On the train, I tried making conversation about work, Ty Cobb, the President's tax cuts, anything—but Nick was monosyllabic. I stared at a ragged billboard from an optometrist. An enormous pair of glasses stared back. I gave up on Nick, and we rode in silence to the center of the Valley of Ashes.
It felt like No Man's Land, the apocalyptic stretch of dirt between the French and German trenches of the war. For four years, both sides dug ditches that stretched for endless miles. In between, every rabbit, tree, and flower had been blown to bits. Nothing green could stay. Between two barbed wire fences, only mud and disease remained.
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In this center point between East and West Egg, they'd already strip-minded out all of the coal. A few houses and shops and remained, and no one had bothered to replant any trees or gardens yet. All of this would eventually get replaced as the middle class took over, but for now, in this bleak, brown, striated zone, squatted George Wilson's garage. The train stopped nearby, and I stood to get this terrible job over with.
Nick followed me. I gripped his arm and looked him dead in the eye. He glanced at my fingers, clenched his forearm, and started back at me as though to say, Unhand me.
"What are you doing?" I said in a low voice, glancing at the other passengers. I hoped they wouldn't look up from their newspapers. The trial of two Italian anarchists who'd robbed a bank and shot the paymaster so they could fund a murderous revolution screamed off of the front page. They reminded me of that bank-robbing gangster who worked for Lenin in Russia, the short, dark-haired one with the withered arm. People liked to glorify him, too.
"I have to use the bathroom," Nick said.
When I looked him in the eye, I felt he was lying. I regretted trying to help him invest in stocks, and I especially wished I hadn't told him he should marry Jordan.
"No, you don't."
"C'mon," Nick said.
"Hold it. Your house is—"
"Five stops away," he interrupted.
I relented. To this day, I regret that I did.
We stepped onto the platform, and the train rumbled off. "See you," I said, and headed for a white fence, which held back a snarling dog. I hugged the shaggy Airedale puppy to my chest. The poor pup would panic if the Rottweiler was out. Wilson's garage—Myrtle's husband fixed and sold cars—was a polo field's distance down the dirt road.
