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.
I had known Tom at Yale, where he was a football star—powerful, arrogant, and wealthy even then. Now he lived with a brutal opulence, having brought polo ponies from Lake Forest. They had drifted East after a year in France, and though Daisy claimed the move was permanent, I sensed Tom’s restless search for some lost thrill. Their Georgian Colonial mansion overwhelmed me: a lawn running a quarter-mile from the beach, French windows glowing in the sunset, and Tom himself standing on the porch in riding clothes, his body cruel and powerful, his voice gruff with paternal contempt.
Inside, the room was bright and airy, curtains fluttering like flags. On a vast couch sat two women in white, as if buoyed by an anchored balloon. One was a stranger, completely still, her chin raised as if balancing something—Jordan Baker, a famous golfer I’d seen in rotogravures. The other was Daisy, who laughed with a charming, paralyzed happiness and greeted me with thrilling warmth. She murmured about Jordan, and I felt the room’s cool, impersonal elegance.
Daisy asked about Chicago, and I relayed messages from mutual friends. “Do they miss me?” she cried. I described a town in mourning, and she exclaimed, “How gorgeous! Let’s go back, Tom. Tomorrow!” Then she mentioned her three-year-old daughter. Tom, restless, interrupted to ask my profession. When I said bond business, he dismissed my firm. I retorted that he’d hear of it if he stayed in the East. “Oh, I’ll stay in the East,” he said, glancing at Daisy, “I’d be a God damned fool to live anywhere else.” Jordan suddenly said “Absolutely!” and stood, complaining of stiffness. She declined cocktails, citing training, and Tom marveled at her discipline.
Jordan’s grey eyes held polite curiosity. She noted I lived in West Egg and asked if I knew Gatsby. Before I could answer, dinner was called. Tom steered me away as if moving a checker. The women led us to a porch lit by candles, which Daisy snapped out, remarking on the coming longest day. Conversation turned trivial. Then Daisy noticed a bruise on her finger. “You did it, Tom,” she accused. “That’s what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a great, big, hulking physical specimen of a—” Tom objected to “hulking,” but she insisted, revealing a physical reality beneath their glamour.
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