"It was the day I got my new English golf shoes." Jordan says. A row of fancy Louisville homes - red, white and blue bunting "tut, tutting" in the breeze - are set along a beautiful, green stretch of park. "Daisy was by far the most popular girl with the Officers from Camp Taylor..." Across the road, an 18 year old Daisy is perched in the front seat of her flashy white roadster, beaming, happy...
"One of them was in the car with her." Beside Daisy sat a handsome lieutenant: "It was Gatsby. And the way he looked at her..."
The Hotel Sayre - on the rooftop garden - The silhouettes of Jordan, Nick and Jesse, leaned close, are lit magnificently against the beaded lights of the city...
"Is the way all girls want to be looked at." Jordan says, meeting Jesse's brown eyes; a conspiring flicker.
"So what happened?" Nick asked, eyes widening.
"Well, I don't know..." Soon, the scene changes to a French battlefield, where Gatsby leads his men on a heroic charge out of the trenches-
"Gatsby was sent off to war..." Jordan also looks at Jesse. In Jesse's mind A MASSIVE EXPLOSION plays back in his mind, where he could still hear the explosions like he was still at that battlefield.
"But when the war ended... For some unknown reason, Gatsby couldn't return..."
...
"AMERICA'S WEALTHIEST BACHELOR TO WED: TOM BUCHANAN LURES LOUISVILLE'S SWEETHEART."
...
"A year later, Tom Buchanan of Chicago swept in and stole her away..." At the Seelbach Hotel - in Daisy's Grand Suite - An exquisite string of pearls coils around Daisy's neck.
"He gave her a string of pearls worth $350,000." Even Jesse couldn't fathom that much money. Compared to Tom's life, both Jesse and Marion lived happily on the cheap, even though Jesse brought home more than enough money than they knew what they could do with it. Back to Jordan's story, Tom is tightening the clasp.
"But, the morning of the wedding, Daisy received a letter..."
...
On the bed, Daisy, hysterical, clutches a bottle in one hand and a letter in the other.
"Tell them Daisy's changed her mind!" Young Daisy shouts.
JORDAN "Daisy! Please, everyone's waiting!" Daisy reaches for the pearls around her neck...
YOUNG DAISY "Give them back!" Suddenly! Daisy tears the pearls and hurls them; they explode into a hundred shimmering pieces against the hard wood floor!
A set of stern, white heels clicking down the hall... Daisy's hard-mouthed mother.
DAISY'S MOTHER "What on earth is going on in here!?" her mother's eyes land on the bottle, and then the letter... Daisy's mother reads the last line of the letter Love, Jay.
DAISY "Leave me alone!"
DAISY'S MOTHER "Jordan, run the bath! Now!"
In the bath, Daisy grips the letter in her trembling hands.
...
"What was in the letter?" Nick wanted to know. A deep breath, a last look, and then, Daisy opens her hand... The letter comes to pieces like snow.
"I don't know. She wouldn't tell me." But before the letter disappears completely the word "The truth is..." appears.
...
Daisy and Tom, newly married, pose for photos. "Anyways, that day, at five o'clock, Daisy Faye married Tom Buchanan with more pomp and circumstance than Louisville had ever seen..."
Jordan, Nick and Jesse take a stroll beneath the soaring electric signs. "After the honeymoon, I saw them in Santa Barbara. It was touching, actually. I'd never seen a girl so in love with her husband. A week later, Tom crashed his car. The girl with him was a chambermaid at the Santa Barbara Hotel. It got into all the papers..."
As the trio approach the curb, waiting for a cab, Nick turns to Jordan; he and Jesse are struck by a... sudden, puzzled thought.
"It's a strange coincidence, isn't it? Gatsby's house being just across the bay..." Jordan whirls round-while Jesse flinches-
"It's no coincidence. He bought that house to be near her, he threw all those parties hoping she'd wander in one night. He constantly asked about Daisy... I was the first one who knew her." Nick takes this in; as if seeing Gatsby for the first time.
"All that for a girl he hasn't seen in five years...? And now he just wants me to have her for tea...?" then muttered to himself, which Jesse heard, The modesty of it.
"Kind of takes your breath away, doesn't it?" Jordan says, as a cab pulls up, and Nick opens the door... Jordan slides in... Jesse takes the front seat, making the cab driver nervous.
"Evening sweethearts! Where to?" the cab driver asked, gathering his composure, then looked at Jesse once more.
"Long Island, please." Jordan says,
"And you think I should? I mean, does Daisy want to see Gatsby?" Jordan gave a stern whisper. "She's absolutely not to know. You are just supposed to invite her over so he can "happen to drop by."
Nick, unsure..."I remember feeling torn. Was it right to bring my cousin Daisy, a married woman, together with a man I hardly knew?" As Nick wonders, the taxi floats across Times Square, under the cool eyes of the man in the Arrow shirt...
For Jesse, being in New York just kept getting weirder and weirder the longer he stayed... And he needed a telephone to update his sister and his wife of his whereabouts...