The Great Gatsby: Jordan's Story

One morning late in July, Gatsby drove up to my door in his gorgeous cream-coloured car and invited me to lunch in New York.On the way he told me the story of his life: he was the son of rich people in the Middle West, he had been educated at Oxford, and he had won medals in the war.He hurried over the word “Oxford” as if it bothered him, but then he showed me a real medal and an old photograph of young men at Oxford, and I almost believed him.

At lunch he introduced me to his friend Mr. Wolfshiem, a small, gloomy man who talked sadly about the old days in New York.When he had gone, Gatsby told me quietly that Wolfshiem was a gambler, the man who had fixed the World’s Series in 1919.It amazed me that one man could play with the hopes of fifty million people, the way a thief breaks open a safe.

That afternoon, over tea at the Plaza Hotel, Jordan Baker told me a story from years before, in Louisville.In 1917 Daisy had been the most popular girl in town, and one day Jordan saw her in her white car with a young officer who looked at her the way every girl wants to be looked at.The officer’s name was Jay Gatsby, and soon afterwards he was sent overseas to the war.

A year and a half later Daisy married Tom Buchanan, who gave her a string of pearls worth three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.But the night before the wedding, Jordan found her crying on her bed with a letter in her hand, saying that she had changed her mind.She held the letter until it fell apart like snow, and the next day she married Tom without a single tremble.

“Gatsby bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay,” Jordan said.Suddenly I understood that on that June night he had not been reaching only for the stars, but for Daisy, just across the dark water.All he wanted now was a small thing: that I invite Daisy to my house for tea one afternoon, and let him come over.