Daisy’s brown irises shivered in their fields of white.

  Daisy Fay had distanced herself from my brown skin and black hair. She had denounced me like a false religion.

  “You used me to make yourself look like some rich family’s daughter,” I said. “And then you broke Jay’s heart.”

  Now her laugh was unguarded and piercing. “I’m sorry. I broke his heart?”

  “Didn’t you?” I asked.

  “You need to talk to Jay.” She glanced past me. “He needs to tell you the truth, and you need to hear it.”

  “Are you angry at him?” I asked.

  “I’m not angry at him at all,” she said. “I’m angry at you. I care deeply for Jay, don’t you ever forget that. I love him. But not that way. And he doesn’t love me that way either. I know that.”

  “Then you don’t know anything,” I said.

  “Of course not,” she said. “Why would I? I’m not supposed to know a thing for myself.” She leaned forward, her skirt lapping at the night. “Men love beautiful, useless, expensive things. So I’m meant to be one. I’m not supposed to be anything but a beautiful little fool.”

  “Nick,” Gatsby called from the light of the service garage. “Let’s go home.”

  “Daisy’ll go with me,” Jordan said. “I think we could all use some sleep.”

  Daisy’s eyes stayed on me. “Talk to him.”

  For once, her posture didn’t speak of pale blue cosmetic tins printed with pink flowers. It didn’t speak of her imitating advertisements of virginal blondes on tree swings.

  This was the Daisy I knew, the one who jumped from the highest trees into the pond when everyone else was still gauging the distance.

  “Please,” she said. “Just talk to him.”

  * * *

  Gatsby drove us out of the Ash Heaps and toward the lush green of West Egg.

  “Have you ever heard of la luz mala?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “What is it?”

  “It’s light that looks beautiful,” I said. “Enchanted even. But it’s around something decaying. It’s light that results from something decomposing on the ground just underneath it. It comes from the vapor off that decay.”

  A ribbon of ash twirled through the air.

  “So you get these beautiful wisps of green light, but then they lead you into a marsh that might drown you, or a meadow full of snakes, or a forest you might never find your way out of.”

  “Have you ever seen one?” Gatsby asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “Then how do you know?” he asked.

  I could taste my own smile, bitter as gin. “Daisy’s mother warned me about them.” The irony of it, how Daisy’s mother had been so diligent in cautioning her children and nieces and nephews. Escucha, beware something bright like that, just out of nowhere. Daisy, her own daughter, had bleached herself so pale that all that was left of her was a green glow.

  “From far away, it looks like something you want,” I said. “But if you get too close, it’s poison.”

  * * *

  To my truest heart in the world,

  I can’t believe what we’ve done. I can’t believe we came out together that way. None of those men who’d been bragging about their millions could lift their jaws from the floor.

  Everyone has such ridiculous questions, like if it was Brussels lace on your dress, or if it’s true that I wore gold garters with diamonds (where do they get these ideas?).

  I won’t tell a soul that the only thing on my garters was the orange blossoms you pinned there. I won’t tell how those petals crushed their scent to my thighs as I greeted every fawning guest.

  With every picture I see of us, I’m delirious with happiness. There’s no one else on earth I would have wanted to come out with. You are every dazzling thing in the world. Do you know that?

  Yours, entirely enamored,

  Daisy Fabrega-Caraveo

  CHAPTER XXXI

  “Gentlemen.” Another of the Ivy League men who said what college he’d gone to more than his name—I thought this one might be Harvard?—poured a 4:00 P.M. champagne toast. “It’s all up from here.”

  Everyone raised a glass in a murmuring agreement except me.

  The Princeton man noted my empty hand. “Nobody got you a drink? Strange, since you always look like you need one.”

  “I don’t drink,” I said.

  “You one of the Mormons?” He swallowed half his glass. “I didn’t know they had Mormons in South America.”

  I ignored the array of incorrect facts. “I tried it as soon as I got off the train in New York,” I said. “It turns out I don’t hold my liquor very well.”

  “Know thyself.” The Princeton man raised his glass. “I respect that.”

  The Harvard man went on. “If you think we’ve summited the highest peak, get ready to go to the stars. And after the stars, the moon!”

  Everyone burst into applause.

  They were careless with facts about me, and the moon, and they were careless with other people’s money.

  Before I could think better of it, I said, “The moon is closer than the stars.”

  Scattered laughter replaced the dying applause.

  “Something you want to say, Carraway?” the Harvard man asked. “Care to give a lecture on geometry?”

  “I was just thinking about your toast,” I said. “And I guess we’re not going to talk about the potatoes.”

  A few of the younger men, ones who were shrinking freshmen at Yale and Cornell when men like Tom Buchanan were seniors, did laugh. But the rest of them looked at me with curdled expressions.

  “The overbuying of potatoes last week because no one double-checks their paperwork?” I asked. “How much money did that lose?”

  “Everyone makes mistakes, Carraway,” the man said. “Even you, I’m sure. You’ll never get anywhere if you’re afraid of them. Besides, you’re from Idaho, aren’t you? Shouldn’t you have warned us about the potatoes?”

  “And the Canadian dollar futures?” I asked. “How about those? The men you bought them from weren’t even Canadian. They didn’t know what they were talking about.”

  “How were we supposed to know they were crooks?” another man asked.

  “They bought the futures right before they convinced you to buy them, and when you bought them the price went up and they sold them.” I spoke to the questioning man now. “And you would have known what they were running if you’d asked around about them.”

  The traders averted their gaze, as though talk of logic or linear algebra might stain their silk ties.

  I could learn the right words and the right colors for shirts. But this was where I stopped. The next step was one my body resisted.

  “The market won’t hold forever,” I said. “That’s how markets work. And if you keep assuming it will, a lot more people than you are going to lose a lot.”

  “We’re going to be captains of the universe, my friend,” he said. “And you’re going to be back in Minnesota.”

  “You’re going to be broke, or you’re going to be rich off other people’s backs,” I said.

  “Carraway!”

  I turned around to the sound of Benson’s voice.

  “My office,” he said.

  I followed.

  “Looks like Benson’s finally about to clean house,” someone said, but I didn’t look to see who.

  Benson shut his office door. “What in the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “You’re the one who hired me to look at numbers,” I said. “Wheat prices predicting silver prices. How much gold investors buy when they’re worried about inflation. Trend lines. Models. Why did you ask me to play this game of dots and boxes if you didn’t want to hear what I saw?”

  “Because nobody wants to hear it,” he said. “That kind of talk can take down a whole place, Carraway.”

  “That’s not my name,” I said. “It’s never been my name.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” He got out his checkbook. “I won’t remember it anyway.”

  He scrawled out the sum of my last pay.

  “You know I’m right,” I said. “There are things you can do now so that when the downturn comes, it won’t ruin everyone.”

  Benson ripped the check off, blew on the ink, and handed it to me. “I wish you the best of luck.”

  * * *

  Mr. Jay Gatsby

  West Egg, New York

  Dear Jay,

  I know I’ve probably disappointed you to no end, and I think it’s time I give you a clear answer. I should have weeks ago.

  I can’t do what you’re asking of me. You see, my heart goes where Jordan goes, and the rest of me follows. I think you know that by now.

  It occurred to me that I never told you how I fell in love with Jordan, and since you’re a fellow romantic, I thought you might want to know.

  Did you know that Mrs. Buchanan’s private bathing room has a glass bathtub? Can you believe it? I swear that woman would put in a crystal floor with a fishpond underneath just so she could say she had one. Anyway, the first time Tom left me alone there, I showed it to Jordan, and I told her we should go in. I undressed right down to my camisole and knickers, lavender bubbles and all. Jordan stayed fully dressed, so I thought that meant she wasn’t coming in. But then she did, still wearing her ice-green charmeuse. She looked like a siren among sea foam, and I realized I’d been in love with her for a long time and hadn’t known it, and that she’d been in love with me for a long time and had known it.

  Maybe sometimes I’d known a little, when I saw the bloom of her lipstick on a champagne glass, or when she told me that bridal bouquets were getting so enormous I’d have to take a course of serious exercise in preparation to carry one. But I hadn’t truly known before Mrs. Buchanan’s glass bathtub.

  And that was that. We threw bubbles at each other like snow, and there was no getting my heart back. You know just what that’s like, don’t you?

  Yours, still,

  Daisy

  CHAPTER XXXII

  With that pale leaf in my pocket, I left the building. I stepped out onto the pavement in time to hear the far-off whistle of the National Biscuit Company. The paper grew heavy in my pocket from the damp air and the knowledge that I had failed at being a grateful son, a man who took care of his family.

  I walked, and the bells of St. George’s Church sounded. I passed through the shadow of the Flatiron Building, where men gathered at Fifth and Twenty-Third, waiting for currents of air off passing traffic to ruffle skirts. I continued north toward the park, where the glass gleam of the Plaza’s revolving door stopped me.

  There’s a moment before jumping into water where you don’t have enough of a chance to hesitate. If you go past that moment, you might not jump at all. It was in this spirit that I held my breath and shoved myself into the revolving door.

  I spun around once, and kept going, through the lobby and then out again. Marble-cooled air and then hot evening and back.

  “Sir?” a voice said.

  I spun, my world nothing but metal and glass.

  “Sir?” the voice said again.

  I kept spinning, trying to throw myself into orbit.

  “Sir.” The voice came resolute and loud.

  I slowed, falling to earth.

  A pane of glass stood between me and the worried face of a concierge.

  “Sir, you can’t do that here.”

  “No se preocupe.” I caught my breath. “I’m leaving.” I spun the half turn toward the street. “There’s something I have to do, anyway.”

  * * *

  Mr. Nicolás Caraveo

  West Egg, New York

  Dearest Nick,

  By now you must be awfully confused. I suppose I’m a bit confused myself.

  But here’s the best I know how to explain: I think sometimes you do the same thing so many times, you get tired of it. Maybe not if it’s the right thing. If you do the right thing over and over, I imagine it becomes part of you, like your own breath. But when it’s the wrong thing, there comes a point where you try it on for a thousandth time and realize how ill it’s been fitting all the while.

  You see, I spent half my life trying to get everyone to like me, trying to be what it was everyone would like. But do you know what I found out? If you turn yourself into someone everyone can like, you’ll probably end up not liking yourself much. If everyone in the world loves you, then really nobody does.

  That’s why you go after it, Nick, the star that helps you find your way. Everyone needs something that’s worth risking everything for. Even if the world doesn’t think that’s the right thing, even if the world thinks you should be going after something else, you have to know.

  I hope you and Jay have had it out by now. Why, that sounds ominous, doesn’t it? I didn’t mean it that way. I mean I hope you’ve discussed things.

  Do you know what I said to him last week? I told him, “You know that one day I’ll be old, don’t you? I won’t be as lovely as I am right now, at least not to the world. The world might think I’m harmless and sweet and a pretty sort of old lady, but it won’t be so impressed that I’m on your arm. Will I still be beautiful to you then?”

  And do you know what he told me? He said, “Yes, of course. No matter your age, you’ll still be a dream to me.”

  I think he meant this to be sweet, but all I could think was, my goodness, I’d still be a dream at that point? I wouldn’t be a fulfillment yet? That sounds exhausting. Does he have any idea how tiring it is to be someone else’s dream?

  He’s been trying so hard to convince me what delirious fun a life with him would be, and I’m sure it would be. But I worry about him. I worry that chasing after me or some other girl like me is something he’s done for so long he doesn’t know how to do anything else.

  So be sure that you know, Nick. Know the light you’re following.

  Yours,

  Daisy

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  I found Gatsby in the library, cutting the pages of a book with a letter knife.

  “Do you still love her?” I asked.

  He looked up. “What?”

  I wished he hadn’t worn the shirt he had on. As I’d been borrowing his clothes, he’d thrown different ones at me to try. That one, wine red, hadn’t fit me right. But now I thought of it being against my back and then against his.

  “She let you take the fall for Tom,” I said.

  “I wanted to,” Gatsby said. “I didn’t want her humiliated by everyone knowing he was stepping out on her.”

  “And you still love her,” I said. “Even after that?”

  “Yes.” Gatsby’s fingers traced a set of uncut pages. “Of course. Why would I want to spend my life with her if I didn’t love her?”

  Daisy’s green lamp was a luz mala, a luring light that would pull Gatsby out into the bay.

  “What is it about her?” I asked. “What keeps you so in love with her no matter what she does?”

  Gatsby fumbled the book. “In love with her?” He recovered his grip. “Nick. I’ve only ever fallen in love with one person.”

  “Yes, I know,” I said. “We all know.”

  “I really don’t think you do.” He set both the book and scrolled letter opener down. “Nick.”

  The light of a nearby lamp threw amber onto one side of his face.

  “Do you not know I’m gay?”

  The green of his eyes turned to twin luces malas, a bright lantern glow across a pond. Everything about Jay Gatsby pulled me into a marsh, a meadow, an ocean, and I was lost there.

  His time as an underage soldier in the war.

  His history as a breaker boy.

  How he’d come to say the words I’m gay with so little hesitation.

  How had he managed it? I hadn’t even known for sure that boys like me—like us—were allowed to claim the word gay.

  There was so much under the surface of this boy. He seemed to hold everything out in front of you so you could see it all, but he was simply giving you a mirrored surface. Like the smooth glass of the sea, the reflection concealed everything underneath.

  “If you’re gay,” I said, “then why were you chasing Daisy?”

  He slipped the partly cut book onto the shelf. “Do I really have to draw you the whole picture?”

  “Yes,” I said. “You do. You’ve been pining for her for years. You bought this house. You had these parties. To win her heart.”

  “No,” Gatsby said. “Not to win her heart. So she’d accept my proposal.”

  “Why did you care so much if she accepted your proposal?” I asked. “If you don’t love her, why?”

  “Because I’m gay and—” He hesitated, stopped cold in the middle of the sentence.

  I breathed the rest of it, the truth, before I even understood it.

  “Daisy likes girls,” I said.

  Gatsby would never have said it out loud. He would never tell that about someone else. But he didn’t have to tell me. The kinship I’d always felt with my cousin flew into pin-sharp focus.

  “Daisy’s been trying to tell me she likes girls,” I said. “And I haven’t listened at all.”

  You see, Nicky, boys are always falling in love with me, but I don’t much fall in love with them.

  Of course Daisy wouldn’t fall in love with Gatsby. He was a boy.

  “So what was the proposal for?” I asked. “If you’re not in love with her and she’s not in love with you, then why?”

  “Because that’s what you do if you can,” he said. “Someone like me marries someone like her. I didn’t want her that way. I wanted the life we could have together.”

  It had been dawning on me slowly, but then it broke.

  “A lavender marriage,” I said.

  “Yes,” Gatsby said. “We could make a way for ourselves in the world, and she could be with whoever she wanted, and I wouldn’t mind because I’d be with whoever I wanted. And then I fell in love with you, and she was in love with Jordan.”

  “Daisy’s in love with Jordan,” I said, as though my mind needed a repetition to absorb the fact.