I said to myself: There’s the kind of man you’d like to take home and introduce to your mother and sister.’” He paused.
“I see you’re looking at my cuff buttons.”
I hadn’t been looking at them, but I did now.
They were composed of oddly familiar pieces of ivory.
“Finest specimens of human molars,” he informed me.
“Well!” I inspected them. “That’s a very interesting idea.” “Yeah.”
He flipped his sleeves up under his coat.
“Yeah, Gatsby’s very careful about women.
He would never so much as look at a friend’s wife.”
When the subject of this instinctive trust returned to the table and sat down Mr. Wolfsheim drank his coffee with a jerk and got to his feet.
“I have enjoyed my lunch,” he said, “and I’m going to run off from you two young men before I outstay my welcome.”
“Don’t hurry, Meyer,” said Gatsby, without enthusiasm.
Mr. Wolfsheim raised his hand in a sort of benediction.
“You’re very polite, but I belong to another generation,” he announced solemnly.
“You sit here and discuss your sports and your young ladies and your -” He supplied an imaginary noun with another wave of his hand.
“As for me, I am fifty years old, and I won’t impose myself on you any longer.”
As he shook hands and turned away his tragic nose was trembling.
I wondered if I had said anything to offend him.
“He becomes very sentimental sometimes,” explained Gatsby. “This is one of his sentimental days.
He’s quite a character around New York—a denizen of Broadway.”
“Who is he, anyhow, an actor?”
“No.”
“A dentist?”
“Meyer Wolfsheim?
No, he’s a gambler.”
Gatsby hesitated, then added coolly: “He’s the man who fixed the World’s Series back in 1919”.
“Fixed the World’s Series?” I repeated. The idea staggered me.
I remembered, of course, that the World’s Series had been fixed in 1919, but if I had thought of it at all I would have thought of it as a thing that merely happened, the end of some inevitable chain.
It never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people—with the :single-mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe.
“How did he happen to do that?” I asked after a minute.
“He just saw the opportunity.”
“Why isn’t he in jail?”
“They can’t get him, old sport.
He’s a smart man.”
I insisted on paying the check.
As the’ waiter brought my change I caught sight of Tom Buchanan across the crowded room. .
“Come along with me for a minute”, I said; “I’ve got to say hello to some one.”
When he saw us Tom jumped up and took half a dozen steps in our direction.
“Where’ve you been?” he demanded eagerly.
“Daisy’s furious because you haven’t called up.”
“This is Mr. Gatsby, Mr. Buchanan.”
They shook hands briefly, and a strained, unfamiliar look of embarrassment came over Gatsby’s face.
“How’ve you been, anyhow?” demanded Tom of me.
“How’d you happen to come up this far to eat?”
“I’ve been having lunch with Mr. Gatsby.”
I turned toward Mr. Gatsby, but he was no longer there.
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 tut-tut-tut-tut, in a disapproving way.
The largest of the banners and the largest of the lawns belonged to Daisy Fay’s house.