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At Nick’s very first party at Gatsby’s, he gets stupendously drunk. Wickedly drunk. Absolutely sozzled.
Nick was drunk. To an extraordinary extent. The drinks had just kept coming, delightful silver moons of finger-bowls and champagne flutes constantly passing under his nose. The room seemed to shift precariously on its axis and everything swam pleasantly before him, like the cool suffusing waters of a pool in the summertime. He had spent the last few hours drifting around the edges of the party: the distinct embarrassment of being alone had slipped away from him a while ago and he was now content to simply sway to-and-fro with the fickle movements of the crowds.
With a kind of slow, gentle alarm, Nick found himself musing the contours of Jordan Baker’s wan face, which had appeared suddenly in front of his own. She moved her hand up and down his arm and, in the same way, her mouth moved up and down also. A distant realisation came wandering into his mind – Jordan was speaking to him. Her brows were pulled together: a comical caricature of worry which forced a luxuriated string of giggles from him. He was being coerced slowly in an unknown direction when a sudden lurch of the earth launched Nick forward and he stumbled. A feeble attempt was made to focus on balancing but was presently abandoned as a broad chest pressed solidly along his cheek.
*
The allure of a rousing Charleston number had pulled Jordan from where she had been smoking languorously in the garden and into the hot, gold clamour of Gatsby’s house. She hadn’t been there five minutes when she spotted Nick Carraway’s face through the mirage of strangers. She could see immediately the leaning posture, the loose grip he had on his empty glass, the unfocused expression.
Good God, thought Jordan.
She hadn’t expected him to be the type to get roaring drunk, and at his first of Gatsby’s parties too! He hadn’t seemed the type, but then she had never been the best at judging people. Jordan extracted herself carefully from the group of people she had been initiated into, navigating through the buzzing throngs of people until she arrived directly in front of Nick. He was even worse up close, and hadn’t noticed her yet; his eyes were focused somewhere past her as if she were a ghost.
“Nick, it’s me. Jordan Baker.” she said, pronouncing each word elaborately as if she were talking to her senile aunt. She gripped his upper arm, trying desperately to command his attention.
“How many have you had? You’ve really gone off the deep end.”
Nick looked at her hazily with a lopsided smile but said nothing, only burst into a fit of champagne-soaked laughter as if she had said something absolutely hilarious. It dawned on her that she had practically accepted responsibility for him and now had to figure out how to either get him sober or get him home. She couldn’t very well just leave him here. She took another look at him. Sober? No chance.
She was pulling him along, his bicep locked in her death grip, when he stumbled, lunging forward as if propelled by some otherworldly force, and smashed directly into someone.
“Steady, old sport!” the man exclaimed, reaching up to Nick’s shoulders to hold him still.
Jordan began to apologise profusely, dragging Nick’s limp body back from where he had simply crushed his face into the man’s chest.
“It’s quite all right.” He said, smiling assuredly and looking attentively between them both. She observed him for a moment, looking slowly from his perfectly cut blond hair to his proud, rigid posture. She had a feeling she had known him, but she couldn’t place his face.
“No, really, I am very sorry. He’s absolutely drunk.” She repeated for the third time.
“I’ll call him a taxi.” The man decided suddenly, looking again to Nick, who was staring with a kind of queer unreserved wonder at him. A servant holding a black telephone, served on a silver platter, appeared at the man’s elbow: he reached immediately for it. Jordan watched, stunned. How can he just summon a telephone? Who is he?
“There’s no need.” Jordan protested hastily, “He lives right next door. I’m taking him there now.”
“I can take him.” He offered easily, the favour leaving his lips as if nothing else would please him more than to help Nick get home. Surely, Jordan thought, surely, he had some other place to be, someone else to talk to. He must have a girl waiting for him behind a closed door, innumerable gaggles of devotees ready to cling on his every word. He seemed that kind of man whom, despite not being particularly special or interesting, people wanted to be seen with. If you had someone like him around you, then you knew you were going up in the world.
Jordan secured her grip tighter on Nick’s arm, feeling a pang of protectiveness over him. He was entirely vulnerable, stumbling alongside her like a baby foal taking its first steps. She had no idea who this man was and wasn’t about to just hand him off to a stranger, no matter how charming he was.
“That’s a very kind offer,” she began, “but-”
“It’s a host’s responsibility to look after their guests.” He interrupted.
Jordan stopped and gaped at him.
“You’re Gatsby?”
“I’m Gatsby.” He said, and for a second Jordan had half a mind to disbelieve him. But the basic sincerity of his tone settled in the air between them and she tilted her head back to affect scrutiny.
“I thought you knew. I’m afraid I am the host – but not a very good one, clearly.” Gatsby chuckled drily before continuing, “It really is no trouble. In fact, I would be delighted.”
And he really did look delighted. His eyes flicked back and forth between her and Nick.
“Well...” Jordan said slowly, rolling the word around in her mouth like a piece of candy. She considered. Around them, the hilarity had been reaching its climax, with a frantic choir composed of laughter, dancing, and drink, all working in a chaotic harmony to drive everyone towards the height of frenetic pleasure. She imagined herself being somewhere, doing something when it – the fireworks display, custom at every Gatsby party – happened, kissing someone in an intimate corner or else getting almightily tipsy herself.
Gatsby really did seem nice enough. The rumours which had been flying around about him were all utterly unbelievable. I mean, really? Second cousin to the devil? Nonsense.
“Alright.” She conceded after half a second of deliberation, and Gatsby beamed as though she had granted him a great favour.
“But if you murder Nick there will be hell to pay.” Jordan said seriously, fixing him with her own murderous stare.
“I promise he is safe with me.” He vowed.
Simultaneously, they looked to Nick. Despite having been almost entirely forgotten about by Jordan for the past five minutes, he remained the same, continuing to stare in a stupor at Gatsby. He was swaying dangerously and it was only due to Jordan’s absent-minded hold on his arm that he wasn’t falling over.
Gatsby glided to Nick’s side, propping him up with an arm wrapping securely around his waist as he guided Nick’s left arm over his own shoulder.
Jordan observed with amusement as Nick sagged into Gatsby, tucking his face into his shoulder and humming contentedly. Gatsby seemed to blush. Hm. She set the new information into the back of her mind for later. Right now, she had a scandalous party to lose herself in. Tossing a cursory thanks behind her shoulder, Jordan melted into the sea of people just as the fireworks began.
*
“You… where are you taking me?”
Gatsby looked down at Nick, at where his face was pressed firm against his shirt collar. Warm air puffed out across his neck as he breathed.
Their meeting flashed like an after-image on the back of his retinas – the sight of Nick’s face, flushed with his inebriation and yet captivating. He looked like any man on the street, but there was something about the subtle curve of his brow, his juvenile smile, his jaw. He didn’t understand it, but Nick drew him in. Gatsby continued to manoeuvre them towards the garden, and the suffocating heat parted like a curtain at the top of the marble steps. He welcomed the deep green air into his lungs and said to Nick,
“I’m taking you home, old sport.”
Nick spoke unintelligibly but Gatsby assumed he had no quarrel as Nick continued to let himself be moved carefully, slowly down the steps. The string lights hung like a closer night sky above them as the raucous cacophony and whirlwind of dancers faded out behind them. There was no clear path to Nick’s cottage as far as Gatsby could see, and he peered ahead in the midnight gloom until he could make out the faint blue outline of his quaint home. And it was quaint, very quaint, to Gatsby. Quaint, and oh so very small!
Nick had curled even further into his body during their perilous journey as they left Gatsby’s trimmed grass and ventured into Nick’s wild, overgrown landscape which was full of thistles, with ferns rising in rings around each tree.
Nick’s hands, one clinging onto the front of Gatsby’s jacket and the other wrapped round his waist, were pressure points which he found greatly distracting. Every moment and at every step they took in tandem, there was a shift, a distracting press of another fingertip into his thin shirt or a squeeze of the waist. It called glorious attention to his own hold on Nick. The way Nick’s bony wrist was held so perfectly in his own palm. His waist – so grabbable! Almost immediately as he began to ponder the curve of Nick’s waist, he stopped himself and cringed deeply. He was meant to be aiding Nick, not ogling him when he was so completely vulnerable. It was ungentlemanly, and that was the last thing he ought to be.
Ashamed, he stared fixedly straight ahead and they hobbled up to the backdoor. He tried the door handle. Locked. Gatsby swallowed a curse and stood there dumbly for a moment, unsure of what to do.
“Nick?” Gatsby said gently, nudging Nick away from the crook of his neck.
“Do you have your house key?”
Nick blinked blearily up at him with his green eyes unseeing. A clear of the throat. Then –
“S’in my pocket.”
“Which pocket?” Gatsby asked, with a bone-deep sense of dread.
“Don’t know.” He said, and Gatsby had the notion that he actually did know, and yet was deliberately holding out on him.
There came an undignified kerfuffle, where Gatsby first patted each pocket tentatively and then wormed his hand into each of Nick’s pockets when he couldn’t tell which one the key was in. The cloak of darkness was a blessing, hiding their uncoordinated tangle of limbs as Nick wobbled and wavered at the clumsy pushing and pulling which was necessary to locate the key. Gatsby would’ve found being this close to Nick sensual, only the circumstances were so awkward that he was in a constant state of discomfort and was immensely glad when it was over.
With the rusty key safely in his hand – it had been tucked in one of those pesky secret inner jacket pockets – he swung open the door with a gentle click and coaxed Nick inside and up the stairs.
The pale silver moonbeams filtering through the window soaked the room in thin light.
“You’re ver’ handsome.” Nick slurred in Gatsby’s direction as he was being guided into his bed.
Gatsby’s movements stuttered for a second. A hot flush of confused heat passed over his cheekbones, but he pushed the remark away, shaking his head minutely. He sat Nick down on the edge of the bed. The side of his body where Nick had been felt cold and absent.
“You need to go to sleep.” Gatsby said firmly, “You’ll have a terrible hangover tomorrow, old sport.”
Nick flopped back on the pillow; his arms were outstretched invitingly. A boyish grin spread out across his face and he snickered languidly.
“Old sport.” He repeated.
Gatsby huffed a small laugh, watched Nick for a couple moments longer before he reached over and swished the curtains across the window. Then he passed like some ghoul around the bed and lingered in the doorway, looking back in the blue darkness at him.
“Goodnight, old sport.”
Nick suddenly frowned and made a helpless abortive gesture with his arm. He looked utterly abandoned.
“Aren’t you coming?” Nick said.
It took a little while of bewildered squinting on behalf of Gatsby (and beseeching staring from Nick) for it to click. A sharp intake of breath. Blinking. Sudden tightening in his chest. ‘He wants…’, Gatsby thought, ‘He wants me to get...’ Want flared up, rising in him like a viper, constricting his throat with half-shame, half-shock. It appeared to him clear as day that if Nick wasn’t completely inebriated then he would probably say yes.
“No.” Gatsby murmured as gently as he could, “Sleep well, Nick.”
Backing quickly out of the room, he pulled the door shut silently, leaving no room for a response, not even enough time to see Nick’s face fall.
It was only when the party ended, when only the stragglers remained in his halls and his house was plunged into blackness, that he realised he hadn’t thought of Daisy the entire night.
*
Nick woke up to a thumping headache, a cricked back, and a huge gap in his memory. The sunlight glowed brightly around the walls of his room, and he groaned in lethal agony at the knives it was jabbing into the bright flesh-red of his eyelids. His eyes were gummed up with a crusted glue, and he rolled over with a pitiful moan to press his face into the pillow. It reminded him of something, but he resigned himself to lying there limply until he heard the sudden terrifying, grating squeal of the telephone ringing downstairs. Nick could’ve cried.
He stood feebly, feeling unwashed and sweaty, and found, with little surprise, that he was still trapped in the previous night’s clothes. Parts of the suit were clinging, sticking flush against his sweaty skin in places where that shouldn’t be happening. Seams dug in where they weren’t supposed to. His tie was missing. He moaned to himself all the way down the stairs, feeling along the walls with aching arms and fighting a screaming head. It made it more bearable. The telephone was wailing its terrible song still, and he snatched it up with as much fervour as he could muster.
Jordan Baker shouted down the end of the line, and he pulled the receiver away from his tender ear with a cringe.
“Nick Carraway, are you alive or dead?” She demanded.
“Alive, unfortunately.” He croaked, tongue like sandpaper.
“God, you sound like death.” Jordan observed coolly, and Nick could imagine her expression, “It’s to be expected, the state you were in last night. Why, there were several times when I thought you were going to pass out.”
Nick shut his eyes to focus on her words, collapsing with a soft thump into an adjoining armchair. He moved his lips against each other, feeling the cracks in the dry skin.
“I don’t really remember what happened.” He said.
“You got blackout drunk – that’s what!” she exclaimed emphatically, “It’s past lunch now, almost one o’clock, and I’ve been ringing you since eleven just to make sure you hadn’t died. You know, choked on your own vomit. Or murdered.”
Nick chose to ignore that and instead said, tone belaying no small amount of confusion, “How did I get home?”
Jordan’s voice lowered then, conspiratorial, and he could hear the absolute smirk, “Gatsby took you home.”
Nick’s eyes flew open.
“Gatsby took me home?”
The one-dimensional empty figure in his mind shuddered and dusted itself down. He felt the enigma of Jay Gatsby was about to be explained at last.
“I was going to do it myself but he practically begged me to let him take your drunken self home.” He could sense her sly grin, “He was simply desperate.”
“Well, I don’t know why he would do that for me.” Nick replied finally, after a long pause, for lack of anything else to say. He couldn’t fathom the idea of it. It seemed fantastical – he could see no reason why his reclusive, mysterious and overwhelmingly wealthy neighbour would bother with him. Or anyone for that matter. And the idea of Gatsby being desperate, desperate for him: it gave him shivers.
“There’s only one possible explanation.” She spoke.
Nick’s ears pricked up.
“He must be in love with you.” Jordan declared.
“What?” Nick blurted, shocked out of his wallowing self-pity.
“Oh, it was quite obvious from the way you two were last night.” She replied matter-of-factly.
Nick felt as if he had just been dunked in ice-frozen water. What did they do? Did he speak to him? Did they touch? Kiss? The freezing cold dread of not knowing – was it incriminating? Was Jordan disgusted? She didn’t seem to be, or else she wouldn’t have called up in the first place. The frazzled wires of his brain fizzled and crackled with the attempt to connect a string of thoughts together.
“What did-” he faltered, “What do you mean?” He demanded.
“Oh, don’t worry. It wasn’t obvious – I’m just a mighty sight better at observing than the average person.” Her voice was jovial, and Nick was soothed by its apparently impartial view of his...misdemeanours.
“Anyway, whatever you feel is reciprocated. I’m sure of that.” She remarked, with a sense of finality.
“Whatever I feel- Jordan, I don’t remember him. Why, I don’t even have any clue what he looks like!”
He protested as his body recalled its hangover. His head pounded and he leaned his forehead on his upturned palm, keeping the phone pressed to his ear with the clamp of his head and shoulder. The blind panic of a second ago had quelled the symptoms of his hangover, but now they had come back swinging. He knew distantly that he should really have been worried about Jordan knowing of his inclinations, but it was just too far away for his sluggish mind to grasp. What he did know was that what she was proposing was simply preposterous.
“I haven’t met him before.” He sighed.
“You will.” She said smugly, with an air that she knew something he didn’t, “You won’t be disappointed.”
It took a minute of confused follow up questions from Nick, responded with radio silence, for him to realise that she had hung up on him. He hadn’t even registered the click.
-
At the sound of knocking at the door, Nick startled and almost dropped his cup of tea. It had been an hour since Jordan had called. He had dragged himself out of that sordid armchair and had miraculously bathed, dressed himself and was just finishing his late lunch. He felt a strange anticipation building, infusing his veins, and he walked slowly to the front door. It could be anybody. It could be Jordan. Or Daisy, surprising him with a visit. He placed his hand on the doorknob, feeling the cool, slightly tacky metal rub on his skin. Inhaling sharply, he swung it open.
A man, just slightly shorter than him, with an elegant face and earnest expression, was standing on his doorstep. His suit was impeccable, perfectly accentuating the broad lines of his shoulders which were held back in an enviable posture. Nick felt a warmth flood his face. He was attractive. His eyes were blue, hooded and looking right at him. God, was he attractive.
Aware of social etiquette and of the seconds ticking by, he was gearing himself up to stammer out a greeting when the man’s face suddenly broke into a smile. An ardent smile: entirely genuine. Nick’s heart stuttered. If he had more time to ponder it, he would’ve been more poetic about it but, as it stood in the five second in which he reacted, he was speechless. It reached something deep in his soul just as a well-timed, beautifully precise arrow pierces the centre of a target. Cupid had struck. Bulls-eye.
“Good afternoon, old sport!” he said, beaming at Nick with his unfairly radiant smile, “I was hoping you’d be awake. You see, I took you home after the party last night, and I was under the impression that you would like your key back at some point.”
He held up the key to Nick’s cottage, and Nick felt a secret rush of embarrassment at not realising it was missing. Then the reality hit him. This was the man who had helped him home last night. This was Gatsby.
*
He had been unreasonably nervous at seeing Nick the following day. Jordan Baker had caught him at the very end of the previous night and told him, in no uncertain terms, to approach Nick in the afternoon and introduce himself. Otherwise, she said, Nick will have to do it out of obligation and that will be more awkward for everybody involved, including herself. He hadn’t particularly wanted to argue with her and so here he was, clutching the key like a lucky charm as he made the short walk to Nick’s house.
It looked entirely different in the day. The long grass was, in fact, intertwined with flowers which he took care not to crush with his shoes. He carved the same path, following the already broken fronds and squashed daises, and gazed at the windows behind the white-painted patio. Nick must be awake. He hoped he was.
He stood outside the front door for three whole minutes before lifting his fist to knock. Smoothing back his hair with one hand, calming his fried nerves and slowing his breath. Then he smartly rapped his knuckles on the wood and stepped back.
The door opened. Nick, in a loose shirt and pants, stood there. Gatsby could see the marks of a wicked hangover: the mauve eye bags, the slightly damp hair (from the shower – oh god, don’t think about Nick in the shower –), the tired slump of the shoulders. And yet, he was gorgeous. In the heavenly light from the sun, he could make out the green glint of his eyes which had seemed a deep dark black, alluring in the midnight fog. He liked these bright, tired eyes better. Glossing over Nick’s seemingly startled expression, – he must be surprised to see a complete stranger on his doorstep – he passed on the key. Gatsby pressed the corroded golden metal into his palm and said, as a sudden afterthought,
“I’m Gatsby.”
“I know.” said Nick, and Gatsby smiled the widest he’d smiled in five years.