The Great Gatsby - Chapter 3

Nick attends one of Gatsby’s extravagant parties, where he finally meets Gatsby, a mysterious and charming host. They form a friendship, and Gatsby reveals he served in the war. Rumors swirl about Gatsby’s past. Nick also starts dating Jordan Baker, a professional golfer. The night ends chaotically, reflecting the reckless behavior of Gatsby’s guests. Summary by Dream AudioBooks

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter three of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights.
In his blue gardens, men and girls came and went
like moths among the whisperings, and the champagne and the stars.
At high tide in the afternoon, I watched his guests

(00:21):
diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the
sun on the hot sand of his beach, while his
two motor boats slipped the waters of the sound, drawing
aqua plaines over cataracts of foam. On weekends, his rolls
Royce became an omnibus bearing parties to and from the
city between nine in the morning and long past midnight,

(00:43):
while his station wagons scampered like a brisk yellow bug
to meet all trains. And on Mondays, eight servants, including
an extra gardener, toiled all day with mops and scrubbing
brushes and hammers and garden shears, repairing the ravages of
the night before. Every Friday, five crates of oranges and

(01:05):
lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York. Every Monday,
those same oranges and lemons left his back door in
a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a machine in
the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred
oranges in half an hour if a little button was
pressed two hundred times by a butler's thumb. At least

(01:27):
once a fortnight, a core of caterers came down with
several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to
make a Christmas tree of Gatsby's enormous garden on buffet
tables garnished with glistening our d'uvs, spiced baked hams, crowded
against salads of harlequin designs, and pastry pigs and turkeys

(01:47):
bewitched to a dark gold. In the main hall, a
bar with a real brass rail was set up and
stocked with gins and liquors, and with cordials so long
forgotten that most of his female guests were too young
to know one from another. By seven o'clock, the orchestra
has arrived, no thin five piece affair, but a whole

(02:09):
pit full of oboes and trombones and saxophones, and vials
and coronets and piccolos and low and high drums. The
last swimmers have come in from the beach, now and
are dressing upstairs. The cars from New York are parked
five deep in the drive, and already the halls and
salons and verandas are gaudy, with primary colors and hair

(02:31):
shorn in strange new ways and shawls. Beyond the dreams
of Castile, the bar is in full swing, and floating
rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside, until the air
is alive with chatter and laughter and casual innuendo, and
introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women

(02:53):
who never knew each other's names. The lights grow brighter
as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now
the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music, and the opera
of voices pitches a key higher. Laughter is easier minute
by minute, spilled with prodigiality, tipped out at a cheerful word,

(03:16):
the groups change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve
and form in the same breath. Already there are wanderers,
confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter
and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous moment, the
center of a group, and then excited with triumph glide
on through the sea, change of faces and voices and

(03:38):
color under the constantly changing light. Suddenly, one of the
gypsies in trembling opal seizes a cocktail out of the air,
dumps it down for courage, and moving her hands like Frisco,
dances out alone on the canvas platform a momentary hush.
The orchestra leader varies his rhythm obligingly for her, and

(04:02):
there is a burst of chatter as the erroneous news
goes round that she is Gilda Gray's understudy from the follies.
The party has begun. I believe that on the first
night I went to Gatsby's house, I was one of
the few guests who had actually been invited. People were

(04:22):
not invited. They went there, They got into automobiles which
bore them out to Long Island, and somehow they ended
up at Gatsby's door. Once there, they were introduced by
somebody who knew Gatsby, and after that they conducted themselves
according to the rules of behavior associated with amusement parks.
Sometimes they came and went without having met Gatsby at all.

(04:45):
Came for the party with a simplicity of heart that
was its own ticket. Of admission. I had actually been invited.
A chauffeur in a uniform of Robin's egg Blue crossed
my lawn early that Saturday morning with a surprisingly formal
note from his employer. The honor would be entirely Gatsby's,
it said, if I would attend his little party that night.

(05:08):
He had seen me several times and had intended to
call on me long before, but a peculiar combination of
circumstances had prevented it. Signed J. Gatsby in a majestic hand.
Dressed up in white flannels, I went over to his
lawn a little after seven and wandered around, rather ill

(05:28):
at ease, among swirls and eddies of people I didn't know.
Though here and there was a face I had noticed
on the commuting train. I was immediately struck by the
number of young Englishmen dotted about, all well dressed, all
looking a little hungry, and all talking in low, earnest
voices to solid and prosperous Americans. I was sure that

(05:52):
they were selling something bonds or insurance or automobiles. They
were at least agonizingly aware of the easy money in
the vicinity, and convinced that it was theirs for a
few words in the right key. As soon as I arrived,
I made an attempt to find my host, but the
two or three people of whom I asked his whereabouts

(06:15):
stared at me in such an amazed way and denied
so vehemently any knowledge of his movements that I slunk
off in the direction of the cocktail table, the only
place in the garden where a single man could linger
without looking purposeless and alone. I was on my way
to get roaring drunk from sheer embarrassment when Jordan Baker

(06:37):
came out of the house and stood at the head
of the marble steps, leaning a little backward and looking
with contemptuous interest down into the garden. Welcome or not.
I found it necessary to attach myself to some one
before I should begin to address cordial remarks to the passers. By. Hello,

(06:58):
I roared, advancing toward her. My voice seemed unnaturally loud
across the garden. I thought you might be here, she
responded absently. As I came up, I remembered you lived
next door to She held my hand impersonally as a
promise that she'd take care of me in a minute,

(07:19):
and gave ear to two girls in twin yellow dresses
who stopped at the foot of the steps. Hello, they
cried together. Sorry you didn't win. That was for the
golf tournament she had lost in the finals the week before.
You don't know who we are, said one of the
girls in yellow. But we met you here about a

(07:39):
month ago. You've dyed your hair since then, remarked Jordan,
and I started, but the girls had moved casually on,
and her remark was addressed to the premature moon produced
like the supper, no doubt, out of a caterer's basket.
With Jordan's slender, golden arm resting in mine, we descended

(08:00):
steps and sauntered about the garden. A tray of cocktails
floated at us through the twilight, and we sat down
at a table with the two girls in yellow and
three men, each one introduced to us as mister mumble.
Do you come to these parties? Often, inquired Jordan of
the girl beside her. The last one was the one

(08:22):
I met you at, answered the girl in an alert,
confident voice. She turned to her companion. Wasn't it for you, Lucille?
It was for Lucille too. I like to come, Lucille said,
I never care what I do, so I always have
a good time. When I was here last I tore
my gown on a chair and he asked me my

(08:44):
name and address. Inside of a week I got a
package from Curriers with a new evening gown in it.
Did you keep it, asked Jordan. Sure I did. I
was going to wear it to night, but it was
too big in the bust and had to be altered.
It was gas blue with lavender beads. Two hundred and

(09:05):
sixty five dollars. There's something funny about a fellow that'll
do a thing like that, said the other girl eagerly.
He doesn't want any trouble with anybody who doesn't, I
inquired Gatsby. Somebody told me. The two girls and Jordan

(09:25):
leaned together confidentially. Somebody told me they thought he killed
a man. Once a thrill passed over all of us.
The three mister mumbles bent forward and listened eagerly. I
don't think it's so much that, argued Lucille skeptically. It's
more that he was a German spy during the war.

(09:49):
One of the men nodded in confirmation. I heard that
from a man who knew all about him, grew up
with him in Germany. He assured us positively. Oh, no,
the first girl. It couldn't be that, because he was
in the American Army during the war. As our credulity
switched back to her, she leaned forward with enthusiasm. You

(10:11):
look at him sometimes when he thinks nobody's looking at him.
I'll bet he killed a man. She narrowed her eyes
and shivered. Lucille shivered. We all turned and looked around
for Gatsby. It was testimony to the romantic speculation he inspired,
that there were whispers about him from those who found little,

(10:31):
but it was necessary to whisper about in this world.
The first supper there would be another one after midnight
was now being served, and Jordan invited me to join
her own party, who were spread around a table on
the other side of the garden. There were three married
couples and Jordan's escort, a persistent undergraduate given to violent

(10:56):
innuendo and obviously under the impression that sooner or later
Jordan was going to yield him up her person to
a greater or lesser degree. Instead of rambling, this party
had preserved a dignified homogeneity and assumed to itself the
function of representing the staid nobility of the countryside East Egg,

(11:18):
condescending to West Egg, and carefully on guard against its
spectroscopic gaiety. Let's get out, whispered Jordan, after a somehow
wasteful and inappropriate half hour. This is much too polite
for me. We got up, and she explained that we
were going to find the host. I had never met him,

(11:40):
she said, and it was making me uneasy. The undergraduate
nodded in a cynical, melancholy way. The bar where we
glanced first was crowded, but Gatsby was not there. She
couldn't find him from the top of the steps, and
he wasn't on the verandah. On a chance, we tried
an important looking door and walked into a high Gothic library,

(12:03):
paneled with carved English oak and probably transported complete from
some ruin overseas. A stout, middle aged man with enormous
owl eyed spectacles was sitting somewhat drunk on the edge
of a great table, staring with unsteady concentration at the
shelves of books. As we entered, he wheeled excitedly around

(12:26):
and examined Jordan from head to foot. What do you think,
he demanded, impetuously about what. He waved his hand toward
the bookshelves. About that, as a matter of fact, you
needn't bother to ascertain. I ascertained. They're real, the books,

(12:50):
he nodded, Absolutely real, half pages and everything. I thought
they'd be a nice, durable cardboard. Matter of fact, they're
absolutely pages. And here let me show you taking our
skepticism for granted. He rushed to the bookcases and returned
with volume one of the Stoddard lectures. See, he cried, triumphantly.

(13:15):
It's a bona fide piece of printed matter. It fooled me.
This fellow's a regular Belasco. It's a triumph. What thoroughness,
what realism? You went to stop too, didn't cut the pages?
But what do you want? What do you expect? He
snatched the book from me and replaced it hastily on
its shelf, muttering that if one brick was removed, the

(13:37):
whole library was liable to collapse. Who brought you, he demanded,
or did you just come? I was brought. Most people
were brought. Jordan looked at him, alertly, cheerfully, without answering.
I was brought by a woman named Roosevelt. He continued,
Missus Claude Roosevelt. Do you know her? I met her

(14:00):
somewhere last night. I've been drunk for about a week now,
and I thought it might sober me up to sit
in a library. Has it a little bit? I think?
I can't tell yet. I've only been here an hour.
Did I tell you about the books? They're real? There,
you told us. We shook hands with him gravely and

(14:21):
went back out doors. There was dancing now on the
canvas in the garden, old men pushing young girls backward
in eternal, graceless circles, superior couples holding each other tortuously,
fashionably and keeping in the corners, and a great number
of single girls dancing individualistically or relieving the orchestra for

(14:44):
a moment of the burden of the banjo or the traps.
By midnight, the hilarity had increased. A celebrated tenor had
sung in Italian, and a notorious contralto had sung in jazz.
And between the numbers people were doing stunts all over
the garden, while happy, vacuous bursts of laughter rose toward

(15:05):
the summer sky. A pair of stage twins who turned
out to be the girls in Yellow, did a baby
act in costume, and champagne was served in glasses bigger
than finger bowls. The moon had risen higher, and floating
in the sound was a triangle of silver scales, trembling
a little to the stiff, tiney drip of the banjos

(15:27):
on the lawn. I was still with Jordan Baker. We
were sitting at a table with a man of about
my age and a rowdy little girl who gave way,
upon the slightest provocation, to uncontrollable laughter. I was enjoying
myself now. I had taken two finger bowls of champagne,
and the scene had changed before my eyes into something significant, elemental,

(15:51):
and profound. At a lull in the entertainment, the man
looked at me and smiled. Your face is familiar, he said, politely.
Weren't you in the third Division during the war. Why? Yes,
I was in the ninth machine gun Battalion. I was
in the seventh Infantry until June nineteen eighteen. I knew

(16:13):
I'd seen you somewhere before. We talked for a moment
about some wet, gray little villages in France. Evidently he
lived in this vicinity. For he told me that he
had just bought a hydroplane and was going to try
it out in the morning. Want to go with me
Old Sport, just near the shore along the sound? What time?

(16:36):
Any time that suits you best. It was on the
tip of my tongue to ask his name, when Jordan
looked around and smiled. Having a gay time now, she
inquired much better. I turned again to my new acquaintance.
This is an unusual party for me. I haven't even
seen the host. I live over there. I waved my

(16:59):
hand at the invisible hedge in the distance, and this
man Gatsby sent over his chauffeur with an invitation. For
a moment, he looked at me as if he failed
to understand I'm Gatsby. He said suddenly what I exclaimed? Oh,
I beg your pardon. I thought you knew Old Sport.

(17:22):
I'm afraid I'm not a very good host. He smiled, understandingly,
much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare
smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it that
you may come across four or five times in life.
It faced, or seemed to face the whole external world

(17:42):
for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an
irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so
far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you
as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured
you that it had precisely the impression of you that,
at your best you hoped to convey precisely. At that

(18:04):
point it vanished, and I was looking at an elegant,
young roughneck, a year or two over thirty, whose elaborate
formality of speech just missed being absurd. Some time before
he introduced himself, I'd got a strong impression that he
was picking his words with care. Almost at the moment

(18:26):
when mister Gatsby identified himself, a butler hurried toward him
with the information that Chicago was calling him on the wire,
he excused himself with a small bow that included each
of us in turn. If you want anything, just ask
for it, old sport, he urged me. Excuse me, I
will rejoin you later. When he was gone, I turned

(18:50):
immediately to Jordan, constrained to assure her of my surprise.
I had expected that mister Gatsby would be a florid
and corpulent person in his middle years. Who is he?
I demanded, Do you know? He's just a man named Gatsby.
Where's he from? I mean, and what does he do?

(19:13):
Now you're started on the subject, she answered with a
wan smile, Well, he told me once he was an
Oxford man. A dim background started to take shape behind him,
but at her next remark it faded away. However, I
don't believe it. Why not, I don't know, she insisted,

(19:34):
I just don't think he went there. Something in her
tone reminded me of the other girls. I think he
killed a man and had the effect of stimulating my curiosity.
I would have accepted without question the information that Gatsby
sprang from the swamps of Louisiana or from the Lower
East Side of New York. That was comprehensible. But young

(19:57):
men didn't, at least in my provincial in experience, I
believe they didn't drift coolly out of nowhere and buy
a palace on Long Island Sound. Anyhow, he gives large parties,
said Jordan, changing the subject with an urbane distaste for
the concrete and I like large parties. They're so intimate.

(20:18):
At small parties. There isn't any privacy. There was the
boom of a bass drum, and the voice of the
orchestra leader rang out suddenly above the echolalia of the
garden ladies and gentlemen. He cried, at the request of
mister Gatsby, we are going to play for you, mister
Vladimir Tostov's latest work, which attracted so much attention at

(20:41):
Carnegie Hall last May. If you read the papers, you
know there was a big sensation. He smiled with jovial
condescension and added some sensation, whereupon everybody laughed. The piece
is known, he concluded lustily, as Vladimir toss Ustoff's jazz
History of the World. The nature of mister Tostoff's composition

(21:07):
eluded me, because just as it began, my eyes fell
on Gatsby, standing alone on the marble steps and looking
from one group to another with approving eyes. His tanned
skin was drawn attractively tight on his face, and his
short hair looked as though it were trimmed every day.
I could see nothing sinister about him. I wondered if

(21:28):
the fact that he was not drinking helped to set
him off from his guests, For it seemed to me
that he grew more correct as the fraternal hilarity increased.
When the jazz history of the world was over, girls
were putting their heads on men's shoulders in a puppyish
convivial way. Girls were swooning backward playfully into men's arms,

(21:50):
even into groups, knowing that some one would arrest their falls.
But no one swooned backward on Gatsby, and no French
bob touched Gatsby's shoulder, and no singing quartettes were formed
with Gatsby's head for one link. I beg your pardon.
Gatsby's butler was suddenly standing beside us, Miss Baker. He inquired,

(22:15):
I beg your pardon, but mister Gatsby would like to
speak to you alone with me, She exclaimed in surprise, Yes, madam.
She got up, slowly, raising her eyebrows at me in astonishment,
and followed the butler toward the house. I noticed that
she wore her evening dress, all her dresses like sports clothes.

(22:37):
There was a jauntiness about her movements, as if she
had first learned to walk upon golf courses in clean,
crisp mornings. I was alone, and it was almost two.
For some time, confused and intriguing sounds had issued from
a long, many windowed room which overhung the terrace, Eluding

(22:58):
Jordan's undergraduate, who now engaged in an obstetrical conversation with
two chorus girls, and who implored me to join him.
I went inside. The large room was full of people.
One of the girls in yellow was playing the piano,
and beside her stood a tall, red haired young lady
from a famous chorus, engaged in song. She had drunk

(23:21):
a quantity of champagne, and during the course of her
song she had decided ineptly that everything was very, very sad.
She was not only singing, she was weeping too. Whenever
there was a pause in the song, she filled it
with gasping, broken sobs, and then took up the lyric
again in a quavering soprano. The tears coursed down her cheeks.

(23:45):
Not freely, however, for when they came into contact with
her heavily beaded eyelashes, they assumed an inky color and
pursued the rest of their way in slow black rivulets.
A humorous suggestion was made that she sing the notes
on her face, whereupon she threw up her hands, sank
into a chair and went off into a deep vine

(24:08):
as sleep. She had a fight with a man who
says he's her husband, explained a girl at my elbow.
I looked around. Most of the remaining women were now
having fights with men said to be their husbands. Even
Jordan's party, the quartet from East Egg were rent asunder
by dissension. One of the men was talking with curious

(24:31):
intensity to a young actress and his wife. After attempting
to laugh at the situation in a dignified and indifferent way,
broke down entirely and resorted to flank attacks at intervals.
She appeared suddenly at his side like an angry diamond,
and hissed you promised into his ear. The reluctance to

(24:53):
go home was not confined to wayward men. The hall
was at present occupied by too deplorably so bert men
and their highly indignant wives. The wives were sympathizing with
each other in slightly raised voices. Whenever he sees I'm
having a good time, he wants to go home. Never
heard anything so selfish in my life. We're always the

(25:16):
first ones to leave, so are we well, we're almost
the last tonight, said one of the men, sheepishly. The
orchestra left half an hour ago, in spite of the
wives agreement that such malevolence was beyond credibility. The dispute
ended in a short struggle, and both wives were lifted

(25:39):
kicking into the night. As I waited for my hat
in the hall, the door of the library opened and Jordan,
Baker and Gatsby came out together. He was saying some
last word to her, but the eagerness in his manner
tightened abruptly into formality as several people approached him to
say good bye. Jordan's party were calling impatiently to her

(26:03):
from the porch, but she lingered for a moment to
shake hands. I've just heard the most amazing thing, she whispered.
How long were we in there? Why? About an hour?
It was simply amazing, she repeated abstractedly. But I swore
I wouldn't tell it, And here I am tantalizing you,

(26:26):
she yawned, gracefully in my face. Please come and see
me phone book under the name of missus Sigourney Howard,
my aunt. She was hurrying off. As she talked, Her
brown hand waved a jaunty salute as she melted into
her party at the door. Rather ashamed that on my

(26:47):
first appearance I had stayed so late, I joined the
last of Gatsby's guests, who were clustered around him. I
wanted to explain that I'd hunted for him early in
the evening, and to apologize for not having known him
in the garden. Don't mention it, he enjoined me eagerly.
Don't give it another thought, old sport. The familiar expression

(27:09):
held no more familiarity than the hand which reassuringly brushed
my shoulder. And don't forget. We're going up in the
hydroplane tomorrow morning at nine o'clock. Then the butler behind
his shoulder, Philadelphia wants you on the phone, sir, all right,
in a minute, tell them I'll be right there. Good Night,

(27:32):
good night, good night, he smiled, And suddenly there seemed
to be a pleasant significance in having been among the
last to go, as if he had desired it all
the time. Good Night, old Sport, good night. But as
I walked down the steps, I saw that the evening

(27:53):
was not quite over. Fifty feet from the door, a
dozen head lights illuminated a bizarre and tumultuous scene in
the ditch beside the road, right side up but violently
shorn of one wheel, rested a new coop which had
left Gatsby's drive not two minutes before. The sharp jut
of a wall accounted for the detachment of the wheel,

(28:15):
which was now getting considerable attention from half a dozen
curious chauffeurs. However, as they had left their cars blocking
the road, a harsh, discordant din from those in the
rear had been audible for some time and added to
the already violent confusion of the scene. A man in

(28:36):
a long duster had dismounted from the wreck and now
stood in the middle of the road, looking from the
car to the tire, and from the tire to the
observers in a pleasant puzzled way. See, he explained, it
went in the ditch. The fact was infinitely astonishing to him,
and I recognized first the unusual quality of wonder, and

(28:59):
then the man. It was, the late patron of Gatsby's library.
How did it happen? He shrugged his shoulders. I know
nothing whatever about mechanics, he said, decisively, But how did
it happen? Did you run into the wall don't ask me,

(29:19):
said owl eyes, washing his hands of the whole matter.
I know very little about driving, next to nothing. It happened,
and that's all I know. Well, if you're a poor driver,
you oughtn't to try driving at night. But I wasn't
even trying, he explained indignantly. I wasn't even trying. An

(29:42):
awed hush fell upon the bystanders. Do you want to
commit suicide? You're lucky. It was just a wheel, a
bad driver and not even trying. You don't understand, explained
the criminal. I wasn't driving. There's another man in the car.
The shock that followed this declaration found voice in a

(30:04):
sustained aha. As the door of the coop swung slowly open,
the crowd it was now a crowd, stepped back involuntarily,
and when the door had opened wide, there was a
ghostly pause, Then, very gradually, part by part, a pale,
dangling individual stepped out of the wreck, pawing tentatively at

(30:27):
the ground with a large, uncertain dancing shoe. Blinded by
the glare of the headlights and confused by the incessant
groaning of the horns, the apparition stood swaying for a
moment before he perceived the man in the duster. Was
the matter? He inquired, calmly, did we run out of gas? Look?

(30:51):
Half a dozen fingers pointed at the amputated wheel. He
stared at it for a moment, and then looked upward,
as though he suspected that it had dropped from the sky.
It came off, someone explained. He nodded at first, I
didn't notice wee stopped a pause, Then, taking a long

(31:12):
breath and straightening his shoulders, he remarked, in a determined voice,
wonder if tell me where there is a gasoline station?
At least a dozen men, some of them little better
off than he was, explained to him that wheel and
car were no longer joined by any physical bond. Back out,

(31:35):
he suggested. After a moment, put her in reverse, but
the wheels off. He hesitated, no harm in trying, he said.
The caterwauling horns had reached a crescendo, and I turned
away and cut across the lawn toward home. I glanced

(31:55):
back once a wafer of a moon was shining over Gatsby's,
making the night fine as before, and surviving the laughter
and the sound of his still glowing garden. A sudden
emptiness seemed to flow now from the windows and the
great doors, and dowing with complete isolation. The figure of
the host, who stood on the porch, his hand up

(32:18):
in a formal gesture of farewell. Reading over what I
have written so far, I see I have given the
impression that the events of three nights, several weeks apart,
were all that absorbed me. On the contrary, they were
merely casual events in a crowded summer, and until much later,

(32:39):
they absorbed me infinitely less than my personal affairs. Most
of the time I worked in the early morning, the
sun threw my shadow westward as I hurried down the
white chasms of Lower New York to the Probity Trust.
I knew the other clerks and young bond salesmen by
their first names, and lunched with them in dark, crowded

(33:00):
restaurants on little pig sausages and mashed potatoes and coffee.
I even had a short affair with a girl who
lived in Jersey City and worked in the accounting department,
But her brother began throwing mean looks in my direction,
so when she went on her vacation in July, I
let it blow quietly away. I took dinner, usually at

(33:23):
the Yale Club. For some reason, it was the gloomiest
event of my day, and then I went upstairs to
the library and studied investments and securities for a conscientious hour.
There were generally a few rioters around, but they never
came into the library, so it was a good place
to work. After that, if the night was mellow, I

(33:44):
strolled down Madison Avenue, past the old murray Hill Hotel,
and over thirty third Street to the Pennsylvania Station. I
began to like New York, the racy, adventurous feel of
it at night, and the satisfaction that the constant flicker
of men and women and machines gives to the restless eye.

(34:04):
I liked to walk up Fifth Avenue and pick out
romantic women from the crowd and imagine that in a
few minutes I was going to enter into their lives
and no one would ever know or disapprove. Sometimes, in
my mind, I followed them to their apartments on the
corners of hidden streets, and they turned and smiled back
at me before they faded through a door into warm darkness.

(34:28):
At the enchanted Metropolitan twilight I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes,
and felt it in others, poor young clerks who loitered
in front of windows, waiting until it was time for
a solitary restaurant dinner. Young clerks in the dusk, wasting
the most poignant moments of night and life. Again, at

(34:50):
eight o'clock, when the dark lanes of the forties were
five deep with throbbing taxicabs bound for the theater district,
I felt a sinking in my heart. Storms leaned together
in the taxis as they waited, and voices sang, and
there was laughter from unheard jokes, and lighted cigarettes outlined
unintelligible gestures inside, imagining that I too was hurrying toward

(35:15):
gayety and sharing their intimate excitement. I wished them well.
For a while I lost sight of Jordan Baker, and
then in midsummer I found her again. At first I
was flattered to go places with her because she was
a golf champion and everyone knew her name. Then it
was something more. I wasn't actually in love, but I

(35:38):
felt a sort of tender curiosity. The bored, haughty face
that she turned to the world concealed something most affectations
conceal something eventually, even though they don't in the beginning,
And one day I found what it was. When we
were on a house party together up in Warwick, she

(35:58):
left a borrowed car out in the rain with a
top down and then lied about it. And suddenly I
remembered the story about her that had eluded me. That
night at Daisy's, at her first big golf tournament, there
was a row that nearly reached the newspapers, a suggestion
that she had moved her ball from a bad lie

(36:19):
in the semi final round. The thing approached the proportions
of a scandal, then died away. A caddie retracted his statement,
and the only other witness admitted that he might have
been mistaken. The incident and the name had remained together
in my mind, Jordan Baker instinctively avoided clever, shrewd men,

(36:43):
and now I saw that this was because she felt
safer on a plane where any divergence from a code
would be thought impossible. She was incurably dishonest. She wasn't
able to endure being at a disadvantage, and given this unwillingness,
I suppose she had begun dealing in subterfuge's when she

(37:04):
was very young. In order to keep that cool, insolent smile,
turned to the world and yet satisfied the demands of
her hard, jaunty body. It made no difference to me.
Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply.
I was casually sorry, and then I forgot. It was

(37:25):
on that same house party that we had a curious
conversation about driving a car. It started because she passed
so close to some workmen that our fender flicked a
button on one man's coat. You're a rotten driver, I protested.
Either you ought to be more careful or you oughtn't
to drive at all. I am careful. No, you're not. Well,

(37:52):
other people are, she said lightly. What's that got to
do with it? They'll keep out of my way, She insisted.
It takes two to make an accident. Suppose you met
somebody just as careless as yourself. I hope I never will,
she answered, I hate careless people. That's why I like you.

(38:16):
Her gray, sun strained eyes stared straight ahead. But she
had deliberately shifted our relations, and for a moment I
thought I loved her. But I am slow thinking and
full of interior rules that act as breaks on my desires.
And I knew that first I had to get myself
definitely out of that tangle. Back home, I'd been writing

(38:41):
letters once a week and signing them Love Nick, and
all I could think of was how when that certain
girl played tennis, a faint mustache of perspiration appeared on
her upper lip. Nevertheless, there was a vague understanding that
had to be tactfully broken off before I was free.

(39:02):
Every One suspects himself of at least one of the
cardinal virtues, and this is mine. I am one of
the few honest people that I have ever known. End
of Chapter three.