Work Text:
Considering it was the tail-end of summer, the weather was rather lovely. None of the sweltering heat that often plagued the longer days, mellowed out into a pleasant breeze that brought with it the chirping of songbirds and rustle of the drying leaves. I enjoyed this weather the best. Full summer was suffocating, autumn caused the seasonal shift into bleariness, winter brought horrible memories of a brick building from a few years past through the cold. Spring always lightened my spirits, but the allergies award the spot of the best weather to this brief period of shifting summer to fall.
I especially enjoyed working on these days, letting myself slip into focus by the sound of the curtain’s billow. My novels were financially unremarkable, but I got by well enough, and it was an honest living.
If not a lonely living, my small countryside house to my own, family’s pleas for marriage falling unto deaf ears. I had a few work associates, but none particularly close enough to show up on my doorstep to visit. That’s probably why I was surprised to hear the knock while punching away at my typewriter.
I was even more perplexed when I opened the door to the sight of a woman. Sleek black hair grown out, with a short dress for the weather yet a wisened face. She was so different, in fact, that it took me a moment to realize it was Ms. Baker. Though I suppose it was Mrs. Bow, now.
“Jordan, it’s been quite a while,” I paused for a moment, giving her an odd look. “How did you find where I live?”
“Tracking you down was quite the journey. You’ve become a hard man to find, Mr. Carraway.“ She gave me a hardy smirk, reminiscent of her old carefree cadence through her sagely aging. “And hello to you too.”
“Yes, uhm, if you’d like to come in-” I vaguely motioned to the inside of my door, fully unprepared for any guest, especially someone I hadn’t seen in years.
She waved her hand. “It’s alright, I won’t be long. I’m simply a messenger to-day. I know you don’t particularly care to see me.”
I grimaced. I hadn’t wanted to say it, but it wasn’t wrong. I had been especially cruel to Jordan before my sanitarium treatment, and the lingering part never mended- I never apologized for missing her wedding, either. I was trying to be kind, but it felt like eggshells after my stormy treatment of her as a foolhardy disguise years ago.
“I’ve come to deliver a letter, in fact,” she continued, reaching into the velvet clutch she had been carrying. “I was to give it to you once you turned 40.”
“Oh!” I leaned forward, tilting my head with slight curiosity as she pulled out a simple envelope. “You remembered it was my birthday?”
In truth, until she had brought it up, I hadn’t realized myself. This day was known better to me as the eve of an awful death. 40, I’m getting old.
“Well, it’s a little hard to forget. You understand.” She gave me a sad smile as her powdered hand held out the envelope.
“Yes. Thank you, Jordan.” I tenuously took the letter, looking down at it with the slightest suspicion. “What exactly have you written in here? You don’t…”
She snorted, the old flapper-girl I knew a decade ago surfacing. “Don’t be ridiculous. I know your type- and I’m quite content to have only one man around, thank-you. Besides, the letter’s not mine. I just played the delivery boy.”
I laughed, quietly, but there nonetheless. “I’m just pulling your leg. Who’s letter is it, then?”
“That’s a secret of Pendersleigh,” she hummed as she fastened her clasp. “Happy birthday, Nick. See you anon.”
I didn’t reply, watching her return down my humble lawn to the black automobile she must have taken up- I had been too absorbed in my work to hear it arrive. It’s a snide thought reminiscent of my younger attitude, but I’m glad she didn’t stay long. I’ve tried to escape that summer, lest I break the dams. I still hold the lesson close, you can’t repeat the past.
This letter was curious, though. Once retreated to a leather loveseat in my tea-room- albeit it was less for tea and more for working out my writer’s frustrations, as evidenced by a rattan wastebin filled with rejected prose- I gently broke the envelope’s top from its seal.
The moment I saw the handwritten script, I felt my breath hitch in my throat. It certainly wasn’t Jordan’s.
Dearest Nick,
If you’re reading this letter, it must be your 40th birthday. So I wish you happy birthday, to a new decade. To wonderful things. I’m sure when we’re 40, we’ll have a new kind of wisdom to our names. That’s probably why I wrote this letter so soon- maybe you can look back on it differently than you would’a if I gave it to you now. You’re close to 30, correct? Forgive me, old sport, I don’t actually know.
I waited to give you this letter so you could read its contents with a more worldly set of eyes. I’m sure you’ll get why. Maybe you’ll even feel differently by now. But it felt wrong of me to leave this unadressed [sic] forever.
I guess I should stop rambling on. It’s just a bit hard to write.
I know that you feel love for me. I also know you think me a fool, but I can see it in your eyes. I’ve got a strong love in my own heart, I can tell that look real well.
My grip on the aged paper tightened.
Please, don’t be alarmed. I’m not writing this to blackmail you, old sport. Nor do I want to end our companionship. I know you might want to call me up right this instant, but I promise that you’re safe with my hands.
You might try to deny my assumption, too. But if my only basis was the way you act around me, I probably wouldn’t be writing this letter. See, there was a particular party of mine you got ragingly drunken at. You won’t remember it, because I had asked you the following morning if you did, and you told me that you had just hung around a while before leaving- and apologized for it. It’s funny, even when accusing my parties of boring you, you were so polite.
Well, you had clearly gotten too much of my champagne, because you were as tipsy as those fellows driving onto the lawn. I had to help you home, in fact, otherwise I’m afraid you would have tripped and fallen asleep in the grass by the hedge. This is all to say, you’re a man of secrecy, it’s obvious, and that’s a good trait in a city lad. But just like those other crashed city fellows, alcohol just happens to be the key for the lock.
I’m beating around it. You can probably tell. You tried to advance on me that night. Of course, it wasn’t anything too drastic, and when I resisted you more or less gave up. But still, you tried to kiss me with the alcohol on your breath, and you said it- that you loved me. Now, at first I thought, maybe you were just a purveyor of Plato, you’re a Yale man after all. But when you then tried to advance further I knew you were one of those fellows, of the Oscar Wilde type.
I’m sorry to be so blunt about it, and I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. I hold no ill-intent for that sort of thing. Between growing up with the lower-classed folks and living in this city, I’ve known quite a few men with congenital homosexuality. I know many look down on it, but really, I have no issue. I don’t write this letter to accuse you of anything nasty. I just don’t want this unspoken thing to fester any longer.
I like you greatly, Nick. You’re the dearest friend I’ve ever known. As I’m writing this letter, I’m still waiting for Daisy to call, and I think your presence last night did wonders for me. Even when I told you I’m not really a gentleman, you stayed. I know there’s a secret motive there, but I don’t think it cheapens the act at all. You’re such a dear friend, that- please, forgive any cruel phrasing- I think you might have infected me.
But this spat with Daisy’s husband, it’s not the end. It can’t be, for our love is too great for that to be the end. I’m sure when you’re reading this we’re a well-off couple, perhaps even married. You need to understand, old sport, this love is the most secure I’ve ever felt. Even if the companionship w [blotted]
That’s why I write this letter. Your eyes are filled with the same love that we share. I needed to tell you, that I know of your love, but my heart belongs to her. I hope, dearly, that you are not destroyed. If Daisy wrote to me the same, I would be destroyed as well. But it’s simply different, old sport. If I’m to be a man of this position, it simply must be. Me and your cousin, we’re soulmates, made for each other. I don’t want you to go on thinking that I might be yours.
I hope that some day- perhaps, at 40, that day has come- you can find the same love with another. Even if with a man, I simply wish you happiness.
I hope too, by 40, that we’re still friends, and you received this letter from my own hands. Then, I hope this will not ruin the friendship we have. I love you, Nick, I just can’t love you the way you’d want.
And if we’re not friends any-more, please, give me a call. I’m sure I’d like to hear from you again.
With love,
James
Ah.
I folded the lengthy paper, leaning back into the loveseat. All those rambling words, and it was just a rejection letter that came ten years too late.
My mind was struggling to process any of the arduously discursive sentences he had written down in his gorgeous hand. Trying to decide what to feel.
If I had received this letter the day after my 30th birthday, the very day he died, I would have indeed been ‘destroyed.’ Likely angry, too, that he had known all along. But I’m too old for that any-more, and Gatsby is too far away.
If anything, it was almost funny, in a sad sort of sense. Knowing what Daisy really felt. For all he wrote about how our loves were different, we had turned out the same in the end. I idly wondered if his ‘infection’ could have made a difference, if things would’ve gone differently that morning in the pool. But it’s far too late for that.
I suppose, then, there was the one other difference. Despite how hard he had tried to claw his way back, it was that difference which kept me sane at the sanitarium. That I always knew you couldn’t repeat the past.
I took up the envelope, licking the seal for any lingering taste of him. Then I tossed it in the rattan bin, gone with the rest of my pen’s woes.