Nick Carraway, a Midwesterner bondsman, rents a cottage in West Egg next to the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby. Drawn into the world of his cousin Daisy and her brutish husband Tom, Nick becomes the confidant for Gatsby's singular, five-year obsession: to win back Daisy and recreate a perfect past, a dream that ultimately collides with reality and ends in violence.
Nick insisted on paying. As the waiter brought change, Nick saw Tom Buchanan across the room. “Come along,” he said, “I’ve got to say hello to someone.” Tom jumped up, eager. “Where’ve you been? Daisy’s furious because you haven’t called up.” Nick made the introduction. Gatsby’s face showed a strained, unfamiliar embarrassment. He shook Tom’s hand briefly. Then, as Tom asked about Nick’s presence so far uptown, Gatsby was gone—vanished into the crowd without a word.
That afternoon, in the tea-garden at the Plaza Hotel, Jordan Baker sat very straight on a straight chair and told Nick the story of Daisy Fay. One October day in 1917, Jordan, walking through Louisville, had seen Daisy in her white roadster with a lieutenant she’d never seen before. They were so engrossed Daisy didn’t notice Jordan until she was five feet away. “Hello, Jordan. Please come here.” The officer looked at Daisy in a way every girl dreams of being looked at. His name was Jay Gatsby. Jordan didn’t see him again for over four years.
Rumors followed: Daisy’s mother found her packing a bag one winter night to run away and say goodbye to a soldier overseas. She was stopped, and didn’t speak to her family for weeks. By 1919, she was supposedly engaged to a New Orleans man, then married Tom Buchanan of Chicago with staggering pomp—four private cars, a whole hotel floor, pearls worth three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Jordan was a bridesmaid. Half an hour before the bridal dinner, she found Daisy on her bed, lovely as a June night in her flowered dress, and drunk as a monkey. She clutched a bottle of Sauterne in one hand, a letter in the other. “Gratulate me,” she muttered. “Never had a drink before, but oh how I do enjoy it.” She groped in a wastebasket and pulled out the pearls. “Take ’em downstairs and give ’em back… Tell ’em all Daisy’s change’ her mine!” She cried and cried. Jordan and the maid locked the door, put her in a cold bath. She wouldn’t release the letter, took it into the tub, squeezed it into a wet ball. They gave her ammonia, iced her forehead, hooked her back into her dress. Half an hour later, she walked out with the pearls around her neck. At five o’clock she married Tom Buchanan without a shiver and sailed for a three-month trip to the South Seas.
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