It was the summer solstice today, when the light would last the longest and the gold stayed until dark. It was one of my cousin’s favorite days of the year, even though she usually forgot it was coming. I wait through the winter and spring for all that light, and then I miss it.

  “Why do you think I’m here about Daisy?” Gatsby asked.

  I shrugged my suspenders onto my shoulders. “I imagine you all have a lot of plans to get started on.”

  “No,” Gatsby said, and now the angle let me see the color of his suit, a blue that was almost lavender. “I had something else in mind. It is your birthday, isn’t it?”

  My heart gave a hollow flinch.

  “How did you know that?” I asked.

  “Daisy told me,” Gatsby said.

  “Why would she tell you that?”

  “I asked,” Gatsby said. “I was asking about you.”

  “Why?” I said.

  “She’s known you for a long time, hasn’t she?” he asked.

  Why would he spend his time with Daisy talking about me?

  Worry crossed his face. “Would you rather I hadn’t?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s fine.”

  “Good.” Gatsby handed me a tie as purple as a summer plum. “Because they’re waiting for us.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  He was already halfway to his car, parked on the path between the cottage and his grounds. The finish was a dusk lavender a little cooler than his suit.

  “Who’s waiting for us?” I asked. “Where are we going?”

  Gatsby looked back at me how any boy in the world would want to be looked at—as though there was such infinite possibility in me, such infinite light, that I was one endless, longest day of the year.

  “Come on,” Gatsby said, and so I did.

  CHAPTER XIX

  Once we got into the city, Gatsby led me through a flower shop with a gold-lettered window. But he didn’t stop at the counter, or at any of the clouds of pastel blooms, or even at the chandeliers of dripping blossoms that looked like the arrangements he’d brought into the cottage.

  “Frank,” Gatsby greeted a white man arranging flowers.

  The stems stood twice as tall as the vase that held them. Frank nodded back, shaking the stalks into place.

  “What are we doing here?” I asked.

  Gatsby turned back, his head haloed in blooms. “You’ll see.”

  “Jay.” A Black woman with her nails done in that half-moon manicure stopped Gatsby with a touch on his arm. She wore glasses in the oval shape I now knew to be this season’s fashion—I then corrected myself to thinking spectacles, not glasses—and a hat the same pink as the flowers she was studying.

  “And how’re the season’s brides treating you, Irene?” Gatsby asked.

  “There’s one who’s demanding the moon,” Irene said. “And one who doesn’t know what she wants, so everything takes twice as long. I don’t know who’s giving me the greater headache.”

  “At least June’s close to over,” Gatsby said.

  “And when it is, Belle and I are taking a vacation somewhere no one can ask me about trailing bouquets,” Irene said.

  Belle? She’d just said a woman’s name with the affection of a lover, in earshot of Frank and two other florists. I wanted to know Irene in the way I wanted to know Martha, but at the same time, I worried for her, saying another woman’s name so fondly. Would she lose her job if anyone noticed?

  Irene handed two tiny bunches of flowers to Gatsby, each stuck with a pin.

  “Have fun, you two,” she said, and then was gone in a mist of blossoms.

  Gatsby took one of the tiny bunches of flowers and pinned it to one of my suspender bands. I tensed so I wouldn’t shudder at his fingertips against my shirt.

  “Did you know these are called amnesia roses?” Gatsby said, touching the lilac petals. “The story goes that if you smell them, you forget the heartbreak of the past.”

  “I imagine gin has roughly the same result,” I said.

  Gatsby laughed. “But for a night instead of forever.” He pinned on his own and then slipped behind a wall of flowering branches.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “The gayest place in New York.” Gatsby pushed on a wood panel that turned into a door. “In more ways than one.”

  The door opened onto a space wider than the flower shop itself. The hum of music warmed the air, and the first person I recognized was Martha, leaning against a deep-finished bar. She looked straight out of a B. Altman catalog, wearing a three-piece skirt suit with a high-collared shirt and a row of cloth-covered buttons down the center. She was talking with a Black woman wearing a tuxedo, and I couldn’t remember what the lapels on her tuxedo jacket were called—though Gatsby had told me the difference between notched and peaked, I couldn’t keep them straight—but the lapel fabric shined like glass. From their expressions and gestures, she and Martha seemed to be complimenting each other’s clothing and discussing tailoring.

  The shimmer of beads adorned loose dresses. I noticed a woman I’d seen the first time I’d gone to one of Gatsby’s parties, the one who’d been holding a tube of orange lipstick. I’d since learned that the man who’d told me she was Chinese American had been right, which made me hope and wonder if maybe white New Yorkers made fewer assumptions, though I doubted it. The woman now shared laughter as glittering as her necklace with the woman she’d been showing the lipstick to. They touched hands every time they reached for their drinks. (Had they been this obviously enamored of each other at Gatsby’s? Had I simply missed it?) Patrons who—as the kind of boy I was, I couldn’t help noticing such things—seemed as though they might have been called boys at birth wore paillette-adorned gowns, thin brows, and dark lipstick.

  Gatsby stopped at a table where two women sat more next to each other than across from each other. They both had brown skin, and one looked a little like my mother in old photographs, and neither was trying to hide her adoration for the other. They held champagne flutes, and they laughed in that intimate way that created gravity, pulling them closer. They had on skirt suits restrained enough to make me wonder where they’d been before coming here. But they also had purple flowers tucked around their low buns, and I was nearly sure they’d put them in upon arriving.

  “Nick,” Gatsby said, “Helen and Frances, two of my first friends here.”

  “Jay, how did you manage to send this to our table before you even got here?” Helen lifted her flute.

  “Yes, have you been hiding in the flower shop this whole time?” Frances asked. “And who’s your friend?”

  “Nick is my neighbor,” Gatsby said, “and hopefully still friend by the time today’s over.”

  “What?” I asked. “Why?”

  Gatsby touched the table. “Happy anniversary, you two.”

  “Three years, can you believe it?” the women said almost in unison, and then collapsed into laughter. With that laugh, Gatsby and I didn’t exist anymore, and neither did the rest of the world. It gave me a hope as buoyant as the bubbles rising in their glasses.

  These women had just admitted to being together. Together in a way that could be pinned to an anniversary. How had they counted? From the moment they first smiled at each other? From the first time they both breathed the same jasmine-scented air?

  As Gatsby and I left them to their sparkling world, I leaned close enough to say, “They just said that out loud.”

  “That’s the point here,” Gatsby said. “Everyone gets to be a little more themselves. Remind me to introduce you to their husbands.”

  “Their husbands?” I asked.

  Gatsby indicated a table where two men looked as enthralled with each other as the women did. “Have you ever heard of a lavender marriage?”

  “No,” I said, though I could now guess.

  “They’re very chic in the Hollywood sewing circles,” Gatsby said. “Marrying for appearances is much easier when both husband and wife are equally fond of and uninterested in each other. I heard rumors that Alla Nazimova arranged both of Valentino’s. Do you want a drink?”

  “Seltzer, same as you,” I said. “You saw me drunk. I’m not planning a repeat performance.”

  So Gatsby and I drank soda water among the highballs and rose martinis. The microphone switched hands every couple of minutes, a new song each time. First the woman in the tuxedo, who then tried to hand it to Martha after, but Martha refused. The knowing shake of her head—the look of Oh no, you’re not talking me into this again—told me how often she must have come here, how many people knew her. Then came a laughing duet between two girls in beaded skirts.

  The air smelled like smoke and cedar and the dark pencil of eyeliner. Everyone’s sentences were peppered with phrases I didn’t know. Blue ruin. Bell polisher. To the gills. But unlike Gatsby’s parties, where I felt like a hayseed, everyone here had a generous air to them, like we’d all come in out of the rain together.

  A group pushed a laughing woman in a white lace dress toward the front of the room. She must have been thirty, maybe thirty-five, and tinier than anyone else here. Her large eyes and heart-shaped face looked as fresh as the flowers they thrust into her hands.

  Celebrants in sequin dresses flanked her.

  “We have a debutante tonight!” one exclaimed.

  “And she’s coming out in style!” the second one said with a wave of her arm.

  They rained flower petals down on the woman.

  “What are they doing?” I asked Gatsby.

  “A coming-out ball,” Gatsby said. “When you figure something out about yourself, it’s worth marking the occasion. This is how everyone here does it.”

  The petal-crowned debutante danced with Martha, and then with the woman in the tuxedo. Men who seemed generally more interested in each other greeted her with the enthusiasm of waltzing with a bride at a wedding. Next she danced with young men who, I thought, were maybe the same kind of boys Gatsby and I were.

  “And if I’m not mistaken,” a woman in a beaded dress said, “we have a birthday boy here.”

  I looked at Gatsby. “You didn’t.”

  Gatsby grinned.

  When a group came over to us, I grabbed Gatsby’s arm. “Oh, no you don’t. If I’m going, you’re coming with me.”

  I pulled him along as we were gathered into the center of the group. One woman said my birthday made me a summer boy, and a sequined dress chorus said that was my name now. Hands with polished nails rained flowers down on us. Men who seemed like older versions of boys like Gatsby and me patted us both on the back, and it felt like a world of pride away from how Tom Buchanan did it.

  The music grew louder, and then half the group was dancing, the room shuddering with frantic joy.

  Gatsby held on to me, and I was too happy to think too hard about how his arm felt.

  “Are you all right with all this?” he asked.

  I shut my eyes as tiny petals caught on my eyelashes, laughing as I said, “I’m having the gayest time.”

  The celebratory fever around us was the only explanation I had for why I kissed him. And it was the only explanation I could come up with for why he kissed me back.

  It all felt friendly and casual, more like a greeting than an overture. The cheers of our fellow revelers spurred us on, his mouth hot on mine as he kissed me harder.

  But when we stopped, he laughed, like we’d thrown tinsel or sprayed champagne fluff everywhere.

  That was how I knew it was nothing but fun to him. That was how I knew I didn’t have to think about it too much. We’d gotten swept up in the impossible magic of so many hearts being fearlessly themselves.

  That was all.

  * * *

  Querido Papá,

  I haven’t heard from Mamá, so I will bore you next.

  Do you remember telling me growing up how things are always interesting when you’re paying attention? Well, today I paid attention to every taxicab I saw. Just in an afternoon, I spotted gray, green, midnight blue (at Grand Central Terminal), purple (near the library), even a checkered one (outside the old Putnam Building on Forty-Third and Forty-Fourth. It runs a whole city block, did you know that?).

  I miss you all terribly. And I’d be over the moon if you’d write back.

  Yours,

  Daisy

  P.S. Please tell Amelia she was right about me eating ketchup on toast. It seems it’s just as tacky as she said it was. You know better than anyone that of all my sisters, she likes saying “I told you so” the most, so please let her know I’ve said it to myself on her behalf.

  CHAPTER XX

  “Is this necessary?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Gatsby said. “You’re attending a debutante ball. That means full evening dress. And they’re going to need time to fit it to you. This is just to get an idea of how close we are.”

  “But a tuxedo?” I asked. “Really?”

  “That is full evening dress,” he said. “I’ve clearly been slacking on tutoring you.”

  At least the waistcoat was shorter than what I’d seen in pictures. And at least I was trying all this on in Gatsby’s closet instead of a busy shop.

  Full outfit on, I presented myself. “Go ahead and laugh.”

  Gatsby’s eyes fixed on me. “Why would I laugh?” He blinked, as though coming back from somewhere. “I think we’re close. Do you mind if I grab at you a bit?”

  I cleared my throat. “Mind if you what?”

  “No pins, I promise,” he said.

  “Oh,” I said. He was talking about checking the fit. “Sure. Go ahead.”

  I kept my body still, holding off any reaction to his hands brushing my shoulders, my waist, checking the jacket, the extra fabric at the pant hem. His fingers skimmed along the loose bow tie hanging around my neck. I hadn’t known where to start with tying it.

  He was close enough that I could smell his cologne, something green growing under rain, like wild clary. Alongside the dark wood shelves of his bedroom, I felt the dividing pull of something between lovesickness and homesickness. The green of that cologne and the deep wood called up Wisconsin trees.

  I shut my eyes for just a second. I didn’t want him to see me doing it. I didn’t want him worrying over that one kiss, or thinking I was in love with him.

  He took hold of the lapels, shifting the seams on my shoulders. “You look marvelous.”

  I would have sworn to a priest that Gatsby’s smile pulled light in through the windows.

  * * *

  The moment I unlocked the cottage door, the sight of Dechert pinned me at the threshold.

  I had caught him in the act of opening a drawer.

  A bowl of fruit had been knocked to the floor. A vase had spilled water and flowers onto a rug. Books I hadn’t brought but that I’d leafed through splayed across the floor and sofas. Things that belonged not to me but to the owners—stationery and pens, little decorative figures—seemed to have flown around the room.

  “Hey!” I yelled.

  I expected him to run, and my body geared up to chase after him.

  But he didn’t run. He regarded me in the doorway, as though he might continue his search with me standing there.

  “Get out of here!” I yelled.

  What else could I yell? I’ll call the police? I had a better chance of building Jules Verne’s cannon to the moon than having the police take my side against Dechert’s. I’ll report you to your boss? I didn’t know who his boss was, and even if I had, it was unlikely he’d mind an investigator tossing the place where someone like me was staying.

  I nearly shouted, You can’t just do this, except that he could.

  Nothing stopped him.

  He shut the drawer with a courteous air, like he was being polite. With a slow, deliberate shove of his hand, he threw one of my math textbooks to the floor. The pages landed in disarray, creasing them at odd angles. It struck me worse than Tom’s elbow in my face.

  “Evening,” Dechert said, and took the sea-facing doors out.

  My body still wanted to chase him, but I stopped it. Even if I overpowered him, the whole thing was far more likely to end badly for me than him.

  He’d left the kitchen in even worse disarray. Jars of flour and sugar pushed over. The icebox left open. I’d heard anecdotes about jewelry being hidden in containers of cereal grain. But did he really think I’d just toss all those pearls in with the oats?

  “Nick!” Gatsby was running across the grass.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “You left these.” He held up a folder of papers, numbers I meant to recheck before tomorrow. “They looked like work, so I thought you might need them. Then I heard the yelling and saw a car drive off.” He paused in horror at the state of the cottage. “What happened?”

  I wanted to tell him everything so that he’d know how badly I needed to get my cousin away from Tom Buchanan. But I had more reasons not to tell him. First was that I didn’t trust him with it. If he heard any of my speculation that Tom might have harmed Daisy, or at least used her without caring whether she got hurt, Gatsby might go right over to East Egg and start throwing his fists at Tom. However badly a fight between Dechert and me might end, that one would end worse.

  Second was how little I could do. Dechert had been in here and hadn’t made any try at concealing who he was. He didn’t have to. I was a brown boy in a borrowed cottage, flanked by millionaires. Dechert had nothing to fear from any complaint I could make.

  “It was just kids,” I said, as though I wasn’t, by the definition of most adults, a kid myself.

  “I’ll check around.” Gatsby made a circuit of the cottage. The reassuring rhythm of his footsteps slowed my heartbeat.

  “It looks like they didn’t get to your bedroom,” he said when he came back.

  It was as tactful a way to put it as anyone could have; I knew what he meant. They didn’t get far enough into your things to see your side lacers, or anything else that might tell them what kind of self-made boy you are.