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It had been a close thing that gunshot wound. Even the thought of that one small projectile, that one insignificant bullet that was mere inches from taking the most wondrous man from the world, makes me put down my pen and pace for an hour, makes me wander upstairs to where he works in a glittering office. Sometimes I go in. Most times I just open the door a crack and watch, his eyes off in the middle distance, talking calmly and confidently into the phone, his suit impeccably perfect, though I am the only one he sees most days, his hair rigorously slicked back and his eyes a perfect twinkle. Sometimes he sees me, hangs up his very important call and lets me come to him. Most times I try not to disturb him. Just seeing him in his element is often enough at these times. On the foulest days, when I’m dragged into the worse visions, images of the wound blooming on his chest, the way that glorious light might die in his eyes if the shot had been to the left just a hair, it takes more than a simple look. He knows those days, I think. When I push the door open, he closes the call, reminding me dreadfully of those many calls he turned away for Daisy’s sake. He lets me hold him close, breathe him in, places a hand on the back of my head and says quietly “I’m not going anywhere, old sport.” Sometimes it’s the days that hurt the most that make you feel the most love, make me feel like I truly am completely separate in his mind from the pain that came with Daisy.
It didn’t always used to be this way. Sometimes it’s easy to confuse my great Gatsby for a god when seen from afar. I know I did, even as I fell in love with him, even as I was willing to do anything for him. Looking back, it was almost like Daisy in reverse; A love that had been deified. But where in Daisy that idolization had hidden a wretched, selfish, spoiled child, in Gatsby it held an even more astounding man that drew my love more rather than shatter it with the cold reality. In some ways, the day of the gunshot was like a metaphorical death for my Gatsby, for in that moment, how could he avoid looking at anything but the truth? In his hospital room no one else came, not with the speculation over Mr. Wilson’s suicide note condemning Gatsby with the claim that he had killed Myrtle. True, by the point I am writing this, the whole ordeal had been gleamed over by Mr. Wolfsheim as if it had never happened, but then no one would dare be associated with a man with a mistress and murder. It sickened me, sitting alone at his bedside, the greed and selfishness and the frivolity hidden under the glamor of those parties I once held sacred. It sickened me, having to repeat over and over to his delirious questions that Daisy wasn’t coming, having to see the shock and pain over and over again on his face. I thought it would never end. Yet still I sat, letting the hours tick past that timeless space, watching him and touching him and vowing never to let go again, never to leave him again. It was a new pain each day to pull myself away from his side and go home to my empty, lifeless cottage.
And then he woke up. And in some ways that was worse. The horrid reality stuck in his mind: Daisy wasn’t coming. Daisy hadn’t chosen him. Daisy was weak and mortal and not the Venus of his dreams. In those days I wondered if it would have been a mercy if the bullet had hit him in the one fatal spot. Most days it was like taking care of a corpse or a man with war weakness. I’m still not sure how I managed it, taking care of him in those days when all he would see was his crumbling vision of Daisy.
When he was allowed home, it was worse still in some ways. He stayed with me as it wasn’t very prudent to have an invalid to stay in that drafty house with too many stairs. Now, where the cottage had been a mere place to sleep away from the smell of antiseptic and the broken image of Gatsby, it was now filled with the melancholy of his broken spirit, thick and oppressive. I was terrified. I feared that if I turned my back, I would find he killed himself in a state of lucidity. His pain was that great. And it made it all the worse because it tore at me to sit by his side, to watch the man I loved and respected die slowly. Many times, looking at that hunched figure, I wondered why he kept going. I didn’t think on it long, as if thinking about it would trigger him to do it. There was a lot I tried not to think about in those days.
I had started to write again, when we returned home. I felt like I couldn’t do anything else. Work was meaningless. Work meant I was away from him and if he was dying I was determined to be there right by his side. What were bonds compared to him? Writing was the only thing that gave me comfort in those long days, though often times my material would only draw me deeper into my depression.
It happened one day, when I was writing on the terrace, sheltered from the chilly rain. The words on the page were wrong and painful, bitter and lonely, screaming as I could not do in life, not with him there, in so much more pain than I. I know not how long I was out there; a few hours at least. I had left Gatsby staring passively at the rain from the sofa, the very one he and Daisy had sat upon on that first fateful meeting in five years. It hurt, much as everything hurt, to see him there, as if he sat long enough Daisy would materialize out of the rain. I can’t remember what I was writing to this day, but it was one of those bad days, when nothing I could tell my absent reader would bring me comfort. The days like that were growing more and more frequent the more I watched Gatsby suffer. I don’t know how long he stood there, watching me, I like to pretend, before he finally placed a hand on either of my shoulders. I remember jumping, a cry on my lips at the unexpected contact, the unexpected warmth when it had felt like I had been cut off from all human interaction. Before I could turn to him and ask any of a dozen questions on my mind, he nestled his chin on the top of my head. That simple seeking of comfort made the words die in my throat.
After what seemed like half of an eternity, Gatsby finally spoke. “I’ve always thought I’m a man who knows what he wants, old sport. While…while I may have lied to myself after I created my dream…” Here Gatsby had to draw a breath. “I never once ignored what I wanted from life. From the start I wanted to be a great man and with the way the world was going and they was the war was building…well, being an officer seemed like the right choice at the time. And then in walked Daisy. But you know all about that, don’t you, old sport? For five years, a life with Daisy was all I wanted, all I bothered to dream up, creating more elaborate and more decadent fantasies that I…” Gatsby shook his head. “But that changed when I met someone at the beginning of this summer.”
He must have felt me start, because when I asked an astonished “Who?” I was staring into his upside-down eyes, bent over to look me in the eyes.
Gatsby blinked in slow realization. It was not an expression I had seen often on that face, upside-down or no, making him look more like James Gatz than the great man of the summer. “You…you didn’t realize, old sport?”
“Realize what?” An inkling of a thought began to pool at the back of my mind.
Gatsby let out a surprised laugh, seeming, to me at least, that all the gloom in the world had been lifted for one perfect instant. “You really didn’t notice! It’s not like I was being subtle.”
“You were never one for subtlety, dear friend.” I heard myself say.
Gatsby smiled and for the first time in months he looked like the man I had stumbled into this adventure with. “I suppose not, no. And here I had thought you must have known; you bantered with me so splendidly I thought you had given your answer!” A burning yet deadly cold feeling pooled in my stomach, hope and fear for wishes I tried so hard to ignore over the course of that beautiful summer. His eyes took on a softer edge. “Daisy was only half of the life I wanted for myself. That day on the dock, I only told you part of it, old sport, the part I was desperately trying to hold on to. The other half, I knew I’d never lose.” He chuckle softly at my confused face. “I invited you, Old Sport. I spent half of my days either with you or thinking of you. For God’s sake, Nick, I shared the first day I had back together with the woman I loved with you.” He smiled gently at me and I have no idea what emotion was on my face; fear, shock, hope, want? My throat constricted on me and he took pity. “The parties were mostly for Daisy, but they were also for you. It was you who I invited. It was you who loved them. I took you on dates. The Hydroplane, old sport? Did you not realize how hard I was trying to convince you about my made up past? Lord, Nick, I told you about James Gatz, dead all these long years.” He looked at me expectantly. As if it was all that simple.
“You lo-“ I was unable to finish the sentence. I swallowed and started over. “You had a dream; you had Daisy. What…why…It was Daisy. All you wanted was Daisy to leave Tom and marry you.” I met his eyes desperately and in so doing caught the pain in his eyes before he settled his chin back in my hair, his face sliding out of my view.
“No…no, old sport.” He said quietly. “Daisy was supposed to leave Tom and live with me in that big house, yes, but…you were going to move out of this cardboard box and help make that empty house feel like a home too. Daisy’s smile was going to light up every room, dancing in the ballroom while we sat together, drinking the finest champagne, maybe each take a turn dancing with her, the other watching as the sun sinks below the horizon.” He let out a shaky breath, hands sliding loosely around my neck to meet each other into what I wanted to call an embrace. “And that was just the start, old sport. I never really had a concrete dream when it came to you, Nick; there was no need to create a fantasy when you were right there. But I started finding that all my dreams started incorporating you. Extravagant dinners at long tables turned into small circular tables for just the three of us. Intimate boat rides turn into brighter, sillier affairs with you in them, but they became more precious because of it. Images of Daisy twirling in the clothes I had bought just for her turned into ones where you stood next to me smiling in carefully tailored suits that complemented mine. Quiet romantic evenings turned into cuddles by the fire, holding Daisy in my arms and listening to you recite poetry in my ear. And then the children.” His hands squeezed tighter, and I could see his hands whitening from the pressure. When he continued, his voice was a hoarse and rough. “When Daisy would get pregnant, we wouldn’t know who the father was. We wouldn’t care either, because the baby would be ours. We would laugh and joke after she was born, saying she had your nose and my eyes and Daisy’s lips. And maybe she would be yours and maybe she would be mine, but we’d love her fiercely anyway.” He held me tighter, an almost choking hold, turning his head to press his cheek against my head. “We would have a boy and a girl, one yours, one mine, and they would be the prettiest babies the world would ever see. Can you picture it, old sport? The three of us, curled in one big bed around two sleeping bundles?”
I could. I could smell the soft wind from the bay wafting through the curtains, could feel the delicate cotton sheets imported from England, could see the utter contentment on an older Gatsby’s face, could see the gentle smile on Daisy’s lips, even though the thought of sharing this beautiful moment with her and all her selfishness sullied the image. It was not the Daisy of reality, I tried to tell myself. This is the Daisy that Gatsby deserved, the one who was infinitely kind and sympathetic, who would dance all night and wear the glittering clothes he bought her, but would rather have him than all the jewels lost at sea. It didn’t help, not when Daisy was long gone without even a card to say where she was going or to wish Jay good health.
He shifted his hold, turning it to a true embrace; arms curling around my waist and his face pressed firmly into my shoulder. “I keep telling myself to keep the half of the dream I still have alive. I keep telling myself that I haven’t lost everything…but it’s so hard…it’s so hard to look away from what I lost. I was so close, old sport. I was so close. And some part of me thinks that when I turn back to you…you’ll have vanished when I blinked.” His hands tightened viciously. They relaxed slowly with a measured breath. “I’ll never know how you put up with me, old sport. I don’t see how you ever did, not when you thought I only wanted Daisy.” He whispered shakily against my skin.
“Well…” I tried to search for anything to say that wasn’t a declaration of the enormity of my affections. “It was you.” His silence forced me to continue. “Life without you would be…” My throat constricted around the words I had written over and over during the pain. “…nothing. Nothing I would want. Nothing I could deal with. Nothing I could live with. I…Daisy didn’t matter. Being with you was enough. Being your neighbor was enough. Having you smile at me was enough. Daisy…Daisy was natural. I…what I wanted…how could you want that?”
“Didn’t it hurt, Old Sport?” He whispered brokenly against my shoulder. “Every time I saw that brute with her…and you felt the same way…”
“You loved her.”
He laughed humorlessly. “You’re a better man than I am then, Nick Carroway.”
“Jay!” I wrestle out of his grasp and turn to him. Somehow, in all of these weeks, this is the final straw, hearing him finally voice the thoughts I know he’s been harboring. But as I turn to angrily protest that he’s worth every drop of gold, every ache of my soul, I take in the gauntness of his cheeks, the lines of tension in his shoulders and brow, the raw emotion clawing its way out through his eyes. My resolve crumbles, the strain of the last weeks too much to hold myself in check. I tell him that by heaven and earth, there is nothing I can do to be worthy of him in the only language I have left to me. I tell him through a kiss.