Tom throttles forward, watching Jordan and Nick...
"You think I'm pretty dumb, don't you? But I have a- an almost second sight, sometimes, that tells me what to do. And I've made a small investigation of this fellow." he says.
"And you found he was an Oxford man?" Jordan says, condescending.
"Oxford, New Mexico! He wears a pink suit for Christ's sake!" With that, Tom shifts gears and the Duesenberg rockets on, where they tear into the Valley...
"We're almost out of gas Tom..." Jordan says mockingly. Tom slams the brakes and the Duesenberg slides to a stop at Wilson's... Wilson doesn't budge. He's staring with sickly eyes at the giant billboard of Dr. T. J. Eckleberg.
"Wilson! Wilson! What are you waiting for!? Let's have some gas... Do I have to do it myself?" Tom gets out of the Dusenberg.
"I'm sick. I'm all run down. I need money bad... My wife and I want to go West." Wilson says.
"Your wife does...?" Tom glances up to the window above the garage. Myrtle's face, badly bruised, stares back. Tom clocks this, and hesitates... He was beginning to feel the hot whips of panic. His mistress and wife, an hour ago so secure, were both slipping from his control...
"I just got wised-up to something funny the last two days. She's goin' whether she wants to or not." Wilson says, but Tom isn't listening... He sees the coupe approaching at highspeed, threatening to leave him in the dust!
"What do I owe you!?" Tom asked.
"$1.20." The blue coupé flashes by. Tom glances back to Myrtle... And then jumps into the Duesenberg.
"You can have the car! I'll send it around tomorrow!" He throws coins into the dirt for Wilson to collect. Then he floors the gas and peels out after the coupé! VRRROOMM! The cars roar neck-and-neck, veering, swerving and skidding PERILOUSLY close. As Tom and Gatsby shoot dangerous glances at one another, Daisy waves carefree back to Tom...
The cars tear over the Queensboro Bridge, toward the glimmering, golden city...
...
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! Shards of ice spilt off from a huge chunk of ice as a bell-boy makes ice-cubes...
"That's enough..." Tom says. The room is large and stifling hot, it has been filled with huge ice buckets in an attempt to cool it. Gatsby, Tom, Nick, Daisy, Jack, Jesse and Jordan are bathed in a thin sheen of perspiration.
"Open another window." Daisy says faintly.
"There aren't any more." Nick says.
"Then telephone for an axe..."
"Forget about the heat. You make it worse by crabbing about it." Tom snapped.
"Why not let her alone, old sport?" Gatsby says, while Jack looked at his cousin.
"That's a great expression of yours, isn't it?"
"What is?" Gatsby looks at Tom, and he also turns to Gatsby...
"'Old sport'. Where'd you pick it up?"
"Now see here, Tom; if you're going to make personal remarks I won't stay here one minute." Daisy says, while Gatsby's foot beats a restless tattoo; Tom eyes him suddenly.
"Mr. Gatsby, I understand you're an Oxford man."
"No, not exactly." Gatsby says uneasily.
"Oh yes, I understand you went to Oxford."
"Yes - I went there." Tom's laugh is incredulous and insulting.
"Sure; the man in the pink suit went to Oxford!"
"Tom...!" Daisy began, but Gatsby stands, followed by Jack. He was on the ready to break up any fight that was going to be brewing between his cousin and Tom.
"I told you I went there." Gatsby says, slowly and intensely.
"I heard you, but I'd like to know when."
"You'd like to know when...? It was in nineteen-nineteen, I only stayed five months. That's why I can't exactly call myself an Oxford man." Tom glances around to see if the others mirror his disbelief. But they are all looking at Gatsby.
'"You see, it was an opportunity they gave to some of the officers who actually fought in the war." Both Jack and Nick can't help but smile.
"I'll make you a drink Tom, then you won't seem so stupid to yourself..." Daisy says, but Tom's not done yet.
"Wait a minute, I want to ask Mr. Gatsby one more question."
"Go on. Please Mr. Buchanan, go on."
"What kind of a row are you trying to cause in my house anyhow?" They are out in the open at last and Gatsby is content.
"He isn't causing a row; you're causing a row. Please have a little self-control!" Daisy says, trying to prevent the situation from escalating.
"Self-control! I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife? Well, if that's the idea you can count me out... See, nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions and next you know they'll throw everything overboard and we'll have intermarriage between black and white!"
"We're all white here, Tom." Jordan says.
"Your wife doesn't love you. She's never loved you. She loves me!"
"You must be crazy."
"No, old sport. See, she never loved you... She only married you because I was poor and she was tired of waiting. It was a terrible, terrible mistake, but in her heart she never loved anyone but me!"
"We should go..." Jordan says, and Jesse equally agreed. Jordan soon had her arm in the crook of Jesse's arm.
"Daisy and I have nothing to hide..." Gatsby says, and Jack tried to pry his cousin away, but Gatsby only shook away from his cousin.
"Get away from me, Jack!"
"Come on Jay. I don't want you to get into this messy situation. Let it go." Jack pleaded to his cousin.
"Jay let's go, please...!" Daisy also pleaded.
"Sit down Daisy!" Tom snapped.
"Yes, Daisy, please sit down." Gatsby says, reassuring her. Tom's voice gropes unsuccessfully for the paternal note.
"What's been going on? I want to hear all about it."
"I just told you what's been going on; its been going on for five years...!" Gatsby fired back, but Tom turns to Daisy sharply.
"You've been seeing him for five years?"
"Not seeing. No, we couldn't; but both of us loved each other all that time, old sport, and you didn't know. I used to laugh sometimes, to think that you didn't know..."
"Oh - that's all; you're crazy! I can't speak about what happened five years ago, because I didn't know Daisy then - but I'll be damned if I see how you got within a mile of her unless you brought the groceries to the back door. But all the rest of that's a -damned lie. Daisy loved me when she married me and she loves me now." Tom starts to make himself a drink...
"No..."
"She does, though... And what's more, I love Daisy too. Once in a while I go off on a spree, but I always come back, and in my heart I love her all the time..."
"You're revolting..." Daisy's voice drops an octave lower, filling the room with thrilling scorn... "Do you know why we left Chicago...? I'm surprised they didn't treat you to the story of that little spree." Gatsby walks over and stands beside Daisy.
"That's all over now. Just tell him the truth, that you never loved him; and all this... all this pain will be wiped out forever." Daisy looks at Gatsby blindly.
"Why, how could I love him, possibly?"
"You never loved him." Daisy hesitates; too late, she realizes what she is doing. "I never loved him."
"That's right..." Gatsby says.
"Not at Kapiolani?"
"No."
"Not that day I carried you down from the Punch Bowl to keep your shoes dry...? Daisy? Never?" Tom says, in a husky tenderness
"Please don't."
"Daisy..." Her voice is cold, but the anger is gone.
"There, Jay." She trembles as she looks to Gatsby as she continued, "You want too much! I love you now; isn't that enough? I can't help what's past." She begins to cry, "I did love him once; but I loved you too." Gatsby was shocked, uncomprehending, "You loved me too?"
"Even that's a lie. She didn't know you were alive. There are things between Daisy and me that you'll never know, things that neither of us can ever forget." Tom says savagely. The words seem to bite physically into Gatsby.
"I want to speak to Daisy alone. She's all excited now..."
"Even alone I can't say I never loved Tom. It wouldn't be true."
"Of course it wouldn't." Daisy turns to her husband. "As if it mattered to you."
"Of course it matters. I'm going to take better care of you from now on." Tom says.
"You're not taking care of her any more! Daisy's leaving you."
"Nonsense."
"I am, though." Daisy says, with visible effort.
"She's not leaving me; and certainly not for a common swindler!" Tom's words suddenly lean down over Gatsby. "Mr. Gatsby, who exactly are you anyhow? You see, I have made a small investigation into your affairs... You're one of Meyer Wolfsheim's bunch." Tom turns to the others and speaks rapidly. "See, he and this Wolfsheim bought up a lot of 'drug stores' and sold bootlegged alcohol over the counter!"
"What about it, old sport?"
"Don't call me 'old sport!' This drug store business is just small change compared to the bonds stunt you and Wolfsheim have got going on now. And I see you got your little friends in on this action as well..."
"Well your friend Walter Chase isn't too proud to come in on it."
"I've been giving that some thought. How does a reputable banker like Walter Chase find himself up to his eyeballs in debt to a little kike like Wolfsheim?"
"It's called 'greed,' old sport."
"That's right; you've got half of Wall Street out there swilling your free booze at that fun park every weekend..." Tom then turns to both Nick and Jesse, "I'm surprised he hasn't tried to drag you both in..." Nick looks away sharply, while Jesse shook his head, and covers his face in his hands. Tom registers this.
"My God, he has..."
"They've got nothing to do with-"
"With your little racket..." then turns to Daisy, "Daisy... Can't you see who this guy is? With his house and his parties and his fancy clothes; he's just a front for Wolfsheim, a gangster, to get his claws into respectable folk like Walter...!" Gatsby says, with a vicious sneer.
"The only respectable thing about you, old sport, is your money, that's it, and now I've just as much as you; so that means we're equal!" Tom smiles with smug, condescending scorn.
"Oh no, no, we're different; I am," gesturing at Nick, Jesse, and Jordan, "They are..." now at Daisy, "She is..." finally at Jack, "He is...we're all different from you - we were born different, it's in our blood, and nothing you do, or say, or steal or dream up, can ever change that... And a girl like Daisy will never...!" Gatsby explodes with terrifying rage.
"SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUTTT UP!" Shock jolts the room. Even Jack was stunned. His rage-filled eyes stare into the void, as, with all his willpower, he restrains himself from ripping Tom apart... Finally, Tom snorts a dismissive laugh.
"That's right Mr. Gatsby, show us those fine Oxford manners..." Gatsby recovers and turns to Daisy, who is trembling in the corner, on the verge of tears.
"My sincerest apologies. I... I seem to have lost my temper." Struggling for self control, Gatsby turns toward her as if Tom suddenly no longer exists. "Daisy darling... None of this has any consequence. Don't listen to him Daisy." Daisy blanches; Gatsby, now desperate, babbles incoherently. "We're going back to Louisville to be married. Then we're going to live together in our house; it's-" There is a feeling of excruciating unease in the room. But with every word Daisy was drawing further and further into herself, until only the dead dream fought on...
"Please Tom; I can't stand this anymore!" Daisy is staring, terrified, courage gone; she looks to Tom. "You two start on home..." then turns to Gatsby. In Mr. Gatsby's car. Daisy is alarmed now. "Go on. He won't annoy you. I think he realizes that his little flirtation... is over." Daisy, hysterical, runs from the room; Gatsby pursues her, while Jack contemplates on chasing after his cousin. He gave it a long thought, then decided to follow after them, leaving Jesse with Jordan, Tom and Nick.
"Daisy...!" Daisy and Gatsby are gone, and Jack also disappears. A terrible silence fills the room. Tom begins wrapping the unopened whiskey bottle in the towel.
"Want any of this? Jordan? Jesse? Nick? Nick?"
"What?"
"Want any?"
"No... I just remembered - today's my birthday. I'm thirty." Tom mutters as he pours himself a drink...
"Happy birthday..." Nick is staring out the window, lost in thought...
Thirty - the promise of a decade of loneliness...Nick thought, towards the setting sun and the Queensboro Bridge...but for Nick, the formidable stroke of thirty died away, as Gatsby and Daisy drove on through the cooling twilight, while Nick saw, down below, Jack threw his hands up in the air.