Ch. 7-9 Online

Chapter Seven: Tom Buchanan and Company

Pam and I finally arrived back home from Fargo well after midnight. We took off our coats and I sighed, “Home sweet home.” “Call Lacy, Uncle Nick, I’m starving!” Cried Pam, throwing her bag down on one side of the divan and herself on the other side. I laughed. “She’ll come,” she said, pulling out her compact from the little bag. She opened it and examined herself. “She likes you.” She began to dab at herself with the little pad from the compact. “What a mess I am.”

I went to the Victrola and was drawn to play “Love is Sweeping the Country.”

Then I went back to the sitting area and sat down opposite Pam. She had begun to smoke again and I followed suit, pulling out my pipe and filling it. We filled the air with smoke.

Pam gazed at me speculatively. “Is this song in honor of my mother and Gatsby, or . . .?”

I smiled. “I suppose so.”

Why are people gay All the night and day, Feeling as they never felt before?

What is the thing That makes them sing? Rich man, poor man, thief, Doctor lawyer, chief, Feel a feeling that they can’t ignore! It plays a part In ev’ry heart, And ev’ry hearts is shouting “Encore!”

Love is sweeping the country! Waves are hugging the shore; All the sexes From Maine to Texas Have never known such love before.

See them billing and cooing Like the birdies above! Each girl and boy alike,

Sharing joy alike, Feels that passion’ll Soon be national. Love is sweeping the country!

There never was so much love! Love is sweeping the country!

Waves are hugging the shore; All the sexes From Maine to Texas Have never known such love before.

See them billing and cooing Like the birdies above! Each girl and boy alike, Sharing joy alike, Feels that passion’ll Soon be national.

Love is sweeping the country! There never was so much love!

She let out a small breath of smoke, shook her hair back from her face, and smiled. “You know, I always love it when I see got to see a musical, and they sing a song like this one, and I think what fun it would be to just get up and start singing in front of a band like they always do in those pictures. Just get up and go for it. No microphone, of course. Movies like that always make me want to imitate them. Just get up and, I don’t know, really let it out.”

“You mean like when you were dancing in front of everyone at the theater earlier?” She laughed that sparkly lovely laugh of hers. “I think you did some letting out there, daughter.”

“Oh,” she batted her cigarette at me. “You liked it, didn’t you?”

“Yes, you big show-off. It was . . . (I shook my head staring deep into her tropical green eyes) amazing . . . unbelievable . . . enrapturing.”

The laugh again. “Keep going! Well—“She flicked her cigarette ashes into the green cut glass ashtray. “I like showing off, I guess. And I was swept away by . . .” The cigarette waved in the air. “Many things.” She stared at me and those little flecks of gold in her iris caught the lamplight. Then she offered me her smile and said: “It was a great audience.”

I smiled back but thought: she has no fear. No fear. I laughed to myself. That’s all I have. I eyed her with bemused wonder; so beautiful, and yet there was also that fearlessness—not just in her performance outside the theater in Fargo, but in telling me of her affair, of her sexual proclivities. She wanted me to know the truth about her. Well, she should know the truth about me too. About me, and her father . . . And there it was again. The guilt. But, strangely, there was also a sense of pleasure, for what I had done, and then more guilt for feeling pleasure about what I had done.

I swirled the ice around the glass. Sharing her deepest secrets with me like she did—that took guts. I took a deep breath and decided to show some guts myself. No more “Nick the Stick.” I smiled and she caught it.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing, really. Pam—“I put the pipe down and stared at her fixedly, my hands on my thighs. “You confessed something to me that was very personal and powerful. I want to do the same. Though this may ruin everything, but . . .“ I waved my hand in the air, and getting up, went over to the liquor cabinet. Gatsby locked in his photo on the wall smiled out at me. I turned and addressed my lovely niece sitting midst a swath of smoke there on the divan, gazing at me expectantly without saying a word. “Do you remember your question from earlier? What did Gatsby want? You know? Why did he come back?” “Yes, I remember.” She nodded vigorously. “Why did your ghostly friend return?”

I swallowed. “He came back because he wanted revenge against your dad. And . . . I helped him get it.”

Pam snuffed the cigarette out in the tray and just sat there looking at me with her mouth open a fraction, her hands now clasped in her lap. “Oh my goodness,” she breathed out, so softly I could barely hear her.

I turned and poured us two drinks, Seagrams on ice with water, and walked back to her extending one of the tumblers. “Here, you’re gonna need it.”

She took it without saying a word and I let out a big sigh. “I guess it’s my night to get drunk.”

I eyed her closely. “Well,” I shrugged, “Let me take it from the top. Are you okay with this? Are you okay, in general?”

She started. “Well, yes, I—I’d like to hear it.” The sudden smile was a little faltering.

What follows is the story I told her, though I did leave out some.

Gatsby made his next appearance back in the fall of 1928, the day after he had told me of his final plan of revenge—his revenge on Tom. I literally had no time to think it all through or change my mind or anything. He outlined his plan, and the next thing I knew, I was on a train back to New York City to meet up with Sulla. I really wasn’t overjoyed to have to work with legendary Italian killer, but Gatsby had insisted. Ultimately, I saw the wisdom of the concept, there seemed to be a sense where Sulla had to help.

I got off the train at Grand Central and made it out to 42^nd street where we had arranged to meet. Sulla made no effort towards a rejoicing reunion standing alongside of his aging black Packard coupe, smoking a cigarette, but we shook hands, and I could see in his eyes and the curl of his lip a strong resolve to comply with Gatsby’s plans.

We got in and he turned to me, his barracuda face looming in the shadow of the coupe’s interior: “Alright, first things first, Mr. Carraway. You said Gatsby told you all this.”

“Yes.” I bit my lip. “And please call me Nick. It was like I said in the cable, Vic, er, Sulla,” I spread my hands apart, shrugged, and decided to tell him the truth. “I have been conversing with Gatsby’s ghost. I know you probably don’t believe that. I mean, it’s hard for—“

“Can-it, Mr. Carraway. I believe you.” He stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray and glancing out the car window momentarily said, “I seen ‘em too,” looking me square in the eyes. Nodding his head. “Yea, yea, he didn’t just appear to you, ya know.”

“So that’s why you agreed to work with me?”

“That’s right. He told me it was all part ’a the deal.”

“‘The deal,’” I thought grimly. I remembered back to my last meeting with the spirit of Gatsby, and asking his ghost: “Well, why don’t you just have Sulla shoot him?”

“No, no, that wouldn’t do it, old sport,” Gatsby had replied, shaking his head and his cane at the same time. “Our dear old friend, Tom, has got bodyguards, and Sulla—as handy as he is—wouldn’t make it past the receptionist. A guy like Sulla, no. And there’s more to it than that . . . “

“Like what?”

“Because the way I’ve devised—the, ah, end of Tom—there will be more justice . . . if you are involved, old sport.”

This is the way that Gatsby wants it, I thought, looking at the lovely murderous countenance of Sulla as we sat in the car waiting for his “girl” and feeling little else but alarm. That is, until I remembered that Sulla had seen Gatsby too! That proved I wasn’t crazy and that the ghost was real. So that was settled.

“Wow,” I said to Sulla. “I wonder if anyone else has seen Gatsby.”

“Naah.” He shook his head. It’s just you and me, pal.” He shrugged. “We’re all he has left—his true friends. “Ah, shitski,” muttered Sulla suddenly, peering out the front windshield. “Here she comes. Look, Nick, let’s not talk about the ghost business in front of Stella, ok?”

“Stella?”

“Yea, Stella.” He pointed with his thumb out towards the sidewalk where I turned to see a buxom and stylish young lady drifting up to the car with a parcel in one hand and a purse in the other. She was in her early-twenties or so, cute in that sort of flapper way with all the makeup and her hair bobbed under a white cloche hat. She was wearing one of those slender and loose flapper dresses: it was a plum affair made out of crepe or silk or both, with a low neckline, long sleeves, a big tied plum bow very low on the hips, and a short pleated skirt that came down to just below her knee. She knocked on my window and I rolled it down where she gave me a sort of faux petulant smirk and remarked, “Hey, fella, you stole my seat-ski. Wha-da-I have-ta sit in the back, Victor?” She had that perfect Cupid’s bow-lips look with dark red lipstick, her eyebrows were thin and dark, highlighting her fairy-like face, thin upturned nose, and dazzling brown eyes framed expertly by the sides of the cloche hat, which came down past her cheeks.

“Oh I’m sorry, I can move to the back—“

“Oh for Chris’ sake, Stella,”cried Sulla.

“Oh don’t go getting your pants in an uproar, Seymour. Just a sec.” She seemed to bounce about quickly, opening up the back door to deposit her parcel in the backseat, then opened my door saying, “don’t move honeycakes,” and forthwith hopped on my lap and made her way over to the middle of the front seat where she snuggled in between Sulla and I. I say “hopped,” but it was more like she fell on me and then sort of wiggled over me to garner her seat. There was the soft plushness of her body squirming on my lap, the lovely smell of something emanating from her, both floral and tangy, and the sweep of a bit of her dark bobbed hair briefly upon my face and her breasts on my chest. ”Excuse me,” she said, offering her hand, ”I’m Stella. I’m this big lug’s girl.” She gave me a very nice playful smile and her brown eyes sparkled. I have to say it was one of the best introductions I ever had.

I took her hand and said, “I’m Nick. Nick Carraway. I’m, ah, an old friend of his.”

She laughed a high cheery little lilting laugh and said, “I know that, silly.” She hit me lightly on the side of my arm.

“If you two have about finished,” glowered Sulla. He gave Stella a side glance as he turned on the ignition and pulled into traffic. “Where’s them cigarettes, or did ya fo’get?”

“No I didn’t forget your cigs; did you forget the booze, bubski. It appeared that everything they said to each other was dripping with sarcasm.

“No of course not”—he hesitated—“ski,” he added shaking his head, leering sardonically at her.

Winding our way through the lower east side, we headed over the Queensboro bridge and crossed into Long Island. Stella was fiddling with the car radio and not having much luck. “Oh applesauce!” She exclaimed. “This thing is for the birds.” Finally, she got it locked into a NY station and Stella joined in with Eddie Cantor in her high exuberant voice as we winded our way towards East Egg.

If you knew Susie, like I know Susie Oh! Oh! Oh! What a girl

There’s none so classy As this fair lassie, Oh! Oh! Holy Moses, what a chassis

We went riding, she didn’t balk Back from Yonkers I’m the one that had to walk

If you knew Susie, Like I know Susie Oh! Oh! What a girl!

She wears long tresses And nice tight dresses Oh! Oh! What a future she possesses

Out in public How she can yawn In a parlour, you would think the war was on

If you knew Susie, like I know Susie Oh! Oh! What a girl

Oh, you beautiful doll You great big beautiful doll Let me put my arms around you I could never live without you

As Stella sang, she bounced in her seat and pointed her index fingers up in the air together in time to the music. Passing a small bottle of bourbon between us I found myself getting caught up in her enthusiasm, and her shoulder bouncing off of mine added to the feeling. I even joined her on the chorus: “Oh! Oh! Oh! What a girl!” “Atta boy, Nicky,” she laughed, and then with her little ruby-colored lips in a tight pucker, she patted my cheek happily. As usual, Sulla appeared like he was going to murder someone with his eyes straight ahead down the road. “I like-ee your pal-ee, Victor. He’s fun. Unlike some people around here.” She snickered and glanced at me mischievously. Then she leaned over to Sulla and holding his arm gave him a little peck. “Oh I just love my mean ol’ sugar daddy.”

“Hey! Hey!” He warned, raising his hand up in a chop-like gesture designed to ward her off. “Hands off the merchandise while I’m drivin,’ ya dizzy doll.” Then he looked over at her quickly and approximated the closest thing to a smile I had seen thus far—a small bit of movement at the corner of his lip. “But speaking of merchandise,” he said, pointing with his thumb at Stella, “How ‘bout the chassis on this one, eh Nick?”

“Hey!” She punched him hard in the arm. “I’m gonna bust ya one, buster.” But she turned to me with a smile. “But I do have a slick chassis, don’t I.”

“Yes, very slick,” I stammered.

She laughed then pinched my cheek with that little playful pucker.

Sulla let his lip rise for a second and then went back to sternly appraising the road ahead. Stella went back to dancing in her seat, singing, and I suddenly noticed we were going by George Wilson’s old garage and that wretched waste land of ashes he and Myrtle had lived and died in. A heavy set man was at the pumps and the place looked like it had been repainted but was still pretty decrepit. Shortly after that we drove up to Gatsby’s mansion—or at least up to the locked gate at the front of the driveway next to my little cottage.

We got out and Sulla sneered out of one side of his mouth and pointed over his shoulder to my cottage with his thumb. “Is that the place?” Cried Stella astonished and added sarcastically: “Gatsby’s big mansion?”

“Nah. That ain’t the place. This was Nick’s sad little shack near the front—used to be the caretaker’s place, or something.” He scoffed through his nose, and both edges of his mouth curled up slightly.

“Very funny,” I said.

“That’s Gatsby’s, Stella, over there.” He pointed through the trees and we could now see the immense proportions of the big house that was party to so much wanton carousing and carnvalesquetry through Gatsby’s determined summer magnanimousness. It was empty, abandoned, forsaken, as it too had died with his death, captured within that fevered dream of Gatsby’s for all eternity. I was struck by the remembrance of an old blues song, “Ain’t Nothin’ Left but the Blues,” as we ascended the marble stairs to the side of the fountain rising up before the back of the mansion’s classic columnar magnificence.

The fountain—so much of the ambiance here at one time—was empty, the marble contours grimed and tarnished, the grass around it and in much of the yard was dead, though in some places it had been allowed to grow freely and thus parts of the steps had been overgrown. Statues of the Grecian nymphs and satyrs that had added a faded classic beatitude to the dizzying night’s proceedings remained standing, but the faces had been vandalized and lacked noses and lips, and the breasts were missing from some of the nymphs as if all had suffered through some barbaric statuary butchery. What had seemed so bright and new and yet somehow heraldic in those days in 1922 in the moon’s late night madcappery and the day’s bright Long Island Sound-reflected sunshine, had now a haggard hew, a ghostly parlor, as if something dredged from the depths of the waters of that very Sound, and allowed to lie there still, timeless, irreparable.

Sulla was scratching his head and frowning. Stella was impressed. “Wow!” She said, for perhaps the tenth time by now. “Some swell dump! This is what I call the cat’s meow, Victor.” She slapped his arm. ”Hey! We ain’t movin’ in here are, are we?”

“No ya dizzy dumbbell! Do we look like millionaires here.” He shook his head with disgusted.

“OK, then Mr. Smartypants, then what are we doing here?” She spread arms wide and gestured to the vast mausoleum rising up before us.

I tried to answer but I seemed to hear music suddenly as if rising vampire-like from beneath the spotted browning terrace floors themselves and stood as one entranced. Here the gaiety of Gatsby’s parties had rang out. Here the dancers had swirled in the radiant nights; here the servants had sallied forth to do battle to the wanton evening hordes, here the rich had paraded about with their goblets and gossip, the famous had cloistered together in a false brutbruderschaft. Here the bands had played those hits from the years before: “Ain’t We Got Fun,” “There’s One Little Girl Who Loves Me,” and so on. The vague words and easy lazy laughter. The medley of carefree faces and voices swaying to the rollicking rhythms generated by countless orchestras. A world that had pandered to the gaudy dreams of American revelers lost in their sloppy bombastic conception of the American dream. Where were they all now? These ghosts were still here for me somehow in this forgotten palace. Klipsinger. The owl-eyed man. Jordan with her wan and lovely face, the graceful golfer bending her firm body to the night. Daisy and Tom on a condescending visitation, becoming lost to the thrall despite their hypocritical reserve. The gay exciting group I had danced with one night—oh yes. Will never forget that. And Gatsby, of course, there every night in the crowd unnoticed in his immaculate tuxedo, or upstairs looking down, waiting patiently like some fine bold spider secure in the center of its web knowing the moth must soon take flight from her secluded cocoon and arrive at last.

“We are here to secure something that Gatsby wants, er, wanted us to have.” I said at last smiling at the girl and waving to her to join me as I approached the large double doors of the back terrace locked in place by an iron chain. “That is, once we get inside.”

Sulla, with a brusque “Excuse me, folks,” pulled a sturdy-looking metal cutter from a small bag he had carried with him. He cut the links, opened the doors and walked inside to an echoing reverberation of sound. “Now what?”

“Well,” I looked uneasily around in the still twilight air of the giant foyer. “We go to the spot where he left the, ah, stuff. He told you, right?” I beckoned to Sulla.

“Told me what?” He looked perplexed at me then with my look back he gained sudden understanding and looked uneasily at Stella, saying, “Oh, well, he didn’t say anything to me.”

“Oh. He told me you knew where it was.”

“Me? Whoa Whoa Whoa! Wait a minute—what did he say to you?”

“He said you know where it is—his special place.”

“His—“ Clarity broke upon him like a sudden storm. He hit his head. “I’m getting like this one,” pointing to Stella, and making the spinning crazy sign with his hand beside his head. “I remember now.”

“Hey! Don’t you wish!” She swung her purse at him but he neatly swerved away.

“Alright, I know. Right this way,” We followed him up the circular staircase, he with his bag.

“Okay, you two fellas just keep me in suspense; that’s’ just peachy.”

Upstairs, Sulla took us into what I quickly remember as the master bedroom, the room where he had taken Daisy and had tossed out all his shirts into the air. Sulla went right to that closet that once had been the home of all those brilliant shirts, and with his crowbar, he pried open the panel behind the shelves revealing a hidden compartment. Apparently, Sulla had forgotten about it—Gatsby seldom used it, as far as he knew. He reached inside and pulled out a gun, a Colt .45 with sculptured silver handle. It was Dan Cody’s revolver. He then pulled out stack after stack of United States greenbacks—what turned out to be close to $250,000 in $100 bills. “Wow-wee,” cried Stella, “We’re in the money!”

“Well I’ll be damned,” said Sulla. “I thought he spent it all.”

Gatsby had told me during his last visit how he had not only made quite a bundle off of his bootlegging activities for Wolfsheim, but had taken advantage of the “Big Bankroll’s” uncanny ability to predict the outcomes of horse racing and had even won over $100,000 twice betting on the races. Much of it had gone to his expenses chasing after Daisy, but the rest was still secreted away in the old West Egg mansion. “You’re going to need it, old sport,” he had told me during that visit; “In order to carry out my plan. You’re going to need sufficient funds to allocate for various important expenses, as well as being able to prove you’re a successful investment broker.”

“Really?” I had questioned him at the time.

“Yes, really. We’re going after Tom in a manner that suits his own propensity for greed and acquisition. I remember what old Meyer taught me: ‘The other fellow’s greed is a wonderful thing.’ We’re going to use his greed to ruin him, old sport.” And smiling brightly, he suddenly fell into a little soft shoe dance, singing “Greed is a wonderful thing,” a ditty I figured he had just created. I had never heard it.

Meanwhile, in Gatsby’s old mansion, Sulla looked puzzled. “I thought he had spent everything trying to win back that dream dame of his.”

“Guess not. He was saving up for, well, who knows—a big wedding?”

Sulla nodded and stared at me. “That and the five grand he gave me for my father’s funeral.”

Stella was oblivious to Nick’s solemnity. “Now we got this big bundle, what next?” She cried, prancing about the room with a handful of the green stacks clutched to her bouncing breasts.

“We’re gonna spring us a little trap, my dear.” I beckoned for her to hand them back, but she only smiled coyly, giggled, and flounced off around me. “For a very big beast of the jungle,” I said and looked at Sulla. “Let’s go back to town and get us some new duds and a new vehicle, shall we?”

We all smiled at each other—if you can call that cracked twisted-look grimace on Sulla’s face a smile–and Stella put her stacks carelessly into the bag Sulla held open. “Well, check out the last of the big time spenders here.” She tsk-ed. “Don’t forget little ol’ me. I could use a new outfit, you know. There’s this thing at one of the stores on 5^th avenue I’d die for.” Sulla put the gun in his jacket pocket, grabbed the bag now swollen with money.

Down the stairs we paraded cheerily, Stella singing:

She wears long tresses And nice tight dresses

And we both chorused “Oh! Oh! Oh! What a girl!” all the way back to the car.

Two weeks later we made our way down Broadway towards where Tom Buchanan held up in his 44^th floor penthouse in the gigantic Woolworth building on Broadway, between Barclay and Park Place. The Woolworth was the largest building in the city—in the world—at the time, though we saw the foundation under construction of what was to be a bigger skyscraper, as they were now labeled: the Chrysler building on 42^nd , between Lexington and third. We had put Gatsby’s cache to work. We were all of us decked out in new “rags”, as Stella

called them: Sulla and I with Brooks Brothers charcoal grey pinstripe suits, and Stella with an expensive and sheer cream dress that had cost a fortune. It was the one she had seen at Macy’s. The car was new, a Green Packard sedan that Sulla had insisted on we had picked up brand new from a small dealership up town. It had plush dark brown leather seats and was easily the most luxurious thing I had stepped foot in since that ride in Gatsby’s yellow roadster six years earlier. “This baby can fly, too; got a big straight eight.”

I waited outside a small shop on 7^th with Sulla, who was sitting calmly in the driver’s seat while Stella spent some of Gatsby’s largesse on yet more luxuries. She came sauntering up in her new black chiffon rhinestone flapper dress, sparkling with its layer of tiny shiny rhinestones, and looked smashing. She was singing, “If you knew Susie like I know Susie.” Swinging her hips, she made the low fringe of the dress swing and her V-necked breasts bobbed. She give me a playful smirk; I picked up, singing along, ”Oh, oh, what a girl.” She picked up my hand and we danced singing the chorus again. It was hard to resist! Stella spun about, then crinkled her nose and gave me little cheek pinch. “Don’t you forget it.” She was so appealing in that happy carefree who-gives-a-damn flapper way and her humorous carryings-on were infectious. “You’re a sport, Nickie.” Bending over, she peered at the solemn Sulla. “But look at this big Palooka.”

“Ah get in Stella, ya dizzy doll. What are you, crocked again? You’re lit up like a Christmas tree, fer chris’sake.” She hopped into the center of the front seat with a “whew!” and gave him a quick buss on the lips. He smirked and asked, “You having fun?”

“Ab-so-lute-ly,” she said. “But I am not crocked, Victor. What’s eating you? Here—“ She pulled out a small bottle from her purse and handed it to me. “You hold the hootch, Nickie, dear. You are the hootch-holder.”

“Christ, Stella, you’re supposed to go to this meeting with us,” said Sulla beckoning for the bottle from me, and alluding to my latest ripple on Gatsby’s plan.

“Oh,” I said,” She’ll be alright, Sulla, it’s just—“

“Look,” she said smugly, “I promise to behave myself. Here.” She handed a pack of Chesterfields to Sulla, “Butt me.” He lit one for her almost grimacing as she hugged his arm grasping him close. Then she pushed him in the shoulder, “Oh, Victor,” and leaning over to me, grabbed my arm, looked longingly into my eyes in a theatrical manner. “Why can’t you be more like our pal, Nickie?”

“Hey let go of the poor schmuck.” He wrenched her off of me. “I’d hate for Nickie to wake up on a slab tomorrow.”

“Hey,” I said, raising my hands up like I was innocent of all crimes.

“Ah what a wet noodle you are. But I love you anyway. And I’m not dumb you know, I just like to have fun. Speaking of which,” she glanced at him in a theatrical image of the coquettish flirt; “When are we gonna have fun again? Last night was—Do dah, do dah!” She sang, then she laughed, or rather tittered in a sort of “tee hee hee” style while making circular motions in the air with one finger raised.

Sulla turned on the ignition and we pulled into traffic. Stella was instantly on the radio turning nobs and going from one station after another as we cruised down 7^th. “Now this here radio is the cat’s pajamas, fellas. Not like that ancient contraption you had in that old flivver of yours, Victor.” She paused on “Connie in the Cornfield” and began to dance in her seat, humming along with the instrumental part and singing with the Arcadians:

There was her brother John, and several hangers on

When I met Connie in the cornfield

“’Cat’s pajamas?’” I questioned her. “I thought it was ‘cat’s meow?’ Which is it?”

“It’s both,” she reached up to tap me on the chin. “Cat’s pajamas, cat’s meow, cat’s whiskers…”

Sulla piped in with a wry smirk: “Yea, how ‘bout cat’s bullshit.’”

“Oh go screw, silly. There’s no such thing. But there is ‘bee’s knees.’ That’s a cute one.”

“Yes it is,” I added, and we smiled at each other, though I glanced uneasily over at Sulla.

Stella sang along with the radio, bouncing: “’We were both going strong, when her father came along. Then I left Connie in the cornfield.’” She stopped suddenly, raising her hands questioningly in the air. “Hey, whaddya suppose he means by “’both goin’ strong?’”

“They was both doin’ it, whaddya think?” Sulla was quick with the answer.

“Nah. They was just neckin’.”

“Well, whatever they were doing, he just gets up and runs when her pa shows up,” I added. “Kind of cowardly.”

“Yea, that’s low. He just scrams and leaves her in the lurch, lyin’ on a bunch a’ corncobs or somethin’.”

“Ah ya Dizzy Dora,” interjected Sulla. “Ya don’t do it on the fucking corncobs. Ya put down a blanket or somethin.’”

“Aw, says you. And how do you know, ya big heel? Mr. Tommy Torpedo. You ain’t nevah had a girl in a cornfield in your life.”

“Maybe I have, and maybe I haven’t.” He pointed threateningly at her. “But I’ll tell ya one thing: I planted a few stiffs out in the cornfields. They had big mouths like you, Dizzy.”

“Uwwww,” she said, giving him the I-sure’am-really-scared act, her eyes wide open as she elbowed me. “Uwww . . . “ She turned to me. “Uwww… You know he’s a killer, right?”

“You don’t say.”

“Oh yeah. I seen him. Well, he didn’t kill the guy but he dusted him up pretty good.” She put a serious look on her face and gave a goofy little punch in the air. “Kaboom! And down he went!”

“Yea, I saw him hit this giant guy at one of Gatsby’s—“

Stella interrupted: “He’s a dangerous fella, but I like him.” She pinched his cheek. “I like bein’ with a killer.” She rolled her eyes holding his arm and bit her lip in a dreamy orgiastic manner. “It gets me goin’.”

Sulla was grim, but there was a touch of light in his eyes. “Hey, would you just can it, Stella, for cryin’ out loud. Try to be sensible for once in your life.” He looked over at me and shrugged, and wrinkled his lips as if to say, “What are we gonna do with a girl like this?”

She yawned. “Ah, what’s so great about being sensible?” She yawned. “I gave that up when I left college.”

“You were in college?” I asked.

“Yessiree.”

“Okay,” I nodded. “Very good. But speaking of being sensible: listen, both of you, I’m going to have to get into a sort of act when we get there. I’m going to have to put on a little show for Tom, and you guys got to play along, ok? I’ve got to act sort of like him, and I mean this guy is bizarre.” I frowned. “He’s one of these Nativist types who hate everyone, except anyone like him.”

“What is he?”

“He’s a big arrogant rich guy, who thinks, he’s, well, you know—the cat’s meow.”

“Oh fer Chrissake.” Sulla peered at me glumly. “You too?”

We parked on Barclay and went around the Woolworth building’s giant limestone exterior to the entrance on Broadway. Across Broadway sat the squat stone City Hall building, and above towered the endless stories of the Woolworth building, like some majestic European Gothic cathedral with its pyramidal cap above the 57^th floor. “Hot dawg,” cried Stella; “Ain’t it somethin’!” The three of us strolled through the front doors and into the ornate front lobby where we signed in at the front desk. The lobby was incredible, with its marble-lined walls, vaulted ceiling, mosaics, and sculptured statues of the gentlemen responsible for its construction: Frank Woolworth, Gunvald Aus, and Kort Berle.

I was prepping myself for the performance I would have to deliver, somewhat overwhelmed by the grand lobby milieu, my new shoes feeling a bit too loose and squeaking on the marble floors. The concierge contacted Tom’s office and up we went on the longest and fastest elevator ride I had ever experienced. Up, up, up until we reached the 44^th floor. Stella was holding on to Sulla’s arm for dear life, uttering “Weuwww . . .” all the way up and giggling. We entered Tom’s lair through a door marked Buchanan Enterprises, and confronted the receptionist, a middle-aged woman with dyed hair tied up in a bun who inquired of us in a shrill voice: “Nick Carraway?” She looked from one to another of us with a smug smile.

“Ah, yes, mam, that’s me.” I pointed to myself. I noticed a plain-clothed man sitting off to the side reading the Herald Tribune but at the same time glaring at us over the top of his paper, a toothpick in his mouth.

She pressed a knob on her phone and shrilled out: “Mr. Buchanan. Mr. Carraway here to see you . . .” She hesitated; “With two associates.” She peered dubiously at Sulla and Stella, there at my side, Sulla with his hands folded in front of him, Stella holding his arm and working away at her gum.

The toothpick guy rose to usher us in the door and we walked into a large, opulent and cluttered office where behind a massive mahogany desk arose an equally massive Tom Buchanan. He came around the desk, and reaching out a big meaty hand, said, “Well, I’ll be damned! It’s my old pal, Nick Carraway!”

In the six years since I had last seen him he had puffed out expansively. Always tall and big-shouldered, he was now a bloated, portly and mammoth creature. A victim of the unreformable proclivities of his twisted desires. Tom’s face had turned jowly, blotchy; his dark eyes peered uncertainly from beneath a heavy thick eyebrowed forehead. His hand enveloped mine and in a padded embrace he conveyed all the power and prestige he owned. He wore a bow tie and a cream seersucker suit. In the background, on some radio hidden somewhere, I could hear Bill Murray busting out with “Yankee Doodle Boy.”

“Hi ya, Tom,” I said with false exuberance, “How the hell are you, old man?”

“Oh, I’m swell Nick. And you are looking good, I must say.” Both hands clasping mine now. “And who are your two associates here?” He gazed at the two releasing my hand.

“Well, this is my, ah, associate, Victor Salieri, and my friend, Stella.”

Tom shook both their hands saying “Pleased to meet ya.” He eyed Sulla with a touch of suspicion and Stella with a touch of leering desire. “Any friend of Nick’s is a friend of mine.” He pointed to another large man who was even bigger than Tom with a hard florid face, a fedora tilted slightly on his head, and chewing a toothpick as well. “This is Michael Sullivan; we call him Iron Mike,” explained Tom. (I was reminded of what Gatsby had cautioned me: “Tom has two very tough characters as bodyguards right now so that’s another reason we need Sula. I would need some muscle.”) We nodded at Iron Mike and he nodded back a bit reluctantly, and then Tom pointed over to a much smaller desk where sat a little grey-bearded be-speckled elderly man busy with papers. “And this here’s Gaspar, my accountant and my brain trust.”

“Oh, hello,” offered Gaspar with a thick German accent.

“Gaspar was a bit of flotsam I picked up after the war and he’s been by my side ever since,” said Tom sitting on the edge of his desk. I expected the other side of the desk to flip up with Tom’s weight crushing down on the poor thing. He literally flowed over the desk like some giant smartly-suited leech. “We are very heavily into the market right now, Nick, and doing well I might say.”

“Well that makes two of us, Tom.” I expressed myself airily with definite false bravado. I’ve had quite a bit of success in that arena as well. Got back into the bonds business after I last saw you, and, well, I’ve done alright for myself.”

“Well, that’s swell, Nick.” On the radio, another old American classic began: “In the Good Old Summertime.”

Tom was honestly happy for me and impressed by my new cocksure and arrogant attitude: the very mirror of himself in that sense. Despite the disarray, I became quickly aware of a number of iconic items: a large number of Civil War lithographs and paintings on the far wall; a small vanity table off to the left side with silver combs and brushes, and a substantial cut glass mirror; and most surprising of all: a portrait of Daisy on his desk, her smile bright, her hair in lovely blonde ringlets as she gazed out in the immaculate bliss of her world of yesteryear.

“A drink?” Asked Tom. When I nodded he asked Iron Mike to “make himself useful” and whip out the bourbon.

Mike didn’t appear too excited about the process, and the toothpick seemed to pop around in his mouth a bit. He handed out the glasses, poured. Filling Sulla’s, my “associate” sourly remarked, “Thanks, there, Micky.”

“No problem, bub. Sure you can handle it?”

“Oh yeah, I can handle anything the likes ‘a you can dish out.”

“Oh is that right?” They were glaring at each other. Birds of feather don’t always flock together.

“C’mon now fellas,” cautioned Tom. He held up his drink in the form of a toast and toasted the air: “Here’s to America, real Americans, and our fabulous American economy! Long may it continue to flourish.”

We drank and then Tom gazed at me seriously and asked, “Of course you know about Daisy and I?”

“Yes.” I shrugged. “I heard you two split up for good.” Through the windows behind his desk I could make out a giant billboard above the old Congreve hotel. The ungainly head of some erstwhile youth in glasses beckoned out at the masses holding a facsimile of the world’s biggest bottle of Coca-Cola. The sign below his eager face announced: “The Drink That Cheers But Does Not Inebriate.”

“That’s right.” Tom answered matter-of-factly.

I held my hands out palms up. “These things happen. I was married for two years and then my wife left me. We have to move on, my friend.” I was impressing myself with my new bravado, but I caught sight of Sulla glaring at me with one eyebrow raised. Stella gazed at me with her mouth open and her eyes wide.

“Yes, exactly. Sorry to hear about that though. Women can be so troublesome . . . no offense, young lady.” He glanced furtively over to Stella who merely smiled back and chewed her gum. She gave Sulla a sarcastic smile. “Yes we must move on. Like that whole incident with that Gatsby fellow, that bootlegger that put the moves on Daisy. I know you were a little miffed about that at the time, Nick.”

“Ah,” I said expansively, waving the whole matter away with one hand. “Water under the bridge. Frankly, I have too many matters of importance and financial speculations to worry about that kind of thing, Tom. And that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” I was amazed how easily I went into my new persona. It was a little frightening, but actually easier to talk to Tom in this way.

“Well by all means. Have a seat.” We all sat in nice comfortable chairs and he went back behind his desk.

“Mind if we smoke?”

“Not at all, not at all, I’ll join you,” he gestured to his ashtrays. “Help yourself.”

We sat smoking while I explained the fictional story Gatsby and I had devised which illustrated my success on Wall Street and in my business as a financial adviser to others. There were some stocks we had just invested in, which were already “taking off.” With the aid of Wolfsheim’s accountant, Abe, who still remembered Jay Gatsby fondly, I had conjured forth some older requisitions that showed profitable results from the last year. I mentioned that I had been working with some major firms in Chicago and with Wolfsheim recently as the head accountant and investment broker during that period, but “the old Jew”—I shook my head and looked at Tom conspiratorially—was “downsizing” and no longer needed my services. (I knew that Abe and Wolfsheim would back this bit of preposterousness. “Anything I can do to help a friend of that young man,” Wolfsheim had said.) The story ran that I was staying at the Plaza for a bit to oversee my current investments. I told him that as an old friend I had some proposals he might find interesting and that he should let me know in the following days if he was intrigued.

He was very impressed with everything I said and the materials in the portfolio I showed him. Sitting back in his padded leather chair, he said: “You know, it’s good that honest Americans like you and I are successful. I hate to say it, and I know you know this, but the damn Jews and darkies, those illegal immigrants, like the Italians and others of that type are trying to take over and ruin things for the rest of us. Those wretched heathen hordes are over-running the country. We have to look out for each other, Nick. I mean, am I right?” His jowls, hoary and grizzled, shook with his disclaiming.

“You are. You are totally right,” I offered. “I know I was a little skeptical about some of the things you discussed with me back in Long Island back in those days, but I’ve come to see your point and I agree.” I worked my way into the little spiel Gatsby and I had created. “If we don’t watch out, those people will take over everything.”

“Exactly.” He looked over at Mike. “Heh? What did I tell you?” Back to me he asked, “Hey. You aren’t in the clan, are you, Nick? The Klu Klux Klan?”

“No,” I said, hiding my alarm, “but I . . . I . . . “ –I looked at Sulla who I could see seethed a deep Italian rage–“definitely . . . support their views. Are you?”

“Yes, I am actually, and so is Iron Mike here. We’re on the up and up with a local chapter here. But I don’t want to get too involved, you know?” No, but you just want to fund these stupid bastards, I thought. He raised his hand and pointed at me. “But, listen—it’s not just here in America—Europe is waking up to this plague sweeping the white races off the planet. Have you heard of this fella, Hitler?”

“No, I haven’t, actually.”

“Oh, well, I don’t suppose you would have.” He looked very pleased with himself suddenly—no doubt a common look for him. He told us how Gaspar had just gotten a copy of this book “this German fella Hitler” wrote. He mentored me that “fellas like you and I” are part of the Nordic or Aryan blood like this Hitler. On and on he diatribed about how Germany has the same problem over there as we do here—though Hitler’s more concerned with “the Jews and all, not the coloreds . . . but the book is in German and all, so I’m no authority. What’s it called, again, Gaspar?”

“Mein Kampf, sir.” He turned to view me over his spectacles. “It is a revolutionary book, it is, by a very enlightened leader. A friend of mine sent me a copy several veeks ago. Very inte-res-ting.

“Yeah,” added Tom. “It’s amazing how so many great minds are saying the same thing—you know, Goodard and all those fellows.” He tapped the table with his knuckles. “If we don’t take action soon on a grander scale to take care of these colored bastards and the Jews and the immigrants and all, I tell ya, Nick, we’re doomed.”

As I told this part of the story to Pamela, I looked over at her and commented: “Of course, now we know that this ‘enlightened’ and ‘evolutionary’ fellow is a total dangerous megalomaniac.”

I saw the cigarette hovering between those lovely lips, burning there in the dark. “My father . . .”

“Yea,” I said. “Yea, your father.” I took a deep breath, considered my pipe and continued: “We kind of had to suck it up for a while agreeing with Tom, ah, your father, about the importance of prohibition to keep the blacks in line so they don’t keep running amuck getting drunk and raping white women and destroying the fabric of society, and all that and meanwhile I had to stop looking over at Sulla and Stella, as Stella would make these sudden little faces suggesting is-this-crazy-or-what? And that was funny; and Sulla was just frowning and glaring at Tom, suggesting what-the-hell-is-this-bullshit? And that was really funny.”

I then told Pam how Tom had said, “And it’s the Jews who are selling the booze to them! Ain’t that right Mike?”

“Yessir, the kikes,” said Iron Mike, moving the toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other. “And the wops too.” He smirked over at Sulla.

Sulla turned. “At least we can handle our liquor, eh Mick?”

“Oh yea, ya wanna see if you can handle my fist in your face, pally?”

“Why don’t you button it where it flaps, ya lousy potata-head.”

“Hey! Hey! Fellas. C’mon!” Tom interrupted. “I’m trying to talk to my old friend, here.”

“The Jews are just the smartest ones at bringing in the booze, is all,” interjected Stella casually, to everyone’s mutual surprise.

Tom was shocked the most: “What, are you Jewish?”

“No,” Stella replied, shaking her head with a snide little cocky smile. “I’m a Daughter of the Revolution, actually. We go way back.”

“Well, there ya go!” Cried Tom enthusiastically; “Here’s a real American girl!” He gave her a little applause.

“That’s me,” she said, with a coy wink at Sulla and I. “I’m just thinkin’ we should be thankin’ those boys instead ‘a givin’ ‘em a hard time.”

“Alright, alright—let’s just drop it,” finished Tom with a sneer, while I guess I was staring at Stella for a moment.

It was time for our little meeting to come to a close; I had accomplished what Gatsby had instructed me to accomplish. I gave Tom my card with my hotel room at the Biltmore, and shaking hands, we had rekindled a fine relationship that really only existed in his mind.

We left the Woolworth and found the Packard up 2^nd near 42^nd street. I got in, laughing to myself at the frightened faces of the New Yorkers passing by Sulla and getting out of his way, thinking back to weeks before and Gatsby telling me in the little living room in Minnesota why he just didn’t have Sulla shoot him; what was I needed for? (“Well, for one thing, old sport, it’s just not that easy. He rarely comes out of his apartment penthouse, and, well, he has two bodyguards.” Then he pointed out how he needed both of us to pull off the caper he had in mind. He had “something special devised” for Tom and wanted both of us involved. You both need to be involved in this priceless moment of justice and revenge.” He then told me his plan.)

“That fat high-hat gives me the heebie-jeebies, I’ll tell ya,” said Stella as we drove off. She cranked on the radio, and there was “Connie in the Cornfield” again.

He’s crazy.” She drew out the last word in a number of syllables.

Sulla shook his head, pursing his lips: “He’s nuttier than a fruitcake.”

Stella laughed out loud. “What’s with the ‘Ohhh-we’re-all-doomed’ hooey?”

“He’s doomed alright,” added Sulla.

“Oh, you’re gonna rub him out baby? My vicious killer. My little Al Capone,” She pinched his cheek.

“Hey, watch out or I’ll let you have it.”

“Oh, baby, please let me have it. I don’t care if Nick’s here.” They kissed. “My killer.” The light changed. I said, “Ah . . . “

“What? You want some of this.“ She laughed and turned to me and grabbed my tie. I wouldn’t mind some of this,” looking at my mouth. “He’s kind ’a cute.”

“Hey,” cried Sulla. “You stay away from my little red flapper, Nick old pal.”

I put my hands up.

Sulla turned to Stella with a sneer: “And what’s all this about ’Daughters of the Revolution,’ huh?”

“Don’t—you—under—estimate—me, bub.” She jeered at him, breaking up each section of the sentence as she said it, and punctuating the breaks with finger jabs to Sulla’s arm.

The sneer only deepened on his dark predatory face. “Ah . . . “

“Stop here,” Stella cried out suddenly. It’s Gladys’ place. Wez all outa hoochski.”

We pulled over on 3^rd and she hopped out.

“I guess that’s what a college education will get you nowadays,” I joked. “Knowledge of where all the speakeasies are.”

“Speakeasy?” Scoffed Sulla. “Gladys’ is a fucking butcher shop, Nick.”

“A butcher shop?”

“Yea. They’ll sell booze anywhere these days.” He sneered. “Hotels, saloons, restaurants, drug stores, bakeries, cigar shops, even fucking paint stores I’ve heard.”

“Prohibition. It’s like they put a stopper in a giant keg, but the whiskey just pours out from 1000 other holes.”

“Ha.” He poured a stopper-full from our little flask, handed me back the flask and raised his stopper in a toast. “To prohibition.”

“To prohibition.” We clinked our two vessels together and drank. Then Sulla suddenly reached over and poked me hard in the shoulder. “Hey,” he said, glaring at me.

“Hey? What was that for?” I was rubbing my shoulder I suppose with a hurt expression on my face.

“Ah, don’t be such a pantywaist.”

“I’m not a pantywaist.” But damn it hurt.

“Watch your step with her, ok?”

“Watch my step? What am I supposed to do? Push her back and say, ‘Get away from me you hideous creature?’”

He gave me the I’m-trying-to-be-patient-with-you-but-I-may-just-lose-my-patience-any-second-and-smack-you-one-in-the-kisser look. “I’m just sayin’,” his head bobbed for a second, “hands off the merchandise, ok?”

“Okay!” I had my hands up in the air defensively and I thought he was going to start laughing at me.

Instead he said, “Listen, Nick: you don’t know much about me, do you?”

“That’s not true. I know a lot.” I told him about what Gatsby had shown me, and how I knew all about how he was like Gatsby’s “right hand man” and that sort of thing. He nodded, pursing his lips, the scar on his cheek seeming to enlarge itself for a moment as he said, “I would kill anyone for that man.”

I lit his cigarette for him, as the operatic voice of Enrico Caruso singing “Una Furtiva Lagrima” rang out of the radio speaker while we waited.

After a moment I asked him, ”How did you get into this, ah, racket, as Gatsby would say/”

“You mean, how did I become a hit man, a hatchet man, a killer? Or what my family always called people like me: a ‘soldier?’”

“Well, I mean, I guess, yeah.” He shrugged. “I’ll tell ya—it’s easy. My family. My dad. My country—Sicily. I was only there a few years but I remember, see. Especially the end. I was—I don’t know—seven? Playing outside the house with my cousins. And my aunt came running through the front gate, cryin’ and yellin’. My uncle had been gunned down by a rival family. Some sorta ancient vendetta, ya know?”

“So your whole family got together and got vengeance.”

“No.” He shook his head vigorously. “My father sent these guys a letter that he didn’t want any more bloodshed and he wanted to talk about a treaty, right. So that night, he sits me down and he tells me: ‘Victor,’ he says, ‘if you wanna be a man and you wanna survive in this world, you have to know when to pick your battles. You gotta bide your time. Like a good tomato–you pick it when it’s ripe.’ So he waits it out, see, and they think he’s gone soft and can’t get over the loss of his big brother. These guys had been terrorizing the whole area. Well, they show up at his house and they ask him for some of his wine, he brings out a cask, and he’s like playing it up that he’s helpless now and wants to be their friend. Suddenly he pulls out a shotgun from underneath the bread rolls and just like that—‘Boom! Boom! Boom!’—he puts a round in each of their chests. I was sitting there at the table when this happened. He looks at me and asks, ‘Are you okay?’ Real worried, ya know? I just nodded and said, ‘Are the tomatoes ripe, father?’ He laughed. ‘Yes they are Victor. And they are all gonna get picked.’ Meanwhile my cousin has killed the driver, and taken his whole uniform. Even wears a fake beard. The two of them and three of their friends hop in the car, and head back to their enemy’s place. They pull in and they have fooled them enough that they get the drop on ‘em, and spilling outa the car, they unload on everyone there with rifles and pistols and leave a heap of bodies. We left for America the next night.” He shrugged, and threw the cig out the window, “Ya see, I was born into it.”

“I see.”

Tapping on the steering column he waved his finger at me. “But there’s more to it than that.” He peered out the window. “My father said to me once, ‘There are those born to this earth who must do the dirty things the others cannot do, but that must be done. That’s us.’ He pointed at him and me. ‘We are the soldiers,’ he said—‘soldiers in private wars.’” Sulla now pointed at me. “And that’s you too, now, Nick.”

“Oh boy,” I said, reaching for the worn silver flask again.

The next step in Gatsby’s plan was all Sulla. Tom rarely emerged from his Woolworth building lair, but the accountant Gaspar went home to his little flat in the Village every day. Sulla followed him the next day after our first meeting and ambushed him at his apartment on Grand and 1^st. He didn’t tell me how exactly but he put the fear of Sulla into him and persuaded the elderly German immigrant that it was in his best interest to leave town, or at least leave Tom, for good. Sulla can be pretty convincing—especially at the business end of his .45. But maybe he just snarled at the poor old fool who promptly ran back to his enlightened Hitler and Germany lickety-split. We had typed up a fake note from Gaspar which he signed. It contained his resignation maintaining that due to a sudden illness with a loved one he had to leave immediately and he would send for such things as he had left at Tom’s offices.

Within two days I had heard back from Tom and we scheduled a luncheon. We met alone in the Oak Room in the Plaza Hotel. A small quintet in the back played “The Wabash Blues,” as sat down and ordered “tea,” with our meal.

Of course, when the “tea” arrived in little tea cups, it was pure Scotch whiskey—the real stuff. Tom told me that he liked how I had focused much of my stock purchases on sound American companies, like US Steel, General Electric, General Motors, American Can, Bethleham Steel, and the big railroad companies as well. Their solid American-ness appealed to him, as I knew it would. Then he told me that not only was he interested in my suggestions for the market, but he asked me if I wanted to take over as his accountant and financial adviser. “Old Gaspar, well, he couldn’t handle the stress. I know he wrote that it was a sick family member, but he was just too old. The trick is to keep your edge, and to surround yourself with people who have that edge as well—like you do, I can tell, Nick.” We had ordered filet mignon with French potatoes and green beans almondine, and while we waited for our meals, Tom added: “You’ve got to keep your edge and stay strong no matter what disasters befall you. You can’t give up.” He pulled a cigar out of his vest, bit off the end, lit it up. Puffing away merrily, he said: “You remember the Harvard-Yale game of 1914? The last game of the year and it decided the Ivy League Championship.” When I shook my head he said, “Well, it was my last game as a graduating senior, right; you sure you don’t remember? No? Okay, well, Harvard was favored. They had a great quarterback in Frank Merriwether and a giant offensive tackle, Hiram Bingham, who hadn’t allowed one defensive end to tackle Merriwether for a loss all season, and who consistently opened up gaping holes in their opponent’s lines for Merriwether and others to scat through for big gains. But I wasn’t no slouch either, Nick my man, remember?”

“Yeah I do remember that,” I had to admit.

“I was having a stand-up season—but not that game. I mean this guy was huge—maybe six-four, 240 pounds. I was six-one, 210, and the size advantage was hard to overcome; he was quick too. I ran my best moves on this guy, and he had the speed to run me out of the play, or just knock me down and bury me under his massive body, right? I did better than anyone else had that season, don’t get me wrong. Fortunately, the rest of our defense played stout behind me. But here it was two minutes to go and we are down by four—21-17. Harvard had the ball on their 45 yard line and we’re trying to run out the clock. But it got to 3^rd down and 7 and they elected to pass to get a first down, right, instead of running the ball and be forced to punt and give it back to us with time still on the clock. You following this?”

“Yes. I know football, Tom.”

“Okay, so…” he tapped the cigar. ”I had had enough; I was beaten, bloody, battered, and frankly, I wasn’t used to that—you know how I dominated the line virtually every game.”

“Sure.”

“But in the huddle during the timeout they had called before this 3^rd down play, I said to the boys: ‘Listen, you Bulldogs, we got to stop ‘em here. We can’t give up. This is where we hold the line for good ol’ Eli Yale!’ In other words, Nicky, I didn’t give up when the going got tough.”

“So what happened?”

“Jesus, you still don’t remember? I know you were at the game! You must have drank too much, for Christ’s sake.” He looked at me and let out a big boisterous laugh. “I can’t believe—“

“Look, I don’t remember every game, ok?” I smiled though I wanted to hit him. “So what the hell happened?”

“What happened was that when the play started, Merriwether rolled out to the left on the option, old Hiram was getting ready to knock me out; I said screw this, and jabbed my fingers in his eyes. He yells, I push off of him, and just as Merriwether tries to bolt by me, I lunge and spear him hard in the front of his big sweaty grill using my helmet. It’s a wicked damn blow. Totally legal, of course. So he sails backward through the air; the ball flies free. I get myself up quickly, reach out and catch that damn pigskin as it tumbles down toward me, and I’m off to the races. Down the sideline I go!” He waved his hand like he was chopping something. “38 yards into the end zone. No one even lays a hand on me. We win 24-21 and they carried me off the field. Oh! What a day that was Nicky.” He slapped his knee, laughed, and then turned to me with a look of great gravity that made me want to laugh, and said, “But see: I didn’t give up, that’s my point here, and that’s spirit of real red-blooded Americans like you and I.”

He gestured for a drink refill for both of us, as the waiters wheeled in our steaming platters. I was feeling sick, but then he turned again to me and stated conspiratorially “Screw Gaspar, I want to offer you a job working for me. I want you to do for me what you did for yourself and others. I mean, we go way back, you know? And, well, we’re family. Right?” He cut and forked himself a huge chunk of the thick blood red steak and conveyed it eagerly into his yawning mouth. “We gotta take care of each other,” he said, chewing harshly.

“He offered me a very nice salary,” I told Pam, interrupting the story. Though really I didn’t care what the salary was. It wasn’t important. I said, “And that’s how I came to work for your dad, not only as a financial consultant, but ultimately as his accountant.”

One morning, I think it was the third week, I had been in Tom’s office when a number of his Klu Klux Klan buddies showed up and I got to feeling really sick and got up to leave. When I bolted out of his office, I found Mary Ellen the receptionist arguing with a tall slender woman in her late-twenties/early thirties in a fashionable blue dress and matching hat. “I’m sorry Miss Baker, but Mr. Buchanan is extremely busy right now. You’re going to have to come back another time.” I did a double take and realized in a moment that it was Jordan Baker. I recognized her at the same time as she recognized me. “Nick?” she asked. “Jordan?” I asked. We both smiled, shook hands, and then sort of stared at each other awkwardly.

Jordan had aged extremely since I last had seen her. She still looked quite attractive, in her own way, but at the same time there was something worn and a trifle haggard about her. She looked like she had been out in the sun too long. Like what had formerly been a brilliant plant now getting hard and brown around the edges. She leaned back in the bored and haughty manner of hers and looked me over. What once had seemed wan was now just tired. “Well you look swell,” she said, with a slight smile on those sensuous thin lips of hers.

“So do you.” I hesitated. “What brings you here?”

She waved one gloved hand carelessly towards Tom’s door and shrugged. “Well . . . I don’t know . . . can we go get some coffee or something?”

I agreed and we took the elevator down to the lobby of the Woolworth and I took her to Leons, a small café nearby. Settled in corner booth with our coffee and cigarettes, I asked her, “So how’s my favorite reckless rider?” I suddenly heard “Glad Rag Doll” in my head again.

“Oh, still being pretty reckless, I guess.” She felt disposed to tell me about recent events in her life. It was a sad story replete with yet more fractious narrative regarding Tom. It seems she and Tom had “gotten together” back in 1926, shortly after he and Daisy had split. “Don’t think me a monster, but I was commiserating with him one night over drinks and one thing led to another and well . . .” She took a deep draw from her cigarette and let out a strong jet of smoke. I dared not open my mouth for fear of what would come out. “We saw each other a bit, on and off. Then, he hit me. No surprise there. I guess the biggest surprise was that I . . . well . . . I didn’t stop seeing him. I actually hit him back too. With a seven iron.” In fact she seemed to have found him even more interesting afterwards, excited for the first time in her life with the danger emanating from his brutal and imperative presence. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” she scoffed slightly; “There’s always been something about you, Nick, which . . .”

“Yea, I know. People always confess to me. I’m like the confessor in a Brooks Brothers suit and loafers.”

She laughed, but then grew serious, deep in thought. Obviously not interested at all in my life, she continued with hers: “I still see him from time to time.”

I told her it didn’t look like he wanted to see her today.

“Yeah,” she scoffed again. “He knew I was going to hit him up for some money.” She shrugged. “Things have been a little tight. I haven’t won a tournament in ages.”

I offered to help her out but she turned me down. There really wasn’t much more to say; neither one of us relished descending down memory lane at that moment. We parted ways and made a disingenuous plan to see each other again. I had the feeling she would like to see me again, but I just had no interest whatsoever.

Tom put intrinsic trust in me; I guess being a relation, being “Nordic,” and his supposition that I was still inherently in awe of him, meant that I was completely trustworthy. I spent little time at his office, fortunately, but we met with his banker in order that I could have more ease in negotiating transfers and purchases, and in late November of 1928, I outlined my plan for him that would really result in massive profits. Gatsby had laid it all out for me, of course, knowing what was going to happen in America and the rest of the world soon. Like so many folks then, Tom was enticed by the “trade secrets” I knew about. And I did know some trade secrets. Thanks to Gatsby, who told me what was going to occur in about a year’s time. How he knew? Well, from where he resided normally, I guessed such knowledge was possible. But it really wasn’t that hard to see what was going on in America and how bad it had to get. Anyway, I went ahead and bought 1000 shares of the investment trust, Goldman Sachs Trading Company, at the start of December, 1928, which opened on the market for $104 per share; within two months it was trading at $222.50 per share. Like many stocks at this time, it just kept rising. Of course it was all just a big pyramid scheme. But no one knew this except for the crooks running it, and of course, myself. Everyone was hooked into this madness. Groucho Marx had equipped the luxury liner Berengaria with a broker’s office and the first “wireless telephoning” to make trades at sea. Commander Byrd was known to radio his broker from the South Pole during this time. I told Tom, “Even Commander Byrd is buying from the end of the earth.” He was ecstatic. Other pyramid scams opened up throughout 1929, like Shenandoah and Blue Ridge, and we went for those big time. Of course, in October of 1929, came the the Stock Market Crash of 1929 that led to the Depression. In just a few hours, Goldman Sachs Trading Company went from $280 to $1.75 per share; Blue Ridge went from $100 to $3.

What Tom didn’t realize was that I ultimately invested all of his money into these schemes, liquidating assets his family had held for years to throw into the trading madness.

There was nothing left.

We returned to Tom’s office, Sulla and I, on October 18, two days after Black Friday and the Crash. I phoned Tom that I was coming. I remember waiting in the Packard sedan with Stella outside the Woolworth building that night for Sulla, who was making sure that Tom was in his office. Sulla and I wanted to say goodbye to Tom. I had rather had not, but Sulla insisted. It was raining. One of those dark misty rain-drenched nights in New York where everything moved in shadows. In my mind I could hear one of those melancholic blues songs by Blind Willie Johnson, “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground.”

Around us these shadows coalesced momentarily into darting human figures bent on unknown assignations in the chaos of spinning lights, the shining chrome of automobiles, and the somber stone buildings rising up on all sides. We had pulled up near the Broadway entrance in the sedan and were sitting in the quiet darkness curbside, when I saw a figure come from out of the strange light-shafted darkness across the street to emerge in the dim lamplight. He was silhouetted in the light and fog, and then I could make out Sulla’s murderous countenance there even with the brim of his fedora drawn tight over his eyes. He was smoking and looking up at the far reaches of the Woolworth building heights. The cigarette smoke fought the rain and joined with the inchoate mist above him. I watched as he pulled out his revolver from his coat pocket and checked the chambers and then looked suddenly across the street at me and nodded. I was inside the protection of the car, but I still felt chilled.

We left Stella in the Packard to wait for us.

When Sulla and I arrived at his office on the 44^th floor, the door was open and there was no receptionist, just papers strewn about and clutter everywhere. I opened the door to the office and looking back to make sure Sulla was behind me. At his desk sat Tom, his mammoth bulk and bloated face informed by such an obvious look of dismay and discomfort that I almost laughed. Worse than the outer office, everywhere about the desk and surrounding floor lay an avalanche of paper detritus: the wreckage of an empire that I had orchestrated.

“What? You came to gloat?” Croaked Tom, his eyes small, malicious.

“No,” I answered harshly; “I came to finish it.”

To the right of the desk sat both Iron Mike and Phili Tom, and they both arose as we entered, peering at Sulla and I with increasing hostility. Sulla stood in the door slightly behind and to the right of me, and there was a subtly growing sneer up one side of his mouth as he eyed the two men, his hand slowly unbuttoning the overcoat. The eyes of Iron Mike and Phili Tom were glued to Sulla and their hands seemed to be inching up towards their coat pockets.

“Hey, Wop.” Muttered Iron Mike solemnly, the toothpick switching about between his tight lips.

“Hey Mick,” returned Sulla. The sneer grew and so did a strange light about his pupils. He only had eyes for Mike and ignored Tom completely. “Started looking for new work yet. I hear their hiring in the sewers.”

“Yea, you ought to know, huh? No place like home.”

The toothpick moved; Sulla’s sneer didn’t.

Tom just stared at me perplexed. “Great work, pal—all my dough into stocks which are worth nothing now. We’re all ruined, eh?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“No?”

“No.” And there was the memory of Gatsby floating dead in the pool again. Oddly, that gave me strength. “I set you up, Tom. The whole thing was a set-up. I knew the whole market was going down—thanks to your old friend Gatsby—and put your entire fortune into stocks I knew for sure would fail completely. You’re the one that’s ruined, old sport, and I had a great time doing it.”

With a raging expression on his face, Tom glared at me, then slammed his huge hand on his desk, upsetting his big glass tumbler which toppled over dispensing its alcohol in a clear wave of liquid over the table. But he only had eyes for me as he rose from his seat cadaverously and spit out at me, “Why you no-good son-of-a-bitch!” He hands reached beneath the disarray of papers, and he finally pulled out a small revolver.

“Sulla!” I yelled, but Gatsby’s ex-bodyguard and loyal friend had already pulled out his pistol and in a flash and amidst a deafening roar, he put two slugs in Iron Mike’s forehead. Within a second he repeated the action on Phili Tom who flew backwards into the corner of the room arms flying—he hadn’t even a chance to draw his gun. Iron Mike barely had time to do so before he was gunned down, having just tugged his big .45 out of a jacket pocket. He flew back into the wall behind him and was cast there in his last seconds of life, a startled look in his eyes, his lips opening up wide disengaging the ubiquitous toothpick from his mouth forever. He slowly slumped down the wall to the floor, leaving a trail of blood on the Civil War lithographs behind him, some of which crashed over him and to the ground around him in a clatter of broken frames and glass.

Sulla turned fast to face Tom with the same sneer and lit murderous expression on his face, the .44 pointed directly at the big man. But it was too late. The look of shock on his face was profound as he saw Tom’s gun. It was pointing down at the desk, and I was standing in front of the desk with the barrel of Dan Cody’s old etched silver-plated Colt .45 Peacemaker stuck in the meat of Tom’s fat left cheek. “No Sulla, don’t shoot him,” I hollered.

“Yeah,” Sulla said in a long drawn out hissing manner; “It’s better that you do it.”

Tom’s face was quivering, and so was my hand. I had wanted to pull the trigger. I still wanted to pull the trigger. “No. Not yet.” I stared with fascination at Tom’s helplessness, his dismay; his fear; where was all the brutal mannish power now?

“Go ahead,” said Tom, and placing his gun on the desk carelessly, slumped down in his chair. “It’s over anyway; I’m ruined. You two just interrupted me. In 15 minutes I was jumping out that window with the rest of them.” He pointed behind him disconsolately. Where was the big hero of New Haven now? The Big Man? The dominating force whose immense presence had enthralled us, overwhelmed so many. The guy who had made me feel so impossibly damn low. So humiliated.

He peered at me with a strange quizzical look on his bloated face, opening his hands wide. “Why Nick?”

“Why? Why! I tell you why, Tom. You are the fucking worst of the reckless riders.”

“What?”

“You are what’s truly rotten in the state of America. You represent everything I scorn—you all do. All of you rich reckless riders with no concern for others, no interest but your own interests, no compunctions or vision except to take whatever you need and want, no compassion for others—the downtrodden, the people who haven’t had your privileges—which you didn’t even have to work for, and you have the unmitigated gall and audacity to claim the immigrants, the Jews and the Negroes—Ha!—those poor fools who don’t have a fucking dime to their names—they are the ones responsible for the ruination of this nation; when it was you and your ilk in your frenzy of greed and acquisition and conquest who caused this disaster that’s ruined you. Yeah—how ironic—you were all undone by your own wretched greed. “

He scoffed and glared at me. “Who are you kidding? You want to be just like us—you all do. Rich, powerful, not having to work. I certainly didn’t hear old Myrtle complaining when I rescued her from the death trap she was in for a few moments. Look how she carried on in New York.”

“Myrtle.” I shook my head. “Exactly. Tom, you corrupt and ruin everything. And for what you did to my friend Gatsby, I ought to shoot you down like a dog.”

“Gatsby? Him again?”

“Yea, him.” Cried Sulla, knocking Tom a sharp blow in the head with the butt of his revolver. “You set him up, you bastard.”

“Yes, Gatsby again. He was my friend—and his.” I pointed to Sulla. “He finally gets justice. And get this: he set this whole thing up, believe it or not. At least he gets some modicum of revenge.” I grabbed Daisy’s picture from his desk. Pointing at her face, I cried: “But what does she get? Nothing. You defiled her—destroyed her.”

“No, No.” He shook his head as vehemently as he could while putting one hand up to his bleeding forehead. “Gatsby did. I’m the one who held it together, despite everything. No one realizes that. No one knows.”

“Like hell you did.”

”Well, you’ve ruined me. I know that. I’m done. Not a penny to my name after all that.” He shook his head, looking down, and then over to the windows. “I’m gonna jump. The hell with it.”

Sulla came over waving his gun: “Well don’t let us stop you, pal, on your way outa here.” With that, Sulla put two shots into one of the big windows, shattering glass and metal clasps. He then grabbed one of the small wooden chairs between the prone bodies and turning, began smashing the chair through the gaps in the series of windows, then launched the chair through the remaining window remnants, allowing for the perfect man-size hole. The chair sailed down four floors to the streets of New York below, hitting God knows what.

Tom got up slowly and peered through this sudden eruption in his world; the wind coming through the room in a rush of coldness. As he peered out the window, Tom’s expression changed from utter self-despair to complete horror. His eyes widened and contracted in desperate attempts to focus; suddenly his thoughts were not about Sulla and me about to kill him; instead, he looked as if was seeing something ghastly looming in on us or just behind us, I couldn’t tell. It was as if time had stopped for him; with his mouth agape, he began to make throttled gasping sounds. Sulla and I halted our assault; we were stunned by the sight. Still staring at us, or through us, Tom began to yell, “No, no, you’re dead, I killed you! You bastard, I killed you! You were nobody but a fancy fraud, you son-of-a-bitch! You tried to steal my wife . . . I showed you!” Sulla looked to me for an answer but I had none. Raving, staring with eyes wide at someone or something between Sulla and I, Tom continued: “Your nothing but a Gypsy, a gangster, a wretched heathen, you hear me? Stop it, stop it, stop that grinning you son-of-a-bitch!”

Sulla reached for Dan Cody’s Colt still in my hands, raised it up, and pulling the trigger three times, he effortlessly put all three rounds in the center of Tom’s chest, all in the exact same spot where an organ that supposedly passed for a heart resided. “How’s that for stoppin’ it, asshole.” As for myself, I shouted out, then sat down heavily in the chair by the vanity. I tuned away, but before me was that big mirror. In it, I could see reflected Tom’s outraged and horrified face in contortion. A rope of blood flung from the enlarging chest cavity and splashed over Daisy’s portrait on the desk.

I watched in that mirror as Sulla jumped over to the side of Tom kicking away the chair, and with one swift and Herculean motion, grabbed him by the shirt collar and hurled him through the window. “Here’s a message from all us wretched heathens, you lousy scum-sucking puss-bag!” Yelled Sulla out the window after Tom’s descending body, allowing the last phrase to linger in the air, his eyes alive with rage and delight as his normally perfect hair flew about his face in the sudden sultry city wind.

I turned, and rose, to look directly through the jagged hole he had flown out of. There, across the street was the Coke Cola billboard. I swear I saw in the eyeglasses of the actor, the face of Gatsby shining out.

As I finished this part of the story, I suddenly and startlingly remembered my audience. There was an ember glowing in the corner in the darkness of my living room and the sound of sobbing.

“Oh God, I’m sorry,” I said. “Really. I shouldn’t have told you all this. But once I began I couldn’t stop. Now you will hate me.” I was overcome with mortification, despite the fact that I had actually left out most of the brutal details. I went over to Pam’s side by the little side table, turned on the lamp, and then kneeled down in front of her. I felt like a total jerk and worse. “Can I get you a tissue? A drink? A weapon?” She cried a bit harder. I placed my handkerchief in her hand, “Here.”

“Thank you,” Pam sobbed, burying her face in it and grabbing my hand with her free hand at the same time. She squeezed it. For a long time.

“I’m so dreadfully sorry. Can you ever forgive me? Pamela?”

She turned her beautiful face up to me. Oh God, here was my angel, my goddess again. “Of course I can,” she said softly. She reached over, put her arms around me and her head on my shoulder. “He was a monster.” I hugged her back with all my strength.

Then Pamela sat back on my chair and sighed. “O my goodness.” She shook her head. “You know, I hated my father, and I guess in a way I always wanted to see him dead. But this is ridiculous.” She laughed. Out came the cigarettes. I lit hers with a match.

“But you see why, don’t you?” I offered plaintively. “I mean, he was going to do it anyway… you know, kill himself.”

“Yes.” She sighed.

“And there’s certainly a sense of justice working here in that he was finally forced to pay for his crimes.”

“Yes, justice was served. I see that.” She placed the cigarette down into the ashtray carefully, and clasped her hands together in her lap. “Justice was served for Gatsby, my mother, all those women and girls he was so abominable to, and, well, you too, I guess.”

“Yes.” I looked at her closely. “But it’s a horrible story.”

She drew on her cigarette hard, eventually releasing a long train of smoke. “Well . . . (she said the word in about five syllables), I think that beats my confession.”

There was a form of low laughter from both of us. We sat for a moment quietly smoking. I peered at her out of the corner of my eye. Finally, she asked, “So did you see Gatsby again?”

“Oh yes. I guess I can wrap up the story now, though there’s not much more to say.”

I told her what happened when we came back out on the street and found Stella waiting in the car patiently. The young flapper spoke out anxiously when we arrived, pointing down the Broadway: “You know I saw this chair or something crash down to the street. And then a body falling. It was horrible, and yet, it was kinda the gnat’s whistle too, know what I’m sayin’? Too bad it wasn’t that ghastly Tom guy.”

Sulla made a harsh scoffing sound. “It was, ya dizzy doll.”

“What? You guys did that?”

“That’s right. He was goin’ anyways, I just helped him on his way with one right here.” He placed his index finger right on her forehead.

She squealed, said, “You killed him?” and grabbed him in a close embrace. “I love you.” She bent up to him and kissed him eagerly. He kissed back, circling his hands around her waist.

I sat there for a moment, muttering something, ‘til she turned, smiling and reached for me to plant one on my lips.

“Hey! None of that now!” hollered Sulla, this time with an actual God-awful smile on his face. He hauled her back. And they continued where they left off for some time, while I sat somber, withdrawn, and alone with my thoughts and still pounding heart.

They drove me back to my hotel. We sat in the car together, the three of us, silent, “My Blue Heaven” coming out of the car speakers.

I looked out the front window and Sulla stared at me. “Look,” he said, “the bastard had it coming to him, right.”

“Yes, he did.” I tried to feel good, but I didn’t.

“And Gatsby can rest in peace now, right?”

“Yes. Gatsby will be at peace. And so will you and I.” I could hear the sound of gum cracking beside me.

“Well, ya did good, Nicky boy.” He nodded his head. “I’ll make a soldier outa you yet.”

I had to smile at that.

“Now listen,” said Sulla, poking me hard in the shoulder. “If you see Gatsby, and, ah, I don’t, tell him it was my pleasure. And I miss him.”

“Ok,” I nodded back, trying to smile, “and you do the same for me.”

“Sure. You got it.”

“Nice meetin’ ya, Nicky,” said Stella softly. Turning to Sulla she asked, “Are you sure I can’t do ya both, Victor? It would be the cat’s—“

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Stella. Alright, Nick, go on, you better scram.”

“Oh don’t get yourself in a lather,” I offered as I got out, and we all had a laugh—or at least I think that was the noise coming out of Sulla’s twisted face. Sulla and I shook hands, I got a soft kiss from Stella and a cheek pinch, and they roared off in that sweet Packard that was Gatsby’s parting gift to his loyal and remorseful bodyguard.

I returned to the Gatz house a week later, riding the rails from New York to St. Paul through the cold and bleak hinterlands of the Midwest. I drove up to the house as night fell, the old Ford still functioning to some degree, opened my darkened door, pushed aside the mail that gathered on the floor, and started lighting lamps. I went outside quickly and gathered some wood from the wood pile, scarcely cognizant of several shadowy shapes moving about the oak nearby. I got a fire going in the stove, put a disk on the Victrola—I think it was some version of “Ain’t No Sweet Man Who’s Worth the Salt of My Tears”–and sat back in my chair still wearing my overcoat.

I lit my pipe using tobacco from a new tin of Danish blend I had just picked up before I set out for the homestead, and then I sat quietly waiting. I didn’t have to wait long.

“Well, there you are old sport!”

I started though I had thought I was prepared. Gatsby was there in the hallway in his yellow linen suit, brown fedora this time, and incandescent smile. He dropped the cane and with his arms wide he came towards me and grasped me as I rose from the seat, still holding the pipe. I had been feeling pretty low, but now I was once engulfed in a flood of bliss in his embrace, our bodies close together, our arms wrapped around each other. He then leaned back, holding me at arms-length, and cried: “Well done! Well done!” He gave a sort of victory yell. “You and Victor were unbelievable, old sport! We got revenge and we got justice—what could be more just than that he should die a victim of his own rapacious greed?”

Now that he had released me, most of the air was released from my blissful balloon. He stared at me for a moment, saying, “What is it? You aren’t happy?”

“No,” I returned. “I’m not happy. Killing somebody—even a monster like Tom—is not my idea of a good time.”

“He had it coming, Nick.”

“Yes I know.

“And you were doing me a big favor.”

“Yes I know.” “And doing yourself a big favor.”

“Yes I know.”

“Well, what is it?”

I sat down and took up the pipe again, engaging the fire in the smoldering weed. “It’s easy for you and Sulla, but I don’t like being the killer, the dark avenger, the “soldier,” as Sulla put it. I mean, I did kind of like it for a moment, I guess. But now that it’s over . . .”

“You don’t feel so swell about it.”

“Yes.”

“It’s called remorse, old sport. It’s called a conscience. But add this little ingredient to your little conscience stew: you helped destroy a truly reprehensible creature. A man who single-handedly destroyed or corrupted the lives of dozens of innocent people—like Daisy and George Wilson, and many not-so-innocent people, like me. Daisy deserved more than that. Daisy deserved me.” Over at the Victrola, Gatsby placed a record on the turntable and laid down the cartridge. The joyous refrains of the Jena Goldkette Orchestra’s “Painting the Clouds With Sunshine” began to pour through the room.

“And ultimately you win. It took a while, but you finally did best Tom. Though, unfortunately, Daisy is left with neither of you.”

“Not quite, old sport.” He brought over a bottle of the whisky from my cabinet and a glass.

“Hey!” I uttered, pointing at the glass and bottle in his hands.

“It’s for you,” he said, smiling. I poured and took a small sip. “You see, we’re both dead, it’s true, but there’s only one person that Daisy still loves, and that’s me. So yes, I did win.” He paused and looked at me closely. “There are things between Daisy and I that no one knows, and no one will ever know.”

I sat in my chair wreathing myself in smoke.

“Listen,” Gatsby picked up his cane and pointed it at me; “You took action, old sport, and it was the right action. Hey! I’ll tell ol’ George Wilson you’re no longer Nick the Stick!”

He laughed, and I had to join in, though less enthusiastically. “How ‘bout Nick the Slick?” I said.

“There ya go.”

I thought for a moment, and finally ventured: “So. Are you done here? I mean, can you move on now to, wherever you should be moving on to?”

“Well,” he looked at the cane, bringing it up to his waist; “We’ll see. We’ll see. But of this I am forbid to tell, and all that . . .” Then he swung that ancient relic of old Abraham Rothstein’s about, twirling it, and started a little song and dance number, singing:

In the meantime, in between time

Aint we got fun!”

“And that’s how it ends, my friend.” Gatsby stuck his cane under his arm and with an effulgent smile, arguably his biggest and brightest, came over to me and shook my hand. “I take my leave with many 1000 thanks,” he quoted, as I reluctantly released his hand. Then, he bowed deeply, turned around and disappeared past the photographs down the hallway which lead to what used to be his room as a kid.

“Goodbye Gatsby,” I murmured to myself. I picked up the tumbler and took a small drink, and then another. “Ah, the Fitzgerald Scotch,” I said out loud. “So smooth.”

“So that was the last you ever saw of him?” Said Pam quietly. I broke out of my reverie in the telling of my revenge story, facing the little voice and the little figure across from me.

“Yep. Think of me what you will, but I did want justice. There were times when I wavered to be sure, but I didn’t do anything to stop it—the machine of vengeance we had constructed, that is.”

“You know I think he did love me, in his own way.”

“Your father?”

“Yes. Believe it or not.” As I refilled our drinks, she told me how he came to see her one time in Chicago, early in 1928. He had taken her to lunch. “I think he really just was curious how my mother was doing, but at some point during our luncheon, he turned to me and told me how pretty I was becoming, and that I was the only decent thing that had come out of his marriage to my mother. Then he said, “Although . . . well . . . “ and shook his head. Next came something about me being ‘the essence of Nordic beauty’ and all that. I remember him tapping the table with his hand, looking at me and shaking his head, He said, “How ironic is that.” Not sure what he meant by that. Then he said he had always wanted a son. But my mother had never delivered, or words to that effect. Of course it was my mother’s fault, right. He wanted an Aryan son to follow in his footsteps, et cetera, et cetera.” Pam fiddled with her hair and then took a deep draw from her cigarette. “I can’t forgive him, though, for everything he did.” Again came the feeling of relief. “I can forgive my mother, though.”

“I can’t forgive her either, I’m afraid.” I shook my head, getting up to look for new beverages for us. “I’m sorry. I just can’t countenance Daisy’s actions: a stone cold killer who, under the guise of being—what?—a silly little fool and all that rot—was just a hit-and-run coward.”

Pam suddenly came over to me kneeling and reached for my hands, which she held warmly. She looked me square in the eyes and with a quiet passion said, “Oh please forgive her Nick. Can’t you?”

I set the pipe down and muttered something vague and inconsequential.

“Don’t you know she never had a chance to be anything but what she turned out to be, like she admonished me to be: ‘a silly pretty little girl.’ She didn’t say that cause she was an idiot, Nick. She said it because she felt that under the oppressive mantle of her family and of her town’s society, that was the only strategy that offered respite. The only strategy that insured sanity. Of course it didn’t work, tragically. There was something that women’s rights leader Emma Goldstein used to say about the plight of women under men’s thumbs. It was true in my mother’s case. But it wasn’t just her father—my grandfather, the Colonel; it was my mother too.”

I had turned on the radio to a station out of Chicago, and a lovely melancholic song sung by a young woman that I had never heard before was playing.

“I remember one day several years ago,” Pam eventually continued; “when my mother had one of her more lucid moments. She sat me down in the patio next to her beloved garden and she told how it was for her in Louisville and Chicago when she was young. She said that she was not allowed to discuss any real issues in the world, not allowed to read books, and not allowed to advance her education to anything more than specific societally conditioned manners and customs, or something to that affect. She never had any freedom, really. Always supervised and chaperoned and told expressly how she should look, act and behave. I remember this very clearly.” Pam rose and began to pace the room. “My mother got up and went over to this giant flowering vine growing on a trellis on the patio—a Morning Glory maybe?—and she said to me: ‘Oh Pamela. If you only knew what it was like always being under my parent’s thumbs.’ She reached up and grabbed one of the flowers on the vines. ‘It was like being one of these beautiful flowers; just trying to blossom and reach up toward the sun, and then, being completely and arbitrarily crushed.’ She clasped her hand over the flower and then released it, leaving only a smashed remnant. ‘Again and again. “Daisy do this,” they would tell me. “Daisy do that. Daisy don’t this. Daisy you must never—“They were always hovering. It was never what I wanted. It was always their plans. Their wishes. That’s why I sent you away, my dearest one.’ She pulled down a length of the vine with many blossoms, this wistful smile of hers upon her face. She turned and came back to me, and draped the flowers over me, like a wreath. ‘I can’t let them—‘ she waved her hand about her as if dismissing armies of bad influences—‘trap you like they did me.’ She then just sat there next to me, twining the vines through my hair, and I watched as her face transformed from a wistful dreamy happiness to a dark melancholia. ‘They refused to let me marry the man I wanted to marry,’ she said. ‘Oh Pamela.’ She kissed me lightly on the forehead, and I felt her tears, warm against my skin, before she turned with a choking sound and moved off to the deep recesses of the garden.”

Pam looked up at me again, her eyes again with that yearning intensity of our first day together, our hands still clasped. “So I am asking you to forgive her, as I forgive you for my father. Could you just do it for me?”

I saw her so clearly again then. Pamela. My little goddess Hebe. This amazing girl who had emerged from her own ash waste land of sorts to shine so brightly. I still couldn’t forgive Daisy, but what could I do? I owed Pam that much. What wouldn’t I do for her? I said: “Yes. I forgive her.”

The sudden inexplicably lovely smile. “Thank you.” She squeezed my hands.

“No, thank you.” I felt a scary hotness in my eyes as I stared at her. I said, “Well, one more drink, eh?”

“Sure.” We both rose and went over to the cabinet. “I can see you with your little wreath around your head. The goddess Hebe.”

“Oh, not that again.” She began to look through my records.

“Yes. You ought to start your own religion. Singing, maidens dancing, blessings from above in the form of clouds of goose feathers, that sort of thing. We’ll call it ‘Hebe’s Hordes.’”

“As long as it’s not ‘Hebe’s Whores.’”

I haven’t laughed so hard in years. I couldn’t stop.

“Okay, you’re cut off, pally.” She joked, effecting a bit of a gangster edge.

“Hey, how ‘bout this?” I passed over my newest record: a live recording of Brooks Bowman’s “East of the Sun,” featuring this little-known Negro band leader, Jay McShann and his band, including a sensational young sax player named Charlie Parker. I had obtained it after their gig in Chicago only two months before. It was a very jazzy, modern and up-tempo version with a sultry female vocalist.

or, 

The big band kicked in and Pam immediately reached over to me, “C’mon, Uncle Nick. Let me see what you got.” She grabbed both my hands and raised me up off my comfy seat.

We were both pretty coddled by then, but maybe that made it easier to get into the flow of the music. We went right into a waltz sort-of-thing and I was surprised how easily Pam moved under my hands as I led her around the room.

“Wow!” She said, her eyes bright and laughing, a big smile on her face and on my face as well.

East of the sun and west of the moon,

We’ll build a dream house of love, dear.

Near to the sun in the day

near to the moon at night,

We’ll live in a lovely way, dear

Living on love and pale moonlight.

Just you and I, forever and a day,

Love will not die, we’ll keep it that way,

Up among the stars we’ll find

A harmony of life to a lovely tune,

East of the sun and west of the moon, dear,

East of the sun and west of the moon.

I found myself laughing as we spun around my little living room. Pam’s body felt so supple in my left hand: the small bones, the soft yet firm slender muscles on her shoulder, back and waist. But above all her smile and her gay green eyes, the lovely fragrance of her hair passing the air about me. And to be dancing in harmony with her. I had a sudden flashback to a scene from long ago.

When the song was over, I said, “Wait! Let me play something else for you.”

“Good gracious, Uncle Nick. You can dance!” Her eyes were bright with amusement. “Oh dear, I’m feeling tipsy.”

“Oh c’mon, I can waltz a little,” I said, as we both sipped from our drinks. But thanks for not making look bad, niece.” I put my drink down hard. “Hey, but listen: I now remember my favorite moment, Pamela! My favorite memory.” I found the record I was searching for and slipped it on the Victrola. As I moved the cartridge head over, I announced, “It occurred during one of Gatsby’s parties. I was when the band played a version of this—“Song of India.”

The lilting vaguely oriental strains of the song began, the lazy clarinet articulating the song’s refrain, and I reached for Pam and with a smile she joined me in what started out as an elegant waltz at first but quickly grew casual, sloppy, as I told her the story while we danced.

It was this magical moment at one of Gatsby’s parties back in that frenzied summer of ’22. Jordan and I were dancing, waltzing on the dance floor around the patio fountain alongside a colorful cavalcade of other late night dancers. A light breeze had come off the Sound, harbinger to an oncoming storm, and I remember the flapping of flags, of awnings, of tents, of dresses. Millions of little lights darted about from one thing to another, caught in a restless tableau of merriment as the participants flew about in the babble of laughter and chatter. Even the half-moon perched above us teetered precipitously. Jordan and I found ourselves next to this famous actress duo in beige chiffon dancing together. I forget who they are now, but we stared at them for a moment, transfixed by our proximity to their legendary stunning beauty. Suddenly, as if heralding our attention, and promulgated by the clarinet’s mournful but sweet administrations at the opening of the song’s refrain, they reached over to us and took our hands in theirs. In a moment we were swirling about—not waltzing or anything like that—but just spinning in circles as a quartet, then collapsing into partners, then back to a circle, and so on. I had this brief vision of that Chaplin film, Sunnyside, where Charlie’s character has a dream of dancing and twirling about with beautiful faerie maidens clad in white flowing gowns and flower garlands: so carefree, joyous, buoyant and lovely. The garlands here were the swirling gowns of the three ladies, and the starlet’s wreaths of pearl necklaces and silk scarfs. The starlets were both blonde with blue eyes so merry as they engrossed themselves in sort of hamming it up dramatically, pivoting their perfect bodies in perfect grace to the perfect leisurely tones of “Song of India.”

Then I hear the song that only India can sing,

Softer than the plumage on a black raven’s wing.

High upon a minaret I stand

And gaze across the desert sand,

Upon an old enchanted land There the Maharaja’s caravan,

Unfolding like a painted fan, How small the little race of man.

The two actresses and then Jordan, with her dark hair and dark eyes, the restrained haughty look finally collapsed into a merry ecstasy as she surrendered to the gay group cavorting. In my joy I began to laugh, and then Jordan, and then the girls fell out of their persona and we all laughed together, finally, our faces lit with gaiety and abandon. We were spinning in a tight circle with our heads up to the extraordinary orange moon and then just collapsed in a heap. I think that was the moment I was most infatuated with Jordan. We walked off, waving a goodbye to the girls, and when I looked up, there was Gatsby. Gatsby, one hand raised in a casual wave, with his flawless tuxedo, and that luxurious smile of his, as if to say: “Way to go, old sport.”

“Ha!” Said Pam. As we danced slowly to the needle’s relentless end-of-record tracking, her head on my shoulder. “I had a feeling ol’ Gatsby would show up somehow.” She took her head off my shoulder and gazed at me. “That’s so beautiful.”

Lost in the exquisite perfect allure of those moistened green tropical eyes, the quivering lines around her full lips now with a growing smile, the light hair falling carelessly about her soft cheeks, the subtle airy fragrance, I whispered, “No, you are so beautiful.” I reached up to let my fingers gently pass down her cheek.

Her smile got bigger, and more tender, and a gathering flush resolved its plum color about her cheeks.

I took both her hands in mine. “I love you, Pamela.” Her eyes grew wide for a moment. “I mean, I’m not in love with you. But I love you—I love who you are.” I caressed her hair there by the dove earrings.

“Thank you, Nick.” She reached up and kissed me lightly on the lips. Ah, my blessed little goddess Hebe. It was a benediction.

“If I wasn’t so much older, and your uncle . . .” Of course, I didn’t really mean that, did I?

She laughed, an exhilarating sound. “I thought you were my father! Remember at the theater?” She imitated Sugar Bear’s deep tones: “’Ya daughtah show can dance.’”

We both laughed this time. “Oh great, thanks for bringing that up.” Then I grew more serious, my hands still grasping hers. “But listen: I do want to be like your father, I guess. I want to help you, Pam, if I can. I want to be there for you. I want to be your friend, your family.”

“You are my friend, Nick.” She squeezed my hands. “But I’d like that—I mean to stay friends, close relations. That would mean a lot to me.”

The idea dawned on me out of the blue; I had totally forgotten about what I still had from Gatsby. “Look: I can help you with school, and your expenses and such. Seriously!” I had no time to think it through, but it was worth a shot. “Wait here.” I turned and rushed to Gatsby’s room, turned on the light, and going over to the closet, pulled down a shoebox. I flew out of his room, I don’t know why I was in such a rush, but because of that I stumbled and fell against the wall. There went Gatsby’s picture—just like with Sulla—flying off the wall, but this time, instead of me, it was Pam reaching out with a funny shocked expression and catching it before it fell.

“Whoa!” She cried, and then laughed. “You should see the look on your face!”

In falling, I had also dropped the box which spilled open and engorged its contents down the hallway floor: several bundles of US dollar bills neatly wrapped. I looked up at Pam from my spot on the floor. “You should see the look on your face,” I said.

“Good gracious!” She choked out, her hands raised in front of her face. “Whose?

Where–?”

It’s Gatsby’s!” I bent down to pile the loose piles back in the box, Pam helped. “Well, some of it is the money he had hidden away; some of it is money that I acquired through my trading based on what Gatsby’s ghost told me. I couldn’t spend it. It didn’t feel right. But this feels right.” I pointed down to the pile. “It’s yours.”

“No, no, you keep it, Uncle Nick. I can’t–”

“Hey! He might have been your step-father, if, you know, your mom had run off with him, instead of—“

“Running somebody over?”

“Well . . . Look, we can use some of it for your schooling. For your dancing career. For, I don’t know—whatever. Please,” I touched her hand and then grasped it. “Let me help you. Do it for me. Do it for both of us.”

She gave me her finest smile and said, “Okay. But let me get things set up first, alright? Then we can meet again and determine what’s to be done.”

“Okay.” We rose together, with me clutching the box to my chest. I insisted on making a pot of coffee which we shared in the kitchen. “You know,” she said, reaching over to take my hand. “Maybe if you came with me sometime to see my mother—I mean back to Louisville—and talked to her, maybe that would help. What do you think?”

I looked at her for a moment. “Well,” I shrugged; “If that’s what you want. But in the meantime, let me give you this.” I walked quickly back into the living room and plucked the framed photo of young sailor Gatsby from the wall, came back to the kitchen, and handed it to her. “Maybe this will help, somehow.” She smiled as she took it. “Tell her he still loved her until the very end, and that he will always love her.” We held each others eyes for some time, and then she bent over and cried quietly into my handkerchief. She thanked me finally, and despite my objections, she got her coat and purse explaining that she had to get back to town to be ready to go in the morning and was perfectly able to drive.

I walked her to her car, a burgundy 1928 Model A coupe her aunt had given her several years ago. We stood by the door for a moment, huddled in our coats against the cold night. The windmill started to creak in the distance and leaves were skittering about. Something moved in the oak and I could smell winter coming. Pam took my hands again in her soft gloves. “I want to thank you once more for putting up with me, feeding me, taking me to the movies, telling me—well—the truth. However hard it was to hear it.”

“I just hope it is of some help, Pamela.”

“Yes.” The breeze blew her hair about her face, but through it her eyes beckoned warmly. “I needed to know. And like I said, even if it doesn’t give me an avenue for providing some relief for my mother, at least I understand what lies at the heart of her torment.”

We hugged then for a long time and when I released her I said, “Pamela, don’t forget. I want to be there for you. It’s the least I can do, you little meaty-mouthed ninny.”

She laughed. “Ok, you big-hearted black varmint.” She blew me a kiss, turned the ignition, and drove off into the sudden stillness of the early morning. I will help her, of that there was no question; she had already helped me in more ways than I could count.

Chapter Eight: Now What Is It, Gatsby?

Pam left, driving off in her little car. I came back into the Gatz house, preparing to settle in for a long winter’s morning, when I heard a knock, and turning around, I saw Gatsby in the hallway again. It had been over 10 years since his last appearance and I groaned.

“Greetings, friends, Romans, countrymen!” He said to me jovially, turning from the Victrola where he had placed my copy of “Bye Bye Blues.”

“You again?” There was something infinitely irritating in his contiguously perfect youthful look while I had aged so much. Everything about him was unchanged: the yellow suit, white tie and kerchief, the cane, the slender immaculateness of his countenance, the radiant smile and eyes, the rugged handsome face and dark blonde hair peeking out beneath the brown fedora. Here I was with my horribly rumpled clothing, and my greying hair, thickening body and lined-hollowed face. And he was actually older than me! “Why are you back?” I threw out at him, almost in despair.

“Don’t look so shocked, old sport,” he returned. Using the cane he pointed back to the wall and the picture of young sailor Jay Gatz. “Remember?”

It dawned on me then: the picture had fallen and we had caught it—though this time it was Pam who had saved it from crashing to the floor. “You mean—that picture thing again?”

“That’s correct. It set up a synergistic moment in which—“

“Alright, alright! I remember, but . . . doesn’t there have to be a mutual, ah, feeling, or something between all three of us?”

“Also correct. There is a certain kindred sensibility and need we all share, old sport, you, Pamela and I.”

“But I thought you were done. You got your revenge, and you moved on to—I don’t know—the third ring of Gatsby’s purgatory, or something.”

He laughed. “No, there is still unfinished business here, old sport.”

“Oh God . . . I need a drink. I know it’s morning and I’ve been up all night drinking, but, well, either that or coffee. Maybe both.”

“I’d go for the coffee. You need your mind sharp. I have a tale to unfold ‘whose lightest word would harrow up thy soul.’”

“Oh great.” I put on another pot in the kitchen. I felt like I was going to drop any second. “This isn’t about more revenge schemes is it? I mean, if it’s Daisy this time, forget it!”

“Actually, it is about Daisy, but not revenge.” I sat down at my tiny kitchen table with its one chair and put my head in my hands, elbow on the tabletop. “No, don’t sit down, old sport, we have some traveling to do.”

“Oh . . . we do? Gatsby, I’m not—“

“Don’t worry, Nick, this won’t take long.”

“Shit. I thought I was done with all this traveling about with the ghost of Gatsby past.” I shook my head. “Scrooge only had all his visitations in one night!” I threw my hands up in the air, and then asked somewhat disconsolately, “Where to this time?”

“New York City, 1917, old sport. Now, you remember that I had left Daisy and Louisville the fall of 1917 and was stationed up north waiting embarkment for overseas. It was December 31^st, and we were laid up in barracks off of South Street, departure scheduled for January 2^nd . . . ”

Daisy had escaped from Louisville after all. Jordan’s story was not quite right once again. She didn’t know the real story, of course, due to the Fay family’s elaborate cover-up. They told Jordan and others that she had been prevented from fleeing that night in December with her suitcase and bidding a soldier farewell. The truth is that she did flee the house with her small suitcase, her handbag, and coat, found a taxi downtown before anyone knew she was gone, and made it to the train station in time to catch the late express to Washington. From there she connected to New York. She knew where Gatsby was bivouacked thanks to his latest letter, and went right to the gates of the barracks pleading to see him. He was able to get a pass that night and the two found a small hotel nearby. This Gatsby told me as we traveled in that uncanny way behind the young lovers following them on that cold New York night, a light snow beginning to fall. [“Look,” said Gatsby, this will only take a minute, old sport, but I think you really need to see this to fully understand what I going to be telling you afterwards.”

“Sure . . . what did Scrooge say? ’Spirit, lead on.’”

“Scrooge?”]

We trailed young Gatsby and young Daisy as they entered the hotel, arm in arm, kissing every chance they could get, and then up to their room where they tossed off their coats and immediately threw themselves on the hotel bed in a tangle of arms and legs. Daisy cried out, “Oh Jay, Oh Jay,” repeatedly, while he continued to kiss her mouth, nose, cheeks and entire face in a frenzy of passionate desperation. They were subtly illumined by a series of spectral neon lights flashing periodically outside, and singing and banjo from a nearby apartment or café wafted through their slightly opened window. A Negro man—obviously missing his southern home—was singing “Swanee River.”

Within minutes they had stripped off their outer clothes. Kissing her mouth once more, Gatsby whispered, “Oh my love,” and carefully pulled down the fragile straps of her beautiful pearl nightgown. [It dropped, as did my jaw, for there was Daisy in all her naked youthful splendor. I tried to look away but my somber yet glowing ghostly partner wouldn’t let me. “No, no, checked it out,” he said, almost reverently. This is an important moment.”] I shook my head, exasperated, and yet was mesmerized by the scene unfolding before me. Daisy wasn’t as full-figured as Ella, nor as slender as her daughter, but beautifully proportioned. If she was embarrassed by her nudity in front of Gatsby, she didn’t show it, so engaged with him as she was. The blonde hairs on Gatsby’s chest were gilded in the light of the table lamp. The compact muscles of his strong supple body rippled as he carefully laid her down on the bed, her arms around him. He reached back and tore off his khaki boxers, and just stared at her for a moment smiling as he stood above her: her eyes widening with pleasure at the sight of his muscular body, I supposed, the wide shoulders, the jutting pectoral muscles and biceps, the narrow waist and flat stomach with such pronounced abdominal muscles, and his hair, golden in the low lamplight, spreading over his chest and belly. He bent over her slowly, exquisitely, reaching behind her back to cradle her lower body with his arm as he settled in closer. Whispering how beautiful she was and how much he loved her, Gatsby began feverishly kissing her face, then her neck, down her ample breasts to the slight rise of her belly.

Again I wanted to look away. I tried, but I couldn’t. 2^nd cousin or no, I was transfixed by the motions of the couple immersed in each other’s arms there on that hotel bed. There was something so beautiful, something so right here. The soft retinue of limbs, the rich play of lips upon lips, the white flesh bound together. Over and over they repeated their love for each other out loud, her hands rubbing circles on his back, his fingers alive to every part of her body, stoking the tender flesh to uninhibited exultation. His tongue found her small nipples and she ran her hands through his short yellow hair, her own tossed about her and the pillow like some living thing blossoming in the night. Then, as he came back to her lips with his lips, he thrust his lower body down, the tight muscles of his sculptured back and small buttocks quivering, and entered her. They both sighed and again he sighed, “Oh my love, my beautiful.” She responded to his eager ministrations with great energy, crying out “Oh Jay, I love you so!” Until suddenly she was weeping, sobbing great sobs as she grasped his back and moved in tune with him, their lips continually coming together in eager joy as they lost themselves in their love making.

Now I did turn away, and turned to the one lone window through which a lower street neon beckoned, and the snow could be seen falling. The black man had moved on to “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” below us,

and in the near distance, I could hear the screeching brakes of the elevated train from 6^th avenue. [Behind me my ghostly guide said quietly, “It was nothing like I had ever experienced with other women and girls, Nick, don’t you see?” He explained how making love to Daisy was something much deeper, more fundamentally precious, more rooted in the core of his being. If there was a God, such a presence palpitated within her, within them both together. “How I loved her, old sport. Even before that night. Yes, there was the magic of her world of grandeur, wealth and golden perfection. But it was also her fun, carefree excitement with life. Her engaging fascination with all things correlated to Jay Gatsby. Her loveliness: ‘So seems this gorgeous beauty to my eyes.’ But, well, after this night”—he pointed to the couple on the bed behind him—“was when I knew just how much I loved her.”

“I see. Is this why you brought me here?”

“In a way, yes.”

“Well, I tell you one thing,” I said, raising my eyebrows and pointing over to the young lovers. “That was a much better sex scene than the last one you showed me.”

He laughed, loudly, than peered behind him with an embarrassed look on his face, as if he might have startled the young lovers. “This was actually the first time I made love to Daisy, and the last time until 1922,” he added, fondly, melancholically.

I nodded, but grew puzzled. “Wait,” I said. “I thought you said you guys had, ah, known each other, as they say, back before you left Louisville at the end of the summer? You told me you “had her,” or something of that nature, before you had left for the war.

“Actually, no. I wasn’t quite on the up and up with you, Nick. Not sure why I said that.” He chose that moment to wave his cane and wing us back to the little Gatz house, and we were again standing in my living room. “No,” he continued, “I mean—a sexual encounter? There’s no way we could have gotten away with such a thing there in Louisville with her parents, their friends, and the servants hovering around all the time. It wasn’t so easy back in those days and times, old sport. They watched us like hawks, like a bunch of stuffy old-fashioned southern hawks perched on their baronial thrones.” He hesitated, staring at me with a sidelong glance and twirling his cane. “But that wasn’t the important thing, Nick, my friend. The important thing was Daisy got pregnant that last night in New York.”

“She got pregnant?”

“Yes.” He stopped to look at me speculatively, his eyes taking on a solemn expression. “Ok, prepare yourself for this one: Her child—our child—is, well, the young lady you have been entertaining the last few nights.”

“What?”

“Yessir, it’s true, and that’s the reason—along with the two of you knocking over my photograph and all that—that I am here, Nick. You have to know.” He turned to me, his bright blue eyes with a deep gravity. “Pamela is my daughter, old sport.”

I immediately blurted out again, “What? WHAT???” And I imagined I looked pretty wild right then, with my hair in an uproar, my mouth open, my eyes getting larger every second, as Gatsby laughed at loud. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost! Ouch, there’s a sad pun.”

“Oh brother, I need a drink.” I rushed over to the cabinet, poured a whiskey, and threw it down. Catching my breath, I looked hard at him and said, “That’s fucking amazing, Gatsby, , and, well, kind of hard to believe.” So Pam is not Tom’s daughter after all. Well, it obviously made perfect sense. Still . . . “But wait—“I pointed at him—“how can it be possible? I mean, are you sure you are not pulling my leg?”

“Yes. I’ve never been more serious.”

“Ok, I saw the way you looked at her—no, wait! You’re saying that Tom raised your?–”

“Daughter?” He nodded. “Yes, my daughter.” He nodded again and gave me the quintessential Gatsby smile. “Well, he did very little raising. But isn’t she something?”

“Oh good Christ, she sure is!” I sat down hard in my armchair. “She’s un-be-lieve-able. But how, Gatsby, how? And why?”

“I’ll tell you, old sport.” He came over and sat across from me, crossing his legs. “So off I went to Europe, right, after that night in New York. It was a torturous parting; Daisy was overcome with emotion, begging me to run off with her and not go to Europe. But I couldn’t do that, old sport.” He shrugged. “Looking back, maybe that would have been the best thing. But where would we have gone? And what we would do? And the Army would have found me, of course, and that would have been that.” He shook his head, the bright blue eyes lost for a moment in his recollection. He told me how she discovered in early spring, 1918, that she was pregnant, and wrote Gatsby the good news while he was overseas, and said she would wait for him. They had already agreed to marry when he returned, but once her family knew she was pregnant, and that Gatsby was the father, her father—Colonel Roderick Alexander Fay—forbade her to see Gatsby again and sent an angry letter to France warning Gatsby that he would be “taken out and shot” if he returned to Louisville. Then, the Colonel began frantically searching for a solution. And that solution–” He waved his hand as if summoning an answer from me.

“Was Tom?”

“Exactly. Though not right away.” Gatsby related how the Colonel had immediately put out feelers with his contacts across the country in search of the right sort of “eligible” bachelor. Meanwhile, they smuggled Daisy off to an aunt on her mother’s side in Cincinnati where she had the child in the beginning of September. “Remember what Jordan said about those ‘crazy rumors?’” added Gatsby. “That’s probably what they were about—that, and the secret of her running off to meet me in the Big Apple. Then it was just like what you said in your book: by fall of 1918—October to be exact—she was back in Louisville dating new people, and, as Jordan told you, “happy and carefree as ever.” But neither Daisy or her parents would give up Pamela, nor would they have the little living “Scarlet Letter” around. Daisy had, in fact, become resigned to her fate by that time, her life without Gatsby, and being very young, with the baby at her aunt’s, she easily returned to the careless frivolity of girls her age. Her societal debut occurred in November after the war and she was stunning at the ball, reestablishing her reputation as one of the most desirable young ladies of the south. But she wasn’t—she had a child, though no one knew except her parents and a few faithful servants. The right guy had to be found to take on the role, and it couldn’t be a local fellow. They found one—or so they thought—when, in February 1919, as I wrote in my novel, she was engaged to a guy from New Orleans. That didn’t pan out, but the next guy did: Tom Buchanan from Chicago, Illinois, fit the bill perfectly. It was the fathers of the two betrothed who set everything up.

Apparently the Colonel and Tom’s father had business connections and began corresponding with each other at this time. What the colonel had to do was find a man who was willing to not only marry a woman already with a child, but to play along with the scheme of obfuscation they had devised for dealing with Pamela. The Colonel had worked it all out, including the kind of offer that would attract the right kind of man—the kind of young man who was desperate and greedy. Tom fitted the bill. First, there was the desperation. The Buchanan family was going through some tough times at that moment, and, to add insult to injury, Tom was being blackmailed over his mistreatment of a young woman in Chicago. It was the usual thing, but this girl had legal proof of her injuries, plus a child, and demanded a large sum of money. The colonel promised Tom and his family $100,000, which not only paid off the woman and her family but established Tom in the style he was accustomed to living. In addition, Daisy’s father transferred a large portion of the Fay family folder of stocks and securities to Tom, which proved so fruitful that he really wouldn’t have to work for years, other than managing those stocks. “And we know how that turned out,” joked Gatsby. There were also half a dozen prime thoroughbred horses that the old man threw in the bargain which actually became part of that brace of so-called polo ponies Tom brought down with him from Chicago to emblazon his grand entrance in Louisville. Of course, it also helped that the woman he was marrying was young, beautiful and that he really wouldn’t have to see the child that much, let alone worry about parenting it. The stipulations were that Tom could never let on that the child wasn’t his, and that he would never know who the father was; that subject was never to be broached. “But Tom Buchanan could care less about the father of the child,” said Gatsby; “he would have money, horses, stocks, a serious financial and legal problem solved, and a beautiful young wife.”

He stared out my kitchen window. “They were married on June 10^th of 1919, as you know.”

I nodded, and suddenly thought of something I had always wanted to know. “Say, Jordan told me about Daisy breaking down the night before the wedding: getting drunk in the bathtub clutching a letter from you, right?”

“Yes. That was my letter. My last gasp appeal to her. But of course it was too late. And it wasn’t enough anyway. ‘A day late and a dollar short,’ as Meyer would say.” He raised his index finger in the air. “I’ve revisited that scene many times, Nick.”

“What did you write her?”

“What did I write her? What do you think I wrote, old sport? The same thing I had written before. I begged her to not go through with it. I begged her to wait. I told her I would be back. I told her I didn’t care about what her parents thought or her father’s written threats to me if I ever returned. I told her that I was going to make my name when I returned and that if she loved me, and she loved our child, she would wait—and never give up hope. I told her, I pleaded with her, to wait!” His features erupted in a grimace of frustration, pain. “I told her I would be back and I would marry her!”

He walked back to the window looking out to the oak and grew solemn in the shadows of panes across his face. “But she didn’t wait,” he said at last. “She couldn’t wait. And so she married Tom.”

He turned to me, suddenly. “Say, old sport, do you have that song “Summertime?”

“Yes, I sure do. The one with Billy Holiday singing?”

“That’s the one.”

I found the record and ran it on the Victrola, Gatsby murmuring, “Marvelous.”

Summertime, And the livin’ is easy

Fish are jumpin’ And the cotton is high

Oh, Your daddy’s rich And your mamma’s good lookin’

So hush little baby Don’t you cry

Gatsby, with a sigh, continued with his shocking story. Meanwhile, little Pamela was not at the wedding, of course. She had been set up with the aunt in Illinois who took care of her throughout most of her young life. After the wedding, Tom and Daisy went on a long three-month honeymoon to the South Seas, without Pamela, and when they returned it was off to Santa Barbara, California, where Tom got into the usual trouble with a local girl. Pamela joined them out there at the age of one—conveniently it was after Jordan and some other visiting school friends had left. The family reported that Daisy had given birth to Pam in April 1920, but Tom and Daisy were still out in California and so no one actually witnessed the birth—not even Tom, of course. Jordan never actually saw a “baby,” but reported correctly (as I wrote), that they went to France for a year. They took Pamela, now almost two years old, with them, but sadly, she wasn’t available on the few occasions when hometown folks like Jordan appeared for a visit over there—not that Jordan cared. “Not exactly a child-person, that Jordan,” offered Gatsby.

One of these mornings You’re going to rise up singing

Then you’ll spread your wings And you’ll take to the sky

But until that morning There’s a’nothing can harm you

With your daddy and mammy standing by

They returned in 1921, and as I wrote, moved to Chicago and followed a “fast crowd” there. None of whom saw or were interested in Pamela. They come to Long Island in the spring of 1922 and that’s where we all met Pamela. “They thought that no one would know or figure it out—and they were right. After all, Jordan was the only one that summer who knew them intimately.”

“But she had to be what almost four, and the, ah, fake Pamela was supposed to be, what?” I counted with my fingers. “One in 1921, and two in 1922. Not even Jordan could miss that.”

He scoffed. “Oh yes she could. Remember she has no contact at all with children, knows nothing about them—and either did you back then, right? So here’s this little child, and Pam was normal height but very thin—a little waif; she looked young. She was with a nanny—what you called “a nurse”—and that was part of their subterfuge. I mean the difference from two years and two months to three years and six months is very slight—especially if you are not involved with children generally or don’t have other children around to judge by. And they didn’t. Also, who there was even keeping track of when she was born and how old she was?”

It was true. I remembered back to seeing Pamela running by us one time at a club, yelling “Mommy! Mommy!” She could have been three easily. And she talked so well: “Aunt Jordan is wearing such a lovely dress.” She was very articulate. I certainly knew nothing about children at the time, though I would have caught it now, I think. “But Daisy told me she was two and called her a ‘baby.’”

“Yes. Daisy kept us all off track as part of the act. I mean, if Pam was over two years old, why would she call her ‘the baby?’ Also, notice how when you asked her about her little daughter, she changed the subject and told you how difficult her life has been. It wasn’t just cause of Tom, but because thinking of her child reminded her of how Pam was my daughter and of what she agreed to do to pull off this charade. And how she had betrayed me . . . the first time. She wouldn’t even talk about Pamela, but regaled you with her tale of waking up in the hospital in Santa Barbara alone—a story she concocted, though Tom had run off with another woman.”

“Ok, wait a minute.” I pointed at him itching my head. “You, you—when you saw Pamela that time in ’22, I was there, and you looked like you had seen a ghost. You were so uncomfortable.”

“I had seen a ghost.” His expression became grim. “It was my own daughter. I hadn’t seen her, I was unknown to her, I couldn’t hug or kiss her. I had been stripped of her presence all these years and unless I won Daisy’s love back again and got her to agree to divorce Tom, I wouldn’t be able to see her again. Yes, I was uncomfortable. My heart was breaking and all I wanted to do was bend down, hold her in my arms and weep for joy and consternation.”

He went to the window as the sun’s first rays starting peeking through the blinds. “I thought I would get her back too.”

Summertime, and the livin’ is easy

Fish are jumpin’ And the cotton is high

Your daddy’s rich And your mamma’s good lookin’

So hush little baby Don’t you cry

“Why didn’t you tell Pam? I mean, why didn’t you come back and talk to her like you are talking to me?”

“I couldn’t, old sport. Remember? It’s that synergy thing I told you about involving my picture and two people who want the same thing I do and all that. Only when you two did that monkey business with the picture could I return. A bizarre coincidence? Sure. Or was it fate? Think of all the strange coincidences in our lives together—you and I—like meeting up in France that way.”

“So are you going to tell her next?”

“Tell her?”

“Yeah. Tell Pam now. Like you did last time, appearing first to me and then to Sulla.”

He shook his head, a quizzical expression on his face. “I never appeared to Sulla, old sport. I only appeared to you—at this house. The picture is here.” He bent over my collection by the Victrola.

I was speechless for a moment. “You never appeared to Sulla?” I put my head in my hands. “Oh God.” I don’t know how long I just sat there in my chair with my head in my hands rocking back and forth. “If he didn’t see you . . . there goes my proof . . . but why did he act like he did see you then?”

“I don’t know,” he said shrugging and placed a record on the turntable. It was Paul Whiteman’s “Living in the Sunlight, Loving in the Moonlight,” with Bing Crosby singing.

I’m so happy, happy-go-lucky me

I just go my way, living ev’ry day

I don’t worry, worrying don’t agree

Winter, Fall and Spring, I just smile and sing

Things that bother you, never bother me

I think ev’rything’s fine

Living in the sunlight, loving in the moonlight Having a glorious time

Haven’t got a lot, I don’t need a lot Coffee’s only a dime

Living in the sunlight, loving in the moonlight Having a marvellous time

Just take it from me, I’m just as free as any dove

I do what I like, just when I like, and how I love it

I don’t give a hoot, give my cares the boot

All the world is in rhyme

Living in the sunlight, loving in the moonlight Having a wonderful time

Gatsby continued: “I assume because Sulla didn’t want you to think that you could see me but he couldn’t—like that would have made you a better friend of mine, or something.”

I didn’t know what to do with this information. But what did it matter after all? Gatsby was definitely appearing to me. I wasn’t crazy. After all, how could I know all these things? I couldn’t. And he was as real as anything I have ever experienced in my life. I decided to just ignore the whole issue. Besides there was still something I needed to know. Something I had always wondered about, particularly when Gatsby returned the first time. “I have to know one thing, Gatsby,” I came up to him at the window. “You told me before youstill love Daisy. Is it really true? And if so, how could you, knowing how she betrayed you?”

He took a deep sigh and let out the air. “I still love her, old sport. I will love her until the end of time, as someone once wrote. Truth be a liar, but never doubt I love.”

“Yes, but Love is a smoke made with a fume of sighs,” I countered.

“Ha! Very good.” He knocked his hand against the cane in thought. “I love her better now than e’er I did before.”

“Okay, okay,” I said, thinking—than I had it: “The love that follows us sometimes is our trouble.”

I pointed at him. “Right?”

He just turned and said expansively, “Romeo had it: O love, o life. Simple, but, perfect.”

“Ah, fie upon it, fie!” I threw my hands in the air.

“Listen, old sport. Daisy was my beauty, my love, my passage to Heaven. My proof of the divine existing here on this mortal plane. How could I just drop all that?”

“But what about—“

“What about her betrayal? Naah.” He waved it away with the cane, his blue eyes glistening. “She couldn’t help doing what she did, Nick. After the horrible accident with Myrtle, she had no recourse, essentially. If we were married, well, that would have been another story. But we weren’t, so she went back to her home and—“he coughed—“husband. It was only natural. Do I feel great about it, thinking back? No. Or that she didn’t come to the funeral?”

“Or call me to ask about you or show any sign of—“

“No, no, no. She was blinded by her fear, and then, well, it was too late. You can’t expect a pampered naïve little soul like her to make such accommodations to that sort of tragedy, old sport. No.” He turned back to the window. “The important thing was she still loved me, and still loves me. Our love is eternal. And if you will love, you must forgive.”

I saw Daisy again, suddenly, as Pam described her, alone in her garden torn between her madness and her grief. I, too, felt an irreconcilable grief, and it was then, suddenly that I too could forgive her.

We stood together by the window gazing out and how strange to feel such kinship with the being next to me who didn’t essentially exist.

After a moment I asked, “So . . . what about Pam? You’re not going to tell her? I could bring her here—“

“No.” He seemed to wake from a reverie and the smile was back. “You can tell her, if you want. There were two things I’ve wanted in the next life that have kept me from moving on: One was revenge against Tom, or at least ensuring that justice was meted out to that son-of-a-bitch; the other was to somehow find a way that Pam would finally learn who her father really was. I suppose there is some sort of revenge in that as well, don’t you think?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I had hoped that Daisy would come to her senses and tell Pamela, but, well, you know how that situation has deteriorated.” He shook his head, looking down to the ground with a tight line to his lips. “My poor, poor Daisy.”

“I’ll tell her. Pam. It sure is all making more sense to me now; it will make sense to her as well. No wonder! I mean, I could see her being Daisy’s daughter, but Tom? I never could understand that one.”

“No. She’s very clearly my daughter. Have you noticed the smile?”

“Yes, I did.” I poked him in the arm. “But she sure didn’t get the dancing from you, old sport.”

We laughed.

“She’s really amazing, Gatsby. There something about her, it’s hard to explain.” I started rubbing the stubble on my cheek. “As if she is filled to the brim with . . . with . . .“ I shrugged.

“With love, my friend, she’s filled with love,” he said.

Yes, I thought, that’s exactly what it is. Then he came up to me with his arms open and I received the Grade “A” magical Gatsby hug. I heard him say through the blissful embrace, “Give her my love, and thanks, old sport, once again.” When I opened my eyes, he was gone.

Chapter Nine: Oh, and One More Thing

I sat at the kitchen table working my third cup of coffee. Lacy would soon be arriving. That would be fine, I thought. Morning had made its appearance about the Gatz house, and feeble feathered stirrings were evident in the branches of the big Oak and throughout the yard and fields. For some reason I had been playing Gus Amheim’s “It Must Be True” over and over, and it was finishing up as I made my decision, as I whistled along with the singer, Bing Crosby.

Beside a shady nook, a moment’s bliss we took to talk of love beneath the stars above I held your hand, and then I whispered “Dear I love you, I love you.” Or was it just a dream, an idle scheme of mine to fool my heart? And yet it seemed divine it must be true, I was with you, and you are mine, all mine.

It was time to make the call.

I picked up the phone and got the hotel in St. Paul and then her room. A sleepy voice answered, “Hello?”

“Pamela? It’s Uncle Nick, again.”

“Oh gosh. Did I forget something?”

“No.”

“Oh . . .” Her surprise racheted down to a relieved tone. “I was scared there for a second . . . Is anything wrong? You sound so–”

“Pam . . . I . . . I saw Gatsby again.”

“Really? Oh my good lord!” She laughed in a sleepy way, than halted mid-laugh. “Oh no, Uncle Nick—not more revelations? I don’t think I can handle anything else.”

“Well, I think you are going to like this one.” I could hear her soft breath on the other end and could imagine her rising from her hotel bed in wonder and sudden curiosity. “Can you come back as soon as possible? I’d rather tell you in person.”

“Okay, I’ll, I’ll—just give me an hour or so, and I’ll be on my way,” she said breathlessly, excitedly. “Oh dear.”

“I’ll have Lacy make us something wonderful. And then I’ll—you know—take it from the top.”

“You just can’t get enough of me, can you?” There was a faint gay laugh. “Alright, alright, I’m coming.”

I hung up the phone, and there was a huge smile on my face which would stay plastered on it for some time.

I had it wrong in the novel: it may not happen all that much, but sometimes, those boats I wrote about catch the perfect breeze, and bucking all cross currents, travel on to more blessed and paradisical waters.

The End