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Our first meeting was so inconspicuous, I hardly noticed it at all. Gatsby, as they called him, was just another man, sitting among the revelry. His eyes crinkled near the end, and he raised my glass to me.
“Enjoying yourself old sport?”
I gave him a nod and looked out onto the sea of people, dancing in frenzied rows to Irving Berlin.
“Nice party you have here, Mr Gatsby. I like it quite a lot.”
There was no reason, but compelled I told him I liked the party. Did I, with its garish decor and crushed velvet, long to get lost in the throngs spinning their way across the floor?
Or was I more fortunate to spend its duration on the outskirts with my mysterious host?
Gatsby smiled a smile, a radiant one that spanned from tanned cheek to cheek, although it dimmed slightly as he answered.
“Good. I’m glad you like it.”
Looking across the bay, a familiar light shone out. A green light, bright as day, called from the Buchanans’ dock. He kept staring, out in the darkness like God himself would appear in the emerald waters. I wasn’t in the mood to ask. So I didn’t.
I didn’t ask later, when he bid me farewell as the last party-goer to leave. And I didn’t ask when I lay in my bed, wondering why I couldn’t forget the sunken sadness behind his eyes. Why it affected me so, when I had been so faithful to stay out of others’ affairs.
Maybe if I had, I would have noticed my chest had rustled along with the trees.
They were happy. And this was what mattered.
I sat there in my larder, feeling my chest tighten impossibly as another tinkling of laughter emerged from my sitting room.
I agreed to this meeting, coordinated Daisy and Gatsby in the same place with the assistance of Jordan. Gatsby had seemed so nervous beforehand, so apologetic. I had simply taken his tarts and directed him into the living room, awaiting the whirlwind arrival of Daisy Buchanan. She had been Fay when he last saw her, and I wondered if the painting of her in his mind would crumble into flecks of dust or gleam brighter than before with their reunion.
I smiled softly as I tracked the water on the floor with my eyes. Clear as day, the small puddles brought in from Gatsby’s feeble attempt at a normal entrance were haphazard across the floor, evident of his nervousness. They were….well they were. They existed, a testament to the devotion a man could hold for one woman. And I couldn’t ponder any longer why they stuck with me so, and so I didn’t.
I sneezed. Maybe pollen was starting to ramp up outside of Manhattan, due to the summer heat. I couldn’t stand the laughter any longer, and stood up. They could be together, alone.
Coughing once more, I went to the door and unlocked it. Funny enough my throat reeked of pollen too.
Must be the wind.
“You can’t bring back the past, you can’t”
My words struck a deaf man. He rushed through the ruined frippery, shaking his head.
“But I can, old sport. I just have to make her understand!”
I stopped and watched him walk away from me, hair glistening with champagne from the events of the night. I breathed in, words on the tip of my tongue to tell him how wrong he was.
And then I coughed. Hard. I doubled over, and heard the footsteps in front of me halt.
“Nick? What's wrong?”
“No, I'm fine.” I rasped.
I couldn’t let him see me. See my failure. See the result of months of help, months of assistance carrying this rock up a forbidden hill.
It was after we had gone into the city for lunch with Wolfshiem. A jonquil petal, yellow and bright in its excellence, had fallen into my water glass.
I played it off as normal but it scared me more than I let on. And the more time I spent with my West Egg neighbor, the more I was sure what it was from.
Jonquils, violets, even daisies at one point. They filled my house and made me feel like a florist. But more importantly, they were a constant reminder that my willingness to help had grown into a dangerous devotion that I was unwilling to let go.
Now they were caraways, thin spidery white flowers that signified long lasting love. They stuck between my teeth, causing me to choke on the small white blossoms. I lifted a hand to my face, trying to make sure they didn’t escape. There was a sad, cynical part of me that laughed at the way my own blood had come back to crawl up my throat and remind me the one thing I wanted I could not have.
“What’s going on, old sport?”
“Nothing, it was probably just me choking on the bad air.”
I couldn’t let him see me like this. My role in his life was to be the observer, the confidante. I was the bridesmaid, not the bride. But the more Gatsby pursued my cousin, the more I became sure that my involvement in it would cost me my life.
I stood back up, swallowing the greenery back down into my stomach. I could feel vines stretch as I took a deep breath.
“Listen. Gatsby. You want her. But Daisy isn’t real. That love isn’t real. Trust me.”
“I beg your pardon old sport, but maybe you don’t know a thing about love. Jordan hasn’t shown you what I thought.”
Gatsby stalked away from me, as I leaned over, winded.
I called after him lowly, something he wasn’t meant to hear.
“Maybe she wasn’t the one who has shown me things, Jay.”
They didn’t only find Jay Gatsby in his pool and Wilson in the trees.
Collapsed on the steps, Nick Caraway had been found by a responding policeman to a call about gunshots. His skin was green, chlorophyll flowing where blood had been before. His mouth was stuffed with flowers, blue roses of a wilting variety.
In his hand he held a letter. The contents were read but no one but me, the author, and being Nick’s former girlfriend myself, I do feel a strange liberty to impose those words here.
Dear Gatsby,
I am dying. It is an inescapable, uncomfortable truth that I realized last night when I left you in the dark.
You taking the fall for Daisy, for aiding her behavior and sheltering her from the man who she left you for, was too much for me. It made me angry, but mostly it made me quite sad. Now I am not a man who elaborates on emotion well, but I am one thing better than that. I am a writer. And nothing can escape the pen of a man with nothing left to lose.
I am in love with you. The reasons escape me, but I’m sure that is how love blossoms. In the least likeliest of places. You claim that Daisy loves you, with her whole heart and soul. I claim back that I do not think anyone has ever loved you for you, rather than for your uses. Well, except for me. Call me a selfish, call me a fool, but I’d take those words over continuing to let you believe in an illusion. I began to burn for you, and it became too much. Being around you became too much for my heart to contain on its own. I have a disease, a fatal one. That part isn’t important.
What is important is that you know. I don’t blame you for any of it by the way. In a way, I’m happy that it had to be you. You won’t do anything about it, possibly become disgusted with me and my memory, but I could not fall into the ground without knowing that you understood how I felt. How I feel. Why it will be the thing that kills me, and why I am happy to embrace the arms of death.
Yours fatally,
Nick Carraway
Unfortunately the letter’s recipient never saw it, and the letter’s writer never gave it to him. I’m the only one left now. Both Gatsby and Nick are dead, and Daisy flew the coop with Tom after the events of Myrtle’s murder.
I somewhat feel obligated to Nick, however the short time we were involved. And that meant for me, being what he always asked of me but never received. So here you go, Nick.
Here’s me being honest.