second time was that afternoon. Sitting on Tom’s lap Mrs. Wilson called up several people on the telephone; then there were no cigarettes and I went out to buy some at the drug store on the corner.
Then some people came- Myrtle’s sister, Catherine, Mr. McKee, a pale feminine man from the flat below, and his wife.
Catherine was a slender girl of about thirty with red hair. When she moved about there was an incessant clicking of innumerable pottery bracelets upon her arms. She came in and looked around so possessively at the furniture that I wondered if she lived here. But when I asked her she laughed, repeated my question aloud and told me she lived with a girl friend at a hotel.
Mr. McKee was most respectful in his greeting to everyone in the room. He informed me that he belonged to the “world of art” and I learned later that he was a photographer. His wife was shrill, languid, handsome and horrible. She told me with pride that her husband had photographed her a hundred and twenty-seven times since they had been married.
Mrs. Wilson had changed her costume and her personality had also changed. Her intense vitality that had been so remarkable in the garage was converted into impressive hauteur. Her laughter and her gestures became different.
“My dear,” she told her sister, “most of these people will cheat you every time. All they think of is money.”
“I like your dress,” remarked Mrs. McKee, “I think it’s wonderful.”
Mrs. Wilson rejected the compliment.
“It’s just a crazy old thing,” she said. “I put it on sometimes when I don’t care what I look like.”
“But it looks wonderful on you, if you know what I mean,” pursued Mrs. McKee. “If Chester could only get you in that pose!”
We all looked in silence at Mrs. Wilson who looked back at us with a brilliant smile. Mr. McKee regarded her intently.
“I would change the light,” he said after a moment.
“I wouldn’t think it’s reasonable,” cried Mrs. McKee. “I think it’s…”
Her husband said “Sh!” and we all looked at the subject again whereupon Tom Buchanan yawned and got to his feet.
“You McKees have something to drink,” he said. “Get some more ice and mineral water, Myrtle.”
Myrtle raised her eyebrows, then she kissed the dog and went to the kitchen.
“I’ve done some nice things out on Long Island,” said Mr. McKee.
Tom looked at him.
“Two of them we have downstairs.”
“Two what?” demanded Tom.
“Two pictures. One of them I call ‘Montauk Point-the Gulls,’ and the other I call ‘Montauk Point-the Sea.’ ”
The sister Catherine sat down beside me on the couch.
“Where do you live? On Long Island, too?” she inquired.
“I live at West Egg.”
“Really? I was down there at a party about a month ago. At a man named Gatsby’s. Do you know him?”
“I live next door to him.”
“Well, they say he’s a nephew or a cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm’s. That’s where all his money comes from.”
“Really?”
She nodded.
“I’m scared of him.”
Mr. McKee said, “I’d like to do more work on Long Island. All I need is a start.”
“Ask Myrtle,” said Tom. “She’ll give you a letter of introduction, won’t you, Myrtle?”
“What?” she asked, startled.
“You’ll give McKee a letter of introduction to your husband, so he can make some pictures of him.” His lips moved silently. “‘George B. Wilson at the Gasoline Pump,’ or something like that.”
Catherine leaned close to me and whispered in my ear: “Neither of them can stand the person they’re married to.”
“Can’t they?”
“Can’t STAND them.” She looked at Myrtle and then at Tom. “But why do they live with them if they can’t stand them? I would get a divorce and get married to each other right away.”
“Doesn’t she like Wilson either?”
The answer to this was unexpected. It came from Myrtle who had heard my question and it was violent and obscene, “Of course, not.”
“You see?” cried Catherine triumphantly. She lowered her voice again. “It’s really his wife that’s keeping them apart. She’s a Catholic and they don’t believe in divorce.”
Daisy was not a Catholic and I was a little shocked at this lie.
“When they get married,” continued Catherine, “they’re going West to live for a while there.”
“Why not to Europe?”
“Oh, do you like Europe?” she exclaimed surprisingly. “I just got back from Monte Carlo.”
“Really?”
“Just last year. I went over there with a girl friend.”
“Stay long?”
“No, we just went to Monte Carlo and back. We had more than twelve hundred dollars when we started but we lost everything. God, how I hated that town!”
“I almost made a mistake, too,” Mrs. McKee declared vigorously. “I almost married a man who was below me. Everybody was saying to me: ‘Lucille, that man’s below you!’ But luckily I met Chester!”
“Yes, but listen,” said Myrtle Wilson, nodding her head up and down, “at least you didn’t marry him.”
“I know I didn’t.”
“And I married him,” said Myrtle, ambiguously. “And that’s the difference between your case and mine.”
“Why did you, Myrtle?” demanded Catherine. “Nobody forced you to.”
“I made a mistake,” she declared vigorously. “I married him because I thought he was a gentleman, but he wasn’t fit to lick my shoe.”
“You were crazy about him for a while,” said Catherine.
“Crazy about him!” cried Myrtle incredulously. “Who said I was crazy about him? I never was any more crazy about him than I was about that man there.”
She pointed suddenly at me, and every one looked at me. I tried to smile.
“I was crazy only when I married him. He borrowed somebody’s best suit to get married in, and never even told me about it, and the man came to take it back when he was
