl whose disembodied face floated along the dark cornices and blinding signs and so I drew up the girl beside me, tightening my arms. Her wan, scornful mouth smiled and so I drew her up again, closer, this time to my face.
The Great Gatsby
Chapter 5
When I came home to West Egg that night I was afraid for a moment that my house was on fire. Two o’clock and the whole corner of the peninsula was blazing with light which fell unreal on the shrubbery and made thin elongat-ing glints upon the roadside wires. Turning a corner I saw that it was Gatsby’s house, lit from tower to cellar.
At first I thought it was another party, a wild rout that had resolved itself into ‘hide-and-go-seek’ or ‘sardines-in-the-box’ with all the house thrown open to the game. But there wasn’t a sound. Only wind in the trees which blew the wires and made the lights go off and on again as if the house had winked into the darkness. As my taxi groaned away I saw Gatsby walking toward me across his lawn.
‘Your place looks like the world’s fair,’ I said.
‘Does it?’ He turned his eyes toward it absently. ‘I have been glancing into some of the rooms. Let’s go to Coney Island, old sport. In my car.’
‘It’s too late.’
‘Well, suppose we take a plunge in the swimming pool? I haven’t made use of it all summer.’
‘I’ve got to go to bed.’
‘All right.’
He waited, looking at me with suppressed eagerness.
‘I talked with Miss Baker,’ I said after a moment. ‘I’m go-Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com
ing to call up Daisy tomorrow and invite her over here to tea.’‘Oh, that’s all right,’ he said carelessly. ‘I don’t want to put you to any trouble.’
‘What day would suit you?’
‘What day would suit YOU?’ he corrected me quickly. ‘I don’t want to put you to any trouble, you see.’
‘How about the day after tomorrow?’ He considered for a moment. Then, with reluctance:
‘I want to get the grass cut,’ he said.
We both looked at the grass—there was a sharp line where my ragged lawn ended and the darker, well-kept ex-panse of his began. I suspected that he meant my grass.
‘There’s another little thing,’ he said uncertainly, and hesitated.
‘Would you rather put it off for a few days?’ I asked.
‘Oh, it isn’t about that. At least——’ He fumbled with a series of beginnings. ‘Why, I thought—why, look here, old sport, you don’t make much money, do you?’
‘Not very much.’
This seemed to reassure him and he continued more confidently.
‘I thought you didn’t, if you’ll pardon my—you see, I carry on a little business on the side, a sort of sideline, you understand. And I thought that if you don’t make very much—You’re selling bonds, aren’t you, old sport?’
‘Trying to.’
‘Well, this would interest you. It wouldn’t take up much of your time and you might pick up a nice bit of money. It The Great Gatsby
happens to be a rather confidential sort of thing.’
I realize now that under different circumstances that conversation might have been one of the crises of my life.
But, because the offer was obviously and tactlessly for a service to be rendered, I had no choice except to cut him off there.
‘I’ve got my hands full,’ I said. ‘I’m much obliged but I couldn’t take on any more work.’
‘You wouldn’t have to do any business with Wolfshiem.’
Evidently he thought that I was shying away from the ‘gonnegtion’ mentioned at lunch, but I assured him he was wrong. He waited a moment longer, hoping I’d begin a conversation, but I was too absorbed to be responsive, so he went unwillingly home.
The evening had made me light-headed and happy; I think I walked into a deep sleep as I entered my front door.
So I didn’t know whether or not Gatsby went to Coney Island or for how many hours he ‘glanced into rooms’ while his house blazed gaudily on. I called up Daisy from the office next morning and invited her to come to tea.
‘Don’t bring Tom,’ I warned her.
‘What?’
‘Don’t bring Tom.’
‘Who is ‘Tom’?’ she asked innocently.
The day agreed upon was pouring rain. At eleven o’clock a man in a raincoat dragging a lawn-mower tapped at my front door and said that Mr. Gatsby had sent him over to cut my grass. This reminded me that I had forgotten to tell my Finn to come back so I drove into West Egg Village to Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com
