“Shall we all go in my car?” suggested Gatsby.
He felt the hot, green leather of the seat.
“I ought to have left it in the shade.”
“Is it standard shift?” demanded Tom.
“Yes.”
“Well, you take my coupe and let me drive your car to town.”
The suggestion was distasteful to Gatsby.
“I don’t think there’s much gas,” he objected.
“Plenty of gas,” said Tom boisterously.
He looked at the gauge.
“And if it runs out I can stop at a drugstore.
You can buy anything at a drugstore nowadays.”
A pause followed this apparently pointless remark.
Daisy looked at Tom frowning, and an indefinable expression, at once definitely unfamiliar and vaguely recognizable, as if I had only heard it described in words, passed over Gatsby’s face.
“Come on, Daisy,” said Tom, pressing her with his hand toward Gatsby’s car.
“I’ll take you in this circus wagon.”
He opened the door, but she moved out from the circle of his arm.
“You take Nick and Jordan.
We’ll follow you in the coupe.”
She walked close to Gatsby, touching his coat with her hand.
Jordan and Tom and I got into the front seat of Gatsby’s car, Tom pushed the unfamiliar gears tentatively, and we shot off into the oppressive heat, leaving them out of sight behind.
“Did you see that?” demanded Tom.
“See what?”
He looked at me keenly, realizing that Jordan and I must have known all along.
“You think I’m pretty dumb, don’t you?” he suggested.
“Perhaps I am, but I have a—almost a second sight, sometimes, that tells me what to do.
Maybe you don’t believe that, but science——”
He paused.
The immediate contingency overtook him, pulled him back from the edge of the theoretical abyss.
“I’ve made a small investigation of this fellow,” he continued.
“I could have gone deeper if I’d known——”
“Do you mean you’ve been to a medium?” inquired Jordan humorously.
“What?”
Confused, he stared at us as we laughed. “A medium?”
“About Gatsby.”
“About Gatsby!
No, I haven’t.
I said I’d been making a small investigation of his past.”
“And you found he was an Oxford man,” said Jordan helpfully.
“An Oxford man!” He was incredulous.
“Like hell he is!
He wears a pink suit.”
“Nevertheless he’s an Oxford man.”
“Oxford, New Mexico,” snorted Tom contemptuously, “or something like that.”
“Listen, Tom. If you’re such a snob, why did you invite him to lunch?” demanded Jordan crossly.
“Daisy invited him; she knew him before we were married—God knows where!”
We were all irritable now with the fading ale, and aware of it we drove for a while in silence.
Then as Doctor T.
J.
Eckleburg’s faded eyes came into sight down the road, I remembered Gatsby’s caution about gasoline.