The ends of my ashen feet set down upon the boardwalk, woodgrains spiking through the cobbles to my nerves like hot coals. It was painful returning to this place, this West Egg pier to the East Egg point, the array of oak and ligature that Gatsby once stood on. Did he stand, really? Or was it a sway, limbs undulating with the crest of the Sound's watery air, nose arched towards that green light?
Or was it green? What hue did he see parsing out from the sea-rocks and the rowdy ships? I see it now, flush before me some miles away, the past emerald image murkied with turquoise and moss, colors splintered by this homogeny of time.
I touched my chest, and I could feel his flannel. The curve of the breastpocket that held nothing of value, nothing but the tepid beats in his heart. Or did they quicken, quicken with the flow of the watery currents, as his vision of the woman came before his eyes? What we see, I thought, isn't just the product of the eyes; our heart glances too. What we think, I gathered, isn't the sole object of the mind; our eyes remember too.
But there's no use drudging it now, I resigned.
I'll never know from the source. His waters are much more torrid now; a temperature only fitting the scorching gaze he always left me, before he left. It fills me well, I think; but there's still a quiet yearning.
A yearning that can never be fully quenched, but only pantomimed, as I don the man that once—only once—was named Jay Gatsby.
