The Great Gatsby
Page 9

"My dear," she told her sister in a high mincing shout, "most of these fellas will cheat you every time. All they think of is money. I had a woman up here last week to look at my feet and when she gave me the bill you'd of thought she had my appendicitus out."
"What was the name of the woman?" asked Mrs. McKee.
"Mrs. Eberhardt. She goes around looking at people's feet in their own homes."
"I like your dress," remarked Mrs. McKee, "I think it's adorable."
Mrs. Wilson rejected the compliment by raising her eyebrow in disdain.
"It's just a crazy old thing," she said. "I just slip it on sometimes when I don't care what I look like."
"But it looks wonderful on you, if you know what I mean," pursued Mrs. McKee. "If Chester could only get you in that pose I think he could make something of it."
We all looked in silence at Mrs. Wilson who removed a strand of hair from over her eyes and looked back at us with a brilliant smile. Mr. McKee regarded her intently with his head on one side and then moved his hand back and forth slowly in front of his face.
"I should change the light," he said after a moment. "I'd like to bring out the modelling of the features. And I'd try to get hold of all the back hair."
"I wouldn't think of changing the light," cried Mrs. McKee. "I think it's——"
Her husband said "Sh! " and we all looked at the subject again whereupon Tom Buchanan yawned audibly and got to his feet.
"You McKees have something to drink," he said. "Get some more ice and mineral water, Myrtle, before everybody goes to sleep."
"I told that boy about the ice." Myrtle raised her eyebrows in despair at the shiftlessness of the lower orders. "These people! You have to keep after them all the time."
She looked at me and laughed pointlessly. Then she flounced over to the dog, kissed it with ecstasy and swept into the kitchen, implying that a dozen chefs awaited her orders there.
"I've done some nice things out on Long Island," asserted Mr. McKee.
Tom looked at him blankly.
"Two of them we have framed downstairs."
"Two what?" demanded Tom.
"Two studies. One of them I call 'Montauk Point—the Gulls,' and the other I call 'Montauk Point—the Sea.' "
The sister Catherine sat down beside me on the couch.
"Do you live down on Long Island, too?" she inquired.
"I live at West Egg."
"Really? I was down there at a party about a month ago. At a man named Gatsby's. Do you know him?"
"I live next door to him."
"Well, they say he's a nephew or a cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm's. That's where all his money comes from."
"Really?"
She nodded.
"I'm scared of him. I'd hate to have him get anything on me."
This absorbing information about my neighbor was interrupted by Mrs. McKee's pointing suddenly at Catherine:
"Chester, I think you could do something with her," she broke out, but Mr. McKee only nodded in a bored way and turned his attention to Tom.
"I'd like to do more work on Long Island if I could get the entry. All I ask is that they should give me a start."
"Ask Myrtle," said Tom, breaking into a short shout of laughter as Mrs. Wilson entered with a tray. "She'll give you a letter of introduction, won't you, Myrtle?"
"Do what?" she asked, startled.
"You'll give McKee a letter of introduction to your husband, so he can do some studies of him." His lips moved silently for a moment as he invented. " 'George B. Wilson at the Gasoline Pump,' or something like that."
Catherine leaned close to me and whispered in my ear: "Neither of them can stand the person they're married to."
"Can't they?"
"Can't stand them." She looked at Myrtle and then at Tom. "What I say is, why go on living with them if they can't stand them? If I was them I'd get a divorce and get married to each other right away."
"Doesn't she like Wilson either?"
The answer to this was unexpected. It came from Myrtle who had overheard the question and it was violent and obscene.
"You see?" cried Catherine triumphantly. She lowered her voice again. "It's really his wife that's keeping them apart. She's a Catholic and they don't believe in divorce."
Daisy was not a Catholic and I was a little shocked at the elaborateness of the lie.
"When they do get married," continued Catherine, "they're going west to live for a while until it blows over."
"It'd be more discreet to go to Europe."
"Oh, do you like Europe?" she exclaimed surprisingly. "I just got back from Monte Carlo."
"Really."
"Just last year. I went over there with another girl."
"Stay long?"
"No, we just went to Monte Carlo and back. We went by way of Marseilles. We had over twelve hundred dollars when we started but we got gypped out of it all in two days in the private rooms. We had an awful time getting back, I can tell you. God, how I hated that town!"
The late afternoon sky bloomed in the window for a moment like the blue honey of the Mediterranean—then the shrill voice of Mrs. McKee called me back into the room.
"I almost made a mistake, too," she declared vigorously. "I almost married a little kyke who'd been after me for years. I knew he was below me. Everybody kept saying to me: 'Lucille, that man's way below you!' But if I hadn't met Chester, he'd of got me sure."