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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald) - 1/3

Chapter 1

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.

"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."

He didn't say any more but we've always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence I'm inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon—for the intimate revelations of young men or at least the terms in which they express them are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.

And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes but after a certain point I don't care what it's founded on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction—Gatsby who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the "creative temperament"—it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No—Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.

My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this middle-western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan and we have a tradition that we're descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather's brother who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on today.

I never saw this great-uncle but I'm supposed to look like him—with special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in Father's office. I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father, and a little later I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. I enjoyed the counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being the warm center of the world the middle-west now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe—so I decided to go east and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business so I supposed it could support one more single man. All my aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep-school for me and finally said, "Why—ye-es" with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to finance me for a year and after various delays I came east, permanently, I thought, in the spring of twenty-two.

The practical thing was to find rooms in the city but it was a warm season and I had just left a country of wide lawns and friendly trees, so when a young man at the office suggested that we take a house together in a commuting town it sounded like a great idea. He found the house, a weather beaten cardboard bungalow at eighty a month, but at the last minute the firm ordered him to Washington and I went out to the country alone. I had a dog, at least I had him for a few days until he ran away, and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman who made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric stove.

It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road.

"How do you get to West Egg village?" he asked helplessly.

I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighborhood.

And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees—just as things grow in fast movies—I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.

There was so much to read for one thing and so much fine health to be pulled down out of the young breath-giving air. I bought a dozen volumes on banking and credit and investment securities and they stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint, promising to unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Maecenas knew. And I had the high intention of reading many other books besides. I was rather literary in college—one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the "Yale News"—and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the "well-rounded man." This isn't just an epigram—life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.

It was a matter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of New York and where there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of land. Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western Hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. They are not perfect ovals—like the egg in the Columbus story they are both crushed flat at the contact end—but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual confusion to the gulls that fly overhead. To the wingless a more arresting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except shape and size.

I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. My house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard—it was a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gatsby's mansion. Or rather, as I didn't know Mr. Gatsby it was a mansion inhabited by a gentleman of that name. My own house was an eye-sore, but it was a small eye-sore, and it had been overlooked, so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbor's lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires—all for eighty dollars a month.

Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans. Daisy was my second cousin once removed and I'd known Tom in college. And just after the war I spent two days with them in Chicago.

Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven—a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors of anti-climax. His family were enormously wealthy—even in college his freedom with money was a matter for reproach—but now he'd left Chicago and come east in a fashion that rather took your breath away: for instance he'd brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest. It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy enough to do that.

Why they came east I don't know. They had spent a year in France, for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together. This was a permanent move, said Daisy over the telephone, but I didn't believe it—I had no sight into Daisy's heart but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking a little wistfully for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game.

And so it happened that on a warm windy evening I drove over to East Egg to see two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all. Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red and white Georgian Colonial mansion overlooking the bay. The lawn started at the beach and ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walks and burning gardens—finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold, and wide open to the warm windy afternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his legs apart on the front porch.

He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy, straw haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shining, arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body—he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing and you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage—a cruel body.

His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in it, even toward people he liked—and there were men at New Haven who had hated his guts.

"Now, don't think my opinion on these matters is final," he seemed to say, "just because I'm stronger and more of a man than you are." We were in the same Senior Society, and while we were never intimate I always had the impression that he approved of me and wanted me to like him with some harsh, defiant wistfulness of his own.

We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch.

"I've got a nice place here," he said, his eyes flashing about restlessly.

Turning me around by one arm he moved a broad flat hand along the front vista, including in its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half acre of deep pungent roses and a snub-nosed motor boat that bumped the tide off shore.

"It belonged to Demaine the oil man." He turned me around again, politely and abruptly. "We'll go inside."

We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-colored space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding cake of the ceiling—and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.

The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor.

The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She was extended full length at her end of the divan, completely motionless and with her chin raised a little as if she were balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall. If she saw me out of the corner of her eyes she gave no hint of it—indeed, I was almost surprised into murmuring an apology for having disturbed her by coming in.

The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise—she leaned slightly forward with a conscientious expression—then she laughed, an absurd, charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the room.

"I'm p-paralyzed with happiness."

She laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my hand for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was no one in the world she so much wanted to see. That was a way she had. She hinted in a murmur that the surname of the balancing girl was Baker. (I've heard it said that Daisy's murmur was only to make people lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming.)

At any rate Miss Baker's lips fluttered, she nodded at me almost imperceptibly and then quickly tipped her head back again—the object she was balancing had obviously tottered a little and given her something of a fright. Again a sort of apology arose to my lips. Almost any exhibition of complete self sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from me.

I looked back at my cousin who began to ask me questions in her low, thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth—but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered "Listen," a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.

I told her how I had stopped off in Chicago for a day on my way east and how a dozen people had sent their love through me.

"Do they miss me?" she cried ecstatically.

"The whole town is desolate. All the cars have the left rear wheel painted black as a mourning wreath and there's a persistent wail all night along the North Shore."

"How gorgeous! Let's go back, Tom. Tomorrow!" Then she added irrelevantly, "You ought to see the baby."

"I'd like to."

"She's asleep. She's two years old. Haven't you ever seen her?"

"Never."

"Well, you ought to see her. She's—"

Tom Buchanan who had been hovering restlessly about the room stopped and rested his hand on my shoulder.

"What you doing, Nick?"

"I'm a bond man."

"Who with?"

I told him.

"Never heard of them," he remarked decisively.

This annoyed me.

"You will," I answered shortly. "You will if you stay in the East."

"Oh, I'll stay in the East, don't you worry," he said, glancing at Daisy and then back at me, as if he were alert for something more. "I'd be a God Damned fool to live anywhere else."

At this point Miss Baker said "Absolutely!" with such suddenness that I started—it was the first word she uttered since I came into the room. Evidently it surprised her as much as it did me, for she yawned and with a series of rapid, deft movements stood up into the room.

"I'm stiff," she complained, "I've been lying on that sofa for as long as I can remember."

"Don't look at me," Daisy retorted. "I've been trying to get you to New York all afternoon."

"No, thanks," said Miss Baker to the four cocktails just in from the pantry, "I'm absolutely in training."

Her host looked at her incredulously.

"You are!" He took down his drink as if it were a drop in the bottom of a glass. "How you ever get anything done is beyond me."

I looked at Miss Baker wondering what it was she "got done." I enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet. Her grey sun-strained eyes looked back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming discontented face. It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a picture of her, somewhere before.

"You live in West Egg," she remarked contemptuously. "I know somebody there."

"I don't know a single—"

"You must know Gatsby."

"Gatsby?" demanded Daisy. "What Gatsby?"

Before I could reply that he was my neighbor dinner was announced; wedging his tense arm imperatively under mine Tom Buchanan compelled me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square.

Slenderly, languidly, their hands set lightly on their hips the two young women preceded us out onto a rosy-colored porch open toward the sunset where four candles flickered on the table in the diminished wind.

"Why candles?" objected Daisy, frowning. She snapped them out with her fingers. "In two weeks it'll be the longest day in the year." She looked at us all radiantly. "Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it."

"We ought to plan something," yawned Miss Baker, sitting down at the table as if she were getting into bed.

"All right," said Daisy. "What'll we plan?" She turned to me helplessly. "What do people plan?"

Before I could answer her eyes fastened with an awed expression on her little finger.

"Look!" she complained. "I hurt it."

We all looked—the knuckle was black and blue.

"You did it, Tom," she said accusingly. "I know you didn't mean to but you did do it. That's what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a great big hulking physical specimen of a—"

"I hate that word hulking," objected Tom crossly, "even in kidding."

"Hulking," insisted Daisy.

Sometimes she and Miss Baker talked at once, unobtrusively and with a bantering inconsequence that was never quite chatter, that was as cool as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all desire. They were here—and they accepted Tom and me, making only a polite pleasant effort to entertain or to be entertained. They knew that presently dinner would be over and a little later the evening too would be over and casually put away. It was sharply different from the West where an evening was hurried from phase to phase toward its close in a continually disappointed anticipation or else in sheer nervous dread of the moment itself.

"You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy," I confessed on my second glass of corky but rather impressive claret. "Can't you talk about crops or something?"

I meant nothing in particular by this remark but it was taken up in an unexpected way.

"Civilization's going to pieces," broke out Tom violently. "I've gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read 'The Rise of the Coloured Empires' by this man Goddard?"

"Why, no," I answered, rather surprised by his tone.

"Well, it's a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don't look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged. It's all scientific stuff; it's been proved."

"Tom's getting very profound," said Daisy with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. "He reads deep books with long words in them. What was that word we—"

"Well, these books are all scientific," insisted Tom, glancing at her impatiently. "This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It's up to us who are the dominant race to watch out or these other races will have control of things."

"We've got to beat them down," whispered Daisy, winking ferociously toward the fervent sun.

"You ought to live in California—" began Miss Baker but Tom interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair.

"This idea is that we're Nordics. I am, and you are and you are and—" After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a slight nod and she winked at me again. "—and we've produced all the things that go to make civilization—oh, science and art and all that. Do you see?"

There was something pathetic in his concentration as if his complacency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more. When, almost immediately, the telephone rang inside and the butler left the porch Daisy seized upon the momentary interruption and leaned toward me.

"I'll tell you a family secret," she whispered enthusiastically. "It's about the butler's nose. Do you want to hear about the butler's nose?"

"That's why I came over tonight."

"Well, he wasn't always a butler; he used to be the silver polisher for some people in New York that had a silver service for two hundred people. He had to polish it from morning till night until finally it began to affect his nose—"

"Things went from bad to worse," suggested Miss Baker.

"Yes. Things went from bad to worse until finally he had to give up his position."

For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened—then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.

The butler came back and murmured something close to Tom's ear whereupon Tom frowned, pushed back his chair and without a word went inside. As if his absence quickened something within her Daisy leaned forward again, her voice glowing and singing.

"I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a—of a rose, an absolute rose. Doesn't he?" She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation. "An absolute rose?"

This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose. She was only extemporizing but a stirring warmth flowed from her as if her heart was trying to come out to you concealed in one of those breathless, thrilling words. Then suddenly she threw her napkin on the table and excused herself and went into the house.

Miss Baker and I exchanged a short glance consciously devoid of meaning. I was about to speak when she sat up alertly and said "Sh!" in a warning voice. A subdued impassioned murmur was audible in the room beyond and Miss Baker leaned forward, unashamed, trying to hear. The murmur trembled on the verge of coherence, sank down, mounted excitedly, and then ceased altogether.

"This Mr. Gatsby you spoke of is my neighbor—" I said.

"Don't talk. I want to hear what happens."

"Is something happening?" I inquired innocently.

"You mean to say you don't know?" said Miss Baker, honestly surprised. "I thought everybody knew."

"I don't."

"Why—" she said hesitantly, "Tom's got some woman in New York."

"Got some woman?" I repeated blankly.

Miss Baker nodded.

"She might have the decency not to telephone him at dinner-time. Don't you think?"

Almost before I had grasped her meaning there was the flutter of a dress and the crunch of leather boots and Tom and Daisy were back at the table.

"It couldn't be helped!" cried Daisy with tense gayety.

She sat down, glanced searchingly at Miss Baker and then at me and continued: "I looked outdoors for a minute and it's very romantic outdoors. There's a bird on the lawn that I think must be a nightingale come over on the Cunard or White Star Line. He's singing away—" her voice sang "—It's romantic, isn't it, Tom?"

"Very romantic," he said, and then miserably to me: "If it's light enough after dinner I want to take you down to the stables."

The telephone rang inside, startlingly, and as Daisy shook her head decisively at Tom the subject of the stables, in fact all subjects, vanished into air. Among the broken fragments of the last five minutes at table I remember the candles being lit again, pointlessly, and I was conscious of wanting to look squarely at every one and yet to avoid all eyes. I couldn't guess what Daisy and Tom were thinking but I doubt if even Miss Baker who seemed to have mastered a certain hardy skepticism was able utterly to put this fifth guest's shrill metallic urgency out of mind. To a certain temperament the situation might have seemed intriguing—my own instinct was to telephone immediately for the police.

The horses, needless to say, were not mentioned again. Tom and Miss Baker, with several feet of twilight between them strolled back into the library, as if to a vigil beside a perfectly tangible body, while trying to look pleasantly interested and a little deaf I followed Daisy around a chain of connecting verandas to the porch in front. In its deep gloom we sat down side by side on a wicker settee.

Daisy took her face in her hands, as if feeling its lovely shape, and her eyes moved gradually out into the velvet dusk. I saw that turbulent emotions possessed her, so I asked what I thought would be some sedative questions about her little girl.

"We don't know each other very well, Nick," she said suddenly. "Even if we are cousins. You didn't come to my wedding."

"I wasn't back from the war."

"That's true." She hesitated. "Well, I've had a very bad time, Nick, and I'm pretty cynical about everything."

Evidently she had reason to be. I waited but she didn't say any more, and after a moment I returned rather feebly to the subject of her daughter.

"I suppose she talks, and—eats, and everything."

"Oh, yes." She looked at me absently. "Listen, Nick; let me tell you what I said when she was born. Would you like to hear?"

"Very much."

"It'll show you how I've gotten to feel about—things. Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. 'All right,' I said, 'I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool—that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool."

"You see I think everything's terrible anyhow," she went on in a convinced way. "Everybody thinks so—the most advanced people. And I know. I've been everywhere and seen everything and done everything." Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tom's, and she laughed with thrilling scorn. "Sophisticated—God, I'm sophisticated!"

The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention, my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said. It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to exact a contributory emotion from me. I waited, and sure enough, in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged.

Inside, the crimson room bloomed with light. Tom and Miss Baker sat at either end of the long couch and she read aloud to him from the "Saturday Evening Post"—the words, murmurous and uninflected, running together in a soothing tune. The lamp-light, bright on his boots and dull on the autumn-leaf yellow of her hair, glinted along the paper as she turned a page with a flutter of slender muscles in her arms.

When we came in she held us silent for a moment with a lifted hand.

"To be continued," she said, tossing the magazine on the table, "in our very next issue."

Her body asserted itself with a restless movement of her knee, and she stood up.

"Ten o'clock," she remarked, apparently finding the time on the ceiling. "Time for this good girl to go to bed."

"Jordan's going to play in the tournament tomorrow," explained Daisy, "over at Westchester."

"Oh,—you're Jordan Baker."

I knew now why her face was familiar—its pleasing contemptuous expression had looked out at me from many rotogravure pictures of the sporting life at Asheville and Hot Springs and Palm Beach. I had heard some story of her too, a critical, unpleasant story, but what it was I had forgotten long ago.

"Good night," she said softly. "Wake me at eight, won't you."

"If you'll get up."

"I will. Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you anon."

"Of course you will," confirmed Daisy. "In fact I think I'll arrange a marriage. Come over often, Nick, and I'll sort of—oh—fling you together. You know—lock you up accidentally in linen closets and push you out to sea in a boat, and all that sort of thing—"

"Good night," called Miss Baker from the stairs. "I haven't heard a word."

"She's a nice girl," said Tom after a moment. "They oughtn't to let her run around the country this way."

"Who oughtn't to?" inquired Daisy coldly.

"Her family."

"Her family is one aunt about a thousand years old. Besides, Nick's going to look after her, aren't you, Nick? She's going to spend lots of week-ends out here this summer. I think the home influence will be very good for her."

Daisy and Tom looked at each other for a moment in silence.

"Is she from New York?" I asked quickly.

"From Louisville. Our white girlhood was passed together there. Our beautiful white—"

"Did you give Nick a little heart to heart talk on the veranda?" demanded Tom suddenly.

"Did I?" She looked at me. "I can't seem to remember, but I think we talked about the Nordic race. Yes, I'm sure we did. It sort of crept up on us and first thing you know—"

"Don't believe everything you hear, Nick," he advised me.

I said lightly that I had heard nothing at all, and a few minutes later I got up to go home. They came to the door with me and stood side by side in a cheerful square of light. As I started my motor Daisy peremptorily called "Wait!

"I forgot to ask you something, and it's important. We heard you were engaged to a girl out West."

"That's right," corroborated Tom kindly. "We heard that you were engaged."

"It's libel. I'm too poor."

"But we heard it," insisted Daisy, surprising me by opening up again in a flower-like way. "We heard it from three people so it must be true."

Of course I knew what they were referring to, but I wasn't even vaguely engaged. The fact that gossip had published the banns was one of the reasons I had come east. You can't stop going with an old friend on account of rumors and on the other hand I had no intention of being rumored into marriage.

Their interest rather touched me and made them less remotely rich—nevertheless, I was confused and a little disgusted as I drove away. It seemed to me that the thing for Daisy to do was to rush out of the house, child in arms—but apparently there were no such intentions in her head. As for Tom, the fact that he "had some woman in New York" was really less surprising than that he had been depressed by a book. Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart.

Already it was deep summer on roadhouse roofs and in front of wayside garages, where new red gas-pumps sat out in pools of light, and when I reached my estate at West Egg I ran the car under its shed and sat for a while on an abandoned grass roller in the yard. The wind had blown off, leaving a loud bright night with wings beating in the trees and a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth blew the frogs full of life. The silhouette of a moving cat wavered across the moonlight and turning my head to watch it I saw that I was not alone—fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbor's mansion and was standing with his hands in his pockets regarding the silver pepper of the stars. Something in his leisurely movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested that it was Mr. Gatsby himself, come out to determine what share was his of our local heavens.

I decided to call to him. Miss Baker had mentioned him at dinner, and that would do for an introduction. But I didn't call to him for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone—he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and far as I was from him I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.

Chapter 2

About half way between West Egg and New York the motor-road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud which screens their obscure operations from your sight.

But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness or forgot them and moved away. But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground.

The valley of ashes is bounded on one side by a small foul river, and when the drawbridge is up to let barges through, the passengers on waiting trains can stare at the dismal scene for as long as half an hour. There is always a halt there of at least a minute and it was because of this that I first met Tom Buchanan's mistress.

The fact that he had one was insisted upon wherever he was known. His acquaintances resented the fact that he turned up in popular restaurants with her and, leaving her at a table, sauntered about, chatting with whomsoever he knew. Though I was curious to see her I had no desire to meet her—but I did. I went up to New York with Tom on the train one afternoon and when we stopped by the ashheaps he jumped to his feet and taking hold of my elbow literally forced me from the car.

"We're getting off!" he insisted. "I want you to meet my girl."

I think he'd tanked up a good deal at luncheon and his determination to have my company bordered on violence. The supercilious assumption was that on Sunday afternoon I had nothing better to do.

I followed him over a low white-washed railroad fence and we walked back a hundred yards along the road under Doctor Eckleburg's persistent stare. The only building in sight was a small block of yellow brick sitting on the edge of the waste land, a sort of compact Main Street ministering to it and contiguous to absolutely nothing. One of the three shops it contained was for rent and another was an all-night restaurant approached by a trail of ashes; the third was a garage—Repairs. GEORGE B. WILSON. Cars Bought and Sold—and I followed Tom inside.

The interior was unprosperous and bare; the only car visible was the dust-covered wreck of a Ford which crouched in a dim corner. It had occurred to me that this shadow of a garage must be a blind and that sumptuous and romantic apartments were concealed overhead when the proprietor himself appeared in the door of an office, wiping his hands on a piece of waste. He was a blonde, spiritless man, anaemic, and faintly handsome. When he saw us a damp gleam of hope sprang into his light blue eyes.

"Hello, Wilson, old man," said Tom, slapping him jovially on the shoulder. "How's business?"

"I can't complain," answered Wilson unconvincingly. "When are you going to sell me that car?"

"Next week; I've got my man working on it now."

"Works pretty slow, don't he?"

"No, he doesn't," said Tom coldly. "And if you feel that way about it, maybe I'd better sell it somewhere else after all."

"I don't mean that," explained Wilson quickly. "I just meant—"

His voice faded off and Tom glanced impatiently around the garage. Then I heard footsteps on a stairs and in a moment the thickish figure of a woman blocked out the light from the office door. She was in the middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can. Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crepe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering. She smiled slowly and walking through her husband as if he were a ghost shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye. Then she wet her lips and without turning around spoke to her husband in a soft, coarse voice:

"Get some chairs, why don't you, so somebody can sit down."

"Oh, sure," agreed Wilson hurriedly and went toward the little office, mingling immediately with the cement color of the walls. A white ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in the vicinity—except his wife, who moved close to Tom.

"I want to see you," said Tom intently. "Get on the next train."

"All right."

"I'll meet you by the news-stand on the lower level."

She nodded and moved away from him just as George Wilson emerged with two chairs from his office door.

We waited for her down the road and out of sight. It was a few days before the Fourth of July, and a grey, scrawny Italian child was setting torpedoes in a row along the railroad track.

"Terrible place, isn't it," said Tom, exchanging a frown with Doctor Eckleburg.

"Awful."

"It does her good to get away."

"Doesn't her husband object?"

"Wilson? He thinks she goes to see her sister in New York. He's so dumb he doesn't know he's alive."

So Tom Buchanan and his girl and I went up together to New York—or not quite together, for Mrs. Wilson sat discreetly in another car. Tom deferred that much to the sensibilities of those East Eggers who might be on the train.

She had changed her dress to a brown figured muslin which stretched tight over her rather wide hips as Tom helped her to the platform in New York. At the news-stand she bought a copy of "Town Tattle" and a moving-picture magazine and, in the station drug store, some cold cream and a small flask of perfume. Upstairs, in the solemn echoing drive she let four taxi cabs drive away before she selected a new one, lavender-colored with grey upholstery, and in this we slid out from the mass of the station into the glowing sunshine. But immediately she turned sharply from the window and leaning forward tapped on the front glass.

"I want to get one of those dogs," she said earnestly. "I want to get one for the apartment. They're nice to have—a dog."

We backed up to a grey old man who bore an absurd resemblance to John D. Rockefeller. In a basket, swung from his neck, cowered a dozen very recent puppies of an indeterminate breed.

"What kind are they?" asked Mrs. Wilson eagerly as he came to the taxi-window.

"All kinds. What kind do you want, lady?"

"I'd like to get one of those police dogs; I don't suppose you got that kind?"

The man peered doubtfully into the basket, plunged in his hand and drew one up, wriggling, by the back of the neck.

"That's no police dog," said Tom.

"No, it's not exactly a police dog," said the man with disappointment in his voice. "It's more of an airedale." He passed his hand over the brown wash-rag of a back. "Look at that coat. Some coat. That's a dog that'll never bother you with catching cold."

"I think it's cute," said Mrs. Wilson enthusiastically. "How much is it?"

"That dog?" He looked at it admiringly. "That dog will cost you ten dollars."

The airedale—undoubtedly there was an airedale concerned in it somewhere though its feet were startlingly white—changed hands and settled down into Mrs. Wilson's lap, where she fondled the weather-proof coat with rapture.

"Is it a boy or a girl?" she asked delicately.

"That dog? That dog's a boy."

"It's a bitch," said Tom decisively. "Here's your money. Go and buy ten more dogs with it."

We drove over to Fifth Avenue, so warm and soft, almost pastoral, on the summer Sunday afternoon that I wouldn't have been surprised to see a great flock of white sheep turn the corner.

"Hold on," I said, "I have to leave you here."

"No, you don't," interposed Tom quickly. "Myrtle'll be hurt if you don't come up to the apartment. Won't you, Myrtle?"

"Come on," she urged. "I'll telephone my sister Catherine. She's said to be very beautiful by people who ought to know."

"Well, I'd like to, but—"

We went on, cutting back again over the Park toward the West Hundreds. At 158th Street the cab stopped at one slice in a long white cake of apartment houses. Throwing a regal homecoming glance around the neighborhood, Mrs. Wilson gathered up her dog and her other purchases and went haughtily in.

"I'm going to have the McKees come up," she announced as we rose in the elevator. "And of course I got to call up my sister, too."

The apartment was on the top floor—a small living room, a small dining room, a small bedroom and a bath. The living room was crowded to the doors with a set of tapestried furniture entirely too large for it so that to move about was to stumble continually over scenes of ladies swinging in the gardens of Versailles. The only picture was an over-enlarged photograph, apparently a hen sitting on a blurred rock. Looked at from a distance however the hen resolved itself into a bonnet and the countenance of a stout old lady beamed down into the room. Several old copies of "Town Tattle" lay on the table together with a copy of "Simon Called Peter" and some of the small scandal magazines of Broadway. Mrs. Wilson was first concerned with the dog. A reluctant elevator boy went for a box full of straw and some milk to which he added on his own initiative a tin of large hard dog biscuits—one of which decomposed apathetically in the saucer of milk all afternoon. Meanwhile Tom brought out a bottle of whiskey from a locked bureau door.

I have been drunk just twice in my life and the second time was that afternoon so everything that happened has a dim hazy cast over it although until after eight o'clock the apartment was full of cheerful sun. Sitting on Tom's lap Mrs. Wilson called up several people on the telephone; then there were no cigarettes and I went out to buy some at the drug store on the corner. When I came back they had disappeared so I sat down discreetly in the living room and read a chapter of "Simon Called Peter"—either it was terrible stuff or the whiskey distorted things because it didn't make any sense to me.

Just as Tom and Myrtle—after the first drink Mrs. Wilson and I called each other by our first names—reappeared, company commenced to arrive at the apartment door.

The sister, Catherine, was a slender, worldly girl of about thirty with a solid sticky bob of red hair and a complexion powdered milky white. Her eyebrows had been plucked and then drawn on again at a more rakish angle but the efforts of nature toward the restoration of the old alignment gave a blurred air to her face. When she moved about there was an incessant clicking as innumerable pottery bracelets jingled up and down upon her arms. She came in with such a proprietary haste and looked around so possessively at the furniture that I wondered if she lived here. But when I asked her she laughed immoderately, repeated my question aloud and told me she lived with a girl friend at a hotel.

Mr. McKee was a pale feminine man from the flat below. He had just shaved for there was a white spot of lather on his cheekbone and he was most respectful in his greeting to everyone in the room. He informed me that he was in the "artistic game" and I gathered later that he was a photographer and had made the dim enlargement of Mrs. Wilson's mother which hovered like an ectoplasm on the wall. His wife was shrill, languid, handsome and horrible. She told me with pride that her husband had photographed her a hundred and twenty-seven times since they had been married.

Mrs. Wilson had changed her costume some time before and was now attired in an elaborate afternoon dress of cream colored chiffon, which gave out a continual rustle as she swept about the room. With the influence of the dress her personality had also undergone a change. The intense vitality that had been so remarkable in the garage was converted into impressive hauteur. Her laughter, her gestures, her assertions became more violently affected moment by moment and as she expanded the room grew smaller around her until she seemed to be revolving on a noisy, creaking pivot through the smoky air.

"My dear," she told her sister in a high mincing shout, "most of these fellas will cheat you every time. All they think of is money. I had a woman up here last week to look at my feet and when she gave me the bill you'd of thought she had my appendicitus out."

"What was the name of the woman?" asked Mrs. McKee.

"Mrs. Eberhardt. She goes around looking at people's feet in their own homes."

"I like your dress," remarked Mrs. McKee, "I think it's adorable."

Mrs. Wilson rejected the compliment by raising her eyebrow in disdain.

"It's just a crazy old thing," she said. "I just slip it on sometimes when I don't care what I look like."

"But it looks wonderful on you, if you know what I mean," pursued Mrs. McKee. "If Chester could only get you in that pose I think he could make something of it."

We all looked in silence at Mrs. Wilson who removed a strand of hair from over her eyes and looked back at us with a brilliant smile. Mr. McKee regarded her intently with his head on one side and then moved his hand back and forth slowly in front of his face.

"I should change the light," he said after a moment. "I'd like to bring out the modelling of the features. And I'd try to get hold of all the back hair."

"I wouldn't think of changing the light," cried Mrs. McKee. "I think it's—"

Her husband said "Sh! " and we all looked at the subject again whereupon Tom Buchanan yawned audibly and got to his feet.

"You McKees have something to drink," he said. "Get some more ice and mineral water, Myrtle, before everybody goes to sleep."

"I told that boy about the ice." Myrtle raised her eyebrows in despair at the shiftlessness of the lower orders. "These people! You have to keep after them all the time."

She looked at me and laughed pointlessly. Then she flounced over to the dog, kissed it with ecstasy and swept into the kitchen, implying that a dozen chefs awaited her orders there.

"I've done some nice things out on Long Island," asserted Mr. McKee.

Tom looked at him blankly.

"Two of them we have framed downstairs."

"Two what? demanded Tom.

"Two studies. One of them I call 'Montauk Point—the Gulls,' and the other I call 'Montauk Point—the Sea.' "

The sister Catherine sat down beside me on the couch.

"Do you live down on Long Island, too?" she inquired.

"I live at West Egg."

"Really? I was down there at a party about a month ago. At a man named Gatsby's. Do you know him?"

"I live next door to him."

"Well, they say he's a nephew or a cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm's. That's where all his money comes from."

"Really?"

She nodded.

"I'm scared of him. I'd hate to have him get anything on me."

This absorbing information about my neighbor was interrupted by Mrs. McKee's pointing suddenly at Catherine:

"Chester, I think you could do something with her," she broke out, but Mr. McKee only nodded in a bored way and turned his attention to Tom.

"I'd like to do more work on Long Island if I could get the entry. All I ask is that they should give me a start."

"Ask Myrtle," said Tom, breaking into a short shout of laughter as Mrs. Wilson entered with a tray. "She'll give you a letter of introduction, won't you, Myrtle?"

"Do what?" she asked, startled.

"You'll give McKee a letter of introduction to your husband, so he can do some studies of him." His lips moved silently for a moment as he invented. " 'George B. Wilson at the Gasoline Pump,' or something like that."

Catherine leaned close to me and whispered in my ear: "Neither of them can stand the person they're married to."

"Can't they?"

"Can't stand them." She looked at Myrtle and then at Tom. "What I say is, why go on living with them if they can't stand them? If I was them I'd get a divorce and get married to each other right away."

"Doesn't she like Wilson either?"

The answer to this was unexpected. It came from Myrtle who had overheard the question and it was violent and obscene.

"You see?" cried Catherine triumphantly. She lowered her voice again. "It's really his wife that's keeping them apart. She's a Catholic and they don't believe in divorce."

Daisy was not a Catholic and I was a little shocked at the elaborateness of the lie.

"When they do get married," continued Catherine, "they're going west to live for a while until it blows over."

"It'd be more discreet to go to Europe."

"Oh, do you like Europe?" she exclaimed surprisingly. "I just got back from Monte Carlo."

"Really."

"Just last year. I went over there with another girl."

"Stay long?"

"No, we just went to Monte Carlo and back. We went by way of Marseilles. We had over twelve hundred dollars when we started but we got gypped out of it all in two days in the private rooms. We had an awful time getting back, I can tell you. God, how I hated that town!"

The late afternoon sky bloomed in the window for a moment like the blue honey of the Mediterranean—then the shrill voice of Mrs. McKee called me back into the room.

"I almost made a mistake, too," she declared vigorously. "I almost married a little kyke who'd been after me for years. I knew he was below me. Everybody kept saying to me: 'Lucille, that man's way below you!' But if I hadn't met Chester, he'd of got me sure."

"Yes, but listen," said Myrtle Wilson, nodding her head up and down, "at least you didn't marry him."

"I know I didn't."

"Well, I married him," said Myrtle, ambiguously. "And that's the difference between your case and mine."

"Why did you, Myrtle?" demanded Catherine. "Nobody forced you to."

Myrtle considered.

"I married him because I thought he was a gentleman," she said finally. "I thought he knew something about breeding, but he wasn't fit to lick my shoe."

"You were crazy about him for a while," said Catherine.

"Crazy about him!" cried Myrtle incredulously. "Who said I was crazy about him? I never was any more crazy about him than I was about that man there."

She pointed suddenly at me, and every one looked at me accusingly. I tried to show by my expression that I had played no part in her past.

"The only crazy I was was when I married him. I knew right away I made a mistake. He borrowed somebody's best suit to get married in and never even told me about it, and the man came after it one day when he was out. She looked around to see who was listening: "'Oh, is that your suit?' I said. 'This is the first I ever heard about it.' But I gave it to him and then I lay down and cried to beat the band all afternoon."

"She really ought to get away from him," resumed Catherine to me. "They've been living over that garage for eleven years. And Tom's the first sweetie she ever had.

The bottle of whiskey—a second one—was now in constant demand by all present, excepting Catherine who "felt just as good on nothing at all." Tom rang for the janitor and sent him for some celebrated sandwiches, which were a complete supper in themselves. I wanted to get out and walk eastward toward the park through the soft twilight but each time I tried to go I became entangled in some wild strident argument which pulled me back, as if with ropes, into my chair. Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.

Myrtle pulled her chair close to mine, and suddenly her warm breath poured over me the story of her first meeting with Tom.

"It was on the two little seats facing each other that are always the last ones left on the train. I was going up to New York to see my sister and spend the night. He had on a dress suit and patent leather shoes and I couldn't keep my eyes off him but every time he looked at me I had to pretend to be looking at the advertisement over his head. When we came into the station he was next to me and his white shirt-front pressed against my arm—and so I told him I'd have to call a policeman, but he knew I lied. I was so excited that when I got into a taxi with him I didn't hardly know I wasn't getting into a subway train. All I kept thinking about, over and over, was 'You can't live forever, you can't live forever.' "

She turned to Mrs. McKee and the room rang full of her artificial laughter.

"My dear," she cried, "I'm going to give you this dress as soon as I'm through with it. I've got to get another one tomorrow. I'm going to make a list of all the things I've got to get. A massage and a wave and a collar for the dog and one of those cute little ash-trays where you touch a spring, and a wreath with a black silk bow for mother's grave that'll last all summer. I got to write down a list so I won't forget all the things I got to do."

It was nine o'clock—almost immediately afterward I looked at my watch and found it was ten. Mr. McKee was asleep on a chair with his fists clenched in his lap, like a photograph of a man of action. Taking out my handkerchief I wiped from his cheek the remains of the spot of dried lather that had worried me all the afternoon.

The little dog was sitting on the table looking with blind eyes through the smoke and from time to time groaning faintly. People disappeared, reappeared, made plans to go somewhere, and then lost each other, searched for each other, found each other a few feet away. Some time toward midnight Tom Buchanan and Mrs. Wilson stood face to face discussing in impassioned voices whether Mrs. Wilson had any right to mention Daisy's name.

"Daisy! Daisy! Daisy!" shouted Mrs. Wilson. "I'll say it whenever I want to! Daisy! Dai—"

Making a short deft movement Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand.

Then there were bloody towels upon the bathroom floor, and women's voices scolding, and high over the confusion a long broken wail of pain. Mr. McKee awoke from his doze and started in a daze toward the door. When he had gone half way he turned around and stared at the scene—his wife and Catherine scolding and consoling as they stumbled here and there among the crowded furniture with articles of aid, and the despairing figure on the couch bleeding fluently and trying to spread a copy of "Town Tattle" over the tapestry scenes of Versailles. Then Mr. McKee turned and continued on out the door. Taking my hat from the chandelier I followed.

"Come to lunch some day," he suggested, as we groaned down in the elevator.

"Where?"

"Anywhere."

"Keep your hands off the lever," snapped the elevator boy.

"I beg your pardon," said Mr. McKee with dignity, "I didn't know I was touching it."

"All right," I agreed, "I'll be glad to."

...I was standing beside his bed and he was sitting up between the sheets, clad in his underwear, with a great portfolio in his hands.

"Beauty and the Beast...Loneliness...Old Grocery Horse ...Brook'n Bridge..."

Then I was lying half asleep in the cold lower level of the Pennsylvania Station, staring at the morning "Tribune" and waiting for the four o'clock train.

Chapter 3

There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motor-boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city, between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants including an extra gardener toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before.

Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York—every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour, if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler's thumb.

At least once a fortnight a corps of caterers came down with several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby's enormous garden. On buffet tables, garnished with glistening hors-d'oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold. In the main hall a bar with a real brass rail was set up, and stocked with gins and liquors and with cordials so long forgotten that most of his female guests were too young to know one from another.

By seven o'clock the orchestra has arrived—no thin five-piece affair but a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos and low and high drums. The last swimmers have come in from the beach now and are dressing upstairs; the cars from New York are parked five deep in the drive, and already the halls and salons and verandas are gaudy with primary colors and hair shorn in strange new ways and shawls beyond the dreams of Castile. The bar is in full swing and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside until the air is alive with chatter and laughter and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other's names.

The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music and the opera of voices pitches a key higher. Laughter is easier, minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word. The groups change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath—already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous moment the center of a group and then excited with triumph glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light.

Suddenly one of these gypsies in trembling opal, seizes a cocktail out of the air, dumps it down for courage and moving her hands like Frisco dances out alone on the canvas platform. A momentary hush; the orchestra leader varies his rhythm obligingly for her and there is a burst of chatter as the erroneous news goes around that she is Gilda Gray's understudy from the "Follies." The party has begun.

I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby's house I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited. People were not invited—they went there. They got into automobiles which bore them out to Long Island and somehow they ended up at Gatsby's door. Once there they were introduced by somebody who knew Gatsby and after that they conducted themselves according to the rules of behavior associated with amusement parks. Sometimes they came and went without having met Gatsby at all, came for the party with a simplicity of heart that was its own ticket of admission.

I had been actually invited. A chauffeur in a uniform of robin's egg blue crossed my lawn early that Saturday morning with a surprisingly formal note from his employer—the honor would be entirely Gatsby's, it said, if I would attend his "little party" that night. He had seen me several times and had intended to call on me long before but a peculiar combination of circumstances had prevented it—signed Jay Gatsby in a majestic hand.

Dressed up in white flannels I went over to his lawn a little after seven and wandered around rather ill-at-ease among swirls and eddies of people I didn't know—though here and there was a face I had noticed on the commuting train. I was immediately struck by the number of young Englishmen dotted about; all well dressed, all looking a little hungry and all talking in low earnest voices to solid and prosperous Americans. I was sure that they were selling something: bonds or insurance or automobiles. They were, at least, agonizingly aware of the easy money in the vicinity and convinced that it was theirs for a few words in the right key.

As soon as I arrived I made an attempt to find my host but the two or three people of whom I asked his whereabouts stared at me in such an amazed way and denied so vehemently any knowledge of his movements that I slunk off in the direction of the cocktail table—the only place in the garden where a single man could linger without looking purposeless and alone.

I was on my way to get roaring drunk from sheer embarrassment when Jordan Baker came out of the house and stood at the head of the marble steps, leaning a little backward and looking with contemptuous interest down into the garden.

Welcome or not, I found it necessary to attach myself to someone before I should begin to address cordial remarks to the passers-by.

"Hello!" I roared, advancing toward her. My voice seemed unnaturally loud across the garden.

"I thought you might be here," she responded absently as I came up. "I remembered you lived next door to—"

She held my hand impersonally, as a promise that she'd take care of me in a minute, and gave ear to two girls in twin yellow dresses who stopped at the foot of the steps.

"Hello!" they cried together. "Sorry you didn't win."

That was for the golf tournament. She had lost in the finals the week before.

"You don't know who we are," said one of the girls in yellow, "but we met you here about a month ago."

"You've dyed your hair since then," remarked Jordan, and I started but the girls had moved casually on and her remark was addressed to the premature moon, produced like the supper, no doubt, out of a caterer's basket. With Jordan's slender golden arm resting in mine we descended the steps and sauntered about the garden. A tray of cocktails floated at us through the twilight and we sat down at a table with the two girls in yellow and three men, each one introduced to us as Mr. Mumble.

"Do you come to these parties often?" inquired Jordan of the girl beside her.

"The last one was the one I met you at," answered the girl, in an alert, confident voice. She turned to her companion: "Wasn't it for you, Lucille?"

It was for Lucille, too.

"I like to come," Lucille said. "I never care what I do, so I always have a good time. When I was here last I tore my gown on a chair, and he asked me my name and address—inside of a week I got a package from Croirier's with a new evening gown in it."

"Did you keep it?" asked Jordan.

"Sure I did. I was going to wear it tonight, but it was too big in the bust and had to be altered. It was gas blue with lavender beads. Two hundred and sixty-five dollars."

"There's something funny about a fellow that'll do a thing like that," said the other girl eagerly. "He doesn't want any trouble with anybody."

"Who doesn't?" I inquired.

"Gatsby. Somebody told me—"

The two girls and Jordan leaned together confidentially.

"Somebody told me they thought he killed a man once."

A thrill passed over all of us. The three Mr. Mumbles bent forward and listened eagerly.

"I don't think it's so much that," argued Lucille skeptically; "it's more that he was a German spy during the war."

One of the men nodded in confirmation.

"I heard that from a man who knew all about him, grew up with him in Germany," he assured us positively.

"Oh, no," said the first girl, "it couldn't be that, because he was in the American army during the war." As our credulity switched back to her she leaned forward with enthusiasm. "You look at him sometimes when he thinks nobody's looking at him. I'll bet he killed a man."

She narrowed her eyes and shivered. Lucille shivered. We all turned and looked around for Gatsby. It was testimony to the romantic speculation he inspired that there were whispers about him from those who found little that it was necessary to whisper about in this world.

The first supper—there would be another one after midnight—was now being served, and Jordan invited me to join her own party who were spread around a table on the other side of the garden. There were three married couples and Jordan's escort, a persistent undergraduate given to violent innuendo and obviously under the impression that sooner or later Jordan was going to yield him up her person to a greater or lesser degree. Instead of rambling this party had preserved a dignified homogeneity, and assumed to itself the function of representing the staid nobility of the countryside—East Egg condescending to West Egg, and carefully on guard against its spectroscopic gayety.

"Let's get out," whispered Jordan, after a somehow wasteful and inappropriate half hour. "This is much too polite for me."

We got up, and she explained that we were going to find the host—I had never met him, she said, and it was making me uneasy. The undergraduate nodded in a cynical, melancholy way.

The bar, where we glanced first, was crowded but Gatsby was not there. She couldn't find him from the top of the steps, and he wasn't on the veranda. On a chance we tried an important-looking door, and walked into a high Gothic library, panelled with carved English oak, and probably transported complete from some ruin overseas.

A stout, middle-aged man with enormous owl-eyed spectacles was sitting somewhat drunk on the edge of a great table, staring with unsteady concentration at the shelves of books. As we entered he wheeled excitedly around and examined Jordan from head to foot.

"What do you think?" he demanded impetuously.

"About what?"

He waved his hand toward the book-shelves.

"About that. As a matter of fact you needn't bother to ascertain. I ascertained. They're real."

"The books?"

He nodded.

"Absolutely real—have pages and everything. I thought they'd be a nice durable cardboard. Matter of fact, they're absolutely real. Pages and—Here! Lemme show you."

Taking our skepticism for granted, he rushed to the bookcases and returned with Volume One of the "Stoddard Lectures."

"See!" he cried triumphantly. "It's a bona fide piece of printed matter. It fooled me. This fella's a regular Belasco. It's a triumph. What thoroughness! What realism! Knew when to stop too—didn't cut the pages. But what do you want? What do you expect?"

He snatched the book from me and replaced it hastily on its shelf muttering that if one brick was removed the whole library was liable to collapse.

"Who brought you?" he demanded. "Or did you just come? I was brought. Most people were brought."

Jordan looked at him alertly, cheerfully without answering.

"I was brought by a woman named Roosevelt," he continued. "Mrs. Claud Roosevelt. Do you know her? I met her somewhere last night. I've been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library."

"Has it?"

"A little bit, I think. I can't tell yet. I've only been here an hour. Did I tell you about the books? They're real. They're—"

"You told us."

We shook hands with him gravely and went back outdoors.

There was dancing now on the canvas in the garden, old men pushing young girls backward in eternal graceless circles, superior couples holding each other tortuously, fashionably and keeping in the corners—and a great number of single girls dancing individualistically or relieving the orchestra for a moment of the burden of the banjo or the traps. By midnight the hilarity had increased. A celebrated tenor had sung in Italian and a notorious contralto had sung in jazz and between the numbers people were doing "stunts" all over the garden, while happy vacuous bursts of laughter rose toward the summer sky. A pair of stage "twins"—who turned out to be the girls in yellow—did a baby act in costume and champagne was served in glasses bigger than finger bowls. The moon had risen higher, and floating in the Sound was a triangle of silver scales, trembling a little to the stiff, tinny drip of the banjoes on the lawn.

I was still with Jordan Baker. We were sitting at a table with a man of about my age and a rowdy little girl who gave way upon the slightest provocation to uncontrollable laughter. I was enjoying myself now. I had taken two finger bowls of champagne and the scene had changed before my eyes into something significant, elemental and profound.

At a lull in the entertainment the man looked at me and smiled.

"Your face is familiar," he said, politely. "Weren't you in the Third Division during the war?"

"Why, yes. I was in the Ninth Machine-Gun Battalion."

"I was in the Seventh Infantry until June nineteen-eighteen. I knew I'd seen you somewhere before."

We talked for a moment about some wet, grey little villages in France. Evidently he lived in this vicinity for he told me that he had just bought a hydroplane and was going to try it out in the morning.

"Want to go with me, old sport? Just near the shore along the Sound."

"What time?"

"Any time that suits you best."

It was on the tip of my tongue to ask his name when Jordan looked around and smiled.

"Having a gay time now?" she inquired.

"Much better." I turned again to my new acquaintance. "This is an unusual party for me. I haven't even seen the host. I live over there—" I waved my hand at the invisible hedge in the distance, "and this man Gatsby sent over his chauffeur with an invitation."

For a moment he looked at me as if he failed to understand.

"I'm Gatsby," he said suddenly.

"What!" I exclaimed. "Oh, I beg your pardon."

"I thought you knew, old sport. I'm afraid I'm not a very good host."

He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced—or seemed to face—the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey. Precisely at that point it vanished—and I was looking at an elegant young rough-neck, a year or two over thirty, whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd. Some time before he introduced himself I'd got a strong impression that he was picking his words with care.

Almost at the moment when Mr. Gatsby identified himself a butler hurried toward him with the information that Chicago was calling him on the wire. He excused himself with a small bow that included each of us in turn.

"If you want anything just ask for it, old sport," he urged me. "Excuse me. I will rejoin you later."

When he was gone I turned immediately to Jordan—constrained to assure her of my surprise. I had expected that Mr. Gatsby would be a florid and corpulent person in his middle years.

"Who is he?" I demanded. "Do you know?"

"He's just a man named Gatsby."

"Where is he from, I mean? And what does he do?"

"Now you're started on the subject," she answered with a wan smile. "Well,—he told me once he was an Oxford man."

A dim background started to take shape behind him but at her next remark it faded away.

"However, I don't believe it."

"Why not?"

"I don't know," she insisted, "I just don't think he went there."

Something in her tone reminded me of the other girl's "I think he killed a man," and had the effect of stimulating my curiosity. I would have accepted without question the information that Gatsby sprang from the swamps of Louisiana or from the lower East Side of New York. That was comprehensible. But young men didn't—at least in my provincial inexperience I believed they didn't—drift coolly out of nowhere and buy a palace on Long Island Sound.

"Anyhow he gives large parties," said Jordan, changing the subject with an urbane distaste for the concrete. "And I like large parties. They're so intimate. At small parties there isn't any privacy."

There was the boom of a bass drum, and the voice of the orchestra leader rang out suddenly above the echolalia of the garden.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he cried. "At the request of Mr. Gatsby we are going to play for you Mr. Vladimir Tostoff's latest work which attracted so much attention at Carnegie Hall last May. If you read the papers you know there was a big sensation." He smiled with jovial condescension and added "Some sensation!" whereupon everybody laughed.

"The piece is known," he concluded lustily, "as 'Vladimir Tostoff's Jazz History of the World.' "

The nature of Mr. Tostoff's composition eluded me, because just as it began my eyes fell on Gatsby, standing alone on the marble steps and looking from one group to another with approving eyes. His tanned skin was drawn attractively tight on his face and his short hair looked as though it were trimmed every day. I could see nothing sinister about him. I wondered if the fact that he was not drinking helped to set him off from his guests, for it seemed to me that he grew more correct as the fraternal hilarity increased. When the "Jazz History of the World" was over girls were putting their heads on men's shoulders in a puppyish, convivial way, girls were swooning backward playfully into men's arms, even into groups knowing that some one would arrest their falls—but no one swooned backward on Gatsby and no French bob touched Gatsby's shoulder and no singing quartets were formed with Gatsby's head for one link.

"I beg your pardon."

Gatsby's butler was suddenly standing beside us.

"Miss Baker?" he inquired. "I beg your pardon but Mr. Gatsby would like to speak to you alone."

"With me?" she exclaimed in surprise.

"Yes, madame."

She got up slowly, raising her eyebrows at me in astonishment, and followed the butler toward the house. I noticed that she wore her evening dress, all her dresses, like sports clothes—there was a jauntiness about her movements as if she had first learned to walk upon golf courses on clean, crisp mornings.

I was alone and it was almost two. For some time confused and intriguing sounds had issued from a long many-windowed room which overhung the terrace. Eluding Jordan's undergraduate who was now engaged in an obstetrical conversation with two chorus girls, and who implored me to join him, I went inside.

The large room was full of people. One of the girls in yellow was playing the piano and beside her stood a tall, red haired young lady from a famous chorus, engaged in song. She had drunk a quantity of champagne and during the course of her song she had decided ineptly that everything was very very sad—she was not only singing, she was weeping too. Whenever there was a pause in the song she filled it with gasping broken sobs and then took up the lyric again in a quavering soprano. The tears coursed down her cheeks—not freely, however, for when they came into contact with her heavily beaded eyelashes they assumed an inky color, and pursued the rest of their way in slow black rivulets. A humorous suggestion was made that she sing the notes on her face whereupon she threw up her hands, sank into a chair and went off into a deep vinous sleep.

"She had a fight with a man who says he's her husband," explained a girl at my elbow.

I looked around. Most of the remaining women were now having fights with men said to be their husbands. Even Jordan's party, the quartet from East Egg, were rent asunder by dissension. One of the men was talking with curious intensity to a young actress, and his wife after attempting to laugh at the situation in a dignified and indifferent way broke down entirely and resorted to flank attacks—at intervals she appeared suddenly at his side like an angry diamond, and hissed "You promised!" into his ear.

The reluctance to go home was not confined to wayward men. The hall was at present occupied by two deplorably sober men and their highly indignant wives. The wives were sympathizing with each other in slightly raised voices.

"Whenever he sees I'm having a good time he wants to go home."

"Never heard anything so selfish in my life."

"We're always the first ones to leave."

"So are we."

"Well, we're almost the last tonight," said one of the men sheepishly. "The orchestra left half an hour ago."

In spite of the wives' agreement that such malevolence was beyond credibility, the dispute ended in a short struggle, and both wives were lifted kicking into the night.

As I waited for my hat in the hall the door of the library opened and Jordan Baker and Gatsby came out together. He was saying some last word to her but the eagerness in his manner tightened abruptly into formality as several people approached him to say goodbye.

Jordan's party were calling impatiently to her from the porch but she lingered for a moment to shake hands.

"I've just heard the most amazing thing," she whispered. "How long were we in there?"

"Why,—about an hour."

"It was—simply amazing," she repeated abstractedly. "But I swore I wouldn't tell it and here I am tantalizing you." She yawned gracefully in my face. "Please come and see me...Phone book...Under the name of Mrs. Sigourney Howard...My aunt..." She was hurrying off as she talked—her brown hand waved a jaunty salute as she melted into her party at the door.

Rather ashamed that on my first appearance I had stayed so late, I joined the last of Gatsby's guests who were clustered around him. I wanted to explain that I'd hunted for him early in the evening and to apologize for not having known him in the garden.

"Don't mention it," he enjoined me eagerly. "Don't give it another thought, old sport." The familiar expression held no more familiarity than the hand which reassuringly brushed my shoulder. "And don't forget we're going up in the hydroplane tomorrow morning at nine o'clock."

Then the butler, behind his shoulder:

"Philadelphia wants you on the phone, sir."

"All right, in a minute. Tell them I'll be right there...good night."

"Good night."

"Good night." He smiled—and suddenly there seemed to be a pleasant significance in having been among the last to go, as if he had desired it all the time. "Good night, old sport...Good night."

But as I walked down the steps I saw that the evening was not quite over. Fifty feet from the door a dozen headlights illuminated a bizarre and tumultuous scene. In the ditch beside the road, right side up but violently shorn of one wheel, rested a new coup�� which had left Gatsby's drive not two minutes before. The sharp jut of a wall accounted for the detachment of the wheel which was now getting considerable attention from half a dozen curious chauffeurs. However, as they had left their cars blocking the road a harsh discordant din from those in the rear had been audible for some time and added to the already violent confusion of the scene.

A man in a long duster had dismounted from the wreck and now stood in the middle of the road, looking from the car to the tire and from the tire to the observers in a pleasant, puzzled way.

"See!" he explained. "It went in the ditch."

The fact was infinitely astonishing to him—and I recognized first the unusual quality of wonder and then the man—it was the late patron of Gatsby's library.

"How'd it happen?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"I know nothing whatever about mechanics," he said decisively.

"But how did it happen? Did you run into the wall?"

"Don't ask me," said Owl Eyes, washing his hands of the whole matter. "I know very little about driving—next to nothing. It happened, and that's all I know."

"Well, if you're a poor driver you oughtn't to try driving at night."

"But I wasn't even trying," he explained indignantly, "I wasn't even trying."

An awed hush fell upon the bystanders.

"Do you want to commit suicide?"

"You're lucky it was just a wheel! A bad driver and not even trying!"

"You don't understand," explained the criminal. "I wasn't driving. There's another man in the car."

The shock that followed this declaration found voice in a sustained "Ah-h-h!" as the door of the coupé swung slowly open. The crowd—it was now a crowd—stepped back involuntarily and when the door had opened wide there was a ghostly pause. Then, very gradually, part by part, a pale dangling individual stepped out of the wreck, pawing tentatively at the ground with a large uncertain dancing shoe.

Blinded by the glare of the headlights and confused by the incessant groaning of the horns the apparition stood swaying for a moment before he perceived the man in the duster.

"Wha's matter?" he inquired calmly. "Did we run outa gas?"

"Look!"

Half a dozen fingers pointed at the amputated wheel—he stared at it for a moment and then looked upward as though he suspected that it had dropped from the sky.

"It came off," some one explained.

He nodded.

"At first I din' notice we'd stopped."

A pause. Then, taking a long breath and straightening his shoulders he remarked in a determined voice:

"Wonder'ff tell me where there's a gas'line station?"

At least a dozen men, some of them little better off than he was, explained to him that wheel and car were no longer joined by any physical bond.

"Back out," he suggested after a moment. "Put her in reverse."

"But the wheel's off!"

He hesitated.

"No harm in trying," he said.

The caterwauling horns had reached a crescendo and I turned away and cut across the lawn toward home. I glanced back once. A wafer of a moon was shining over Gatsby's house, making the night fine as before and surviving the laughter and the sound of his still glowing garden. A sudden emptiness seemed to flow now from the windows and the great doors, endowing with complete isolation the figure of the host who stood on the porch, his hand up in a formal gesture of farewell.

Reading over what I have written so far I see I have given the impression that the events of three nights several weeks apart were all that absorbed me. On the contrary they were merely casual events in a crowded summer and, until much later, they absorbed me infinitely less than my personal affairs.

Most of the time I worked. In the early morning the sun threw my shadow westward as I hurried down the white chasms of lower New York to the Probity Trust. I knew the other clerks and young bond-salesmen by their first names and lunched with them in dark crowded restaurants on little pig sausages and mashed potatoes and coffee. I even had a short affair with a girl who lived in Jersey City and worked in the accounting department, but her brother began throwing mean looks in my direction so when she went on her vacation in July I let it blow quietly away.

I took dinner usually at the Yale Club—for some reason it was the gloomiest event of my day—and then I went upstairs to the library and studied investments and securities for a conscientious hour. There were generally a few rioters around but they never came into the library so it was a good place to work. After that, if the night was mellow I strolled down Madison Avenue past the old Murray Hill Hotel and over Thirty-third Street to the Pennsylvania Station.

I began to like New York, the racy, adventurous feel of it at night and the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and machines gives to the restless eye. I liked to walk up Fifth Avenue and pick out romantic women from the crowd and imagine that in a few minutes I was going to enter into their lives, and no one would ever know or disapprove. Sometimes, in my mind, I followed them to their apartments on the corners of hidden streets, and they turned and smiled back at me before they faded through a door into warm darkness. At the enchanted metropolitan twilight I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others—poor young clerks who loitered in front of windows waiting until it was time for a solitary restaurant dinner—young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life.

Again at eight o'clock, when the dark lanes of the Forties were five deep with throbbing taxi cabs, bound for the theatre district, I felt a sinking in my heart. Forms leaned together in the taxis as they waited, and voices sang, and there was laughter from unheard jokes, and lighted cigarettes outlined unintelligible gestures inside. Imagining that I, too, was hurrying toward gayety and sharing their intimate excitement, I wished them well.

For a while I lost sight of Jordan Baker, and then in midsummer I found her again. At first I was flattered to go places with her because she was a golf champion and every one knew her name. Then it was something more. I wasn't actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity. The bored haughty face that she turned to the world concealed something—most affectations conceal something eventually, even though they don't in the beginning—and one day I found what it was. When we were on a house-party together up in Warwick, she left a borrowed car out in the rain with the top down, and then lied about it—and suddenly I remembered the story about her that had eluded me that night at Daisy's. At her first big golf tournament there was a row that nearly reached the newspapers—a suggestion that she had moved her ball from a bad lie in the semi-final round. The thing approached the proportions of a scandal—then died away. A caddy retracted his statement and the only other witness admitted that he might have been mistaken. The incident and the name had remained together in my mind.

Jordan Baker instinctively avoided clever, shrewd men, and now I saw that this was because she felt safer on a plane where any divergence from a code would be thought impossible. She was incurably dishonest. She wasn't able to endure being at a disadvantage, and given this unwillingness, I suppose she had begun dealing in subterfuges when she was very young in order to keep that cool, insolent smile turned to the world and yet satisfy the demands of her hard jaunty body.

It made no difference to me. Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply—I was casually sorry, and then I forgot. It was on that same house party that we had a curious conversation about driving a car. It started because she passed so close to some workmen that our fender flicked a button on one man's coat.

"You're a rotten driver," I protested. "Either you ought to be more careful or you oughtn't to drive at all."

"I am careful."

"No, you're not."

"Well, other people are," she said lightly.

"What's that got to do with it?"

"They'll keep out of my way," she insisted. "It takes two to make an accident."

"Suppose you met somebody just as careless as yourself."

"I hope I never will," she answered. "I hate careless people. That's why I like you."

Her grey, sun-strained eyes stared straight ahead, but she had deliberately shifted our relations, and for a moment I thought I loved her. But I am slow-thinking and full of interior rules that act as brakes on my desires, and I knew that first I had to get myself definitely out of that tangle back home. I'd been writing letters once a week and signing them: "Love, Nick," and all I could think of was how, when that certain girl played tennis, a faint mustache of perspiration appeared on her upper lip. Nevertheless there was a vague understanding that had to be tactfully broken off before I was free.

Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.

#the great gatsby #long post

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allureofcrimemurdermystery · 8 months

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* Dr Carl Coppolino - Deadly Anaesthesist

I know it's been a while so here we are;

Carl Coppolino was born in 1933 in Florida, USA. Coppolino graduated Fordham University in 1954 in the Bronx and worked at the SUNY Downstate Medical Center during 1958 in Brooklyn. Coppolino’s health was so poor that by age 30 he had already suffered several heart attacks, retired as a practicing anesthesiologist, and was collecting sizable disability pay. A true polymath, Coppolino had also written several books and scientific papers on anesthesiology and was considered an expert on the matter.

He met his wife whilst working at Riverview Hospital in New Jersey. The connection between the two was unmatched, his beautiful wife Carmela was also a Dr and she understood how hard the job of being a Dr and the work schedules could be. Dr Coppolino's health was deteriorating so poorly that he ended up having to give up work earlier than expected. Other than Carmela's shifts at work and Carl's failing health, the couple seemed happy. But as we all know looks can be deceiving. Inside Carl something was boiling and he was losing his grasp on reality. In 1965 they moved into a home in a retirement community called Longboat Key just off Florida's Gulf of Mexico's coast by the time they were both 32 due to his fragile health.

Back in Middletown, New Jersey, Coppolino began having an affair with his neighbor Marjorie Farber, a stunning woman 14 years his senior. Her husband retired US Army Colonel William Farber was unaware of the passionate rendezvous' that his wife and Carl were having. In 1963 Colonel Farber died suddenly after suffering a heart attack. Marjorie followed Carl to Florida in August 1965 and their secretive affair resumed as if nothing had happened, as if she had not just suffered the huge loss of losing her husband.

On August 28th 1965 Carmela Coppolino was dead. A late-night phone call to a physician, Dr. Juliette Karow headed to Longport Key, Florida, home of Dr. Carl and Carmela Coppolino. Carl had called for Dr. Karow’s assistance as Carl believed Carmela was dying of heart attack. Dr. Karow arrived to find Carmela sadly was already deceased. She was just 32 years of age. Her death was ruled as a Coronary Occlusion (the partial or complete obstruction of blood flow in a coronary artery) on her death certificate. Her body was sent to Boonton, New Jersey. Dr Carl Coppolino did not attend her funeral citing "My heart is weak and my personal physician said it may kill me."

Just 40 days after Carmela's death, Carl was married again. Not to his mistress Marjorie but rather his second mistress. A 38 year old divorcee called Mary Gibson whom he had met at Maxwell Bridge Studios. They became bridge partners and from there a passionate love grew. Marjorie Farber was seething, a woman scorned indeed. How dare he marry someone else when their trysts were more than sex for Marjorie, she loved Carl and would have done anything for him. This included helping him murder her husband.

Marjorie couldn't allow Carl to marry someone else, he couldn't get away with it. Marjorie walked into Sarasota County Police & told them that Carl murdered Carmela using deadly quick metabolizing succinylcholine as well as using this on Colonel Bill Farber, her husband. She confessed her own involvement in the murder of her husband and so the police believed her, after all why would she implicate herself if there wasn't some truth to what she was saying.

Marjorie alleged that on 29th July 1963 under post-hypnotic suggestion from Carl, she had taken a hypodermic needle that he had provided her She began to inject her husband she claims "I couldn't stop myself, it was absolutely over and beyond my control." According to her, unable to continue injecting her husband she called Carl, it was the middle of the night but Carl left his sleeping wife Carmela and went to the Farber's to finish the job. He drugged his victim, William Farber, before smothering him with a pillow.

Upon investigation, Investigators were able to prove that Coppolino had obtained a supply of succinylcholine right before Farber's death. And again just 5 weeks before Dr Carmela's death. Carl's excuse for having this supply of succinylcholine was he was getting rid of a 'troublesome dog" and that he was planning on conducting research into a way of measuring the concentration of the drug in the blood during surgeries.

Due to the circumstances and the confession from Marjorie the police decided to exhume Carmela's body. Dr Milton Halpern, NYC's Medical Examiner at the time & Toxicologist Dr Joseph Umburger examined Carmela for any proof of Marge's claims. After observing Carmela, a small puncture wound was found on her left buttocks, which was consistent with a hypodermic needle. He decided he wanted to test for succinylcholine chloride, however no such test existed. This made it the perfect murder weapon. Dr Umburger refused to let Coppolino get away with the murder of his young, beautiful wife and so he set about devising such a test.

In June 1966, after spending months taking samples from Carmela's organs and the injection site, he had finally succeeded in isolating both succinic acid and choline, this was proof Carmela had been killed in the way Marjorie had described. This revelation proved Mrs. Farber's credibility and she requested the exhumation of her husband, Bill. The police complied with this request due to her proving her reliability in telling the truth and giving her confession.

On July 14th 1966 Colonel William Farber's body was also exhumed, unfortunately Dr Umburger's test could not be used on the Colonel's body as he had been in the ground for too long. The medical examiner could prove William Farber had been murdered though due to the detection of severe fractures of the cricoid cartilage in the larynx. Halpern deducted Farber had die due to strangulation. Just 9 days later on July 23rd 1966, Carl was arrested for the murder of Farber. 4 days later he was informed he was to be indicted for the homicide of his wife, Carmela. Coppolino would have two trial, one for each homicide. The first trial was to be that for Colonel William Farber. It was to be in Naples, Florid and secondly in Freehold, Florida would be his trial for the murder of Carmela.

For both of his trials, Carl used a well known public figure, lawyer F. Lee Bailey, despite using him twice however both trials had different conclusions. Carl was very charismatic, he was able to convince the jury in Freehold County Court that he was simply being a good physician on the night Colonel Farber was killed, which was roughly 29th/30th July 1963 according to the M.E. In response to what exactly he did in his role/duty as a Dr he claimed he had given Farber a tranquilizer and then Pronestal to correct his uneven heart. He reported that he recommended Bill attend hospital but both Bill and Marge refused and so were asked to sign a form declaring such. According to Dr Coppolino the damage exhibited in Farber's neck could have occurred during the exhumation. A defense expert, Dr Spelman theorized that Bill had perished from a heart attack. His theory based on sufficient arteriosclerosis clogging Farber's coronary arteries enough to cause a heart attack. The jury at Freehold County Court deliberated for just four and a half hours before deciding to acquit Carl Coppolino of all charges, releasing him on bail He was free and so Carl and his new wife Mary travelled back home before taking off on holiday!

Overconfident Carl & his defense lawyer, F. Lee Bailey, wholeheartedly believed that he would also be acquitted of charges regarding Carmela's death. They thought this due to no eyewitnesses and them convinced they could prove Marjorie wasn't credible. Marge however was growing concerned about Coppolino's second wife, Mary, she didn't want history repeating itself.

The experts for the prosecution included Dr Joseph Umburger whose newly devised test would no scrutinized because other experts claimed succinylcholine was untraceable. This is because of how rapidly succinylcholine is broken down within the body. The succinic acid Dr Umburger had discovered was in Carmela's brain rather than the injection site. Coppolino's lawyer implied the M.E Dr Halpern had doctored the autopsy report in order to make Carl appear to be guilty.

Dr Umburger unexpectedly confessed that he only said it was possible that Carmela had been poisoned with succinylcholine chloride. He claimed Dr Halpern had insisted he removed the word possible from the report. This only helped Coppolino's case because if the report was altered what else could have been amended or doctored. These circumstances led Coppolino's lawyer, F. Lee Bailey, to believe the case was a home run. He was so confident he didn't even put his client on the stand to deny the accusation of her murder. This would be his downfall.

At 9:30am on 28th April 1967, the jury announced their verdict - Guilty! The all male jury decided this wasn't premeditated murder but rather 2nd degree murder, this meant Coppolino couldn't face the death penalty. Personally I find this appalling how is poisoning not premeditated? Carl was sentenced to life imprisonment, sadly though due to 'good behavior' from the shamed doctor he served just 12 years. Upon his release, his wife Mary greeted him beaming with happiness after having fought and protested for his innocence.

#tcc #true crime community #true crime #murder #murderer #true #devastating #criminal #deadly anesthetist

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vibratingskull · 6 months

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Imperial secrets

Part1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16

Tags : mention of cheating, reconciliation

FemaleReader x Thrawn

You decide to take matters in your own hands and discuss your fiance with someone who might know him for longer times

You wait at the dinner, hiding under your hoodie and some sunglasses. You twirl your straw in your drink, awaiting. You side eye the dinner, you know some of your friends come and work here, you’d rather not be seen. But that’s where she chose to see you. You sigh and slouch in your seat, is it reasonable? You wonder. You don’t know what Arzel said to them, but all your friends stopped talking and texting you for some day now. You didn’t realize you would lose so much by getting on his bad side…

"Lieutenant commander (y/l/n)?" A woman appears at your side, in a black trench coat complimenting her black hair and green eyes.

You rise up in a jump.

"Yes! It's me, Captain Hugtan."

She sat down in front of you, without removing her coat. She looks at you with piercing inquisitive eyes. You always thought she was beautiful, she is even more that close. She could still model for the Empire posters, like before. Your cheeks fluster as your old crush comes acting up again.

"So?" She ask impatiently

"Yes. I wanted to ask you about Nather Satlove."

She looks ultimately uninterested.

"And what do you want to know about him ?"

"You frequent him for longer than me, has he ever appeared… strange to you?"

"When was he never strange? He's a whole circus by himself." she snarls. Maybe their relationship is not as good as you first thought. "He always has been a self centered prick and if I'm judging by the latest news I heard about him, he didn't change."

You lower your head a little, that sounds like your man.

"Well" You start. "I'm sure he has some qualities…"

"Oh, he does! I have an immense respect for his work methods, that doesn't help the fact that he's insufferable."

You pout.

"Okay, has there been a period where he has been especially… Insufferable ?"

She takes a ciggie out of her pocket, lights it up and takes a deep puff of it. You cough because of the smoke but she doesn't stop.

"Well, you realize I can't disclose information about a respected Governor of the Empire to you like that."

"I'm his fiance" You retorted.

She looks at you dubious. You decide to show her some pics of Arzel and you together. You're a bit annoyed having to display your private life like that, but you swallow your pride. She looks at them with a raised eyebrow, and gives you back your community with a grin.

“I see every taste is in nature…”

“We’ll talk about my taste another time.” You respond, losing patience “What can you tell me about him?”

She stares into space for a moment, surely gathering her memories.

“We did our study together at the Academy, even though I was two years ahead of him. As far as I can remember he has always as been a free spirit, with a talent to gather people around him. He regularly spoke about the treatment of the aliens, which had the effect of enraging the teachers and some students. But what can I say? A solar personality and an influential family can melt any ice, and he was popular, except for one other thing…” She takes another puff of her cig. “He was a fucking classist.”

You look at her in surprise. You already knew he had a military education and he used to go to the Academy, but you didn’t suspect this aspect of him. You let her continue.

“Despite being his elder I was a victim of his scorn and disdain because I came from the working class, with other students. He finally showed some respect when some of us graduated.” She pouts.

You don’t feel rancor in her speech, only a profound lassitude. You sip on your drink, all ears.

“For him we didn’t have our place in this elite space and only the ones overcoming the odds deserved his respect.”

Now that you think of it, he never lingered too much in your former neighborhood and speaks to a restricted number of people in church.

“We lost sight of each other when his family “introduced“ him officially to this weird church…” She continues.

“His family?” You're surprised, a bit disappointed even “He never speaks to me of his family…”

She tuts, clearly unsympathetic.

“Well they're all in this weird cult. It’s a family thing apparently, if I remember correctly it’s one of his grandmas that started it with some other illuminated priests.”

“Belegs.” You correct her with anger lingering in the tone.

She squints at you and sneers.

“Of course, you’re part of it.”

“You have a problem with that maybe?”

“No, absolutely not. It’s just another proof that birds of a feather flock together.”

You breathe deeply through your nose. Keep calm, you think, she’s a superior…

“Either way, it appears he selectively chooses his friends after that, and would you look at that : they all come from his circle, except for those who overcame the odds, with whom he looks like he has a weird adoration thing.” She takes a puff.

You keep silent, digesting what you just heard. She looks at you with what you think is pity melt with amusement.

“Oh don’t be sour, if he didn’t tell you about all that it’s because he thought you weren’t ready.”

You snarl at that comment, you hope it’s not that.

“That, or he doesn’t actually trust you…”

Your eyes widen, Eli’s kiss flashing in your mind. You quickly chase this thought, don’t think about it…

“Say, it’s not that I’m bored but I hope you didn’t bother me just for heart reasons.” She throws.

“In fact not.” You respond, straightening your back and with a hard gaze. “Tell me everything you know about the Rear Admiral Marttilf…”

________________________________________________________________

You're curled up over yourself, completely entranced by your screen. It's the only light in your chamber, reflecting on your face and walls. You corroborate all the data you have with the new ones recently obtained, and more importantly the ones about Martlif.

The Empire is losing slaves, or assets as Thrawn would have said. Either way, the Empire is losing precious resources and you’re sure Martlifs is part of that problem, accomplice of those pirates that you chased after for so long and the underworld of Tyrahnn.

You compile everything on a data card and decide to head toward the ISB. You take your airspeeder and fly at full speed on the streets of Coruscant, your mind wandering just as quick. The recent events shined a light on some truths about your situation and yourself. Losing Azrel is losing his love, your friend group, your home, your moral support, stability… And it is too much at once. Your whole life would be in ruins, so you had to take the next logical step : presenting excuses.

You stop in front of his office, looking at the window pensively, ready to forgive him all of his slips for a better life. You take a big breath and get in, you have to act like a proper adult from now on you decide, being the bigger person…

As you walk in the hallway you see someone leaving Azrel’s office, someone you didn’t expect.

“Eli…” You say in a breath.

He sees you and his whole face brightens, he embraces you with joy.

“(y/n)! What an unexpected pleasure to meet you!” He laughs “What are you doing here?”

You gulp, all your defenses going down in front of that smile. How can you be mad at that face? You feel yourself melt in front of him, and your heart drops in your stomach. You don’t want to hate him.

“I came to see Azrel.”

“Who?”

“Nather.”

He nods comprehensively. After all that time, anger led to acceptance and confusion. You’re not even sure of what you saw anymore, there was so much steam and they were away from you. After replaying this scene in your mind so many times, the memory got corrupted. Beside you have no proof of what you saw, all you have is some foggy memories of a moment of vulnerability.

"I thought you were on duty." You manage to say.

"We'll depart in one month, the Chimaera is in repairs. I just wanted to chat a bit with Nather."

Your heart pinches, you want to believe him, you want to believe Azrel. You want to believe a future is possible for all of you.

Eli looks at you with tenderness.

"I'm gonna be honest, at first I didn't like him all that much. But talking to him and his political views, I came to appreciate him." He ruffles his hair with a chuckle, like he didn't want to vex you.

You nod with a faint smile.

"Yes, he really feels strongly about some subjects…”

He put his hand on your shoulder.

“He’s a good man. Strange, but fine.” He hits your shoulder lightly and bids you farewell.

Hand on the door handle you look at Eli walking away in the hallway. You shake your head, take a deep breath and enter.

“Azrel?” You ask, passing just your head through the door.

You see him raising his head from his screen at the mention of his name. He recognizes you and raises an eyebrow.

“(Y/n)...”

You pout. (Y/n) not Roween. He opens his fan in a clac that resonates and hides his face behind it, letting only his eyes visible. You approach with little steps, trying to put a front.

“I came to see how you are since the last two weeks…” You start.

“Good.” He retorts shortly, his eyes following you walking inside his office.

“Good, good.” You pout, licking your teeth trying to continue the conversation.

He slouches on his chair, crossing his legs on his desk, waiting for you to state your true intention.

“I…” You stop and look at the beautiful sunny day through the transparisteel wall behind him, taking inspiration from nature.``I also wanted to present my excuses for what happened last time, I shouldn’t have sold short our principles for a simple date night with a friend, a friend you judge improper for our cause. I just wanted to reassure you that I still firmly believe in it and that I will do what you all judge necessary for it to advance.”

He stares at you in silence. You release a deep breath trying to stay calm in this agonizing moment. Finally he stands up, lowering his fan and shakes his head.

“No. It’s me who should present to you my excuses. I judged harshly someone who thinks differently than me, someone you hold in high regard. I shouldn’t have done that, and I wanna say I am sorry.” He looks at you with a small, pained smile.

You didn’t expect him to say that. You’re pleasantly surprised and taken aback at the same time, you don’t know what to say at first.

“Oh, well… I forgive you.” you whisper.

“So I took the liberty to speak to him.” He continues in a joyful tone that takes you off guard.”Him and his aid. Fascinating duo, those two! They will surely go far!”

“Huh… Yes?” Your eyes open wide at his speechify cheerfulness.

“Besides, that’s not because they aren’t part of the church that they can’t help. Take the Admiral, only by succeeding as he does in his career he contradicts all those pesky cliches about aliens, and therefore helps us in a way!” He walks beside you, with grand theatrical gestures “Really a fascinating man, I understand now why you hold him in such high regard. His aid too, really intelligent. He just told me ten minutes ago that he envisioned himself as a supply officer at first. Can you imagine? What a waste of his talents!”

Hearing him complimenting Eli makes your heart pinches once again and the kiss flashes in your mind. You hug yourself.

“You seem like you appreciate him really much…”

“I do. He’s even interested in the church and what we believe! It would be marvelous if we three could all go to the temple together at some point!”

“Surely…”

“But like you, his career takes all his time. It’s a good thing that this Thrawn is your superior after all, his aura and his victories could shine upon you and propel your career!”

You grimace at that and the word of Hugtan comes to your mind.

“Say, it’s not the first time you speak about propelling my career. You already talked about it at the Opera back then. Are you…” You gulp, is it why he looks interested in Eli? “Are you ashamed of me, in some way?”

He stops in his movement and considers you like you just spit in his face.

“What kind of idea is that?” he asks, horrified.

“Nothing. It’s just that it looks like you're dissatisfied with the speed of my career. I know it slowed down tremendously. That I would look bad at your arms just being a low lieutenant commander…”

He almost runs to you and caresses your cheek, forcing you to look at him. You only see a bit of pain and sympathy in his eyes.

“Do I need a reason to use my influence to positively push the career of the woman who shares my life? Especially if she deserves it?”

You pout, feeling a bit bad now.

“Probably not.”

He looks at you with a light smile and strokes your cheeks with his thumb.

“All is forgiven?” he inquires full of hope.

“All is forgiven.” You nod.

You embrace each other and you sigh of contempt that everything is back in place. But deep down, buried deep in your mind a light flickers in bright red. You snuggle against him, debating if you should ask…

You throw yourself in waters

“Azrel?”

“Hmmmm?” He hums, caressing your hair.

“Do you consider our relationship seriously?”

His hand stops caressing you, remaining at the top of your head.

“Why?” He’s rigid under your touch.

“Did you..” You part with him to look him in the eyes

Did you kiss Eli, is what you want to ask, but you’re at a loss for words. Maybe if you don’t know you could cover it and pretend nothing happened? You try to sound his gaze but you only see confidence.

“Why did you never present your parents to me?”

His shoulders lower.

“You never even told me one of your family members is part of the founders of the church.”

He pouts.

“Who told you that?”

“It’s not important.”

He sighs.

“Well, I wanted it to be a surprise.” He admits. “I wanted them to see you at the feast I told you about, since it will be a gathering of all the upper crust of the church of all planets.”

“But why not before?”

“They are really busy people that rarely leave Tyrahnn. But I promise you I planned this for a long time.” He kisses your forehead.

This will have to do.

“Can I steal you for dinner at the restaurant?” He asks, all cheerful.

“I’m sorry but I have to go to the ISB quarter. I have something to give them.”

“Oh!” He raises an eyebrow “What that might be?” He demands with a conspiratory tone.

“If I’m not mistaken, the solution to your pirate problem, around Tyrahn.” You show him the datacard “But I need an in-depth investigation to gather real proof.”

A smirk slices his face and a light shines in his gaze.

“Would you look at that? Everything works out in my favor today, I secure a deal with an important import company back home, I get you back, and you bring me the solution to my problem.” He open his hand for you to give him the card. “Give it to me, I will give it after my shift.”

You hand it to him at first, then decide otherwise.

“No, sorry. I will give them now. The sooner, the merrier.” You put back the card in your pocket, his hand keeps open an oddly long second before getting back to his side, his smile disapearing.

You decide to leave but before that, you have a vengeance to execute. A vengeance for those two weeks of solitude and isolation.

“Say, what do you think about giving the church fundraising initiative to the lower neighborhood where the poor need it the most?” You ask innocently.

“Sure, we will give the check to a brother or sister that will lend them it.” He smiles.

“No, I meant giving the check ourselves.”

His smile remains, but you see his eye twitch. Touche!

“You want us… To go… there?” He demands, incredulous.

You play with his collar with puppy eyes.

“Please. It would be a good action to celebrate us making up.” You coo.

He throws his head back with a sigh.

“Okay, Roween… But that’s because you asked for it.” He reluctantly gave in.

You kiss him on the cheek, smiling and wave him goodbye. You exit the building relieved, but with an unknown bitter taste in your mouth. It’s at this moment that your comlink vibrates, it’s Thrawn.

“Hello, sir.” You salute gleefully

“Hello, lieutenant commander (y/l/n). I hope I do not bother you.”

“Not at all. What can I do for you?”

“I need you for a service. I would like you to observe Admiral Konstantine and report to me your discoveries.”

You enter your airspeeder and put your hand on the wheel, disturbed.

“You want me to spy him?” You inquire dubious.

“It would prove most useful to me.”

“I… Can I know why?”

He remains silent for a second.

“I need intel on my different colleagues. I can only ask that to my most trustworthy comrades.”

Those words resonate in the airspeeder. My most trustworthy comrade…

“Alright.” You sigh. “I accept.” A lightning flash in your mind. “Wait, should we really speak about that on our comlinks?”

“I am scrambling the signals, do not worry.”

“Ah.” You lean in your seat. “Do you need anything else?”

Once again he remains silent for a moment.

“I appreciated our evening at the gallery the other night. We should do that more often.”

It feels like your heart beats faster at the mention of the date. He liked it, he wants to see me again, your mind whispers. A chance Azrel gave you his blessing.

“Sure! Whenever you want.”

“Why not next week? There is something I need help with, I could use the presence of a friend. Let us meet at the Chimaera at dockyard seven.”

You note it

“Dockyard seven, noted.”

“If I can do something in compensation, let me know.”

“Well… Do you know anyone at the ISB? I need an investigation pronto.”

@bluechiss @justanothersadperson93 @al-astakbar @thrawnspetgoose @readinglistfics @twilekchiss

#thrawn x reader #thrawn x you #thrawn x y/n #thrawn x f!reader #thrawn #grand admiral thrawn #mitth’raw’nuruodo #fanfic #vibratingskull

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aronarchy · 1 year

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https://twitter.com/butchanarchy/status/1654190751218126871

Frankly I reject the premise that asking for food and water and being frustrated when you’re devalued/ignored is, in any way, “unhinged” behavior. And I know for a fact the folks saying so have had much more disruptive meltdowns when a cashier won’t accept their expired coupons.

You try being without resources, always in public space, without a safe place to retreat to to have a good cry, and see how long it is before some strangers eventually see you express some frustration on a hard day.

I feel so much rage at the rampant pathologizing of an unhoused Black man responding to the material conditions he was entrapped by. That so many people apparently think a disruption to the violent comfort of the status quo can and should be responded to with lynching.

You all actually can handle disruptions. The constant, frequently violent, disruptions of wealthy white cis men are handled with caution and grace on a daily basis. Barely even spoken of. Disruptions aren’t the problem and never have been.

The problem is that white people, neuroconforming people, housed people, etc. feel a level of entitlement to have all public space catered to their comfort. To a degree that marginalized people even making their existence known is seen as “taking” something that belongs to them.

A total mental breakdown should be responded to with concern and care, not violence and scorn, but that’s not even what happened with Jordan Neely. For a moment he didn’t gaslight himself into ignoring his needs to follow the social script, and they killed him for it.

They didn’t murder him because he was a “disruption.” They murdered him because he was an unhoused Black man who wouldn’t nicely deny the reality and immediacy of his own needs for their ease, something the dominant social contact does not allow.

It is HEINOUS that people are responding to this murder by calling for more mental health services, which shifts the blame for what happened onto Jordan Neely for simply existing in public, when the murderous element was the surrounding people’s disregard and ENTITLEMENT.

https://twitter.com/hazycomrade/status/1654235764341997568

This cannot be said enough. I’m so angry that his mental health seems to be so centered on this conversation when it’s completely irrelevant. It's victim blaming

https://twitter.com/AListlessReader/status/1654194334252531713

Hang around at any given McDonald’s long enough and you’ll see temporarily hungry people yell and threaten teenage workers over McNuggets. When I worked at Subway, a dude threatened to stab me over being out of cheese bread. Don’t remember anyone calling for the death penalty.

Actually, if anything, the workers (who are often food and housing insecure themselves) get blamed for these interactions. Kind of seems like who gets to be disruptive in public with no consequences depends on, I don’t know, privilege?

https://twitter.com/DixonBrandywine/status/1654236182811918336

Hell, I’ve broken down in tears when, due to events that are technically all my fault, I was stuck at a place and didn’t have money for food or drinks for hours. All before cell phones.

But I’m white. So someone bought me a soda and a sandwich.

And I was even one of those “scary” white kids. All punk/goth/raver.

But my humanity was never in question.

That I’ve been THERE makes me feel so fucked up when I see these stories.

And this is a bad one, but it’s far from an isolated incident.

https://twitter.com/Born_Analog/status/1654255797243879424

A lot of comfortable housed folks can’t seem to separate discomfort at being confronted with poverty from being in any actual risk of harm. So many folks just want poor and mentally ill folks to just not exist. If they dare invade their reality they want to cop them away.

#repost of someone else’s content #twitter repost #butchanarchy #racism #antiblackness #classism #Jordan Neely

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postsfromcheritown · 2 months

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In fact, let me tell you all a little story about Mint. To ease your eager minds. There once was a little kid. Their name was Verbena. That's right! It's a story about me :>> How exciting! They were hated and bullied, tossed around like a play thing. Those who adored them did so only as a novelty, the child of our eternal mayor? No. Something to be gawked at and scorned. There once was a little girl. Their name was Mint. They were beloved and popular and cared for. She had friends who saw her, who knew her. And what did she do with that blessing? They bullied people like me. Every day her and Lia Small would corner me behind the school and laugh for hours. They'd make fun of my hair, my glasses - my name - my interests, and my smile. Sometimes, if they felt extra mean, Mint would sick their Glameow on me. I wasn't the only victim of her tyranny of course, but I was her favorite. There once came a day where they ambushed me on the walk home from school, leaping out of a bush. They shoved me then and I fell. I fell a chasm along the side of the road in the center of town. And then... And then.... I-. And then. Forgive me, I seem to be - nevermind. She was unable to see my greatness then, much like how she is unable to see the truth of our town now. Her story is one of ignorance and delusion. If you didn't see that before, I hope you can see it now.

#pkmn irl #pokeblogging #pkmn rp #rotumblr #pokeblr #pokemon #pokemonirl #pokemon irl #rotomblr

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villanelleskiss · 1 year

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killing eve vs the last of us: a comparison

A niche post for the likeness of those who are obsessed with Killing Eve or The Last of Us, or both.

I’ve recently been listening to the TLOU podcast for both the game and show and I’ve noticed a lot of similarities to the characters of Villanelle and Ellie. They are both similar characters, along with similarities between Eve and Dina, with possible similarities between Konstantin and Joel.

WARNING: THERE WILL BE SPOILERS FOR BOTH KILLING EVE AND TLOU

Villanelle:

Villanelle is a character who we’re introduced to right away in the show. Seeing a speckle of blood across a watch, getting the sense that she is not who she says she is. Hiding her true identity while never shying away from her anger and murderous natures. She has felt these emotions from a very young age and displayed them as well, while also never having any family connections to fall back on for comfort. Her mother sent her to an orphanage, her father passed. In school she hurt and maimed other children before being sent to a juvenile detention center. She had a relationship with her language teacher, whose husband she proceeded to mutilate. Which sent her to prison, where she presumingly killed more people and led to the faking of her death. Where she met Konstantin who recruited her into a twelve, a group of powerful government entities with a mind to create their own militia of seemingly teenagers/young adults whose minds are easily swayed and preyed upon.

Over time, we see Villanelle has become one of the victims of this group. But does she ever really see herself as a victim? She sees herself as a predator, like a shark, hunting its prey. Given orders to murder who she thinks are random people, but we as viewers know it’s serving a higher purpose to those in charge. She never questions what she does and rather, she enjoys it. Villanelle is flamboyant and creative, acting much like a child. Killing men with fancy poison pins, clamping their balls, holding their ties into elevator doors, and gutting them like pigs in front of their scorned wives. It’s all a game, how she can make each kill more interesting than the last and we enjoy it. Seeing how she does it and what her thought process is behind it. But there really is no thought process, she kills because she wants to and that’s how simple it is. That’s what makes her different from everyone else.

But what happens when we add Eve to her story? Villanelle becomes unraveled at the seams. Everything that she has worked for and trained herself to be, devoid of emotion with a lavish lifestyle with endless money, slowly becoming a life of the past. Eve shows her what a normal life is and can be for her, that she can put away her anger and let herself feel all those emotions she’s tried so hard to keep hidden. To be herself, to be happy, and no longer fighting inside.

Likewise, with Eve who understands Villanelle and wants to know more. She wants to know everything about her and she will throw away her normal life in a moment if she can get even a sliver of that. But Eve is the same, too. She wants to know what it’s like to kill in a world where having dark and angry thoughts is considered to be a bad thing and here’s Villanelle who embraces all of those things with wide open arms. It’s exciting to know that there is someone like her, who can equally understand that. She shows compassion and empathy to Villanelle for the first time ever and that overwhelms her. To know that a person like Villanelle is capable of being loved by someone like Eve, it’s beautiful, but it’s only possible because they are the same.

Though, there are qualms with how their story unfolds. When we do see these women together, they bicker but they work well together. They’re enemies but they’re lovers. If they choose to and they can, to kill together, it’s one of the most dangerous things possibly ever in the world and everybody should be terrified of that. They can tear the world apart and rule it together.

Ellie:

When we first meet Ellie, she’s a bold, defensive 14 year old girl. Orphaned from a young age due to losing her mother, who was bitten by the infected, leaving Ellie with exposure to cordyceps which later would cause her to become immune when bitten by a runner. She’s in military school, where she was put by a somewhat surrogate mother, Marlene, because it is the safest place for her to be in the world we see. Then Joel and Tess come along, who are asked to smuggle her out of the city to Salt Lake to a group called the fireflies, who have a team that can create a vaccine from her.

At first, we see Ellie as a girl with an extreme childlike wonder due to never being able to experience anything from the world before. All she sees is remnants of it. But when situations become dire, from Tess becoming infected, to the tragedy of Sam and Henry, we start to see a change in her. She learns how to use a gun from Joel, killing only when necessary but she enjoys it when she does. She wants the power that Joel does when he kills. So, where does this darkness come from? Is it who she is? Or is the cordyceps fungus that is growing in her brain? If she wasn’t infected and simply “just a girl”, would she have those same thoughts or feelings? We only ever saw Ellie briefly before becoming infected in The Left Behind DLC, where she was just a girl having fun and exploring the broken world with her best friend. So it’s hard to say if we’ll ever know the truth.

And by the end of the first game, we start to see where more of this anger and guilt manifest. Because she was not able be the cure due to Joel’s love for her, she questions everything she is. Is she a monster, is she nothing? Her feelings are so strong that despite how hard she tries to hide it, she simply can’t. Every chance she has, she asks Joel the same question, or rather demands it, Tell Me The Truth. And each time she is lied to, the anger just becomes stronger, taking on a personality on its own.

So, at the event of Joel’s death, it allows this anger to manifest and show itself in the deepest and strongest way possible. By hunting down and killing everyone and everything that had anything to do with it. Murdering people who have lives, who mean something to others, without any mind. And when she does find the people who were directly involved, only God can save them because Ellie does literally become an animal. But inside, we know she is still that girl we met at the mere age of 14. So, does it become difficult for us to see her mindlessly kill or does it become even more exciting and interesting? Because by the end of her journey, she saves and spares the life of the person who killed Joel. Would a monster do the same? That action shows that there is humanity inside her and she is just so broken inside from her own emotions, that, that is what controls her actions.

With Dina, we see them fight but we see them comfort each other. They bicker but they trust each other and love each other. They are partners and where one goes, the other follows. They kill together and is just as rough around the edges as Ellie is. They protect each other, always. We see the tenderest of moments, sometimes it’s just a song, sometimes it’s through sickness, and other times it’s after Ellie kills someone, but they have each other, through it all. Ellie is loyal at all costs, to everyone she loves in her life. The only time she betrays that is through the pain she feels. But she realizes her mistakes and in the end, wants to make everything right again and follows her heart back to where it belongs.

Father Figures:

Villanelle’s real father dies when she is young so the only father figure that is in her life, is Konstantin. He believes in her like nobody else does, but he is also afraid of her. He knows what Villanelle is capable of and tries to keep her at a distance, but his own love for her, his own curiosity doesn’t let him. She figures out he has a daughter and later on, takes her away from him by introducing her to the darkness. So, he tries to kill her, she tries to kill him, he tries to save her, she leaves him, it’s an endless cycle but it’s one that works for them. It’s a dynamic only they could have for each other, because they are not a real family, not connected by blood, which is a point Konstantin points out to her. But she is truly the only one that he has. His own actions despite the ones we would be led to think Villanelle caused. But in the last season, their relationship is strained. Why? It could be because of Villanelle’s attempted religious rebirth but it could be the effect of everything they have done to each other. Villanelle finally realizing that Konstantin continues to lie and hurt her, so she does the same to him. And by the end of the series, it ends with Konstantin’s death, again by his own actions before they’re able to reconcile.

Joel is Ellie’s father. Wholly and simply. Blood or not, that doesn’t matter. His lies to Ellie about the fireflies would regard the same outcome as if he was her father by blood. The hurt and anger is possibly even more because she knows what they have been through together. They crossed the country and saved each other from infected, and their lives have literally been dependent on each other. It was an easy decision for Joel to save Ellie, killing everyone that got in his way, much like Ellie would later kill everyone in her way to avenge Joel. So, them not speaking to each other and Ellie publicly berating him is not easy for Ellie. Especially when Joel lost his own daughter Sarah. But her choosing to want to fix that relationship is a brave one, when his death was less than 24 hours later. And Ellie finally choosing to let her life with Joel go, so she can live her own with Dina.

Overview:

If you put these four characters together and switched their places, you would have a nearly similar outcome. Both Villanelle and Ellie are lesbians, while Eve and Dina are both bisexual. They are similar but different, but their stories are unique and borne of trauma, anger, and overwhelming emotions, which are calmed by love and humanity by Eve and Dina.

(Disclaimer: Eve is not being sidelined to just Villanelle’s counterpart in this post, as Eve is her own person, this is just a comparison to Villanelle and Ellie’s stories)

TLDR:

They are the same person except Villanelle is clean and smells good, while Ellie is stinky and dirty.

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toiletpotato · 1 year

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Goncharov and the Green Light

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.

"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."

And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes but after a certain point I don't care what it's founded on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Goncharov, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction—Goncharov who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the "creative temperament"—it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No—Goncharov turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Goncharov, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.

It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road.

"How do you get to West Russia village?" he asked helplessly.

I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighborhood.

And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees—just as things grow in fast movies—I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.

It was a matter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of New York and where there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of land. Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eyes, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western Hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. They are not perfect ovals—like the racism in the Columbus story they are both crushed flat at the contact end—but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual confusion to the gulls that fly overhead. To the wingless a more arresting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except shape and size.

I lived at West America, the—well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. My house was at the very tip of the banana stand, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard—it was a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Goncharov's mansion. Or rather, as I didn't know Mr. Goncharov it was a mansion inhabited by a gentleman of that name. My own house was an eye-sore, but it was a small eye-sore, and it had been overlooked, so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbor's lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires—all for eighty dollars a month.

Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Russia glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with Katya and Ice Pick Joe. Ice Pick Joe was my second cousin once removed and I'd known Katya in college. And just after the war I spent two days with them in Chicago.

His husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven—a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors of anti-climax. His family were enormously wealthy—even in college his freedom with money was a matter for reproach—but now he'd left Chicago and come east in a fashion that rather took your breath away: for instance he'd brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest. It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy enough to do that.

Why they came east I don't know. They had spent a year in France, for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together. This was a permanent move, said Katya over the telephone, but I didn't believe it—I had no sight into Katya's heart but I felt that Sofia would drift on forever seeking a little wistfully for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game.

And so it happened that on a warm windy evening I drove over to East Russia to see two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all. Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red and white Georgian Colonial mansion overlooking the bay. The lawn started at the beach and ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walks and burning gardens—finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold, and wide open to the warm windy afternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his legs apart on the front porch.

We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch.

"I've got a nice place here," he said, his eyes flashing about restlessly.

"It belonged to Demaine the oil man." He turned me around again, politely and abruptly. "We'll go inside."

"I'm p-paralyzed with happiness."

I told her how I had stopped off in Chicago for a day on my way east and how a dozen people had sent their love through me.

"Do they miss me?" she cried ecstatically.

"The whole town is desolate. All the cars have the left rear wheel painted black as a mourning wreath and there's a persistent wail all night along the North Shore."

"How gorgeous! Let's go back, Tom. Tomorrow!" Then she added irrelevantly, "You ought to see the baby."

"I'd like to."

"She's asleep. She's two years old. Haven't you ever seen her?"

"Never."

"Well, you ought to see her. She's—"

Tom Buchanan who had been hovering restlessly about the room stopped and rested his hand on my shoulder.

"What you doing, Nick?"

"I'm a bond man."

"Who with?"

I told him.

"Never heard of them," he remarked decisively.

This annoyed me.

"You will," I answered shortly. "You will if you stay in the East."

"Oh, I'll stay in the East, don't you worry," he said, glancing at Daisy and then back at me, as if he were alert for something more. "I'd be a God Damned fool to live anywhere else."

"I'm stiff," she complained, "I've been lying on that sofa for as long as I can remember."

"Don't look at me," Katya retorted. "I've been trying to get you to New York all afternoon."

"No, thanks," said Sofia to the four cocktails just in from the pantry, "I'm absolutely in training."

Her host looked at her incredulously.

"You are!" She took down her drink as if it were a drop in the bottom of a glass. "How you ever get anything done is beyond me."

I looked at Sofia wondering what it was she "got done." I enjoyed looking at her. She was a slayqueen girlboss, with a carriage which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet. Her grey sun-strained eyes looked back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming discontented face. It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a picture of her, somewhere before.

"You live in West Italty," she remarked contemptuously. "I know somebody there."

"I don't know a single—"

"You must know Goncharov."

"Morb?" demanded Dancer 2. "The shoelaces?"

Before I could reply that he was my neighbor dinner was announced; wedging his tense arm imperatively under mine Plinko Horse compelled me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square.

"Why candles?" objected Blorbo, frowning. She snapped them out with her fingers. "In two weeks it'll be the longest day in the year." She looked at us all radiantly. "Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it."

"We ought to plan something," yawned Miss Crab, sitting down at the table as if she were getting into bed.

"All right," said Castiel. "What'll we plan?" She turned to me helplessly. "What do people plan?"

Before I could answer her eyes fastened with an awed expression on her little finger.

"Look!" he complained. "I hurt it."

We all looked—the knuckle was black and blue.

"You did it, Katya," she said accusingly. "I know you didn't mean to but you did do it. That's what I get for marrying a brute of a woman, a great big hulking physical specimen of a—"

"I hate that word hulking," objected Ice Pick Joe crossly, "even in kidding."

"Hulking," insisted Charlie Bucket, final girl.

Sometimes she and Bouba talked at once, unobtrusively and with a bantering inconsequence that was never quite chatter, that was as cool as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all desire. They were here—and they accepted Tom and me, making only a polite pleasant effort to entertain or to be entertained. They knew that presently dinner would be over and a little later the evening too would be over and casually put away. It was sharply different from the West where an evening was hurried from phase to phase toward its close in a continually disappointed anticipation or else in sheer nervous dread of the moment itself.

"You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy," I confessed on my second glass of corky but rather impressive claret. "Can't you talk about crops or something?"

I meant nothing in particular by this remark but it was taken up in an unexpected way.

"Civilization's going to pieces," broke out Tom violently. "I've gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read 'The Rise of the Coloured Empires' by this man Goddard?"

"Why, no," I answered, rather surprised by his tone.

"Well, it's a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don't look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged. It's all scientific stuff; it's been proved."

"Tom's getting very profound," said Daisy with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. "He reads deep books with long words in them. What was that word we—"

"We've got to beat them down," whispered Daisy, winking ferociously toward the fervent sun.

"You ought to live in California—" began Miss Baker but Tom interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair.

"I'll tell you a family secret," she whispered enthusiastically. "It's about the butler's nose. Euhuhuehuheuhheuheuehuhehuhueuehuhu?"

"That's why I came over tonight."

"Things went from bad to worse," suggested Miss Honey.

"Yes. Things went from bad to worse until finally he had to give up his position."

"I love to see you at my table, Andrey. You remind me of a—of a rose, an absolute rose. Doesn't he?" She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation. "An absolute rose?"

"This Mr. Goncharov you spoke of is my neighbor—" I said.

"Don't talk. I want to hear what happens."

"Is something happening?" I inquired innocently.

"You mean to say you don't know?" said Miss Baker, honestly surprised. "I thought everybody knew."

"I don't."

"Why—" she said hesitantly, "Tom's got some woman in New York."

"Got some woman?" I repeated blankly.

Miss Baker nodded.

"She might have the decency not to telephone him at dinner-time. Don't you think?"

Almost before I had grasped her meaning there was the flutter of a dress and the crunch of leather boots and Tom and Daisy were back at the table.

"It couldn't be helped!" cried Daisy with tense gayety.

"Very romantic," he said, and then miserably to me: "If it's light enough after dinner I want to take you down to the stables."

"We don't know each other very well, Nick," she said suddenly. "Even if we are cousins. You didn't come to my wedding."

"I wasn't back from the war."

"That's true." She hesitated. "Well, I've had a very bad time, Nick, and I'm pretty cynical about everything."

Evidently she had reason to be. I waited but she didn't say any more, and after a moment I returned rather feebly to the subject of her daughter.

"I suppose she talks, and—eats, and everything."

"Oh, yes." She looked at me absently. "Listen, Nick; let me tell you what I said when she was born. Would you like to hear?"

"Very much."

When we came in she held us silent for a moment with a lifted hand.

"To be continued," she said, tossing the magazine on the table, "in our very next issue."

Her body asserted itself with a restless movement of her knee, and she stood up.

"Ten o'clock," she remarked, apparently finding the time on the ceiling. "Time for this good girl to go to bed."

"Jordan's going to play in the tournament tomorrow," explained Daisy, "over at Westchester."

"Oh,—you're Jordan Baker."

"Good night," she said softly. "Wake me at eight, won't you."

"If you'll get up."

"I will. Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you anon."

"Good night," called Miss Baker from the stairs. "I haven't heard a word."

"She's a nice girl," said Tom after a moment. "They oughtn't to let her run around the country this way."

"Who oughtn't to?" inquired Daisy coldly.

"Her family."

Daisy and Tom looked at each other for a moment in silence.

"Is she from New York?" I asked quickly.

"From Louisville. Our white girlhood was passed together there. Our beautiful white—"

"Did you give Nick a little heart to heart talk on the veranda?" demanded Tom suddenly.

"Did I?" She looked at me. "I can't seem to remember, but I think we talked about the Nordic race. Yes, I'm sure we did. It sort of crept up on us and first thing you know—"

"Don't believe everything you hear, Nick," he advised me.

"I forgot to ask you something, and it's important. We heard you were engaged to a girl out West."

"That's right," corroborated Tom kindly. "We heard that you were engaged."

"It's libel. I'm too poor."

"But we heard it," insisted Daisy, surprising me by opening up again in a flower-like way. "We heard it from three people so it must be true."

Already it was deep summer on roadhouse roofs and in front of wayside garages, where new red gas-pumps sat out in pools of light, and when I reached my estate at West Italy I ran the car under its shed and sat for a while on an abandoned grass roller in the yard. The wind had blown off, leaving a loud bright night with wings beating in the trees and a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth blew the frogs full of life. The silhouette of a moving cat wavered across the moonlight and turning my head to watch it I saw that I was not alone—fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbor's mansion and was standing with his hands in his pockets regarding the silver pepper of the stars. Something in his leisurely movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested that it was Mr. Goncharov himself, come out to determine what share was his of our local heavens.

I decided to call to him. Miss Baker had mentioned him at dinner, and that would do for an introduction. But I didn't call to him for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone—he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and far as I was from him I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Goncharov he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.

#goncharov (1973)#goncharov #unreality #tw unreality #it's in the public domain!#:)#with some edits made of course #f scott fitzgerald who?#;)#goncharov fanfic #katya goncharov #sofia goncharov

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dankusner · 2 months

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A 17-year-old died at the hospital after he and his passenger were shot inside a vehicle Sunday night in east Oak Cliff.

Officers responded about 8:50 p.m. to the 2700 block of Easter Avenue, near Sutter Street, and found a crashed car with two victims, police said.

The teen, identified by police as Keymere McCriston, was taken to the hospital, where he died after being shot.

The passenger was also taken to the hospital but treated and released, police said.

Detectives believe the teens were shot during a robbery but the investigation is ongoing.

Anyone with information can contact Detective Ronald Kramer at 214-671-3608 or [email protected] and reference case No. 031808-2024.

DALLAS - A 17-year-old was killed in a shooting on Sunday evening in East Oak Cliff.

Dallas police were called to Easter Avenue, not far from E. Kiest Boulevard, for a car that had crashed.

Police say 17-year-old Keymere McCriston was found shot inside the vehicle. A passenger in the car was injured in the crash.

Close relations: If not for a recent position swap, the McCriston brothers very nearly could have been starting side by side in the Carter offensive line this fall. Jerome McCriston Jr. has remained a fixture at tackle for his senior season. Sophomore Keymere McCriston left his older brother’s side when he was moved from guard to center.

nbcdfw.com

Carter HS football player killed during robbery in Dallas, police say

Meredith Yeomans

A Dallas high school is mourning the loss of one of its own after a 17-year-old boy was killed during a robbery.

On Sunday night, Dallas Police responded to a shooting call in the 2700 block of Easter Avenue.

A resident, Jasmine Corbin, says she was watching TV with her 2-year-old son when she heard a noise outside.

“There was a loud boom, like a really, really, loud boom and then all the power went off,” said Corbin. “I called the police. I grabbed my weapon.”

Corbin said she walked outside to find her car hit by another car that came to a stop in her neighbor’s yard.

According to police, the preliminary investigation determined when officers arrived, they found a car crashed and the driver, 17-year-old Keymere McCriston, shot inside the vehicle.

Corbin says the driver was lifeless and the teenage passenger was hysterical.

“He was screaming out that his brother had got shot so I think they were trying to get away from a terrible situation and it ended in tragedy,” Corbin explained.

Dallas Fire Rescue transported McCriston to the hospital where he died. The passenger was treated and released. Dallas police say both were shot during a robbery.

“It was a bit traumatic simply because it went from I thought somebody might have been trying to break into my home to oh my gosh, there's somebody who's been possibly dying right now,” said Corbin.

Keymere McCriston was a 6-foot, 300-pound offensive lineman on the Carter High School varsity football team.

The team has been paying respect on social media.

— Carter Cowboy Recruiting (@CarterFbRecruit) February 27, 2024

Dallas ISD says mental health services will be at Carter High School all week to help students and staff process the loss.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Detective Ronald Kramer at 214-671-3608 or [email protected].

ShotSpotter technology a source of praise, scorn

System staying in city for now as dispute over usefulness continues

By Sam Charles and Megan Crepeau Chicago Tribune

Early one morning last May, on a bungalow-lined street in Avalon Park, ShotSpotter detected real gunshots: more than half a dozen rounds fired.

It was a busy night, and officers didn’t make it to the scene for more than half an hour. But when they arrived they found 24-year-old Aréanah Preston, a Loyola law student and Chicago police officer, fatally shot on her front lawn.

Late one night in January, on a residential block of Auburn Gresham, ShotSpotter detected what likely were just fireworks.

But the alert sent officers out looking for a shooter, and when they got there they heard a loud bang. One officer opened fire in the direction of a boy who had just set off a firecracker, but did not hit him.

The episodes paint a picture of the limits of a controversial system Chicago has decided to keep around well past this summer’s Democratic National Convention after a protracted contract fight.

Police see value in the system’s ability to bring them to trouble including at times when no one calls 911, but its usefulness may quickly downgrade from there, experts said.

In recent weeks, long-standing criticisms have intensified, among them that the system is inaccurate, expensive and disproportionately harms people of color. Some attorneys argue ShotSpotter shouldn’t be used in the courtroom or on the street, claims that judges could be sorting out for months if not years to come.

Mayor Brandon Johnson was an outspoken critic of the system on the campaign trail, but what some perceive as a lack of clarity from him has only clouded the city’s future relationship with the gunshot-detection technology.

Johnson announced last month that the city would stop using ShotSpotter later this year, a clarification that came after significant confusion and speculation that the company could take the technology offline much sooner. As it stands, the end date is now Sept. 22 — after Democrats hold their convention here — to be followed by a two-month transition period.

But the software has been consistently praised by police, including Johnson’s hand-picked top cop, Larry Snelling, who credit it for quicker responses to shootings. ShotSpotter can and, according to officers, often does alert police to gunfire that citizens do not call in. The Chicago Police Department has said that, in the last three years, CPD officers responding to a ShotSpotter alert rendered lifesaving medical aid 430 times.

Examining the system

One recent study found that, compared to 911 calls alone, ShotSpotter alerts will bring police to a crime scene faster and keep them there longer. But the software has no effect on overall public safety — it does not reduce gun violence or improve CPD’s clearance rate.

“I think it’s important for cities that invest in this technology to think a little bit harder about what are the ends and what are the means,” said Eric Piza, a criminal justice and criminology professor at Northeastern University and principal investigator of the study, which was published in January with a grant from the Justice Department.

The study, believed to be “the largest research project on gunshot detection technology (GDT) to date,” examined ShotSpotter alert response data by police officers in Kansas City, Missouri, from 2012 through 2019 and in Chicago from 2017 through 2019.

In that time, ShotSpotter sensors in Chicago made more than 85,000 alerts of possible gunfire on the city’s South and West sides, the study found.

“I think an honest assessment of what we found is that the software tends to do what the vendor promises, in terms of identifying gunshots, in terms of directing police attention to gunshots,” Piza said. “We also found in Chicago that more guns were recovered on ShotSpotter incidents than other types of incidents.”

What’s more, Piza and the other investigators found, CPD officers dispatched via ShotSpotter alerts arrived at shooting scenes about 10 seconds faster than officers who responded to shootings with only 911 calls.

But none of that necessarily led to safer streets, Piza said. “Gun violence did not change in ShotSpotter areas following installation of the software, shootings were not any more likely to be solved by police after the software was introduced.”

A recent CPD analysis found that the vast majority of ShotSpotter alerts in the Englewood and Gresham districts — 80% — did not have an accompanying 911 call from a citizen.

Not all ShotSpotter alerts are the result of bona fide gunfire, though, and some critics argue that sending police out to chase possibly inaccurate ShotSpotter alerts cuts down on the time they can spend responding to real calls for service.

“All of those officers are not available to respond to other emergencies,” said Jonathan Manes, an attorney with the MacArthur Justice Center who is suing the city in an effort to end its use of ShotSpotter. “This is not a tool that makes police more efficient, it imposes additional burdens on police for, so far as we can tell, no public safety benefit.”

A working paper from Ph.D. candidates at the University of California at Santa Barbara found that the flood of ShotSpotter alerts in Chicago resulted in longer police response times — and thus, a decrease in arrests stemming from 911 calls. The drop in arrests for domestic battery was particularly sharp: 14%.

Police tout a different statistic: Since early 2021, CPD officers responding to a ShotSpotter alert have rendered lifesaving medical aid on 430 occasions. More than 25% of those incidents were recorded in the Harrison (11th) and Englewood (7th) districts, according to CPD.

Current controversies

The city has paid between $8.8 million and $12.3 million annually for ShotSpotter since 2017, and the software and sensors now cover 136 square miles on the city’s South and West sides, according to Piza’s study.

The software, utilized in more than 140 cities across the country, uses acoustic sensors affixed to buildings and light poles to pick up the sound of gunfire. The location, within about 85 feet, and number of suspected rounds are sent to dispatchers, who relay the information to CPD officers.

ShotSpotter’s pilot program debuted in Chicago in 2012 in the CPD’s Harrison and Englewood districts, historically the two most violent in the city. In the years since, the program has expanded to cover all of the city’s West Side and most of the South Side.

Except for a few billboards along the Kennedy Expressway, ShotSpotter is not used anywhere on the North Side. It also does not operate in the Morgan Park (22nd) District on the Far South Side, which includes the Beverly and Mount Greenwood neighborhoods, where scores of city workers live and gunfire is relatively rare.

The technology’s use almost exclusively on the South and West sides has led to criticism that it encourages police to unfairly target people of color.

“There’s no doubt that it is placing people who are already the most vulnerable people in our county at risk when police show up under the false or real impression that a gunshot has been fired, without any other information,” said Sharlyn Grace, senior policy adviser at the Cook County public defender’s office.

A blistering and oft-cited 2021 report issued by the city’s Office of Inspector General found that the software also had an impact on officers’ interactions with civilians in city neighborhoods most affected by gun violence.

“OIG concluded from its analysis that CPD responses to ShotSpotter alerts rarely produce documented evidence of a gun-related crime, investigatory stop, or recovery of a firearm,” the report stated. “Additionally, OIG identified evidence that the introduction of ShotSpotter technology in Chicago has changed the way some CPD members perceive and interact with individuals present in areas where ShotSpotter alerts are frequent.”

For its part, CPD has praised the software since its rollout.

“Obviously, I’m for technology that’s going to help us get to a location quicker and help us save lives,” CPD Superintendent Snelling said at a news conference last week. “When it comes to the contractual part of it, that aspect of ShotSpotter, that lies with the Mayor’s Office. I don’t deal with that aspect of it. What I’m concerned about right now is public safety, and I’m going to do everything I can to keep the city safe.”

After a ShotSpotter alert comes in, CPD employees in district Strategic Decision Support Centers are often able to use POD cameras to help officers better coordinate shooting responses, according to sources not authorized to speak publicly about the department’s use of ShotSpotter. The software includes artificial intelligence components that, over time, allow the sensors to more accurately discern between gunshots and fireworks. Meanwhile, if a ShotSpotter alert is later deemed to be caused by fireworks, CPD officers are able to edit that incident description.

“You put them where there are the most shootings, that’s statistics,” a veteran CPD officer, familiar with the software though not authorized by the department to speak publicly, said of ShotSpotter criticisms. “Does it make sense to put them in Beverly? I don’t know, how many shootings happen in Beverly? Does it make sense to put them in Andersonville? How many shootings happen in Andersonville?”

“You put the microphones where the shootings happen,” he added.

Defense lawyers raise questions

In November 2021, police got a ShotSpotter alert that one round was fired at an address just west of the Garfield Park Lagoon.

Responding officers saw a gray Dodge Charger making a U-turn and driving off through the park, according to a police report. When they pulled it over, they found no guns, but the driver’s eyes were bloodshot and he smelled of alcohol, they said. He was arrested and charged with aggravated DUI.

A couple of years later, public defenders opened another front in the courtroom battle over ShotSpotter.

That technology is unreliable, and that arrest was unconstitutional, they said. Police can’t arrest someone without probable cause or a specific and reasonable suspicion that they committed a crime. Just being in the vicinity of a ShotSpotter alert, they argued, was not nearly enough.

In January, Judge Carol Howard agreed and threw out the arrest. And on Tuesday, prosecutors dropped the charges altogether.

Cook County public defenders have long challenged ShotSpotter in county courtrooms, saying evidence stemming from the technology should not be used against defendants.

Among their most common arguments: ShotSpotter insists it is accurate and reliable, but that has never been proved in an Illinois court; and besides, the alerts do not give police enough basis to make a valid arrest.

“The efficacy (and) the reliability is overblown,” said Assistant Public Defender Celeste Addyman, who worked on the DUI case that was recently dropped.

“It is just being used in a really inappropriate way to sort of cast doubt, or draw into suspicion, very large groups of people who would otherwise have been thought to just sort of be innocently going about their day.”

In response, Cook County prosecutors have argued in court that ShotSpotter alerts — like 911 calls — are absolutely valid to consider when looking at the overall context of whether an arrest was constitutional.

And while a courtroom inquiry into ShotSpotter’s scientific claims would be relevant if attorneys wanted to introduce “a detailed forensic analysis by ShotSpotter” at trial, that is not necessary in the context of a pretrial hearing about an arrest, prosecutors have said.

“No one, ShotSpotter included, would claim ShotSpotter is a flawless tool without any limitations,” prosecutors wrote in a 2021 filing for an armed habitual criminal case. “Such perfection is not expected under a fourth amendment analysis.”

Public defenders have asked judges to conduct evidentiary hearings at which ShotSpotter would have to prove that their technology is generally accepted as scientifically sound. So far, no judge has granted that hearing.

ShotSpotter should have to prove that it is reliable enough to use in court, said Assistant Public Defender Richard Gutierrez.

“A company who wants to engage in the criminal legal system and wants to make money in the criminal legal system should be doing so only with highly validated, highly reliable technology,” he said. “And there is no such validation, and lots of reasons to think they could never get it, that the system doesn’t work.”

When asked if prosecutors believe ShotSpotter is reliable and scientifically sound — and thus should be admissible in court — a spokesperson for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office said prosecutors “review cases individually and make determinations regarding the use and relevancy of the evidence specific to that case within the bounds of the law.

“ShotSpotter is the best resource to answer questions about the reliability of their technology, not the CCSAO,” the statement continued.

Efforts to challenge the technology in court have met with mixed success: Some judges have upheld arrests in which ShotSpotter played a role. Others have thrown them out.

No Illinois appellate court has settled the matter, and it could be months if not years before a higher court takes up the question. By then, ShotSpotter could be long gone from Chicago streets.

Attorneys with the MacArthur Justice Center have filed suit in hopes that a federal judge will stop Chicago from using ShotSpotter altogether.

The technology is unreliable and disproportionately harms communities of color, attorney Manes told the Tribune. Manes said he is appreciative of Johnson’s recent announcement that the ShotSpotter contract would end, but the lawsuit is still relevant “unless the city is willing to commit to actually terminating the program in court.”

“The city can’t end a lawsuit just by sort of making a temporary change in policy which it could just as easily switch back,” he said.

Attorneys for the city stated in court as recently as Feb. 21 that they believe ShotSpotter technology is reliable. While Manes and his colleagues wanted city attorneys to answer questions about Johnson’s statements on the issue — including campaign statements about ShotSpotter’s lack of reliability — U.S. Magistrate Judge Young B. Kim shut that down.

“These are questions that should be asked to the mayor,” the judge said.

scharles@chicago tribune.com mcrepeau@chicago tribune.com

EAST OAK CLIFF

Officer shot, 2 arrested

Teens face aggravated assault, evading arrest charges; third suspect remains at large

Five teenagers in a vehicle police say was stolen were taken into custody Thursday after one of them shot and injured an officer in southern Dallas.

Two of the teens face criminal charges while three of them were released, police said Thursday.

A sixth suspect, only described as being male, is on the lam.

Jaheart Nickelberry, 17, was arrested on charges of aggravated assault, evading arrest/detention in a motor vehicle, aggravated robbery and theft totaling more than $30,000 and less than $150,000, police said.

A 15-year-old girl also faces a charge of evading arrest/detention. Her identity was not released due to her age.

About 12:45 a.m., multiple officers were “working in a covert capacity” when they noticed a vehicle driving erratically in the 3200 block of Easter Avenue near Dear Path Drive in east Oak Cliff, police said.

Officers followed the vehicle and at one point, a suspect fired at the unmarked police car.

At least one shot went through the driver’s side door and struck an officer in the hip, according to police officials.

It was unclear how many shots were fired.

No officers fired their weapons, police said.

Police pursued the vehicle, eventually stopping it and taking five suspects into custody in the 7200 block of Chesterfield Drive. One suspect is at large, according to officials.

Two guns were recovered from the scene, including one from the vehicle and another thrown out of it. Investigators determined the vehicle was stolen.

The officer underwent surgery and was listed in stable condition.

EAST OAK CLIFF

Shooting leaves 1 dead, 2 injured

Incident was one of several gun attacks in Dallas this weekend

Three people were shot, including at least one fatally, Saturday night in east Oak Cliff.

Officers responded about 8:40 p.m. to the intersection of Overhill Lane and Easter Avenue, near East Kiest Boulevard, and found two men and a teenager who had been shot, police said.

One man, who has not been publicly identified, died at the scene.

The teen was taken to a hospital and was listed in stable condition, according to police.

The second adult male victim traveled to a hospital in a private vehicle.

Police did not have an update on the victim’s condition Sunday.

Additional details were not immediately available and no arrest has been announced in the case.

The investigation is ongoing.

The fatal shooting is one of several in Dallas this weekend.

Isaiah Blasig-Prickett, 20, died after being shot early Friday in Love Field;

Shaketta Johnson, 30, was found shot to death in her vehicle about 12:30 a.m. Saturday in east Oak Cliff

and Sofonias Eduardo Gonzalez Morgan, 27, died about 1:10 a.m. Saturday after being shot in northwest Dallas. Coriesha Bradford, 21, was killed in a South Dallas shooting that injured eight others.

Man dead, 2 injured after shooting in east Oak Cliff, police say Little details surrounding the shooting were immediately available.

(Matt Rourke / ASSOCIATED PRESS) By Lana Ferguson

12:57 PM on Apr 14, 2024

Three people were shot, including at least one fatally, Saturday night in east Oak Cliff.

Officers responded about 8:40 p.m. to the intersection of Overhill Lane and Easter Avenue, near East Kiest Boulevard, and found two men and a teenager who had been shot, police said.

One man, who has not been publicly identified, died at the scene.

The teen was taken to a hospital and was listed in stable condition, according to police. The second adult male victim traveled to a hospital in a private vehicle. Police did not have an update on the victim’s condition Sunday.

Additional details were not immediately available and no arrest has been announced in the case.

The investigation is ongoing.

The fatal shooting is one of several in Dallas this weekend.

Isaiah Blasig-Prickett, 20, died after being shot early Friday in Love Field;

Shaketta Johnson, 30, was found shot to death in her vehicle about 12:30 a.m. Saturday in east Oak Cliff and Sofonias Eduardo Gonzalez Morgan, 27, died about 1:10 a.m. Saturday after being shot in northwest Dallas.

Coriesha Bradford, 21, was killed in a South Dallas shooting that injured eight others.

Dallas shooting:

Woman killed outside strip mall in east Oak Cliff

Police are looking for two suspects they say shot and killed a woman in the parking lot of a strip mall in east Oak Cliff.

Officers were called to the scene of a shooting in the 4400 block of S Marsalis Avenue around 12:30 a.m. on Saturday.

Police said 30-year-old Shaketta Johnson died from her injuries.

Investigators said Johnson was inside of her car when two suspects fired multiple times into the car.

The suspects took off in two vehicles, one a blue Mazda sedan with a paper license plate and the other a black Mercedes.

Surveillance photos show the two suspects and the blue Mazda.

FOX 4 crews spotted several evidence markers in the parking lot.

Anyone with information is asked to call Dallas police.

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