Work Text:
Gatsby recluses himself after the hospital.
A deep bitter part of me, an animalistic part of me I’d like to have believed had ceased to exist in my adolescence, swirled until I spat some drunken nonsense on the doorsteps of Jordan’s elderly aunt.
I visited him as much as I could bring myself to. Seeing the weakened, comatose man was a sight not many could bear.
The scribbled handwriting of my Finn– a reminder to call the Buchanans– was a message that it was more that not many could care.
“It could simply be- and if I may be rude?” Jordan speaks as if she hadn’t condemned me during our last in person discussion.
The fuzzy telephone noise flows into my ear. I wedge it between my shoulder and head, cleaning off the table next to the window it sits.
“Are you asking? I was under the impression you called to be rude.” I put my spindly hands on the table, leaning towards the freshly cleaned glass. “Last time we spoke outside my own home you called me- what was it? A noncommittal ninny.”
“I could have married a ninny, Nick. But noncommittal?”
“Just be rude already. Permission granted.”
“It could simply be that he didn’t bother to let anyone know him. Do you visit the mayor when he looks downtrodden?”
“No one tried to. That’s the tragedy.”
“The most self-centered populace didn’t bother to know their host.” I groan. “And he’s reclusive because he was shot. And you were just a tool, not a friend.”
“Well–” I don’t know how to respond. I imagine my mind as a pool, with swimmers that say the same and contradictory thoughts move against each other.
They whisper like gossipping party attendees with seduction and sadism.
“You visited him every other week.”
“Well–”
“I bet he’s having a rocking party with Wolfsheim, or crying over your damn cousin.”
“I thought you asked before you became ruder.” I grab the phone with a trembling hand. “I ought to hang up on you, Miss Baker.”
“I’m sorry, this is no way to treat a lady.” She snickers.
“You think you’re hilarious?”
“No, but compared to you?”
The phone rings. “Jordan–”
“What?” Her smile is evident through the phone.
“I have to let you go– I’m receiving another call.”
She hums. “Can’t handle the heat?”
“Of disaster? No. Now let me go so I can find out why the hell I’m getting a call at–” I read the clock above my head. “–Christ alive, 11? We’ve been on the phone for three hours?”
“You love me. Tell whoever it is I said hello.” I sigh.
“Yes, yes. Have a good game tomorrow.” The phone line clicks dead as I boot it up all over again. “Hello?”
“Hello, Nicholas.” The husky tone shocks me. I don’t recognize it. To be frank, it unnerved me.
“Who–?”
“Gatsby. Come over, old sport–” His words are slow. Not slurring, the way a drunk man’s might. Slow, like a tired blanket is on his shoulders. “We can– I have food, old sport. Imported fish. One of my cooks, they made sushi. Have you ever had sushi?”
I think. “No?”
“It’s marvelous. The rice vinegar and the seaweed– come here. We’ll sit on the dock like old times.”
Old times? What old times?
The months we spent in each other’s orbit? In his orbit? Nick, the matchmaker. The called upon man.
Is this who I am?
I nearly say no, truly, I nearly yell it into the speaker before I slam the phone upon its home.
Then I am standing on Gatsby’s doorstep, tongue just barely meeting the ridge behind my teeth.
A worker lets me in as I breathe out an o.
I find my way to the dock, where Gatsby is sitting on his yacht. I climb aboard, ready to protest any movement when I look at his set up.
I see three pipes. I am far from a stupid man.
“You’re a bootlegger, Gatsby. Isn’t this buying from the other man’s supply?”
“No. This is legal. Although, my men are saying there’s talks in congress…so, not yet is a better answer, I suppose.” I hum.
“Do you need it ground? I’m not a frequent smoker, Gatsby. The last I did it was in New Haven.”
“Already did it myself.” He laughs. “Was it with Tom, old sport? Do you take your own pipe pipe out or share one? Sit down, sit down.” He patted a lounge share to his side. It has his discarded suit jacket laying across it.
I blink.
“Tom? No. My roommate. We wrote news articles for the same school newspaper.” I grab his jacket and begin folding it.
“Sit!”
The command is unlike him. The yell is unlike him.
I don’t stop. I finish folding it before putting on the edge of the lounge chair.
“Did you call me over to yell?”
He looks at me vacant, then understanding. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” But shouldn’t he be? Should I just sweep another social slight under the rug?
I do. Of course I do.
He licks his lips. Despite it, it enchants me a tad.
“Have you ever been to Japan, old sport?” He uses chopsticks, something I’ve only seen in newspaper comics. Ones of slanty-eyed chinaman who don’t measure up to the men I used to know out west.
“No, I haven’t.”
“I have. For three months.” I nod. We were back to lying, to fraud.
He pushes a sushi roll against my cheek, the chopsticks shaking in his grasp. “Eat.” I open my mouth and eat it in one bite.
It is nice. Cold, tangy and salty. Light and sticky.
“My cook– from Japan– introduced me to the concept. She could only use tuna, though, it should have some sort of raw fish.”
My face contorts into some sort of cringe. “Raw?”
“Don’t be so–” He pokes the wooden sticks into my cheek. “–that.”
“You didn’t have any during your Japanese rendezvous?” He shakes his head.
“It’s…uncommon.”
“I’d appreciate it if you’d stop lying to me, Gatsby.” I don’t even look him in the eye. I’m beginning to regret coming here. I did from the start, truthfully, but I’m beginning to get the urge to leave.
“I do that a lot, don’t I?” He lights a pipe. Inhales, exhales. “I’ve never been to Asia. I’d love to go, one day.” The smoke flows from his lips. He could have fooled me, if I hadn’t seen him with the pipe. December air makes my breath hang in the air like his smoke.
“Did you ever smoke with Tom?”
“No. I didn’t care for him then.”
“But you do now?” Gatsby looks at me from the side. My heart sinks, like a monster has caught sight of me– its prey.
“No– why do I need to explain to you this? Remind me? I never smoked with Tom ever, he’s always been obnoxious, and I always preferred my friend’s brand of marijuana cigarettes. I don’t care for pipes. They’re too harsh. Do you want me to smoke off your pipe? Or have I come to be investigated by an inebriated man?”
Gatsby stares. “...cigarettes?”
“Yes. Joy’s Cigarettes. They had some French name- Cigares de Joy.” I wave my hand. “Did you hear anything besides that?”
“Do you want me to buy that for you?”
“What?”
“Cigares de Joy. Do you want me to buy you them? I could have them imported, straight from France.”
“What in God’s name– Gatsby. No. I want to know why you called me here.”
Gatsby gets a pitiful look on his face. “Because you’re my friend?”
“You wanted to sleep with my cousin. That’s why we became friends.” I cross my arms.
“You barely visited me in the hospital.” I want to pull out my hair. Or his. Both, preferably.
“I was the only one that visited. The only one. I have a job and-and-” I don’t like thinking of comatose, shot men. Weak, blue, and cold. When I woke up to my bunk mate who had a shot through the stomach that adrenaline hid until it was too late, cold blood dripped on my nose. When I was shot through the shoulder, and saw cold bodies rushed past me as nurses dug into scar tissue.
Hot, French summer days. Wet mud in my wounds. Cold, destroyed American boys. Fire burned against my skin.
I don’t keep speaking. I don’t finish my sentence.
He looks at me in a way I can’t begin to decipher. He holds out his pipe. “Would you give it a try?”
“It burns my throat. I’m not fond.”
“But cigarettes are okay?” I smile. He lights the end of the pipe and puts it in my hands.
“Can’t I use a clean one?” He rips off lip skin with his teeth.
“It’s packed already.” He scratches right under his lip. I should stop staring at his lips. “Quick, before it…” He gestures. I put it to my lips and inhale, like playing a clarinet, lip tucked in.
The mouthpiece is still warm.
It burns, I cough. He offers me ice water, standing up with his hand on the back of my neck like I’m a choking infant.
When it calms down, he offers another sushi roll.
It feels far more structured in my mouth, the more I chew, unlike a regular rice dish. I sway a bit.
“Wolfsheim visited me, at the end.” I nod. “My two friends.”
“All your parties, for nothing. Made up of selfish fools took everything they could and left. For nothing.”
“For her.”
“For nothing.” I reiterate. “You wanted a dead woman. No better than those men who fuck corpses.” I feel like I’m experiencing a memory. Walking through the halls of my mind, looking for moments to revisit.
Was that Gatsby’s reality?
“I wanted to dream.” I roll my eyes. “Don’t you understand?”
“Until an hour ago, I believed you regarded me as a failed tool. I’m still not sure you don’t.”
“You’re my friend, old sport.” He taps his foot. “I was angry, at first. Every time I thought about you, I was back in that blasted hotel room. Hot and sweaty. Angry. Could she really love him? You went with Tom.”
“He drove me there. Didn’t you want that last moment? To convince her?”
Gatsby nodded. “She cried until I stopped asking.”
I think of my little cousin, winking across the table as she sneaks another cookie made by my grandmother.
I think of Daisy across the sound.
“Have you given up now? Finally? Or am I called here for a new task?”
“I don’t know what else to do with my life. But I suppose it’s over. Maybe it was always over–”
“It was.” I sniff. I put my hand out until he hands me what I want. I smash another sushi roll in my mouth. “And if I may be rude, you were the last person to see it.”
“Who was the first?”
I don’t answer. I don’t have the heart to say her name.
He doesn’t ask again.
“You ask before being rude?” I shake my head.
“I’m on substances, Gatsby, forgive my inconsistencies.” I look at him. “Maybe I wasn’t such a good friend.”
“You weren’t given the foundation to be.” He laughs. “Thank you, for visiting. I enjoyed your flowers.”
“Once a month, I’d pay for a bouquet. No daisies.”
“No daisies.” He passes me the pipe again, this time the lighter with it. I flick the lighter before bringing it to my lips.
Gatsby speaks, the smoke not allowing me to reply. “But when I look at you now…I think of you on the hydroplane.” I look to my side, waving the smoke from my eyes.
He won’t stop staring at me.
I just may be caught in the monster’s grasp.