Page 45 - The Great Gatsby

34 The Great Gatsby Gatsby's past 35 -

buttoned her up in her dress, and half an hour later, when we
walked out of the room, the necklace was round her neck and it
was all over. Next day at five o'clock she marriedTom Buchanan
without so much as a shiver.
1 saw them later that summer in Santa Barbara, and I thought
l'd never seen a girl so mad about her husband. lt was touching
to see her withTom.That was in August. One night a week later,
Tom had a car accident, and there was a photograph of him in
the local newspaper. The girl who was with him got into the
papers too - she was a waitress at the Santa Barbara Hotel.
The nextApril Daisy had her little girl, and they went to France
for a year.They carne back to Chicago, and then moved to Long
lsland. About six weeks ago, she heard the name Gatsby for the
first time in years, when I asked you - do you remember? - if
you knew Gatsby in West Egg. After you had gone home, she
carne to my room and asked me, 'What Gatsby?' And when 1
described him, she said in the strangest voice that it must be the
man she used to know. lt wasn't until then that I connected this
Gatsby with the officer sitting in her little white car.

By thc time Jordan had finished, wc wcre in a horse-drawn cab,
clriving through Central Park in the warrn half-light.
'lt was a strange coincidencc,' I saicl.
'But it wasn't a coincidence at ali. Gatsby bought that house
so that Daisy would be just across the bay.'
So when 1 saw him on his lawn that June night, stretching
out his arms, it wasn't just the stars that he wantecl to touch.
He came alivc to me; suddenly his shallow life of great wealth
ancl parties had a deepcr purpose.
'He half expccrecl her to come to onc of his parries, but she
nevcr did,' continued Jordan. 'Now he wants to know if you'll /)aisy came to my room and asked me, 'What Gatsby?'