The Chosen and the Beautiful Page 13

  Her words cut off as Daisy rose behind her, the spade caked with earth swung high in her hands and then down hard against her double’s skull. There was a crack like some great earthenware jug splitting in two, dark wine spilling out, and in the torrent were lost sweet sparkling gems, there and gone again.

  Daisy’s double fell to the ground with the first blow. She didn’t cry because her mouth ended up in the sod, and Daisy struck her again and again. There was a smoldering smell, something a little like old blood and a little like freesia perfume, and then dim embers ate up her frock, hungrily devouring her. In all paper was fire, and the whiskey sloshed uneasily in me. I was ready to be sick, but then there would have been no one to watch Daisy, hitting her paper double with the spade and then when the flames would have risen up, digging into the nearby garden patch to throw fresh earth over her.

  At some point, I landed on my rear in the bushes. I wasn’t ill, but my eyes felt too dry and too hot. With my arms around me, I could only hear the refrain I shall live with this the rest of my life and God, is that a long time.

  Finally, the shovel fell out of Daisy’s hands and the only thing left of the poor paper girl was a smoking pile of earth and ash, something for the Fays’ gardener to fix when he rose the next morning and wondered what in the name of Heaven had happened on his nice lawn.

  By the light of the nearly full moon, Daisy was streaked with earth and sweat, her leg bleeding from where she had gashed herself with the sharp spade, triumphant. She had never looked saner as she stared down at her work. She reached down, picking through the mush for the pearls that were stained but somehow unbroken. For safekeeping, she fastened them around her own throat before turning to me.

  Daisy lifted my hand to her lips, kissing it almost gallantly, and then she went to put her frock on over all that mess. The slip was a loss, and the dress might be too, but it would likely get her back into the house without any questions.

  “You’re an absolute doll, my Jordan,” she said. “Are you sure you won’t take a ride home?”

  “N-no,” I said. I managed to stop my teeth from chattering because she was so calm and cool. Perhaps I should have tried the demoniac after all. “I’ll walk.”

  She kissed my hand again before pulling back.

  “All right, dear. Remember, back here at seven, bright and early. Mother insisted on that beastly veil, and it will take you and the other girls to get it on me.”

  “Of course.”

  I went out of the yard, walking down the street with my shadow cast in front of me by the yellow-eyed streetlamps. There was no wind at all on that hot June night, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw prowling lions and the figures of young girls rattling in the shadows, thin enough that when they turned sideways, they would cease to be visible at all.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Nick appeared uncharacteristically late for lunch that next Sunday, hair ruffled and a summery red flush on his cheeks. The only reason he was wearing his jacket was because going without at the Plaza tea-garden was simply not done. He slid into the chair opposite from me with a muttered apology, and I excused him because I was probably going to ruin his summer.

  “Gatsby?” I asked, and he looked down, nodding.

  “He brought me into the city,” he said, and I waved him away.

  “Darling, you must know by now that I do not care.”

  He looked uncertain about that, but he took my hand gratefully when I offered it. I had chosen a discreet spot in the tea-garden for our meeting, one sheltered by tall Boston ferns, almost invisible from the main room. It gave everything an Eden-like green glow, and barring the gentle clink of silverware on china, the murmur of the other patrons, and the distant wail of the automobiles motoring by, it was a private kind of place.

  Risking a quick look around, I brought his hand up to my lips for a quiet kiss, but before he could smile too much at me, I shook his head.

  “Business before pleasure, I’m afraid. Let me tell you a story, and at the end, you shall tell me how it ends.”

  “Is this a game?” he asked with a slight and willing smile.

  “Of course it is, dear heart,” I lied. “Now shush and listen.”

  I told him three stories.

  The first was set in October of 1917, the time I had come walking down the road and seen, all unlooked for, Daisy with her arms around a dashing soldier, someone so poor and so unrefined that there was no way to predict the creature he would become. It had taken a war to change him, or a murder, or a deal with the devil, but whatever he was in October of 1917, he looked at Daisy as if she were his heart left his chest, as if he didn’t care where she went so long as he could follow.

  “He looked at her,” I told Nick, “like every girl longs to be looked at.”

  “Do you?” Nick asked, but I waved him away impatiently.

  “I haven’t the time for that kind of nonsense,” I said, sidestepping the question, and then I went on to tell him about what had happened the night before Daisy’s wedding, though of course I gave him the version that Daisy wanted told, the one where she wept and then was ready to join the bridal dinner in half an hour. I could see that Nick believed an eighteen-year-old new drunk, heartbroken and half-mad, could pull herself together inside of half an hour, and it told me that he didn’t know his cousin very well. Some girls could do it. I could likely do it, though I preferred to make sure that I was never in such a situation in the first place. Daisy wasn’t good for that sort of thing. She could only lash out, quick and potentially deadly, but for anything that required a sustained effort, she was at a loss.

  Neither Daisy nor Gatsby asked me to tell him the third story.

  “They honeymooned in Hawaii for three months, and then they returned to Santa Barbara just after Christmas. By that time, I was living with Aunt Justine, and she could never bear a New York winter. We were out in Santa Barbara too, so she could catch up with her California friends, and all by chance, we were at the same hotel where Daisy and Tom were staying.

  “You never saw a girl so in love, or I hadn’t, anyway. She would sit on the beach with him by the hour, his head on her legs, petting his face as if he were the dearest thing. She never liked to let him out of her sight, and I thought they were on their way to becoming one of those couples joined at the hip and the lip.”

  “Jealous?” Nick asked, and I gave him my best withering glance.

  “Never of Tom,” I said. “Aunt Justine wanted to go on to Colorado after Santa Barbara, so we left, and I had it by way of Denver Post that Tom had been in a wretched smashup, his car against a wagon on the Ventura Road. They named him, and they named Pilar Velazquez as well.”

  “Who’s—”

  “The girl who worked at that hotel where he and Daisy were staying.”

  Nick shifted, looking uncomfortable.

  “Surely he was just taking her home?”

  I gave him a long look, and he colored, shaking his head.

  “I sound like a fool, don’t I?”

  “Of all the people in the world to defend without question, I should think that Tom would not be very high on that list,” I said archly.

  “You’re … likely right about that.”

  “I am. About nine months after that, in April, little Pammy was born. Then they were off to France for a year, and then it was back to Chicago to set up housekeeping close by Tom’s people. And that … didn’t last, though I don’t know the details of it.”

  I frowned at that, and Nick chucked me lightly under the chin.

  “Though not for want of digging?”

  I smiled at him, wrinkling my nose.

  “You’re getting to know me a little better. I never heard much about it, except from Daisy. She never drank like she did that night again, you know, and Chicago’s a hard-drinking town. I know they were planning to stay and then suddenly came East. I know that Tom doesn’t want to go back, but Daisy maybe does. But they’ve settled in the East now, and they’re as snug as oysters
in a bucket. Or at least, they were until you showed up.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes. You and Gatsby.”

  He went as pale as paper at that statement, and I made a face, reaching over to squeeze his hand.

  “No, not like that. Gatsby’s in love with Daisy. He wants you to invite her over to your house so he can meet her there.”

  Nick’s face took on a wondering look.

  “He wants to … have an affair with my cousin at my house? My house?”

  “Oh … Oh no. No one wants to have an affair there. No. He wants you to bring her over so he can meet her there. Since you’re right next door, you know? He wants it to be … I don’t know. Some kind of beautiful happenstance. A chance meeting where they meet each other through luck and fate.”

  “Luck and fate that he asked us to set up.”

  I lifted my champagne glass to him in acknowledgment.

  * * *

  He convinced me to go for a ride in a victoria around Central Park before I returned home to prepare for dinner with Aunt Justine. I would have said no, but after lunch and the morning I knew he must have had with Gatsby, I was feeling closer to him. The privacy of the covered carriage driving through the shady paths of Central Park was more appealing than I had ever found it to be before.

  Settled in the curve of his arm, I tipped us a drop each of demoniac from the crystal bottle in my purse. He licked his droplet off my finger, making me giggle a little. He was handsome when he wasn’t going on about his Middle Western manners and morals. I pulled down the voile curtain that separated us from the driver, and twitched open his collar, where I found what I thought I would, a dark bite mark from a wide mouth.

  “Jordan…”

  “You must know by now I don’t mind,” I said.

  “Maybe I do.”

  “If you mind, then you ought not do it,” I said smartly, and then I hesitated. “You … do want to, right? He isn’t…”

  Nick colored to the tips of his ears. I knew that he probably wouldn’t tell me one way or another. I sighed, petting his soft, dark hair.

  “Never mind,” I said. “You’re a dear. I don’t care about that.”

  “Do you care about anything?”

  It wasn’t an accusation, but an actual question. I hesitated, and he took my hand, kissing the palm gently. It sent a shiver through me, and I pressed closer to him. Even in the heat, he felt good, and I buried my face in the crook of his neck, pretending at a shyness I never had.

  “I care about a lot of things,” I said. “How much fun I have. What people think about me. My aunt. Daisy.”

  I hesitated.

  “You.” It wasn’t exactly true, not the way I suspected he wanted it to be, but it wasn’t not true either.

  He smiled as if the sun had come out, and it made me swallow hard, blushing a little.

  “Anyway, Daisy ought to have something in her life,” I said, looking away. “Will you arrange the meeting?”

  “Does she want to see Gatsby?”

  Of course she did. The moment I had told her he existed, the moment she knew he wanted her, she had been ready to fly to him. The only thing that stopped her was the fact that Gatsby wanted things done just so, fitting into some story that made me wary and intrigued Daisy.

  “She’s not to know about it,” I said, sidestepping neatly. “Gatsby doesn’t want her to know. You’re just supposed to invite her to tea.”

  Nick made an agreeable noise, and as the victoria made its way through the shadows of the lowering sun, I curled a little closer to him, letting him cup my face and lean down to kiss me. In that moment, I knew that he had put all thoughts of Daisy and Gatsby and the rest of the world aside.

  I reached up to ruffle my fingers through his hair, making him laugh a little.

  “You’re going to make me look a wreck when we get out,” he murmured.

  “Good. I want you utterly ruined, completely wrecked.”

  I kissed him harder until I could feel him rouse, his hips shifting a little as his kisses became more urgent.

  “No marks,” I murmured in his ear. “I don’t have the benefit of high collars like you do.”

  In response, he slid the scanty strap of my dress aside slightly, and I felt the nip of his teeth against the humid skin there. I clung to him as he put a discreet but credible bite on my skin, and then just as the victoria pulled out of the trees and onto the busier thoroughfare alongside Sixty-Fifth Street, I pushed him away, sitting up straight with my knees together, almost trapping his hand between my thighs before he pulled back.

  Nick grinned at me, looking quite debauched with his hair sticking up in all directions and his mouth red, and I decided that perhaps I did love him after all.

  “Wicked thing,” he said with some delight.

  “Of course,” I replied, pleased.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Dinner with Aunt Justine that night was a late affair at Christine’s with some of her friends. I affected a rather bored air whenever I was around them, women much older than me who occasionally said the odd deeply unfortunate thing about my race, but truth be told, I liked their company. I liked their independence, their wealth, the fact that they were so well-fed and poison-tipped, and they never cared who knew it.

  In some ways, it was a version of the role I had played in Louisville to the older girls, pet and doll and charmer. In other ways, it was like being set adrift in a sea where I couldn’t drown, where all the monsters lurking in the depths rather liked me and wouldn’t upset my little craft.

  After a rather good dinner of jellied chicken bouillon and a spectacular crown of lamb, the ladies lit cigars or their delicate hashish cigarettes according to their preference and got down to the real business of the day, which turned out to be the holy march that was setting up in Washington, DC, in just a few weeks.

  “It really is too very bad that everyone couldn’t keep their eyes up front and their hands to themselves,” said Mrs. Crenshaw. “I tell you, if you had not had the foreigners campaigning for the vote and devils putting their fingers into politicians’ pockets … well, the fun might never have stopped.”

  “I never thought it would last,” said Mrs. Wentworth, thumping her horse-head cane on the carpeted floor. She was a formidable woman who glared about her as if we were going to fight about it. “Demons, foreigners, one’s as bad as the other. By all rights, they should have been pushed back the first time we tried to quell the Chinese, begging your pardon, young Jordan.”

  “Accepted, since I’m not Chinese,” I said with a light laugh, but Aunt Justine frowned.

  “Really, Beulah,” she said. “I don’t see the Chinese or the demons making as much trouble as your average young hawk on the hill. I’m still not convinced the march needs my time or my dollars.”

  They were talking not just about the demons, I knew, but also about the soulless, though where they thought they could push them back to was unclear.

  The number of people who had actually sold their souls, I learned much later, was far less than what it was made out to be that summer. They were discerning, the men in dark suits who came through Jay Gatsby’s door. They liked power, they liked promise. The newspapers made it sound as if we were drowning in an infernal tide, and of course everyone knew someone who knew someone else who had done it. The temperance marchers, out their target after Prohibition passed, came after the damned, and there had been meetings, marches, the whole song and dance.

  I thought of what my aunt’s friends would make of Gatsby and his palace in West Egg. They had seen greater excesses at the fin de siècle, however, and they had also seen how that ended. As in, they might like to have their good time, but they also might have wanted to get well clear before the shooting started.

  After dinner, I kissed Aunt Justine good-bye and asked her to have Lara pack up some of my good dresses and my nicer shoes and send them on to East Egg, care of the Buchanans.

  “You’re getting along well with Daisy this summer,”
she said.

  “I am. She’s been a dear, having me stay before my matches and all.”

  “And her man, is he behaving himself?”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Of course not, Aunt Justine. But you know the type. A new girl every time he looks about and finds his arm free.”

  “Well, that’s a shame for Daisy, then. She ought to keep him in better line.”

  I thought sometimes that my aunt forgot about how big men were, how much space and air they could take up. Even Nick did it sometimes, though he made up for it at other times by being little more than a shadow at the back of the clubs and in overfull booths. Tom was like a hulking stone that some great hand had set down in the world, and it was the responsibility of others to move around him.

  That was too much to drag out on a Sunday night, so I only agreed, said my farewells, and gratefully took my aunt’s offer of the car and driver.

  I dozed on the way over the bridge, not waking up until the first stars were coming out and the air was finally beginning to think of cooling down. Before I rang the bell, I looked out across the Sound to see that Gatsby’s place was lit up again, so bright that it shone a jagged path of light across the waves towards me. I wondered for a moment if it was possible to cross the Sound on that broken path, and at the same time, I realized that while I couldn’t, there was a better than average chance that Daisy might.

  The butler opened the door for me with some slight resignation, and I was headed up to my usual room when I met Tom coming down the stairs. He was pulling on a pair of driving gloves with a distracted look. He gave me a rather befuddled look as we drew even on the steps.

  “She call you already?”

  “No, I’m just here to take advantage of your hospitality and your excellent food,” I said jauntily. “Why, should Daisy have called me?”

  Tom sighed, dragging all ten fingers through his hair.