The Chosen and the Beautiful

by Nghi Vo

  I stood as still and straight as a garden trellis and Khai must have taken that to mean that I cared what he had to say, because from his sleeves, he pulled out an elegant pair of shears and what looked like a thick piece of gold paper.

  “All right, are you looking?”

  He waited until I nodded, and he started to cut, the shears moving so quickly that they seemed to blur, throwing scraps of paper everywhere like a tiny blizzard. Something about the snick of the blades cutting through the thick card stock sent a chill up the back of my neck, made me want to hug myself for warmth even on the hot August night. I felt exposed, I realized. I had done what he was doing twice, once in my bedroom, once in Daisy’s, and he was doing it for fun, in front of God and Gatsby’s guests and everyone.

  I started to tell him to stop, that I wasn’t going to be impressed, but then the shears disappeared and he was plucking at the edge of the card stock. With a single flick of his fingers, there was a bright orange chrysanthemum blossom in his hand, flecked with gold as the paper had been. He spun it up in the air, and before it had reached the top of its arc, there was another one in his hand, red this time, and up it went as well. In a moment, I was standing in a shower of flowers, and despite my reluctance, I looked around in wonder at the shower of red, white, orange, and violet falling down around me, brushing against my arms, my cheeks, and my shoulders.

  At the end, Khai held a pure white chrysanthemum edged in with gold around each narrow petal between his fingers and presented it to me. I took it without smiling, but I brought it up to my face anyway, curious. I was disappointed when there was no scent.

  “Of course there’s no smell,” he told me. “It’s only paper after all.”

  “It feels real, though,” I said, plucking some of the petals and crushing them to a wet pulp between my fingers.

  “Well, of course it’s real,” he said with a hopeful smile. “It’s just real and made of paper.”

  I bit my lip. Somewhere in the back of my mind lived a paper lion and a paper Daisy, tottering on her high heels and grinning to make her babyish cheeks even rounder.

  “But how real?” I asked, and he gave me a curious look.

  He bent gracefully to pick up a yellow blossom.

  “This real,” he said, brushing the petals over my cheeks.

  “This real,” he said, splitting the blossom in half and letting a torn sheet of thin yellow tissue paper drift to the ground.

  “Silly, really,” I said, but he didn’t seem to have the sense to be cut.

  “Of course it is,” he said with a grin. “Silly is all we can do at a place like this.”

  He spoke with a kind of scorn that made me catch a laugh in my mouth. People called Gatsby’s parties brilliant, de rigueur, the most exciting thing since M. Bartholdi and M. Eiffel raised first an island out of New York Harbor and then a gorgeous woman clothed in copper from the island. People also called it the new return of Babylon, surely a sign of the rotten heart of the twenties, and excess that would make us all ashamed if we had anything like a sense of honor to shame.

  I had never heard them called silly before, and Khai grinned to see me surprised.

  “Look, Bai is going to have my head if I don’t actually step up,” he said. “Don’t come to watch us right now.”

  “Why not?” I asked, piqued, because that was probably the best way he could have gotten me to come and see.

  “Because like I said, this is silly. Here…”

  He produced a card from his sleeve, tucking it under the strap of my dress like some kind of reverse pick-pocketing.

  “Come see us Tuesday,” he said. “I’ll put you on the list.”

  “Well, I do like being put on lists,” I said, and with a slight grin, he turned and made his way across the lawn towards a troupe of people in similar clothing. I must have missed them when they were at Gatsby’s last. They were all Asian, all weaving around each other in the steps of some intricate dance, and then I saw them spread out an enormous sheet of paper between them, pale cream, and as it spun faster and faster, opening up into a lotus flower the size of a dining room table. The petals, the same cream as the paper, opened to reveal a slender girl no taller than a mailbox, and I turned away.

  A while ago, I would have been as charmed as anyone, but after what Khai said, I could see it for what it was: cheap, showy, silly.

  I ventured around to the pool, where Nick had swum a few times, but as far as he could tell, Gatsby, never. From his stories, I expected the pool to be an eerily silent place, but of course it wasn’t.

  The pool was enormous, clad in marble tile with a mosaic of a beautiful woman covering her face at the bottom. The water was the turquoise you imagined the Mediterranean must be, almost silky when you slid in. Some people had brought along bathing suits, but more simply dropped in in their clothes when the spirit of the evening moved them. I watched the fun for a while, and as I did, I saw that the people who dove under the surface took on the long and sinuous shapes of enormous swimming carp, gliding through the water as if they were flying through air. They flashed green and copper and vermilion as they swam by, turning their round gold eyes towards those above as if we were wonders or gods.

  When they rose above the surface, they were human again, offered towels and drinks by a small army of pool attendants standing by. I couldn’t tell if it was only a clever illusion or if something had changed their forms, and the swimmers themselves were unclear on the subject.

  At the eleven o’ clock dinner, I held myself aloof, sitting on the balustrade above the dining area with a cocktail in my hand, watching the kingdom below me with interest. It was the place where Gatsby had stood often enough, waiting for Daisy, hoping for Daisy. It was where he had stood when he saw me and Nick the first night, and I wondered what he felt now, dragged into the common tumult with the rest, because I could see him sitting at the table with Nick and with Daisy.

  A swift look around for Tom found him at another table nearby, using his bulk and his boyish smile to impress a silly-looking young girl who I thought must be the daughter of the cultural attaché from France. I could almost hear Daisy call her pretty but common.

  Even from where I sat, I could see that Daisy wasn’t having a good time. She had put on that lolling, rolling manner of hers, the one that so many people simply assumed meant that she was drunk. Nick leaned close to try to snap her out of it, and I realized that at some point, Gatsby had disappeared.

  “Another one of your mysterious phone calls,” I muttered to myself, taking a scornful sip from my drink.

  “Well, yes.”

  I choked, corpse reviver going down the wrong pipe, and Gatsby had to steady me with an arm around my waist so I wouldn’t go toppling off the staircase.

  “You startled me,” I said, trying to brazen it out.

  “You’re in my spot,” he responded good-naturedly.

  “I don’t mind that,” I said, and then daring a little, “was I right? Was that another call with one of your drugstores?”

  That was a story that I had heard more and more lately, that all of this glamour was paid for with headache pills, cheap glamours that were ever so much more dignified than paint, and boxes of school supplies. It wasn’t true, but it gave people who wanted something to believe in something to believe in.

  Gatsby looked at me steadily, long enough to make me uncomfortable.

  “You don’t like me,” he said.

  “Is there a reason I should?” I asked.

  “Well, you’re important to Daisy. We should get along, don’t you think?”

  I laughed because it felt like such a quaint thing to say. One would almost think that we were normal people.

  “I get along with everyone,” I said, and he decided to believe me. He came a little closer, close enough that I could smell his cologne, see the black nail on his left hand. Recklessly, I reached out to tweak his tie a little, straightening it. It surprised a laugh out of him. This close, I could see the tiny wrinkle
s at the corner of his eyes.

  “I can be a very good friend to you too, just as I am to Nick,” he murmured quietly. “Nick likes me so much. It’s only Tom that doesn’t. Tom and you.”

  “Maybe,” I said deliberately, “it’s because you like to fuck people who don’t belong to you.”

  The smile froze on his face, jagged like slips of lake ice. I couldn’t tell where my recklessness had come from, only that the corpse reviver was strong enough that I didn’t regret it yet.

  “I think you’ll find that I only fuck people who belong to me,” he said. “But think about it, won’t you? I’ve a lot of friends, here and in DC. It could be that in a short while you could use some friends.”

  “Think about it yourself,” I said with a smile. “They don’t want you any more than they want me, or weren’t you paying attention?”

  There was something raw in his gaze right then, something trapped, something that was suddenly aware that its camouflage was not nearly as good as it had imagined it to be. I had stepped on some secret, obviously, but he had no idea which one, and no idea that I had no idea either. He forced a shrug and a smile.

  “Fine. Be that way. Shall we keep it civil for Daisy’s sake, or would you like to make your distaste public?”

  “I don’t think of you enough to care about any of that,” I said. “And just because I don’t like you is no reason we shouldn’t be friends.”

  He shoved his hands in his pockets, ruining the line of his slacks, regarding me with his head tilted to one side.

  “You know, I had thought you a Southern girl,” he said. “Like Daisy, like so many others I’ve known.”

  I pointed at my face.

  “That speaks well of you,” I said. “No one thinks I’m a Southern girl.”

  “And they shouldn’t. You’re some East Coast thing, aren’t you? Sharp and mean and cold. What a prize you are.”

  “Don’t let on you like me like that,” I said. “People will talk.”

  He grinned, boyish and easy.

  “You think I don’t mean it, don’t you? You shouldn’t. I think you’re pretty wonderful, Jordan. Nick and Daisy sing your praises—”

  “If you expect me to believe that either of them talk about me when they’re with you, I have a bridge to sell you,” I said. “It’s a very East Coast thing, selling bridges.”

  “They do,” he insisted. “Daisy told me about Fulbright’s, you know. We’re not going to have any secrets from each other. And Nick’s going to marry you.”

  His outrageous words made me snap my mouth shut. I sat up straight on the stone balustrade, my ankles twisted together. Gatsby drifted a little closer, setting one hand on the stone beside my thigh.

  “Listen,” he said softly. “They adore you. I want to adore you too.”

  “There’s nothing stopping you,” I said, shoving down off the stone. It put me closer to him than ever, and this close, it was impossible to ignore my attraction to him, the way he could drink all the light out of the room and present it to you as if it was a special gift, his to give.

  “You could make it easier for me,” Gatsby said with mock exasperation concealing real exasperation.

  “I could,” I said. “I might. But you do come off awful strong, you know.”

  He laughed at that, shaking his head.

  “That is certainly something I have heard before,” he said.

  He didn’t touch me as I made my way around him. When I looked back, he was gone.

  * * *

  Whether he meant to or not, Gatsby got his revenge on me by keeping Nick until dawn. There had been some kind of scuffle with Daisy, more likely, with Tom, and when I was ready to leave, Nick came for me with a regretful kiss.

  “Sorry, darling. Gatsby wants me to stay for a word after everyone’s gone. Sounds like he’s had a rotten night.”

  “And you’re going to make it a little nicer?”

  Nick scowled at that, and I reached out to stroke his arm.

  “And why shouldn’t you? You’re sweet as sugar, and you always make things a little nicer for me…”

  He could sometimes be jollied out of a bad mood if only I was a little sweet with him. The trouble was that I was so bad at being sweet on command.

  “Would you like me to walk you back?” he asked, but I shook my head.

  “Stay,” I said. “Who knows if you can even get back into this sacred space after you have left it?”

  “You could stay too,” Nick suggested, and to my startled delight, he cupped a hand around the back of my thigh. “Plenty of open rooms…”

  “You absolute monster,” I said, pleased.

  “If I am, you’ve made me one,” he retorted. I let him kiss me for a little while, but then I stepped back with a sigh.

  “Come back home as soon as you can,” I said. “I shall languish and fall into a life-in-death faint without you.”

  “I’ll wake you up,” he promised me, and I made my way back to his humble little house.

  Nick’s house was small enough that you could see into all the rooms if you stood in the hall and all the doors were open, but there was something about it that gave me the creeps. I was too used to living with people on all sides, even if politesse and good manners prevented us from acknowledging it.

  At Nick’s place, you could be alone and lonely, and I went straight to his bedroom, firmly closing the rest of the house away. The moon—the real moon—was high in the sky, and I opened the drapes to let the silver light spill onto the bed. I toed my shoes off and hung my dress in the portion of the wardrobe that Nick insisted was mine. As I did so, the card that Khai had given me fluttered to the ground. I picked it up, rubbing my fingers over the characters I couldn’t read and the address that I could.

  I told myself that I could just throw it away. I didn’t have to keep it. I didn’t have to do anything. That comforted me enough that I was able to slide it into my purse, deferring my decision a little while. That helped.

  I had brought pajamas along—slim, silk, and with my initials embroidered on the cuff—but the night was too stuffy for that. Instead I stripped to the skin and stretched out on Nick’s mattress, hoping that he would be done with Gatsby soon. I wondered if he would bring back a touch of Gatsby with him, whether it was the scent of Gatsby’s cologne or the taste of Gatsby’s mouth on his own. I licked my lips restlessly, turning away from the moonlight, letting my eyes drift shut.

  This summer is never going to end, I thought.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The next day, I said a cheerful goodbye to Nick, who had come back from Gatsby’s thoughtful rather than half-wrecked. He offered me a lift into the city or over to East Egg, but I waved him off.

  “I don’t want you getting too used to my comings or goings, you know,” I said. “Wouldn’t that be boring?”

  “I think having breakfast more than a few times a week isn’t going to be considered the height of banality just yet,” he said good-humoredly, but he let me go.

  In truth, the calling card that Khai had slid me was burning a hole in my purse. I didn’t recognize the address precisely, but I thought the neighborhood was rather close to the intersection of Elizabeth and Canal, and that meant Chinatown.

  Unless the nightly fun wanted to roll over to Alexander’s on White Street, I usually steered clear of Chinatown. It was a place that made me prickle uneasily, made me feel not poised and light on my feet, but anchored in a strange way by looks that I simultaneously wanted nothing to do with and that I also wanted to recognize me. My few accidental forays into Chinatown always left me irritated and insufferably arrogant for a while after I came out.

  In truth, I felt less special in Chinatown, and that made me dislike it.

  There was no question of whether I was going or not, however, so after a long nap in a proper bed, I got up, asked Lara to do me up a bit of fruit and cheese, and had a long soak in the bathtub. I was still tired. The heat seeped through the cracks of the apartment, coming in from
outside to curl, feline and unwelcome, on every available surface.

  When the cold water grew tepid, I came out to sit awhile with Aunt Justine, who had managed to prop herself up on a mountain of silk pillows and glare angrily at the paper.

  “Really,” she said, referring to the riots in Washington, DC, and Chicago, “if this many people will not stand for it, they must yield.”

  Buttering my toast, I glanced at her paper, where someone with a face not unlike mine and Khai’s was being led into a police wagon. The riots had been going on for a few days now, and it was impossible to ignore, even at the kind of clubs that I liked to go to.

  “I hope it all dies down soon,” I said with a sigh, and Aunt Justine, in an uncharacteristically soft moment, reached over to lay her thin hand over mine. She wasn’t maudlin enough to squeeze, but she let me feel its papery weight for a moment before withdrawing.

  “You’re safe, you know,” she said quietly. “You’re a Baker. No one would question that.”

  I decided not to let her know where I was going that night.

  She directed me in filling out some paperwork for her for the Aid Society for Hunger Relief, and then around seven, the nurse we had hired, Pola, came in to clean up and to prepare Aunt Justine for bed. Aunt Justine allowed her work to be taken away with ill-grace, but we could all see that she was tiring.

  “I cannot wait until I am recovered,” she grumbled, and none of us mentioned the truth of it.

  Around nine, I went to dress. I had a pumpkin-orange dress embroidered in faux gold beads in a starburst pattern, and I thought it would do; not too flashy and not too dull. I didn’t think I could bear it if anyone in a place like Chinatown thought me dull.

  The cab dropped me off in front of what looked like a restaurant that had closed up for the night, and I looked it over curiously. The menus taped to the plate glass were all written in characters I didn’t understand, and when I tugged experimentally on the door, nothing happened. I thought that there might have been some people moving inside, but the heavy blinds kept me from seeing clearly.