CH 3 Close Read Daisy and Gatsby
CH 3 Close Read Daisy and Gatsby
One October day in nineteen-seventeen (said Jordan Baker that afternoon, sitting up very straight on a straight chair in the tea-garden at the Plaza Hotel) I was walking along from one place to another, half on the sidewalks and half on the lawns. I was happier on the lawns because I had on shoes from England with rubber nobs on the soles that bit into the soft ground. I had on a new plaid skirt also that blew a little in the wind, and whenever this happened the red, white, and blue banners in front of all the houses stretched out stiff and said tuttut-tut-tut, in a disapproving way. The largest of the banners and the largest of the lawns belonged to Daisy Fays house. She was just eighteen, two years older than me, and by far the most popular of all the young girls in Louisville. She dressed in white, and had a little white roadster, and all day long the telephone rang in her house and excited young officers from Camp Taylor demanded the privilege of monopolizing her that night. Anyways, for an hour! When I came opposite her house that morning, her white roadster was beside the curb, and she was sitting in it with a lieutenant I had never seen before. They were so engrossed in each other that she didnt see me until I was five feet away. Hello, Jordan, she called unexpectedly. Please come here. I was flattered that she wanted to speak to me, because of all the older girls I admired her most. She asked me if I was doing to the Red Cross and make bandages. I was. Well, then, would I tell them that she couldnt come that day? The officer looked at Daisy while she was speaking, in a way that every young girl wants to be looked at some time, and because it seemed romantic to me I remember the incident ever since. His name was Jay Gatsby, and I didnt lay eyes on him again for over four yearseven after Id met him on Long Island I didnt realize it was the same man. That was nineteen-seventeen. By the next year I had a few beaux myself, and I began to play in tournaments, so I didnt see Daisy very often. She went with a slightly older crowdwhen she went with anyone at all. Wild rumors were circulating about herhow her mother had found her packing her bag one winter night to go to New York and say good-by to a soldier who was going overseas. She was effectually prevented, but she wasnt on speaking terms with her family for several weeks. After that she didnt play around with the soldiers anymore, but only with a few flat-footed, shortsighted young men in town, who couldnt get into the army at all. By the next autumn she was gay again, gay as ever. She had a debut after the Armistice, and in February she was presumably engaged to a man from New Orleans. In June she married Tom Buchanan of Chicago, with more pomp and circumstance than Louisville ever knew before. He came down with a hundred people in four private cars, and hired a whole floor of the Muhlbach Hotel, and