Hope you enjoy this! Its my take on a meeting with Daisy 10 years after the book :)
10 Years On..
Ten years. It had been ten long years since I had last laid eyes upon Daisy Buchanan. She was walking down a street in San Francisco, a miniature of her, who I concluded was her daughter trailing behind. Daisy still walked the same, commanding the powerless air around her. Anger and resentment that had long been forgotten rose up within me. I turned around not wishing to confront this old friend who I had almost forgotten. It was too late however, for as I turned she spotted me.
"Nick!" she cried in exuberance, her arms widening. Her voice had retained its enchanting and thrilling sound and it pulled me around. At the sight of her, a profound curiosity rested within me. I smiled politely. After ten years I was still hypnotized by Daisy's voice, the rise and fall of it reverberating within me.
"Nick my darling! We must catch up! How about lunch on Tuesday?" I opened my mouth to politely decline, until she interrupted "On no I can't do Tuesday. How about right now? Oh please join me for tea!" Her words obfuscated my mind and I suddenly found myself following Daisy home. I wished to turn the other way and continue home, yet the insatiable curiosity I felt propelled me backwards.
The house kept the audacity of the Buchanan's and the level of grandeur which had been present in New York, all those years ago, yet the grand house had no significance, no life. There was no green light. Daisy's hand beckoned towards me as she whispered something to her daughter who promptly disappeared from sight.
"Nick, won't you please sit down?" Stiffly, I deliberated. She looked at me tiredly, and leaned back "Tom isn't home." I glanced at her uninterested. "He told me." I looked at her stretched body confused,
"Told you what?" her sad eyes met mine directly.
"What happened when you met that day on the street... after...him" she looked away quickly her melodic voice catching, "Do you think horribly of me to?" I glanced at her coldly,
"I never was one to judge Daisy, but after Gatsby..." she flinched at his name, "you left. The man you supposedly loved died. And you left." She looked down with a mixture of despair and shame.
"I couldn't...he... I was..." she mumbled, her lips and hands shaking.
"Driving?" I offered a mixture of scorn and assistance in my voice "He told me. You destroyed him, you really did Daisy, and it killed him."
"I've thought about him every day! I don't know how Wilson found out!" She had leaped up from the chair and was rushing over to me, "I came to the house, but I couldn't bring myself to go any further." She clung to me pathetically "I'm sorry", her voice collapsed in hopeless tears.
"Daisy, he did everything for you. He lied for you and was murdered. He looked over at that green light on the edge of the dock every night, I saw him. You were a far off dream something unattainable, and when he finally had caught you..." I trailed off remembering the heart broken look on Gatsby's kind face. I escaped her grasp and stared at her uncaringly. "You broke his heart." She whimpered,
"Nick, I loved him I really did, but Tom..." I turned my back, the mendacity of her character deterring me from believing her words.
"Daisy, you asked me before if I thought horribly of you" Her red eyes turned wide "The truth is I don't think horribly of you, I simply don't think about you, and personally if I never have to think on you again, I will die relatively happy." I walked out then, her whimpers not deterring me from my destination.
I stepped out of the car, it hadn't changed, not one bit. The old house stood there still the same, the 10 years hardly affecting its appearance. Much like its owner who would forever stand on the edge of the steps and stare at the green light.
"Mr Carraway, shall I wait here sir?" I looked back and nodded. The bond business had not worked out evidently. My time in the East was enough to taint that business for life, but I had found my fortune like all do, in my family. I had never wanted to come back east, it was not until I saw Daisy that I realized I had some unfinished business it the West Egg.
I took the short stroll up the steps and opened to door to the house, as I walked in images of Gatsby's indulgent parties entered my mind. I searched, frantically around the house for something, anything that would show me Gatsby. So that for a moment I could imagine, hope that he was still here, and that he had attained his dream. I found one, an old forgotten one of him, which was obviously taken while he was not looking, he was talking, simply talking but it made me smile.
As I stepped back into the car, I heard myself ask for the cemetery. The drive echoed the haunted journey which I had travelled a decade earlier. Through the window I saw the grave, which upon it read the words 'Jay Gatsby', and through the the thick veil which separated our worlds, I heard his voice. Calling to me as the green light had called to Gatsby. And he said to me, flippantly and happily;
"She was worth it old sport. She was worth it." As I stood there I realized that the most devastating instant about that moment was, that for a second I believed him.
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