Chapter 3

“I’ve got a nice place here,” he said, his eyes flashing about
restlessly.

Turning me around by one arm, he moved a broad flat hand along the
front vista, including in its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half
acre of deep, pungent roses, and a snub-nosed motorboat that bumped
the tide offshore.

“It belonged to Demaine, the oil man.” He turned me around again,
politely and abruptly. “We’ll go inside.”

We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-coloured space,
fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The
windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside
that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through
the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale
flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the
ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-coloured rug, making a shadow
on it as wind does on the sea.

The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous
couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an
anchored balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were
rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a
short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments
listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a
picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the
rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room, and the
curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the
floor.

The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She was extended full
length at her end of the divan, completely motionless, and with her
chin raised a little, as if she were balancing something on it which
was quite likely to fall. If she saw me out of the corner of her eyes
she gave no hint of it—indeed, I was almost surprised into murmuring
an apology for having disturbed her by coming in.

The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise—she leaned slightly
forward with a conscientious expression—then she laughed, an absurd,
charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the
room.

“I’m p-paralysed with happiness.”

She laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my
hand for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was
no one in the world she so much wanted to see. That was a way she
had. She hinted in a murmur that the surname of the balancing girl was
Baker. (I’ve heard it said that Daisy’s murmur was only to make people
lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less
charming.)

At any rate, Miss Baker’s lips fluttered, she nodded at me almost
imperceptibly, and then quickly tipped her head back again—the object
she was balancing had obviously tottered a little and given her
something of a fright. Again a sort of apology arose to my lips.
Almost any exhibition of complete self-sufficiency draws a stunned
tribute from me.

I looked back at my cousin, who began to ask me questions in her low,
thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and
down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be
played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it,
bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement
in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget:
a singing compulsion, a whispered “Listen,” a promise that she had
done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay,
exciting things hovering in the next hour.

I told her how I had stopped off in Chicago for a day on my way East,
and how a dozen people had sent their love through me.

“Do they miss me?” she cried ecstatically.

“The whole town is desolate. All the cars have the left rear wheel
painted black as a mourning wreath, and there’s a persistent wail all
night along the north shore.”

“How gorgeous! Let’s go back, Tom. Tomorrow!” Then she added
irrelevantly: “You ought to see the baby.”

“I’d like to.”

“She’s asleep. She’s three years old. Haven’t you ever seen her?”

“Never.”

“Well, you ought to see her. She’s—”

Tom Buchanan, who had been hovering restlessly about the room, stopped
and rested his hand on my shoulder.

“What you doing, Nick?”

“I’m a bond man.”

“Who with?”

I told him.

“Never heard of them,” he remarked decisively.

This annoyed me.

“You will,” I answered shortly. “You will if you stay in the East.”

“Oh, I’ll stay in the East, don’t you worry,” he said, glancing at
Daisy and then back at me, as if he were alert for something
more. “I’d be a God damned fool to live anywhere else.”

At this point Miss Baker said: “Absolutely!” with such suddenness that
I started—it was the first word she had uttered since I came into the
room. Evidently it surprised her as much as it did me, for she yawned
and with a series of rapid, deft movements stood up into the room.

“I’m stiff,” she complained, “I’ve been lying on that sofa for as long
as I can remember.”

“Don’t look at me,” Daisy retorted, “I’ve been trying to get you to
New York all afternoon.”

“No, thanks,” said Miss Baker to the four cocktails just in from the
pantry. “I’m absolutely in training.”

Her host looked at her incredulously.

“You are!” He took down his drink as if it were a drop in the bottom
of a glass. “How you ever get anything done is beyond me.”

I looked at Miss Baker, wondering what it was she “got done.” I
enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with
an erect carriage, which she accentuated by throwing her body backward
at the shoulders like a young cadet. Her grey sun-strained eyes looked
back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming,
discontented face. It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a
picture of her, somewhere before.