The Chosen and the Beautiful

by Nghi Vo

  One lazy afternoon at Ripley’s, Margaret guessed that the man himself had gone abroad.

  “Heat’s too hot even for him,” she said with a significant look down.

  I doubted that. As far as I knew, Daisy still kept house in West Egg, though Tom, who was being noised a bit in the gossip pages for stepping out with some mysterious redhead friend, not so much. I couldn’t imagine Gatsby willingly leaving Daisy after having found her again. It just didn’t make sense.

  The demons themselves were little seen in Manhattan lately. The Manchester Act was moving forward. The Democrats were pushing for a vote by the end of August, and even as little as I tried to care, it was everywhere. I wished Nick were around, variously because I wanted a snuggle or a distraction or a dance, but he was vaguer than ever. I told myself I didn’t care.

  Daisy finally called up on Thursday, telling me to come out to West Egg. She and I disappeared from each other’s lives like this enough that it wasn’t suspicious, but I held back a little.

  “There’s ever so much to do in the city right now…”

  It wasn’t a lie. There was plenty to do; I just wasn’t doing it. She laughed a little, the sound cool in my ear.

  “Oh, but isn’t that terrible, darling? There’s nothing to do here, and I would love to do it with you.”

  “And what about the talented Mr. Gatsby?”

  “Jay is for the afternoons,” she said primly. “I’m not permitted to intrude on his evening hours.”

  On the other end of the line, I narrowed my eyes. That didn’t sound right to me, and even if I was trying hard not to think about the Manchester Act, it was hard to ignore the people who were pulling up stakes, setting out for parts east, west, and down. I figured if Gatsby were too busy to keep Daisy entertained, the only thing he could be busy with was feathering a little nest for her somewhere in Paris or Rome or Morocco.

  “The truth is, Jordan, I miss you,” she said, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial tone. “Isn’t it just too awful? I really do delightfully and deliriously miss you. I’ve been so very lonely, and it’s been ever so long since you came out.”

  “Being lonely is not the same as missing me,” I said dryly, though the wind and the water did sound just the faintest bit appealing.

  “Oh but it is, dear,” she said coaxingly. “Let me bribe you. I know that Nick has been haunting his sad little shack like a ghost lately rather than taking you out as you deserve. If you come out, I’ll bring him over, just for you, wrapped up in string and pushed into whatever linen closet you like…”

  I laughed at that, shaking my head because Daisy was talking faster now. If I let her, she’d start to promise me every star she could pluck down from the sky as if I were a boy whose attention she wanted. I wasn’t, though, and I gave in gracefully.

  “All right, Daisy. And if I want Nick in a linen closet, I can lure him there myself. You do keep some of Gatsby’s cologne around, don’t you?”

  “You awful thing. Come soon, darling.”

  Aunt Justine insisted that I take the car (“after all, dear, it’s not as if I am going to get to use it for a while”) and I went out to West Egg with a goodly supply of dresses and shoes so that I would not have to borrow.

  The house was unbearably hot when I showed up close to sunset, so I went to find Daisy in the garden, dozing on a long low couch under a sunshade, her feet bare and her eyes gazing towards the sea. I came to sit on the couch opposite hers, taking a sip from her untouched highball before choking a little.

  “Demoniac before dark?” I asked, and she offered me a hazy smile. Now that I looked, I could see a lassitude to her limbs, something unfocused in the way her fingers ran along the edge of the cushion under her head.

  “Oh, but it’s from Warsaw,” she said. “Better than what we’ve been getting from Berlin. It’s ever so good, and Jay brings it over special for me.”

  I cautiously took another sip. It was better than the kind coming from Berlin. Of course with the trouble in Vienna, the Viennese demoniac had disappeared, but Warsaw made up for it. I let it sit on my tongue before swallowing it. It was good, hot enough to make the day seem cool. I stretched on the couch and reached over to take Daisy’s hand.

  She was flattened by the heat, her dark hair curling lank against her damp cheek, the edge of her white chiffon skirt fluttering like the flag of a defeated city. My eyes half-closed and shining under the lids, I thought I could see what kind of monster she was.

  Daisy Buchanan was, underneath her dress waving surrender and her face like a flower, a rather handsome and lazy monster. She wasn’t something that stalked her prey for miles through the underbrush. Instead she would lie so still that something unwary might think she was dead, and when they came for her skin, for the reputation of killing her, for her virtue or her wealth, then she would be upon them.

  Don’t get too close to Daisy Fay, a voice told me. Only disaster, my girl.

  Didn’t I know that already? Hadn’t I risked my reputation in Fulbright’s for her? Hadn’t I made a girl out of trash and let Daisy murder her?

  I remembered more of the night in Chinatown now. The demoniac helped, and apparently the kind from Warsaw was especially merciless. In the hazy vision that wasn’t truly vision, I saw faces like mine far above where I slumped on the filthy tile floor. They were the members of the paper cutting troupe that was performing all over New York that month. At the same time, I saw them with animal heads, cats, oxen, dogs and snakes, and Khai I could see had the face of a pig, just as I did.

  No, I don’t want that, I told them, but Bai, who had the fat-cheeked and comical face of a rat, shook her head.

  Should have thought of that before you did what you did.

  There was a pair of shears in her hand. Unlike the ones they had given me that night, they were heavy as gardening shears, the blades dark and rusty. They didn’t have to be sharp as long as Bai was strong enough, and I knew she was.

  She took my hand, the shears opened, and the blades squeezed shut over my littlest finger, bouncing a few times to let me feel how blunt they were. The next pass, she would take my pinkie off at the second knuckle, but then there was a heavy tread on the stone path leading to the sunshade.

  I was faintly surprised to see Tom making his way towards us. He looked hot and uncomfortable, his hat tucked under one arm, his face shiny with sweat and his hair faintly sodden.

  “Hello there, Jordan,” he said, and instead of greeting Daisy as well, he bent down to kiss her lightly on the forehead.

  For a moment, I expected her to rise up and devour him, but instead she sat still, eyes half-shut and mouth unsmiling. Tom smiled at her, and I realized that he had no idea what she was thinking of him, the slow animosity that rolled off of her like a wave over a sandbar, the narrow-eyed malice that would make any young girl in Louisville nervous.

  “Good to see you at home today,” he said. “I came back from the city early hoping to see you.”

  “So you’ve seen me,” she said sulkily.

  Tom narrowed his eyes and, at the last moment, remembered I was there. Sometimes, having a witness around was enough to remind him he was a good man with a foolishly temperamental wife, and even if Daisy didn’t agree, I liked it better than the other options.

  “I was thinking we could go to eat at the Bay Harbor tonight,” he said. “Fresh scallops, something cool for all this heat, don’t you think?”

  Daisy’s expression went from sullen to positively mutinous, and I shifted a little.

  “Oh, let’s not,” I said indolently, though fresh cold scallops sounded good. “Let’s just stay in and watch the shadows travel across the lawn. It’s just about the only thing I can stand to do when it’s this hot. And Tom, of course you’re going to have to fan us to keep us cool, that would be a perfect job for you since you’re so fresh from the city, don’t you think?”

  Tom smiled at me peaceably, since after all, I wasn’t the one he was married to.

  “I’m no w
oman’s coolie,” he said affably. “But why don’t you let me call someone from the house? I bet I can find someone slacking who wouldn’t mind the work…”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, the pair of you,” Daisy broke in. She was in a slightly better humor, even if she twisted easily away from Tom’s hand when it came to rest on her shoulder. She had a cat-like way of doing it, something that you couldn’t take offense at. Touching Daisy was largely a privilege, even, and sometimes especially, to those closest to her.

  “Let’s call for food tonight,” she said. “We could have the chef from Bay Harbor come up, and then we would never ever have to leave the house ever again. Wouldn’t that be grand?”

  Tom eyed her suspiciously as if unsure whether he should take her seriously.

  “Of course, Daisy, whatever you like best.”

  “Of course,” she echoed, slightly acid.

  Later that night, in my bed with the windows open and a stray sea wind blowing over us, Daisy’s eyes were unfocused but gleaming.

  “I’ve called for him,” she said. “Nick, I mean.”

  “Well, good,” I responded. “I’ve been wondering what he’s up to.”

  I hadn’t had the inclination or the determination to go chasing after him in the wake of Chinatown. I was a little disappointed that he hadn’t come chasing after me. If Daisy brought us together again, that would soothe all the necessities of pride. I had missed him.

  “And he’s bringing Jay, of course.”

  I turned my head to look at her. She stretched out flat on her back, eyes staring at the ceiling. If I looked hard, I imagined I could still see the fingerprints we had left on the plaster when we’d used a Greek charm to float up close to the ceiling earlier in the season.

  “Why are you doing that?” I asked, vaguely alarmed.

  “Oh Jordan, may I tell you a secret?”

  I nodded, and she pressed a little closer, her dark hair settling spider-like over her pale cheek.

  “I’m leaving with Jay,” she whispered. “We’re going away, far away.”

  “Greece?” I asked; it was popular for that kind of thing.

  She looked dreamy.

  “First Greece,” she said. “And then London, and then Oslo, and then France. And then I think I should like to settle in Philadelphia. I know all his family are dead, but it is where he’s from. I could love a place if Jay came from there, I think…”

  I couldn’t help the way her fantasy tugged at me. The world was a book for the two of them. They would let the wind flip the pages, Daisy would put down one delicate finger, and away they would go.

  “And you must come with us, Jordan,” she said. “Gatsby wants Nick along, and so of course you should come too. It’ll be splendid, we can have a double wedding on top of the Eiffel Tower, or maybe in front of the sphinx in Egypt.”

  One moment I was gently envious of Daisy’s daydreams, and the next I was struck with a wave of opposition. I wanted to see all of those places, maybe with Daisy, maybe alone, but for some reason, I didn’t want to see them as myself with them, or even with Nick.

  “Sorry,” I said lightly. “I have to stay with Aunt Justine. I’m taking over some of her causes after her unpleasantness earlier this year.”

  “Oh, but darling, of course you can’t! And what will happen when Nick meets some pretty little China doll in a Shanghai port and gets his head turned all around?”

  “Well, I would say if he can’t tell the difference between us then he’s welcome to her.”

  “Don’t be cross, Jordan, you know that I cannot stand it if you are cross. Let’s say this instead. I’ll give you tickets to wherever we are traveling, special ones that get you where you need to go no matter where you start from.”

  “Gull tickets?” I asked in surprise. They weren’t magic but money, offered by the enormously prestigious Paul Wright Gull travel agency. They were edged in real gilt with enough enchantments piled on that they could never be duplicated, and no matter where you were, city street, cow byre, moor or castle, if you could get your Gull to a ticketing booth, it would take you on.

  “Yes,” Daisy said with a sly smile. “You’ll forgive me for a book of Gull tickets, won’t you?”

  I rolled over onto my side, away from her.

  “I’d consider it, anyway,” I said, but for the first time, the idea of getting out of New York appealed to me. I was tired of the heat and the summer, I thought, but maybe I was only tired of who I was in the heat.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The next morning, we all woke up late, the heat of the day beading sweat and damp on every surface and rolling a haze through the air that made everything look oddly flat and faraway.

  Tom was the only one who could dress first thing. Daisy and I draped ourselves over the cold marble stairs of the foyer in nothing more than our long silk robes, and I pressed my cheek against the marble and made a face at Pammy when her nurse brought her by. Daisy’s daughter, I thought, had been replaced with a rag doll in the heat, so very limply did she slouch over the nurse’s arm. Then I realized with a bit of a start how long it had been since I’d seen Pammy in the skin. Changelings were growing less common as time went on, the fairy magic draining out of the east and flowing west, but there were a few cases every few years of it happening, usually in the good families as well.

  I was just thinking about suggesting we go to check when Tom nudged us both with an officious booted foot.

  “Come on, girls,” he said with a patience I liked less than his bombast. “Time to go get changed. Nick and that damned drug store mogul are coming over soon.”

  Daisy took a lazy swipe at him like a bored cat, but she helped me to my feet.

  “Oh very well,” she said, making a face. “If the great Napoleon tells us we must.”

  “He was only a little man,” Tom said indignantly. “I’m just the opposite.”

  “Of course you are, dear,” Daisy said with such poisonous sweetness that I thought she must surely have given the game away. Tom seemed all smiles however, and it came to me that he only ever really took offense when she wasn’t needling him. When she was only herself and moody or strange or angry for herself.

  With reluctance, we rose from our place on the marble stairs. I noticed that we had left a heat-imprint of our bodies there with our sweat and the oil of our skin and the oil of our perfumes. I hoped that those impressions would last in the marble, some kind of permanent snow angel that Daisy and I could leave behind to haunt the house long after we were both gone.

  We decided on matching white. Daisy thought of brides, I thought of Iphigenia, the virgin sacrifice on the shores of Aulis, and then was roundly mocked for it. We found, willy-nilly, the pot of lip color that Daisy had discovered above the wardrobe that day. It had made its way back to her. I had my own color, something plum and pretty from Macy’s, but I paused when Daisy held the little pot out to me between her finger and thumb, her other fingers fanned out like a peacock’s tail.

  “Wear this for good luck,” she said warmly. “It’s what you were wearing when you met Nick for the first time.”

  I let her smooth the color over my lips, but it didn’t feel like good luck. It felt like a bookend, in that we had started something that day in June and today we were capping it off. I shook the thought off. It was far too Protestant for words, and I was an irreligious modern girl after all. No gods or idols for me.

  We waited for Gatsby and Nick in a dim and cavernous room, curled together on a marvelous round couch as if we were boneless Siamese cats. When the butler showed them in, we looked up in unison, making Nick smile as he came to kneel down next to me.

  “You’re a lovely thing, Jordan,” he murmured, kissing my fingertips.

  “Not that you’ve been around to see,” I teased.

  Gatsby was looking around with such curiosity you had to assume he had come through the whole house that way. I could almost hear things being dropped on the great scales that served for his mind, the house Daisy s
hared with Tom against the one she would share with him, the windows against his windows, the finery of Tom’s servants versus his own.

  We all four looked up at the strident shriek of the telephone, and from the next room, we heard Tom’s voice, loud even when it was trying to be discreet, conciliatory in a way he never had to be with his own wife.

  Nick had learned something at least because he didn’t ask who it was. Daisy, on the other hand, had crossed some kind of Rubicon of her own, and glanced disdainfully through the wall at where Tom stood.

  “That’s Tom with his girlfriend,” she said. “Isn’t she a doll?”

  I glanced at Gatsby, who had acquired a vicious sort of look. For a moment, I thought he might storm into the hallway and challenge Tom to a duel or something equally ridiculous. Daisy had gotten a hold of his hand, however, and was hanging on. Indiscreet, perhaps, careless definitely, but she did like to keep what was hers close by.

  Nick was saying something in defense of Tom, and then the man himself came in, bringing Nick to his feet. Gatsby took his hand from Daisy’s more slowly.

  “Ah, at last, at last,” said Daisy, her tone as relaxed as an overcooked noodle. “Tom, do see about mixing us a drink, won’t you?”

  “I brought something to pass around,” said Gatsby, offering a dark and dusty bottle. With no label, I guessed it must be some more of that powerful demoniac from Warsaw, but Tom turned away and was gone from the room so brusquely it stayed in his hand. Gatsby shrugged and set it on the floor by the fireplace. Later that night, I would find it and be grateful, but right then, I was more concerned with the fact that Daisy had risen, going to push Gatsby back down on the divan by the window. I caught a glimpse of his startled face, the surprised O of his mouth, and then she was straddling his lap, her dress in meringue ruffles around him.