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.
“He wants to know,” Jordan continued, “if you’ll invite Daisy to your house some afternoon and then let him come over.” The modesty of the demand stunned Nick. He had waited five years, bought a mansion, filled it with starlight for casual moths—all for the privilege of “coming over” to a stranger’s garden. “Did I have to know all this before he could ask such a little thing?” Nick wondered. Jordan explained: Gatsby was afraid, after waiting so long. He thought Nick might be offended. “He’s regular tough underneath it all,” she said. “Why didn’t he ask you to arrange a meeting?” “He wants her to see his house,” she said. “And your house is right next door.” He had half-expected her to wander into one of his parties. When she never did, he began asking people if they knew her. Jordan had been the first he found, that night at his dance, where he had worked up to the request with elaborate care. She had suggested a luncheon in New York, and he’d nearly gone mad with anxiety. “I don’t want to do anything out of the way!” he’d insisted. “I want to see her right next door.” When she mentioned Nick was a particular friend of Tom’s, Gatsby had wanted to abandon the whole idea. He didn’t know much about Tom, though he’d read a Chicago paper for years, scanning for Daisy’s name.
Darkness fell as they dipped under a little bridge. Nick put his arm around Jordan’s golden shoulder and drew her close, asking her to dinner. For a moment, he wasn’t thinking of Daisy and Gatsby at all, but of this clean, hard, skeptical person in his arms. A phrase began to beat in his ears: “There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired.” “And Daisy ought to have something in her life,” Jordan murmured. “Does she want to see Gatsby?” “She’s not to know about it,” Jordan said. “Gatsby doesn’t want her to know. You’re just supposed to invite her to tea.”
They passed a barrier of dark trees, and the façade of Fifty-Ninth Street beamed down into the park, a block of pale light. Unlike Gatsby and Tom, Nick had no disembodied face floating in the darkness. He drew the girl beside him closer, tightening his arms. Her wan, scornful mouth smiled, and he drew her up again, this time to his face. The arrangement was set: Nick would summon Daisy, and Gatsby would be waiting, hidden, across the bay.
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