“No, it doesn’t,” I said. “But I don’t understand. It seems like things are going well for you and Martha, aren’t they?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said. “But the money’s not infinite. It’s real, and it’s written down, and it has limits.”

  The way he said it was so plain and full of sense that I felt instantly foolish. I had always thought the wealth of places like East Egg and West Egg was endless, that if you were rich, you were rich in some infinite way. But now I realized that was as misguided as assuming that the price of wheat or gold would never fall.

  “This is my fault,” I said.

  Concern struck Gatsby’s face. “What do you mean?”

  “I talked you into giving Daisy a debut,” I said. “And from the looks of what you’re doing, it might bankrupt you.”

  “It might mean I have to leave this place,” he said. “But so what? I will have done all I can do. She’ll be a debutante with enough standing to know she has choices other than Tom. If that choice isn’t me, then I’ll still know I’ve done my best. She deserves that.”

  “Then what?” I asked. “You’ll leave West Egg?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Or New York altogether.”

  “You just talked me into staying but you’re thinking of leaving?” I asked.

  “As long as you’re here, it’s bearable.” He looked almost sad as he said it.

  I wished he wouldn’t say things like that. To him, I was a good friend. But my heart now followed his the way his followed Daisy’s. She was the sun around which his being orbited, and I was his moon, shadowed and undetected.

  A green-coated stretch of floral wire had been dropped or forgotten alongside the brick path, and I had an idea of how to brighten the mood.

  “Could you get some dish soap and water?” I asked.

  He went inside, and I loved him a little more for not asking why.

  By the time he came back, I’d twisted the wire into a honeycomb frame.

  “I’m intrigued.” Gatsby set the bowl on an umbrella-shaded table.

  “Have you heard of minimal surfaces?” I asked.

  “No,” Gatsby said. “What are they?”

  I dipped the wire frame into soapy water. “It’s the smallest possible surface within a bounded area.” I held the bubble-filled honeycomb to the light. “It minimizes the area within a prescribed shape.”

  Gatsby stood alongside me, both of us studying the colors that swam over the iridescence.

  “Is there some great lesson I’m failing to grasp?” he said.

  “Does everything have to have some sort of significance?” I asked. “I just wanted to do this.” I blew through the honeycomb, and bubbles flew at him.

  He laughed, lifting his hands toward the bubbles as though offering butterflies places to land. For the thousandth time since meeting Gatsby, I marveled at how a boy could have such a beaten-up heart and still have his wonder so untarnished.

  I dipped the wire back into the dish. “Think of if the surface of the pool could stretch as tight within its shape as you can imagine.”

  Gatsby blew through the soaped honeycomb, and bubbles floated toward the pool. On the floor of it was a spiral of iridescent white against the deep blue. Looking at it now with math in mind, I understood the shape in a way I hadn’t during the noise of the parties.

  I lowered the wire frame. “It’s a spiral shell,” I said. “Like a sea snail.”

  “Good eye,” Gatsby said. “No one notices. They just notice the bits of light it throws off when everyone’s splashing around in it fully clothed.”

  I’d seen it. Guests put on bathing costumes for the beach, but the pool always seemed to be a more impulsive decision. They jumped in wearing gowns and fine suits.

  “The man who built it had that pattern set down with little bits of opal. Can you believe that?” Gatsby seemed to be looking for something under the water. “You know, I haven’t used it all summer.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “Do you really think I’m going to during a party?” he asked. “I have yet to find a side lacer I can hide under a bathing costume.”

  “If your guests go in with their clothes, why can’t you?” I asked.

  “I don’t like to encourage that,” he said. “Especially among the intoxicated.”

  “So go in now,” I said. “It’s just us here. Why not?”

  He considered the pool, the same blue I imagined the Mediterranean might be.

  “Will you come in with me?” he asked.

  “Now?” I asked.

  “I have an extra costume.”

  I hesitated.

  “Do you not swim?” he asked.

  “Oh, I swim,” I said. “I’m an excellent swimmer.”

  * * *

  Gatsby gave me a challenge of a smile. “Show me.”

  I stayed down at the bottom, the blue so deep I could imagine myself on the floor of an ocean. Or, if I trailed that spiral of opal, inside a shell.

  As I surfaced, the blue brightened, the sun pleating into layers as delicate as tulle.

  I splashed through it and shook water from my eyes.

  “How do you do that?” Gatsby treaded water near me. “You were under for a hundred years.”

  “I had a lot of practice in the pond back home,” I said. “I can show you how.”

  “No, thank you,” Gatsby said. “I prefer staying where I can breathe.”

  “Come on,” I said. “You got me in here.”

  Gatsby’s hands slid through the blue, as though fidgeting with the water itself. “Fine.”

  He came close enough to let me tell how the salt changed his scent. It sharpened it, like he was coming to life in water.

  “Are you ready?” I asked.

  At his nod, we went under.

  We regarded the blurred versions of each other. Identical black bathing costumes covered us from our shoulders to the middle of our thighs.

  He looked toward the surface, like he might be considering kicking up toward it.

  I took his hands, calming him into being still. I’d learned from older boys that I could hold my breath longer than I thought I could. If I could keep Gatsby down a few seconds more than he thought his lungs could manage, he’d know the rush of doing a small thing you once thought impossible.

  Strands of light adorned our bodies and the bottom of the pool, like the bowing strings of chandelier crystals.

  Gatsby drifted toward me. He shut his eyes, and in my watery vision he looked as though he might kiss me.

  I had kept him underwater too long, and now he must have been light-headed. I wrapped an arm around his waist and pulled him to the surface.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Did I keep you too long?”

  “No,” he said, breathing hard enough that I knew he was lying. “Not at all.”

  * * *

  Querida Mamá,

  I was thrilled to get your letter, though I will admit, I wish it was about more than to ask whether I’d cut my hair. I haven’t. I know it’s too curly and full for a French bob. But there are such neat little tricks. If I put my hair in a chignon, I can style the pieces in the front to give that same sort of look.

  And no, I’m not plucking my eyebrows too much. Not too much eyeshadow or mascara either. I’m keeping it all on the rouge and lipstick.

  Mamá, Amelia told me the most awful thing. She told me you think I’m ashamed of you all, and that’s why I haven’t brought you all to New York or brought Tom to meet you. Of course I’m not ashamed of you. I’m heartbroken you could even think so. I’m not ashamed of Nick either. Would I have convinced Tío and Tía to let him come here if I was ashamed of him? Everyone here knows him as one of my oldest and dearest friends.

  Yours,

  Daisy

  CHAPTER XXVI

  By day I worked in the city, making sense of a universe of numbers as men lobbed trading instructions and college footballs over my head. I practiced the words Gatsby taught me (jam not preserves, writing paper not notepaper, wireless not radio). And Gatsby attended to business with Martha and to adorning the grounds.

  We spent our nights in salt water. The moon turned the wet sand to silver, and we lay on it, looking up. The edge of the tide inched closer to our bare feet, the biggest waves lapping at our heels.

  “Will you tell me about where you’re from?” he asked.

  I laughed. “Where I’m from, we tell directions by barns.”

  “You mean, ‘take the road after the third silo,’ ‘turn after two red barns and a green one,’ that kind of thing?” Gatsby asked.

  “Exactly,” I said.

  “We do that where I’m from too,” he said.

  The angle was wrong to see the green light across the bay. Instead, our view was the moon and its cape of stars.

  “What about your family?” he asked. “What are they like?”

  After I’d introduced myself as a son of the Beet Patch Caraveos, there was no reason not to tell him. “A long time ago, before we came to Wisconsin, we were where Texas is now,” I said. “Then it became part of this country. My family lost what little land they had left. Then it wasn’t long before they started north, looking for work as jornaleros, betabeleros. The Midwesterner growers, they were recruiting workers from Texas to harvest beets.”

  I kept expecting Gatsby to sit up, to make sure the green light was still there.

  “Do you miss them?” he said.

  “The beets?” I asked. “Not a bit.”

  He reached across the sand and lightly shoved my arm. “Your family.”

  “Sometimes,” I said. “I miss playing chess with my father, and losing every time. I miss how my mother can hear when a fox is getting near the chicken coop.”

  “She can?” Gatsby asked.

  “Oh, yes,” I said. “It’s just a sense she has. She’ll scream without warning and run outside. She’ll even wake up from full sleep like that and go right out the door.”

  Gatsby laughed. “Really?”

  “It still startles my father, even after all this time,” I said.

  In the dark, Gatsby talked of growing up poor in North Dakota, raised by his aunt and the woman his aunt called her roommate. He hadn’t seen them in years, and since they had no telephone, they corresponded only in letters and the money he sent them monthly.

  “They gave me my uncle’s name,” he said. “When I told them I was a boy.”

  He talked of enlisting, and this time he told me how old he was. Fourteen, same as I’d guessed.

  “And before I knew it, I was with the Sixteenth Infantry,” he said.

  “Didn’t they know you were too young?” I asked.

  “I think they probably did,” Gatsby said. “But when I said I didn’t have my birth certificate, they didn’t think anything of it. A lot of us didn’t have them. And they wanted anyone they could use. They just checked that I met the minimum measurements.”

  “Minimum measurements?” I asked.

  “Five-foot-three for height,” he said. “Thirty-four inches for chest.” With a hand to his chin, he gave a self-effacing laugh. “You’ll appreciate this. Have you noticed how few beards you’ve seen?”

  He was right. The most I saw on any man younger than Mr. Benson was a pencil mustache. But this had been one of a hundred details about Manhattan men and their heads. The smell of wax, hair shined straight back, the sheen of sharp parts. How they had specific dates on which they switched from summer hats to winter (felt hat day) and back again (straw hat day), and stuck to them even if the autumn chill or spring thaw was late coming.

  “Yes,” I said. “Why is that?”

  “Gillette razors were standard issue during the war,” Gatsby said. “Since they encouraged shaving, my lack of any significant facial hair simply made me look well-groomed. So after the war, the clean-shaven look became something of the fashion. Same with the close-shaved sideburns.”

  “They cared how neat you looked when you were fighting?” I asked.

  “It wasn’t so much that,” he said. “Shaving made it easier to seal our gas masks.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Of course.” How had I asked something so obvious? How many men in my county had come home with lungs singed from phosgene, or not come home at all?

  Gatsby spoke of the Argonne Forest with its hemlock and pine, the relentless rhythm of the trenches—six days in, then rest if they were lucky. He didn’t mention the cold and the mud, the weight of wet clothes, the rats and the smell of death, the influenza that ripped through camps in the last seasons of the war, taking soldiers even faster than it had taken my grandmother. But he didn’t have to.

  While Daisy and I had been children, Gatsby had been a child acting as an adult. Daisy and I had mourned cousins and uncles and neighbors, but we had been spared the bitter gallantries of what Gatsby had witnessed. He had lived in that poison and mud.

  “You think I do all this for her,” Gatsby said. “This house. The parties.”

  “Don’t you?” I asked.

  “I’m more selfish than that,” he said.

  “How?”

  “Because this is how I forget,” he said. “This is how a lot of us forget.”

  Like the iterations of a fractal, I understood how Gatsby could wear such a haunted expression at his parties and still want to have them. The glitter of paillettes, the floating sparkle of dresses, the trombones and clarinets, the whispering of beads—it all pushed back the thick gray of the Argonne Forest.

  “But doesn’t it scare you?” I asked. “All the noise, the bright lights? Doesn’t it just remind you?”

  “Yes,” he said. “But that’s some of the point. I’m hoping that if I get used to noise like this, and bright flashes at a party, then something being loud or bright won’t be as frightening. I’ll remember all this noise and forget the noise I want to forget.”

  I knew he was giving me something he would never give Daisy. This was a raw, rough corner he hadn’t polished to enough of a shine to present to her. And this made me want to hold it carefully, gently, all the more.

  “They don’t much like talking about it, and who could blame them,” Gatsby said. “But at every party here there’s a lot of us. We came home to a world we didn’t know anymore and a country that didn’t know what to do with us and didn’t much care to. Boys like you and me knew we’d have to work harder to be considered men, and we’d still have to no matter what we’d done in the war. Black soldiers came back to a country that didn’t value their lives any more than the day they’d left, even though they’d just risked them for it. The government still hasn’t given Bhagat Singh Thind and Marcelino Serna citizenship.”

  For a moment I saw a thread of light in him, a crack in all that romantic hope. It left me feeling, in equal measures, sad and safe. Sad because I didn’t want to see that hope for how fragile it might truly be. Safe because of how much this boy saw outside of himself.

  Tom could go on making jokes about how tan Gatsby was getting this summer. It didn’t matter. Gatsby would always be white, and I would always be brown, and that left a distance between us that could never quite be closed, like the inevitable space between atoms. But Gatsby noticed the things that were wrong in the world alongside the things that were beautiful. Perhaps there was no white boy in New York who might understand someone like me, a family like mine, better than Jay Gatsby.

  “None of us has the same story,” Gatsby said, “but a lot of us are after the same thing. We’re looking for ways to make a bright light or a loud sound be just a bright light or a loud sound, and not a hundred things we don’t want to remember.”

  Gatsby was a self-made boy, in so many ways. He had sandpapered down his accent and taught himself to say sofa instead of couch, to toast good health instead of cheers. But Gatsby’s life, the dazzling parties and pressed shirts, were as much a reaction against what he’d lived as it was a display for Daisy or anyone else. He was now a version of himself so utterly incompatible with North Dakota dust and blood-tainted mud that he might think of these things as belonging to someone else. He had carried the shame of it and then beat it back into the past with the light of a hundred chandeliers.

  Gatsby blinked into the night sky. “Do you know that we’ll send rockets to the moon? It sounds like Jules Verne, but it’s really going to happen.”

  He’d already turned the compass of his heart. All it took was the moon beholding itself in the mirror of the sound to give him back his dreams. And how could I blame him? If I’d seen what he’d seen, known what he’d known, I’d grasp at whatever beauty I still found in the world.

  I wanted this boy to have what he wanted, even if what he wanted was a chance at my cousin’s heart. I had offered my help making her a debutante whose very name carried the scent of a cascading bouquet. I had helped clear the way for them to fall into each other’s arms. Daisy might have been hesitating now, but she might still choose him. What kind of man could I call myself if I interfered with their happiness?

  When we went into the night tide, I kept my distance. Under the dark water, we couldn’t tell how far apart we were, so Gatsby’s hands brushed my arms. His ankle grazed my shin. I could have floated closer, pretending our nearness was the fault of the current. But this was as close as we could ever be, sharing this piece of the ocean.

  Gatsby and I may have been nothing to men like Tom Buchanan, but men like that did not know we were as divine as the heavens. We were boys who had created ourselves. We had formed our own bodies, our own lives, from the ribs of the girls we were once assumed to be.

  CHAPTER XXVII

  “You’re still here,” Princeton said on his way out.

  “You sound surprised,” I said.

  He leaned against one of the file cabinets. Everything from his hair to his tie pin gleamed of money. “If you start staying late, you’re going to make the rest of us look bad. It’s no way to make friends.”

  “I’m not trying to make anyone look bad.” I turned through a few pages. “I’m trying to find a way to look at this that makes it look better.”

  “I imagine I’ll regret asking,” Princeton said. “But hell, why not? I’m asking.”