The Summer We Read Gatsby (19 page)

“You look really pretty, kid,” he said to me as I walked down the porch steps, his eyes wide in surprise.

He walked me around to the passenger side of the jeep and opened the door for me. The Grateful Dead was on the stereo. “Stella Blue.” “This was never one of my favorite songs,” I told him, suddenly nervous. It hit me that it wasn’t a very good idea to go on a two-hour car ride on what was essentially a first date. What if we ran out of things to talk about and then had to sit through a long fancy dinner in silence?

“Not mine either,” he said, looking at me for a beat before he closed my door and came around, giving Peck a jaunty wave before he slid in next to me. Well, that was rude, I thought.

He pulled out of the driveway and we were quiet, listening to the music.
It seems like all this life / Was just a dream.
It occurred to me as he didn’t speak that I must have misinterpreted his invitation, reading romantic intentions into the talk of skinny-dipping and dinner in the Pool Room. He was obviously just being polite, taking out the family friend, the visitor from abroad, out of allegiance to Lydia. I replayed our conversation on the phone to see if I’d missed some signal, but Peck had been distracting me, and the nuances of whether the invitation was for a date or just a friendly outing escaped me as I tried to recall his words. It didn’t matter; the situation was now more than clear and it annoyed me that I’d been fooled.

“Rough day at the office?” I asked, slightly sarcastic. I felt silly now, in my borrowed finery with my expectations sitting heavily on my chest. And what had happened to his sense of humor? He was practically sullen.

He nodded distractedly. “Sort of. I’ve got a couple of difficult clients right now.”

After that we talked, but our conversation was stilted and I grew increasingly annoyed with him. He made no effort to be funny and entertaining. Instead he appeared tired and it seemed suddenly ridiculous to be driving to dinner hours away with someone who didn’t even seem to like me. And then the voice in my head kicked in, reminding me that even if there had been romantic intentions on his part, there would have been no point in reciprocating when I had so much to do and would soon be leaving this place behind.

It was time, I told myself when we fell into another silence, to go back home and focus on the career I’d allowed to languish. In an e-mail just that day, my editor had expressed an interest in giving me more actual writing projects, rather than only translations, and I’d enjoyed thinking about turning the e-mails I’d sent him into a column. I’d been jotting down notes since I arrived in Southampton and I was excited about getting back to writing. Perhaps after tonight I could write a column about uncomfortable dates.

“Tell me about your writing,” Finn said then, as if he could read my mind.

“There’s not much to tell,” I said. I’d never been comfortable talking about myself or about my yearning to write.

“When I first wanted to be an architect,” he went on, “I used to believe that my first efforts at designing something had to be perfect. When those first sketches weren’t good—of course they weren’t, they were supposed to be rough—I thought that meant I wasn’t supposed to be an architect. It was only later that I understood how the process works. I imagine it must be similar with writing.”

I didn’t realize at the time how these words would later resonate. That night I thought he was being condescending, and I grew prickly as a result. I resented my earlier excitement at the prospect of what I’d assumed—erroneously, I now believed—was a romantic dinner.

There wasn’t much traffic and in no time we were standing in the plaza in front of the Seagram Building and Finn was showing me what he meant by curtain-wall architecture. He spoke as though he were addressing a class of students and my responses grew more and more sarcastic.

Then we were in the restaurant, which really was stunning, being fawned over by a maître d’ who either recognized and adored Finn or was just making him feel as if he did. He led us to a table next to the pool and presented it with a flourish, as though he knew it would please.

“Do you like it?” Finn asked me. He sounded doubtful, as though I were the sort of spoiled woman who might roll her eyes at his enthusiasm.

“It’s beautiful,” I said, resenting his implication. And it was, although I was confused by his behavior, especially when I saw the prices on the menu. The evening seemed awfully extravagant and yet not in the least romantic, and I couldn’t understand why we were there. He ordered a bottle of wine, and then asked if red was okay. Again, the question seemed phrased for another type of woman, one who would find fault with the choice of wine, who might even send it back.

We ordered our food and then spent the rest of the evening exchanging barbed remarks. I’m not sure who exactly I thought I was channeling, but something got into me that night, and I bantered with him like it was a sport in which I excelled. I did not, however, and I suspect I simply came across as rude. For his part, he seemed to have made some sort of unfavorable decision about me. This brought out the worst in me, and after a few sips of wine, I heard myself making fun of him for being an architect, accusing him of having poor taste, although I’d never seen anything he’d designed. If I thought I was flirting I was failing miserably.

“I designed my own house,” he said, and it sounded awfully pompous to me. That, I think, is when I pointed out that it was awfully presumptuous for a single man to assume a woman he might later meet would like it and want to live there, and the conversation went downhill from there.

He shrugged and took a sip of his wine. “
Everybody
likes it.”

I suggested that he was arrogant, like all architects, and he pointed out that I hadn’t seen his house. I said I’d never been invited and then he made fun of me for being
formal
.

“I’m not formal,” I said, sounding exactly like the type of woman he seemed to think I was, one who would be jaded by the Four Seasons and send back the wine and expect an engraved invitation to show up at his house. “I’m
Swiss
.” It wasn’t the kind of thing I would ever say and I blamed him.

He rolled his eyes and then he reminded me I was actually an American, and I told him I didn’t need reminding, and I believe the word
Eurotrash
came out of his mouth. By then I’d had a lot more of the wine than he’d had and we’d ordered coffee and dessert and I couldn’t imagine that we would ever be friends again, let alone anything else, after such a disastrous dinner.

“You’re quite a character, kid,” he said to me in a most infuriating way.

“Just because you
are
a character,” I replied, quoting a line from
Pulp Fiction
, “doesn’t mean you
have
character.”

“Really?” he said, making a face. “Movie dialogue, that’s what we’ve been reduced to?”

Dessert, in the form of an enormous puff of cotton candy, was placed between us before I could answer. “You ordered this?” I asked him, annoyed that he seemed to blame me for reducing the conversation when in my view it was all his fault that things were not going well. Why had he even invited me in the first place? And why had he misled me with all that talk of skinny-dipping on the phone? And by the way, I wanted to say to him, I wasn’t interested in being misled. I wasn’t interested at all.

He pulled a piece and popped it into his mouth. “Try it.” I did and it was delicious. The child-friendly dessert seemed to bring both of us back to our normal selves and we shared a couple of laughs as we polished it off.

The ride back to Southampton was a lot more conversational than our earlier trip, and it went quickly. We both seemed to have dropped our defenses, and we chatted easily. When we pulled into the driveway at Fool’s House, nearly all the lights were off. Only the light over the front door was on, creating a welcoming glow. Finn walked me up the steps and we stood facing each other. “Thank you,” I said. “I’ll always remember this night.”

“Me too,” he said, grinning down at me as though he only half believed me.

This time I was pretty sure he was going to kiss me and I’d decided I would kiss him back, despite what I believed was my increasingly intense dislike for the man. I found myself tilting my head back slightly in anticipation. But rather than the passionate embrace I expected, he simply pecked me lightly on the cheek and said, “Good night, kid.”

I felt foolish as I slipped off the slightly-too-big shoes I’d borrowed from Peck and padded through the living room. I was disappointed that Peck wasn’t there and I quickly got out of the gray dress, hung it on her door, and got into my pajamas. I’d just gotten into bed with Lydia’s hardcover of
The Great Gatsby
when I heard the screen door slam. A few minutes later Peck swanned into my room in a long printed caftan, a bakery box in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other. “Cupcakes and chardonnay. The perfect way to end an evening out.”

I’d never been so grateful to see her. I was so happy that tears pricked at my eyes. “I’m so glad you’re home.”

She paused to stare at me. Trimalchio had followed her and tilted his head to stare at me with much the same expression. “What’s wrong? And why are you even home? Why isn’t Finn ripping that silk dress off your body and throwing you down on the bed? Why aren’t you two fucking your brains out?” She put the bottle and the box on the chest of drawers and pulled a wine glass from each pocket. “But then, why aren’t
I
fucking the brains out of the very good-looking guy I met tonight? He was in
mergers
and acquisitions; isn’t that kinky?” She poured us each a glass of wine and sat on the edge of my bed. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing’s the matter,” I said, swiping at my eyes. “I’m in bed.”

“I see that.” She took a sip of her wine and then a bite of the cupcake. “Mmmmm. How was your date?”

“It was fine. Only it wasn’t a date.” The tears were still coming despite my attempt to wipe them away.

“What do you mean? Of course it was. The Four Seasons Pool Room—what else would it be?”

I shook my head, shocked to find myself practically sobbing now. “He said it himself: it’s a tourist site. And I suppose I’m the tourist.” I gazed up at her, my cheeks wet with tears.

“You’re not a
tourist
.” She looked as horrified as if I had said I was a stripper, or a terrorist. “You were born at New York Hospital.”

“Well, he certainly acted like he was just showing me around, like you would a tourist. There was nothing romantic about it at all. In fact, he couldn’t have been more obnoxious.”

She pursed her lips thoughtfully. “He’s probably feeling guarded. You didn’t remember him. After he pined for you all those years.”

“Pined?” I scoffed at what I suspected was just her usual hyperbole, the tears stopping now. “He didn’t
pine
.”

“Oh, he pined, Stella.” She folded her arms and glared at me sternly. “He pined all right.”

“What do you mean?” I sipped the wine she’d handed me and then took a bite of the cupcake.

“Don’t play coy,” she said. “It’s unbecoming on you.”

“I’m not being coy,” I insisted. “I just didn’t think he liked me that summer, that’s all. We hardly talked. And after tonight it was more than obvious that he still doesn’t.”

“He
talked
. It was you who gave him the cold shoulder. He was mad for you. Totally smitten. Don’t pretend you didn’t know that.”

“I had no idea,” I said, warming at the thought of it: Finn Killian, smitten. With me. But then I quickly dismissed it. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. What’s the opposite of smitten? ’Cause that’s what he is.”

“He’s probably just reeling from the cruel irony,” she cried out, performing now. “You finally come back here, after breaking his heart by getting married, and you’ve conveniently disposed of the starter husband. He’s conveniently not encumbered by any of the replacement Stellas he’s tried to convince himself he should like enough to settle down with, and he’s all excited. He puts on that white dinner jacket and shows up at exactly the sort of party he can’t stand. And you don’t even remember him.”

I stared at her. “You’re completely crazy, you know that? It’s the Moriarty mental illness. It’s gotten hold of you.”

She pointed her glass insistently at me, spilling wine on my bedspread. “Not only do you not recognize him, all you do is talk about selling the house and getting the hell back home to
Switzerland.
Which puts a new twist on being geographically undesirable. So can you blame him if he’s a little careful?”

“Why invite me to dinner at all, if I’m so undesirable?” I protested. “Why bother getting dressed up, driving all the way into the city, eating that fancy meal?”

“Look, Trimalchio,” she said to the dog. “Stella’s getting peevish.”

She grinned at me. Trimalchio too seemed to be amused.

“I’m delighted to be the source of your entertainment,” I groused. “But I still don’t understand why Finn was so rude.”

Peck gestured with her wine glass again, sloshing the chardonnay around. “He’s thirty-five. We’re at that age.”

“We? You’re not thirty-five,” I pointed out grumpily.

“Women reach it by thirty. The age when it becomes imperative that we settle into a home life. And a man, when he builds himself a house without a wife already in place, immediately sets about trying to find one. That’s the stage Miles Noble has reached too. So why would Finn waste his time with you?”

“That’s my point,” I said to her. “Why? And more important, why would I waste my time with him?”

She sat at the foot of the bed and patted my leg through the blanket. “He probably should just stick with Laurie Poplin. And you? You can stick with those Eurotrash literary types you seem to attract like bees to honey.”

This caused a reaction in me, which, of course, was her intention. “Laurie Poplin? The real estate broker? Are you
crazy
?”