The Chosen and the Beautiful

by Nghi Vo

  Klipspringer peered at us in a near-sighted fashion. With his small horns, he looked startlingly fawn-like, tentative and sensitive.

  “Ah, I’m all out of practice, you see. I told you I couldn’t play. I’m all out of prac—”

  “Don’t talk so much, old sport,” Gatsby said sternly. “Play!”

  He turned with every expectation of his orders being followed, squiring Daisy to the rear of the room to settle her on a velvet chaise. He lit her cigarette before sitting down next to her, and I took Nick’s hand in mine as Klipspringer approached the grand piano like it was some kind of slumbering beast.

  He was a ridiculous sight as he sat at the keyboard in his underthings, but at the first touch of his fingers to the keys, a shivery silvery tremolo went through the air. He curled the melody around his fingers, and I realized that he was playing something he had only heard before.

  Nick pulled me around so I was facing him, and we swayed together in surprise. Elsewhere it was a bright kind of song, tinkled out on some small upright piano. Here, as the twilight finally came on and stretched our shadows over the tile, it was something else entirely.

  Night or daytime, it’s all playtime

  Ain’t we got fun…?

  Under Klipspringer’s fingers, the jaunty little tune turned into something sad, something too wise and too bitter by half. As he played, Klipspringer closed his eyes, tears running down his cheeks. In the back of the room, Gatsby pushed away Daisy’s hand holding the cigarette and hid his face in the crook of her neck.

  Nick and I had come to a full stop, watching them. The air in the room was thick with summer and the fact that at Jay Gatsby’s house, it wasn’t too much to expect that summer, this summer, might go on forever.

  Nick’s arm was around my waist, and finally I turned towards him.

  “Come on,” I said quietly. “We’re not wanted here, are we?”

  Nick hesitated, and then one or the both of us must have made a noise because Gatsby looked up at us. He wasn’t angry or sorry. Instead he was only confused. Wherever he was with Daisy, there were no names for other people. He had no idea who we were any longer.

  Nick could see it too, and he nodded reluctantly. Hand in hand like fairytale children leaving a burning gingerbread house, we made our way out. We were in no particular hurry but both of us were done with the pleasures that Gatsby could provide for the moment. We couldn’t find the front door, but we could find the servant’s entrance. In the end, we climbed over the narrow hedge that separated Gatsby’s property from Nick’s. The rain had come back, solid and drenching, and we fled to the cover of Nick’s doorstep, catching our breath and peering back across the way at the garden we had left.

  “Oh!” I said with some hilarity. “My clothes. My shoes. I’ve left them at Gatsby’s.”

  We ended up sitting on his back step together, his jacket—Gatsby’s jacket, just as my clothes were Daisy’s clothes—slung over my shoulders, sharing a cigarette of harsh Turkish tobacco. Nick told me that he had gotten a taste for the stuff in the war, and I liked it better than I thought I would.

  “You should come to France with me someday,” he said. “Just you and me. I could show you Rouen and Le Havre.”

  “Paris or nothing,” I said, but it wasn’t a no.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Summer in New York goes by slowly until it goes by fast, and for the four weeks that took us out of July and into a sullen and ferociously fevered August, I could barely catch my breath. First there was Aunt Justine’s difficulty, where we ended up with a few sleepless nights and a live-in nurse, and then there was the riot that took over Brooklyn and Harlem for a full weekend over the Manchester Act, which would bar the way for all unwanted unworthies from a long list of places, while starting the repatriation of those who had, as so many of Aunt Justine’s friends put it so delicately, overstayed their welcome. Naturally it didn’t specify whether it meant the Chinese, the Irish, the Mexicans, the damned, or the dead that occasionally returned with them, so it was a terrible mess.

  Nick asked me if I was worried, and I took him dancing at the Preston when I hate dancing at the Preston because I wanted to answer him even less. I told him that the Manchester Act had nothing to do with me, that I couldn’t even remember being from anywhere else, and his response—“Prove it”—made me so angry that I ran off the floor and went home with Jodie Washington. She kept me for a few days until her boyfriend came back from his European tour, and by then, I was ready to make up with Nick, so it mostly worked out.

  We were becoming something of an item, written up when the gossip papers were having a slow day, which was pleasant. He was proving surprisingly resilient to the kind of pressures that had crashed me and Walter. Anyway, it helped that I had gotten myself kitted up with a cap through one of Aunt Justine’s friends, and that was at least one catastrophe I didn’t have to worry about any longer, though Nick, charming thing, told me he didn’t worry too much about what we did as long as he was doing it with me. I even mostly believed him, though I was making no further headway on bringing him to the Cendrillon. I wondered if, after Gatsby, he had outgrown that sort of thing, but I doubted it. I had never known of anyone who did, though of ones who said they had, plenty.

  It was a beautifully clear night halfway through August when the whole city seemed to pull up roots and head for Gatsby’s palace. A ghostly little whisper suggested that we stay to enjoy the deserted clubs, but instead I followed Nick home with my new dress—white satin beaded with opalized beads in shivery blue—in the back seat along with some essentials. I had, willy-nilly, started to stay overnight at Nick’s, braving the disapproving looks of his maid and the unreliable water of his bathtub. We were playing house, we both knew it, but it was a good game when played with someone who could be as calm and as sweet as Nick was.

  Gatsby’s mansion spilled light from every window, from every door, and that night, from every tree. Something at the heart of the trees on his property gleamed, and I saw more than one beautiful girl up in the branches, trying to grasp that sweet and lovely light with their hands. They came up empty, and while most gave up, a Black girl in a moiré silk dress remained up in the bare branches, her dress like a cocoon and her face stained with tears for seeing her desire so close and yet so untouchable.

  By the water and in the tall grass were fireflies. At first, they made me think of the long slow nights of the Louisville summer, but when I looked closer, I could see that they were another species entirely. Instead of a sweet soft lime green, they glowed a deep red, and when I caught one in my hands, I saw a brassy metallic sheen to the wings and pincers that clicked at me threateningly before I let it go again.

  Nick and I went arm in arm, and just inside the garden, we met Daisy, who was with Tom of all people. She wore a blue gown overlaid with a sheer fine net of crystal, and the crystals—teardrops and brilliant—were echoed in the tiara perched so sweetly on her head. Tom in black looked around aggressively, and I felt Nick stiffen next to me. I wanted to tell him that I didn’t like Tom either, but that could certainly wait for later.

  I hadn’t really seen Daisy since that day at Nick’s. I tried once or twice, but she had made herself scarce, wrapping up in a kind of silken solitude that never suited her unless there was a secret someone there with her. She leaned over to give me a distracted kind of kiss on both cheeks, but when she addressed Nick, her voice was strained, and shaded behind the blue of her eyes was a small and animal worry. She took his hand and folded a green ticket into it with a tremulous smile as Tom looked on indulgently.

  “Oh Nick, if you’d like to kiss me at any time tonight, simply come give back, won’t you? I’m handing them out tonight…”

  I could see the green slips sticking from the clasp of her purse, see the absolute ease with which Tom regarded that exchange, and then Gatsby was among us like a fox among the chickens, a smile too wide and toothy on his face. The look he gave Daisy was so fond that I almost thought he would give away
the game right there, but then he turned to Tom. He was coldly, vividly triumphant, and he spread his hands out as if to encompass the whole world that belonged to him.

  “Welcome, welcome,” he cried. “Come look around, there’s bound to be so many people you know…”

  “I think it’s quite marvelous,” Daisy said faintly. I caught her startled glance as if she were only now realizing that she had brought her husband to her lover’s house, and I gave her an aggressive little shrug because there certainly wasn’t anything I could do with men like Gatsby or Tom.

  “I was just thinking that I didn’t know anyone at all,” Tom drawled, determinedly unimpressed. The easy arm he kept over Daisy’s shoulders looked like it got a little heavier. “I’m not so fond of parties where I don’t know anyone…”

  “Oh well, surely you know her,” Gatsby said, pointing like a guide at the zoo.

  We followed his arm to where Anna Farnsworth languished beneath the ghostly lights, the illumination giving her a flickering phosphor tint. She had just appeared in The Girl on the Strand, utterly scandalous. It was common tat around New York that an old wizard had made her from a whole garden’s worth of peonies. He should have made her out of something more sturdy, because she was looking wilted under the August heat.

  We didn’t talk about that, of course, but Gatsby let on that the man standing over her and sprinkling her with seltzer water was her director. He led us deeper into the garden, pointing out that star or that politician. I hung back, letting them get ahead, and after a moment, Nick returned to me.

  “All right?” he asked, and I plucked the green ticket out of his hand.

  “Honestly,” I said, a little tartly. “No one’s giving out green tickets this summer.”

  They entitled the bearer to a kiss, a talk, or a secret from the giver, and Nick’s hand had already become stained with the cheap ink of Daisy’s name. I tore it to little bits and dropped the bits into a half-empty flute of champagne sitting on the edge of a concrete planter.

  “Jealous, darling?” asked Nick with amusement, and I waved my hand dismissively.

  “Of course, painfully,” I told him. “Always. Anyway, that’s a strange to-do between the three of them tonight, isn’t it? I shan’t want to stand too close to that.”

  It was true. There was something fraught in the air between all three of them, not just between Gatsby and Tom as might be guessed. I was worried about Daisy, but then none of my experience with her had anything in the world to do with stopping her.

  Nick didn’t seem to share my opinion, looking after them as they walked towards the dancers on the canvas floor.

  “I don’t know,” he hedged. “Are you worried?”

  “Only for my own good time,” I said a little sharply, but I sighed when he looked back at me with some guilt.

  “Go on if you are going,” I said to him.

  “I won’t if you’re cross…”

  I put my fingers to the corners of my mouth, lifting them up.

  “No, no cross here, darling,” I said. “I shall entertain myself with these very entertaining people, and I shall come find you later. Though when I do find you next, I am sure that I will be perfectly demanding and in need of your attention.”

  Nick smiled with some relief, lifting my hand to his lips in a brief salute.

  “You’re a doll, Jordan Baker,” he said.

  “Rather not,” I responded, but he was already gone.

  I was a strange combination of bereft and relieved when he was gone. Even after all our time together, I hadn’t quite resigned myself to being a couple yet, half of an equation when the male half could somehow continue as a whole without me. He was gone, I felt more myself, and to celebrate, I downed a surprisingly strong French 75 and took another with me for company as I wandered through the playground Gatsby had made of his home.

  I hadn’t been lying before. There’s no better place to be alone than a large party, especially when almost everyone around you was trying to be the biggest and most gleaming version of themselves. Through the crowd, I could glimpse Gatsby introducing Tom and Daisy to another famous movie star while Nick looked on in consternation. No, certainly not my scene that very moment, so I moved on.

  I was ready to be delighted by Gatsby’s home, but there was something desperate about it. If hanging around in New York in the summer of 1922 taught me anything, it was how to nose out desperation, and Gatsby’s party reeked of it. Everything was just a shade too bright, everyone just a little too brilliant to be borne. There were tumblers darting through the crowd, human statues in the garden that the people could direct in an enormous chess game, and the usual ubiquitous lights that danced over us like angelic halos, but it all felt so very tiresome to me.

  Or maybe I’m the tiresome one, I thought with a grimace. It had been known to happen, and the summer was wearing on like a runaway car or at a snail’s pace, depending.

  I was just beginning to wonder if I should find a quiet ledge to play gargoyle when I came around a corner in the garden and nearly had my head taken off by a dragon.

  Despite my earlier jaded thoughts, there was a moment when a rush of wind pulled my clothes awry, when I stared after a flash of light over gold scales, that I forgot everything except a startled wonder. For a moment, I thought some exotic bird had made its escape from the trees, but then I saw the dragon for itself, larger than a horse, long and slender as a lamp post.

  It was a dragon, I knew that, even if it was like no dragon I ever saw in the fairytale books. The head recalled the wickedly blunt heads of the crocodiles that I had seen at the menagerie, while a pair of deer’s horns sprouted from its brow. The tail was the vast majority of its length, corkscrewing and curling as the dragon seemed to swim through the air, cat-like paws reaching out, toes extended for purchase.

  The golden dragon twisted around to dance over my head, and I clapped at the display of skill and delicacy. It was a marvelous thing, one more wonder to add to Gatsby’s list, but then the dragon pointed its nose at the night sky above me and started twisting its way up, the tip of its tail weaving back and forth like a counterbalance.

  I stood staring after it, craning my neck, and I saw the moment when it started to drop. First it was flying, then it was falling, and then it was doing some combination of the two and gaining speed as it did so.

  The moment that I realized that it wasn’t going to stop was the same moment when I realized that I couldn’t do more than stumble back, likely landing on my rear. I had had cruel tricks like that played on me before, and I narrowed my eyes at the diving dragon. I wasn’t going to be bullied, and that was why I did quite a silly thing, looking back.

  The dragon could have been anything. It could have been a clockwork wonder taken from a German workshop after the war, and it could have left scars in my arm from jagged metalwork teeth. It could have been a slight and narrow aerialist in some kind of enchantment with more daring than sense. It could have been a dozen and one other things that would have utterly ruined my night, but in the end, it wasn’t.

  Instead it was paper, and I brought the blade of my hand up in an instinctive motion that let the dragon sheer in half from nose to tail tip, the ripping sound making goosebumps stand up on my skin and a prickle of something almost achingly familiar running up my spine.

  I stood there in surprise as the two halves of the dragon, nothing but paper intricately cut and scrolled, drifted down to either side of me, and a delighted laugh rang out behind me.

  “Rotten brat, that took two hours to make.”

  I turned to meet the speaker with my chin up and my shoulders back, nearly losing my poise with surprise when I recognized him.

  He was the boy in the gallery the day Gatsby had shown us his treasure house. Now he was dressed in a black skullcap and a red brocade robe, covered all over with dragons, though, I saw after a moment, ones that were different from the one that had flown at me with such aggression. A long black beard, neatly combed, had been attache
d to his chin with spirit gum, and a pair of green spectacles obscured his eyes. I shouldn’t have been able to recognize him at all, but I did, and I felt at once that sense of attraction and repulsion again.

  “If it took so long to make, then you shouldn’t have sicced it on me,” I retorted.

  He shrugged, unrepentant, folding his hands in his sleeves like a mandarin from the picture books.

  “I can make another,” he said. “I’m Khai.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest, looking him over as he looked me over.

  “Jordan Baker,” I responded. “Have you been here all month?”

  “Something like that,” he said. “The troupe performed here just a few days before you caught me. They were moving on to Philadelphia, and I don’t get on in Philadelphia, so I decided to stay until they came back.”

  “Just found yourself a guest room, and pretended you had been invited?” I asked, and he gave me a curious look.

  “What’s it matter to you? You’re one of Mrs. Chau’s girls, aren’t you? I heard she got some girls from Vietnam…”

  A dull red heat came up on my face, and I felt as if my spine were turning to clear, cold ice.

  “I’m not one of Mrs. Chau’s girls at all,” I bit out.

  He gave me another look, up and down, speculative and curious. I realized that he thought my dress was a costume just as much as his own outfit was. He thought there was another world I lived in, like the one where he dressed in gray slacks, striped shirts, and braces. For a moment, I wondered what he imagined I wore in that other world, and I almost choked.

  “Hey,” he started, but I was turning away. I decided I was bored, and he was tiresome.

  “Hey wait,” he said, grabbing me by the arm. “Wait. I’m sorry.”

  “Good!”

  “Here, let me make it up to you. You cắt giấy, right?”

  I had no idea what the words meant, and they felt like rocks dropped in the middle of his otherwise perfect English. Still they made me choke a little. I couldn’t have heard words like that since I started walking, and I wasn’t supposed to hear them at Gatsby’s party.