I have enjoyed my lunch, he said, and Im going to run off from you two young men before I outstay my welcome.
Dont hurry, Meyer, said Gatsby, without enthusiasm. Mr. Wolfshiem raised his hand in a sort of benediction.
Youre very polite, but I belong to another generation, he announced solemnly. You sit here and discuss your sports and your young ladies and your He supplied an imaginary noun with another wave of his hand. As for me, I am fifty years old, and I wont impose myself on you any longer.
As he shook hands and turned away his tragic nose was trembling. I wondered if I had said anything to offend him.
He becomes very sentimental sometimes, explained Gatsby. This is one of his sentimental days. Hes quite a character around New York a denizen of Broadway.
Who is he, anyhow, an actor?
No.
A dentist?
Meyer Wolfshiem? No, hes a gambler. Gatsby hesitated, then added cooly: Hes the man who fixed the Worlds Series[65] back in 1919.
Fixed the Worlds Series? I repeated.
The idea staggered me. I remembered, of course, that the Worlds Series had been fixed in 1919, but if I had thought of it at all I would have thought of it as a thing that merely happened, the end of some inevitable chain. It never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people with the single mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe.
How did he happen to do that? I asked after a minute.
He just saw the opportunity.
Why isnt he in jail?
They cant get him, old sport. Hes a smart man.
I insisted on paying the check. As the waiter brought my change I caught sight of Tom Buchanan across the crowded room.
Come along with me for a minute, I said; Ive got to say hello to someone.
When he saw us Tom jumped up and took half a dozen steps in our direction.
When he saw us Tom jumped up and took half a dozen steps in our direction.
Whereve you been? he demanded eagerly. Daisys furious because you havent called up.
This is Mr. Gatsby, Mr. Buchanan.
They shook hands briefly, and a strained, unfamiliar look of embarrassment came over Gatsbys face.
Howve you been, anyhow? demanded Tom of me.
Howd you happen to come up this far to eat?
Ive been having lunch with Mr. Gatsby.
I turned toward Mr. Gatsby, but he was no longer there.
* * *One October day in nineteen-seventeen
(said Jordan Baker that afternoon, sitting up very straight on a straight chair in the tea-garden at the Plaza Hotel)
I was walking along from one place to another, half on the sidewalks and half on the lawns. I was happier on the lawns because I had on shoes from England with rubber nobs on the soles that bit into the soft ground. I had on a new plaid skirt also that blew a little in the wind, and whenever this happened the red, white, and blue banners in front of all the houses stretched out stiff and said tut-tut-tut-tut, in a disapproving way.
The largest of the banners and the largest of the lawns belonged to Daisy Fays house. She was just eighteen, two years older than me, and by far the most popular of all the young girls in Louisville. She dressed in white, and had a little white roadster, and all day long the telephone rang in her house and excited young officers from Camp Taylor demanded the privilege of monopolizing her that night. Anyways, for an hour!
When I came opposite her house that morning her white roadster was beside the curb, and she was sitting in it with a lieutenant I had never seen before. They were so engrossed in each other that she didnt see me until I was five feet away.
Hello, Jordan, she called unexpectedly. Please come here.
I was flattered that she wanted to speak to me, because of all the older girls I admired her most. She asked me if I was going to the Red Cross and make bandages. I was. Well, then, would I tell them that she couldnt come that day? The officer looked at Daisy while she was speaking, in a way that every young girl wants to be looked at sometime, and because it seemed romantic to me I have remembered the incident ever since. His name was Jay Gatsby, and I didnt lay eyes on him again for over four years even after Id met him on Long Island I didnt realize it was the same man.
That was nineteen-seventeen.
By the next year I had a few beaux myself, and I began to play in tournaments, so I didnt see Daisy very often. She went with a slightly older crowd when she went with anyone at all. Wild rumours were circulating about her how her mother had found her packing her bag one winter night to go to New York and say goodbye to a soldier who was going overseas. She was effectually prevented, but she wasnt on speaking terms with her family for several weeks. After that she didnt play around with the soldiers any more, but only with a few flat-footed, shortsighted young men in town, who couldnt get into the army at all.
By the next autumn she was gay again, gay as ever. She had a debut after the armistice, and in February she was presumably engaged to a man from New Orleans. In June she married Tom Buchanan of Chicago, with more pomp and circumstance than Louisville ever knew before. He came down with a hundred people in four private cars, and hired a whole floor of the Muhlbach Hotel, and the day before the wedding he gave her a string of pearls valued at three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.