Jordan Baker and Gatsby came out together. Jordan’s party were calling impatiently to her from the porch, but she stopped for a moment to shake hands.
“I’ve just heard the most amazing thing,” she whispered. “How long were we in there?”
“Why, about an hour.”
“It was… simply amazing,” she repeated abstractedly. “But I swore I wouldn’t tell it. Please come and see me… Phone book… Under the name of Mrs. Sigourney Howard… My aunt…” She was hurrying off as she talked – her brown hand waved goodbye as she went outside.
Rather ashamed that on my first appearance I had stayed so late, I joined the last of Gatsby’s guests, who crowded around him. I wanted to apologize for not having known him in the garden.
“Don’t mention it,” he told me eagerly. “Don’t give it another thought, old sport. And don’t forget we’re going up in the hydroplane tomorrow morning, at nine o’clock.”
Then the butler, behind his shoulder:
“Philadelphia wants you on the phone, sir.”
“All right, in a minute. Tell them I’ll be right there… Good night.”
“Good night.”
“Good night, old sport… Good night.”
But as I walked down the steps I saw that the evening was not quite over. Fifty feet from the door a dozen headlights illuminated77 a strange scene. In the ditch beside the road there was a new coupe78 without one wheel. The sharp jut of a wall was to blame for the separation of the wheel, which was now getting attention from half a dozen curious chauffeurs. However, as they had left their cars blocking the road, the beeps of other cars added to the confusion of the scene.
A man stood in the middle of the road, looking from the car to the tire and from the tire to the observers in a pleasant, puzzled way.
“See!” he explained. “It went in the ditch.”
He was so surprised, that I recognized the man – it was the late customer of Gatsby’s library.
“How did it happen?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“I know nothing whatever about mechanics,” he said decisively.
“But how did it happen? Did you run into the wall?” “Don’t ask me,” said Owl Eyes. “I know very little about driving – next to nothing. It happened, and that’s all I know. I wasn’t driving. There’s another man in the car.”
The door of the coupe opened slowly. The crowd – it was now a crowd – stepped back involuntarily, and when the door had opened wide there was a ghostly pause. Then, very gradually, part by part, a pale individual stepped out.
“Wha’s matter?” he inquired calmly. “Did we run out of gas?79”
“Look!”
Half a dozen fingers pointed at the amputated wheel – he stared at it for a moment. A pause. Then he remarked in a determined voice:
“Wonder’ff tell me where there’s a gas’line station?80” At least a dozen men explained to him that wheel and car were no longer joined.
The beeping had reached its culmination and I turned away toward home. I glanced back once. The night was fine as before, but a sudden emptiness seemed to flow now from the windows and the great doors, giving the impression of complete loneliness to the figure of the host, who stood on the porch, his hand up in a formal gesture of farewell.
Reading over what I have written so far, I see it seems that the events of three nights were all that absorbed me. On the contrary, they were merely casual events in a crowded summer, and, until much later, they absorbed me infinitely less than my personal affairs81.
Most of the time I worked. In the early morning I hurried down the streets of lower New York. I knew the other clerks and young bond salesmen by their first names, and lunched with them in dark, crowded restaurants on little pig sausages and mashed potatoes and coffee. I even had a short affair with a girl who worked in the accounting department, but her brother began throwing mean looks in my direction, so I broke up with her.
I began to like New York, the adventurous feel of it at night, and the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and machines gives to the restless eye. I liked to walk up Fifth Avenue and pick out romantic women from the crowd and imagine that in a few minutes I was going to enter into their lives. At the city twilight I felt loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others – poor young clerks, wasting the best moments of night and life.
For a while I lost sight of Jordan Baker, and then in midsummer I found her again. At first I liked to go places with her, because she was a golf champion, and everyone knew her name. Then it was something more.
I wasn’t actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity. The bored haughty face that she turned to the world concealed something and one day I found what it was. When we were on a house party, she left a borrowed car out in the rain with the top down82, and then lied about it – and suddenly I remembered the story about her that had come to my mind that night at Daisy’s. At her first big golf tournament there was a scandal that nearly reached the newspapers – a suggestion that she had moved her ball from a bad position in the semifinal round. The incident and the name had remained together in my mind.
Jordan Baker instinctively avoided clever, shrewd men, and now I saw that this was because she felt safer in a company where no one would think that it’s possible to break the rules. She was incurably dishonest. She wasn’t able to endure being at a disadvantage and I suppose she had begun doing her tricks when she was very young. So she managed to keep that cool, insolent smile turned to the world and yet satisfy the demands of her hard young body.
It made no difference to me. Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply – I was casually sorry, and then I forgot. It was on that same house party that we had a curious conversation about driving a car. It started because she passed so close to some workman that our fender flicked a button83 on one man’s coat.
“You’re a bad driver,” I protested. “Either you ought to be more careful, or you oughtn’t to drive at all.”
“I am careful.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Well, other people are,” she said lightly. “They’ll keep out of my way.”
“Suppose you met somebody just as careless as yourself.”
“I hope I never will,” she answered. “I hate careless people. That’s why I like you.”
Her gray, sun-strained eyes stared straight ahead, but she had deliberately changed our relations, and for a moment I thought I loved her. But I am slow thinking and full of interior rules that act as brakes on my desires, and I knew that first I had to get myself out of that story back home. I understood that I had to break up with that girl tactfully before
a dozen headlights illuminated – дюжина фар освещала
coupe – двухдверный автомобиль с двумя сиденьями и зафиксированной крышей; название образовано от французского слова
Did we run out of gas? – Бензин закончился?
Wonder’ff tell me where there’s a gas’line station? – Кто-нибудь знает, где тут м-можно за-заправиться? (запинающаяся речь нетрезвого человека)
until much later, they absorbed me infinitely less than my personal affairs – в ту пору они занимали меня гораздо меньше, чем мои личные дела
she left a borrowed car out in the rain with the top down – она оставила чужую машину с откинутым верхом под дождем
our fender flicked a button – наше крыло сорвало пуговицу
