Chapter I

 

IN THE GOSPEL according to Matthew, the seventh chapter, twelfth verse, it is written, All things therefore whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do you also to them. . . .

As a child, my mother would often remind me of this dictum regarding a Christian’s duty to his neighbor. Said in her low, husky voice and told in her simple and unadorned manner, it was her unwavering belief in the rightness of her attitude that had impressed me most. In consequence, I made the conscious decision early on to adopt the lofty ideal as my own North Star and have allowed myself to be guided by it ever since.

This principle of reciprocity I later learned as fundamental to nearly every creed and system of philosophy the world over. And for those of us who adhere to The Testaments, Old or New, the idea of doing unto others what you would have done unto you has come to be known in common parlance as the “Golden Rule.”

Expounded in one fashion or another across this republic of ours—taught to little boys and girls in their Sunday schools, broadcast in public service announcements over our airwaves, and oft-regurgitated in print form in our many newspapers, magazines, and home journals—we find that as ubiquitous as the extolment of the Golden Rule has become to-day, rarely does one occasion to see this fine principle put to practice.

But just as the Word became flesh for man’s benefit in the Near East some two millennia ago, so too in more recent memory did the Golden Rule by way of that same glorious mystery transmogrify itself into a living, breathing being. And having the benefit of prior experience, it was born into the world without the limitations and weaknesses inherent to the human form. Steel framed, brick built, and adorned in cast stone it had come in the guise of a department store building. Risen up, right here, above the limestone bluffs that overlook the mighty Mississippi, in this humble and unobscured city on a hill of the Middle West, at Seventh and Robert Streets, the Golden Rule stands six stories tall in all of its Classical Revival glory.

And as if to further ease man’s passage and finally induce him toward the culmination of some shared destiny, all it asks of us now is: All things therefore whatsoever you would that men should buy for you, do you also buy for them. 

The modification, though slight, seems to have made all the difference in the world. And when reasoned out to its logical conclusion even makes a perverse kind of sense—St. Matthew the Evangelist was said to have been a tax collector, after all.

So when I walked into the Santa Claus Store of my youth two days before Christmas and found myself swept away by the bustling tide of holiday shoppers, a certain paternal warmth filled within me at the sight of cherub-faced children as they drifted by.

Eyes wide and mouths hung open in wonder at all the arrayed splendor, and their cheeks still flushed from the outside cold, they obediently clung with their tiny mittened-hands to their similarly enchanted and rose-cheeked mothers, who placidly floated up and down the aisles with the little ones in tow. All the while, friendly clerks, open and frank-faced, as is characteristic of those who inhabit the nearby prairie towns, stood anchored behind their display counters and nodded their approval as they wished upon all whom they encountered the season’s greetings before going on to showcase the latest wares without pretension or the least bit guile. Bills of goods made, transactions completed, parcels handed out, the harmonious and straightforward exchanges that took place all around me permeated the air with a spirit of charity. Strung-up tinsel and holly wreaths and daisy-chained snowflakes, paper-white, hung high between candy-caned columns reflected an overarching peace.

And when an abundant goodwill radiated from deep within my bosom and tipped out and spilled forth, flowing prodigiously and indiscriminately toward my fellow man as Love, for the briefest of spells it were as if history were complete.

 

Despite claiming for itself the title “The Last City of the East,” St. Paul, in truth, is little more than a provincial backwater, undeniably Middle Western in tenor. Unwilling to accede to this most obvious of facts, the town’s citizens continue to double down on the outwardly pathetic and, one might argue, fraudulent assertion with the construction of increasingly ornate edifices, both public and private, church and state, until you could be fooled into believing for a moment you stood on some main street in Philadelphia, New York, or Boston.

A prime example of this unyielding obstinacy would be that of the Golden Rule. Started off as a modest two-story dry goods store, the department store found itself under constant remodel until it had tripled in height and came to occupy an entire block. It now rivaled in size and scope some of the more elaborate white marble dry goods palaces found on Fifth Avenue, despite the fact that St. Paul’s population is a mere fraction of any one of the sprawling five boroughs that make up the city of New York.

And in keeping with the longstanding charade, the Golden Rule now boasts of a lunchroom with a seating capacity of four hundred, with the added distinction of having the largest soda fountain in the city.

“Nick! …”      

I heard my name called out over the din of the crowd, but not expecting to meet anyone here I took it as intended for another and ignored it.

“I say, Nick Carraway! Is that you?” came the voice again from nearby and now more familiar.

Before I had the chance to turn around I felt a hand at my shoulder.

“Why, I knew it was you. What’s the matter, Nick? Didn’t you hear me calling out your name?”

Swiveled on my stool at my place at the counter I was surprised to find Dexter Sibley Payne smiling down at me. And unable to conceal the look of profound embarrassment at having been discovered as it made its way across my face I stuck out a tentative and somewhat reluctant hand.

“Oh, hello, Dexter. Fancy meeting you here,” I finally managed in reply.

“Yes-sir, this is quite the surprise,” he enthused.

 “Of all the people in the world to run into… Good ole Saint Nick,” gushed Dexter even more effusively as he squeezed all life from my hand.

If he were alert to my discomfort he failed to show any indication of it. When I stood to meet him at eye level Dexter responded by putting a broad flat palm to my shoulder and gently pushed me back down on my seat. “Don’t bother to get up on my account,” he seemed to say by his gesture, all the while smiling benevolently down at me from his fixed position of superiority.

The last I had seen of Dexter was earlier that spring, during a brief stopover in Chicago on my way East. But as we now embarked upon our thirties, with no more than a few months to separate us, I could see that Father Time continued to regard him much more favorably. Dexter’s youthful countenance still burned with the vigor and optimism typically reserved for the very young—those as yet untouched and unblemished by life’s many letdowns and inevitable disappointments.

Broad-shouldered and narrow-waisted, the svelte and athletic physique that came to maturation during our time together in New Haven was still evident from beneath the contours of his cinched wool overcoat. His eyes were the coloring of whole wheat bread and hinted at the same wholesome goodness within. By any objective standard he was a handsome man, preposterously so, possessing looks typically the reserve of matinee idols—or rather what I imagined the platonic conception of a matinee idol would be, if ever there were an actor so bold as to imagine it.

Dexter’s good looks garnered him attention wherever he went and were prone to inspire jealousy in other men (I can still remember the stares he’d get from some of our classmates at Yale whenever he entered a room). But Dexter was oblivious to it all. And absent all affectation, his easy-going manner was an invitation for you to partake in that same sort of ease while in his company. Gifted with the added bonus of a natural charisma, he made a friend out of everyone he met, even of those of us who had reason to begrudge him most. In fact, I can recall hearing on many an occasion that old adage said of him, most often by those who knew him best, that Dexter Sibley Payne had yet to meet a stranger.

   “Why, you sly dog,” Dexter continued on as his warm and inviting baritone rose a half octave higher.

“I didn’t know you were in town. Here for Christmas? How’s the family? How’s New York?”

The rapid-fire barrage I could tell came from a genuine desire to know and not out of feigned interest, the sort that passes for polite conversation these days.

At a complete loss on how to answer, I started.

But just as I began to formalize the generalized evasions that I hoped would put an end to his queries, the spare, birdlike woman who’d been my unacknowledged luncheon companion for the past half hour, seated to my right as she intermittently pecked at the egg salad before her in an unbroken state of worried abstraction, managed to divert his attention.

The loose change for her barely touched meal diligently counted out and placed on the counter, the spindly creature began to shimmy from side to side in an attempt to extract herself from her perch. Dexter, ever the gentleman, stepped forward and, with the practiced expertise of a seasoned maître d', helped her. But unaccustomed to the attentions of handsome young men, or perhaps, any member of the human race for that matter, the woman was obviously frightened by the gesture. And after the involuntary spasm that had jerked her free of Dexter’s admittedly light and tentative grasp, she consciously tightened her own hold on her pocketbook.

“Pardon me,” said Dexter as he lifted his hat, the halo of light over his dark, glistening hair bared for all the world to see. Smiling reassuringly down at the old crow, he bid her a Merry Christmas.

Unassuaged of her suspicions, the spinsterly woman cautiously sidled her way past Dexter and cast several furtive and hurried backward glances in his direction. I couldn’t help but to notice her changed countenance upon each successive turn. From an overt wariness it progressed to a sort of blinking astonishment before it ended in a true Christmas miracle when she finally broke out into a wide smile, the source of her prior anxiety all but forgotten. Overcome with a sudden shyness,  the old woman began to burn the bright crimson of a blushing bride before scampering away, and was ultimately lost to my sight in the rush of the lunch hour crowd.

Appearing satisfied at the outcome of his latest interaction Dexter took the now free seat at the counter. His attention back to me, he jovially slapped me on my back as if to signal his intent of working his magic on me.

“You’ve got to tell me all about New York,” he said. “I bet things must be going gangbusters with you—up there on Wall Street.”

This annoyed me.

His choice of words seemed deliberate, as if he were hinting at something more. I was certain it was an allusion to my by chance association with a man who went by the name of Jay Gatsby, a once enormously wealthy bootlegger about whom the most fabulous tales were concocted and then spread all over New York.

When news of Gatsby’s sudden demise was picked up by the press and blown to epic proportions the story bore for a time all the hallmarks of a national scandal, with vast vats of ink and reams of news-paper fed to a whirlwind of conjecture and outright fabrication that swirled all the way up to the inquest into his murder. And among the more irresponsible surmises put forth by an unscrupulous press was a complete mischaracterization of my relationship to the man.

I had been living next door to Gatsby at the time of his murder so it was only natural that I should have been among those first on scene when his body was discovered. And when I realized my neighbor was left all alone, with no one to speak on his behalf, my earlier training compelled me to take an interest when no one else had. Making up news where there was none, my dutiful act had been cynically seized upon by the press to imply a vague but somewhat sinister association between myself and Gatsby that wasn’t even remotely close to being true.  

As I brooded over what now felt like but one of many in a long continuous chain of indignities stretching back to my final days in New York, a starched white sleeve flashed across the counter. In one fluid motion, the sleeve swept away all evidence of the previous patron and wiped the counter top clean with a cotton rag.

“Hello, Mr. Payne. Can I start you off with an eggnog cream soda? It’s something new we just cooked up for the holidays,” said the sleeve as it dropped a pristine and folded white napkin on the spot of white marble that gleamed before Dexter.

“Or maybe you’d rather have your usual, a brown cow?”

“Nothing for me today, Jimmy. I just dropped by to say a quick hello to an old friend of mine.”

Turning to me, Dexter said, “Nick, I’d like you to meet Jimmy Fontaine, the best soda jerker in all of Saint Paul. I keep telling myself I ought to get him to move down to Chicago so I can be treated to one of his delightful concoctions more often. But then I feel guilty at the thought of depriving this town of one of its true pleasures.

“And Jimmy, this here is Nick Carraway. We go way back, and all I can say about him is he’s a finer friend than a fella has any right to.”

“Hmm. How do you do? Nice to meet you,” replied Jimmy Fontaine, his indifference toward me communicated by the manner in which he wiped his fingers across his apron before he stuck out his slow hand.

I could hardly fault the man for his frosty reception as I’d already batted away several of his earlier attempts at friendly banter with my somewhat abrupt and dismissive rejoinders.

“Likewise,” I stammered, now feeling perfectly idiotic.   

 Our contrived introduction dispensed with, the overly tall and precariously thin soda jerker made it his point to forget all about me. Leaned forward, Jimmy Fontaine splayed his abnormally large hands across the countertop as he assumed a proprietary stance and was immediately back to goading Dexter:

“You sure about that eggnog cream soda, Mr. Payne? Awfully tasty. I can whip it up for you in a jiffy. It won’t take but a second.”

“Gosh, that sounds tempting, but I had better not, Jimmy. I’m meeting the missus for lunch. Wouldn’t be right for me to fill up ahead of time.”

“How is Mrs. Payne?” fawned the soda jerker as he looked back over his shoulder.

The flaming red hair that peeked out from beneath his diner hat and the splotchy red freckles that blurred his bulbous nose and hollowed cheeks gave a feverish appearance to Jimmy Fontaine that coincided to his frenetic nature. With his attention back to his drink station, like a prodigy at his piano, he moved his hands swiftly along a line of polished brass levers, pulling on them in near simultaneous succession, while the evanescent hiss and fizz of the various sodas and seltzers as they came pouring forth into their respective drink glasses produced a bagatelle, one surprisingly melodious and not altogether unpleasant to the ear.

“Oh, she’s fine. Just fine,” said Dexter, his voice rising over the music. “In fact, she’s upstairs in the women’s department, picking out a dress for New Year’s Eve.”

As if the thought had just occurred to him then, Dexter once again turned to me warmly as he put another brief hand to my shoulder.

“Hey, Nick, if you’re free, you ought to join us. We’re throwing a little party—nothing too extravagant. Just a few friends up at the old Hill house.”

“I’d love to,” I replied noncommittally, “But, I’m not sure how long I’ll be in town for.”

“What’s your hurry? Stick around a few more days. New York will still be there waiting for you. I know Judy will be awfully disappointed to learn you were in town but didn’t bother to stop by, even if just to say a quick ‘hello.’

“Besides, all the old gang will be there. I’m sure they would love the chance to see you again…. Come to think of it, Anne will be there too.”

I looked up from my plate and found Dexter giving me a knowing look to go along with that benevolent smile of his. Determined to remain steadfast in my refusal I held his gaze, and was even more determined not to be the first to look away. Needless to say, our battle of wills did not last long. But just as I was ready to capitulate, Jimmy Fontaine mercifully interrupted our stalemate with the Lime Rickey soda he placed before Dexter.

“On the house, Mr. Payne.”

“Swell. Thanks, Jimmy.”

Dexter bit down on the maraschino cherry plucked from his soda and took several long draws of his drink through his drinking straw. After he’d finished with his beverage, he then spent some moments dabbing at his moistened lips with his napkin before he finally went on to say:

“I tell you what, Nick—I’ll leave an invitation with the front desk over at the University Club. Just in the case you come to change your mind.”

Before I even had a chance to object, Dexter got up from his seat as he laid two crisp and new one dollar bills hot from the presses of the Federal Reserve on the counter.

“You have yourself a Merry Christmas, Jimmy. You, too, Nick. My regards to your folks. And don’t forget, Judy and I will be expecting you for New Year’s Eve. So don’t disappoint.”

Dexter gone, Jimmy and I were left alone to bask in the cursory afterglow Dexter had left behind.

“That Mr. Payne sure is a fine fellow,” said Jimmy wistfully to no one as he pocketed the overly generous tip.

Dexter’s drink glass removed and the white marble top wiped down and returned to its pristine condition for its next patron, Jimmy took a moment to lean against the counter. And that is when he made his caustic remark:

“Boy, they sure don’t make ‘em like they used to,” he said as he regarded me slyly, a single brow raised.

 

Left unsettled by my run-in with Dexter Sibley Payne, I came out the Golden Rule on Seventh Street somewhat in a fog and only came to after my street car emerged from Selby Tunnel, at the base of Saint Anthony Hill. It turning out to be a clear and crisp afternoon, I decided to walk from there, to better clear my head, and exited the car at the intersection of Selby and Western.

Proceeding south down Western, I took as a shortcut the vacant triangular-shaped lot of land at the junction of Western, Portland, and Summit Avenues that had long ago been appropriated for a playground by the neighboring children. A medley of half-crumbled snowmen on the verge of collapse dotted the landscape. Standing in place like so many pillars of salt, they gazed in stone-eyed wonder at the city around them. And mingled among this race of beleaguered men, the faint impressions left behind by a host of snow angels, their fleeting presence further obscured by the fallen snow.

After divine intervention had me narrowly dodge an out of control toboggan as it whipped past, my luck immediately gave out, and I found myself a casualty of war when I quite innocently wandered into a sort of no-man’s land, hotly contested territory to a snowball fight. A troop of young boys, not satisfied to wait their turn for that eternal rite of passage, had lined up on either side of me as they sought out an early chance at glory. Hard-packed balls of snow whistled past my head like so many artillery shells, while those that fell short were like lobbed hand grenades that exploded at my feet.

Coming out on Summit Avenue, I headed west, and before I knew it, I was back at the University Club. Stopped by the front desk, I checked for any messages that may have been left while I was out. There had been no telephone messages, but I was told the personal items I had sent over from the Golden Rule had been taken up to my room. Upstairs, my refreshed assortment of Munsingwear, handkerchiefs, winter socks, and neckties lay unpacked and neatly fanned out across the foot of my bed, and were waiting to be put away.

Resting alongside my new purchases was something unexpected that had not been made mention of by those downstairs. Whether the oversight had been deliberate or simply resulted from benign neglect, I couldn’t say. It was an oversized white envelope made of heavy card stock and addressed to me in an elegant but rushed hand. From within the envelope I pulled out an even more formal invitation of the same heavy paper that was embossed and printed on with gold foil. It was from the Paynes—inviting me to a New Year’s Eve celebration to take place the following Sunday at the old Hill estate.  Commencing at nine o’ clock, there was to be a dinner served, followed by a night of live music, leading up to the new year. As I tucked the invitation back into its envelope and placed it in the drawer of the nightstand I realized there would be no putting off Dexter now. I would be obliged to attend his and Judy’s party.

I didn’t necessarily object to seeing my old friends again. It was the idea of having to explain to them the reasons behind my premature return from New York that, by and large, fueled my hesitancy. I found the prospect unpalatable in light of the big show I made of it when I left to go East. The upside to any embarrassment that I would be made to feel was that, no matter how acute, it would be brief and would soon be forgotten. What truly filled me with a nervous and existential dread was the more lasting discomfort that was sure to come my way from my inevitable reunion with Anne Burbank. She and I had at one time been romantically involved and there remained between us a vague yet implied understanding.

I now realized the thing to have done was to have used my move East as an excuse to make a clean break of things, cutting off at the head whatever had been dragging on between me and Miss Burbank. But rather than allowing the physical distance of New York to serve as a natural buffer as our quasi-courtship came to its ignominious but long overdue end all on its own, I had done the opposite.

Homesick and perhaps even somewhat lonesome in those first, early days, it was Anne’s reassuring words through the post that gave me courage to see things through. And having come to rely on her succor, and unable to wean myself from the teat of her kindness, I had unwittingly strengthened her claim on me further when I spent all of spring, summer, and into the early fall writing to her once a week, without fail, ending all my letters “Love, Nick.”

That I had yet to call on her upon my return did not have me overly concerned as I knew Anne was bound to grudgingly accept whatever clumsy explanation was offered up to her. My first inclination was to pass off the oversight to having been tied up with familial obligations. As purposefully vague as the excuse was, it had the advantage of being unassailable—in the face of such an assertion, I knew Anne to be the type to consider it impolitic to press the matter further, and as a result all avenues of further inquiry would be closed off to her. The thought had even occurred to me that I might lay some of the blame on having been indisposed, waylaid by some imaginary illness—a shameless and rather transparent play on her sympathy. The true source of my apprehension came from the greater sin I had committed—the sin of omission—in which I inexplicably had neglected to inform Anne of my intention to return from New York in the first place....