«Великий Гэтсби» и другие лучшие произведения Ф.С. Фицджеральда

Her expression was curiously familiar – it was an expression I had often seen on women’s faces, but on Myrtle Wilson’s face it seemed purposeless and inexplicable until I realized that her eyes, wide with jealous terror, were fixed not on Tom, but on Jordan Baker, whom she took to be his wife.

* * *

There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind, and as we drove away Tom was feeling the hot whips of panic. His wife and his mistress, until an hour ago secure and inviolate, were slipping precipitately from his control.

Instinct made him step on the accelerator with the double purpose of overtaking Daisy and leaving Wilson behind, and we sped along toward Astoria at fifty miles an hour, until, among the spidery girders of the elevated, we came in sight of the easygoing blue coupe.

�Those big movies around Fiftieth Street are cool,’ suggested Jordan. �I love New York on summer afternoons when everyone’s away. There’s something very sensuous about it – overripe, as if all sorts of funny fruits were going to fall into your hands.

’

The word �sensuous’ had the effect of further disquieting Tom, but before he could invent a protest the coupe came to a stop, and Daisy signaled us to draw up alongside.

�Where are we going?’ she cried.

�How about the movies?’

�It’s so hot,’ she complained. �You go. We’ll ride around and meet you after.’ With an effort her wit rose faintly, �We’ll meet you on some corner.

I’ll be the man smoking two cigarettes.’

�We can’t argue about it here,’ Tom said impatiently, as a truck gave out a cursing whistle behind us. �You follow me to the south side of Central Park, in front of the Plaza.’

Several times he turned his head and looked back for their car, and if the traffic delayed them he slowed up until they came into sight. I think he was afraid they would dart down a side street and out of his life forever.

But they didn’t. And we all took the less explicable step of engaging the parlour of a suite in the Plaza Hotel.

The prolonged and tumultuous argument that ended by herding us into that room eludes me, though I have a sharp physical memory that, in the course of it, my underwear kept climbing like a damp snake around my legs and intermittent beads of sweat raced cool across my back.