At the bottom, a ten-foot gap stretched before us. No time to think. Jay hurled himself forward, landing hard on a trash can lid. I followed, crashing down, the impact jolting through my bones as we tumbled onto the alley pavement in a tangle of limbs and breathless laughter.
“Wow!” I screamed as I stood up. My heart was going to explode—I couldn’t catch my breath! I stretched my arms to the sky before a backdrop of shops that were closing up. The Harlem air tasted so fresh! “I can’t believe I made that jump. Are you insane, Jay? We could’ve died!”
Jay stood up and pondered it. “But wedidn’tdie. Which is fantastic news, and the fun of it all!” He waved down a cab. “What do you say we get somewhere safe?”
I simply followed, sliding inside the back seat and rolling down the windows. The night melted around us. The wind raced through my ears, as the city passed us by in shades of red, blue, and orange.
“Come with me to my home tonight,” Jay said.
I straightened my neck a bit. Surely the wind eclipsed his words, and I heard wrong. “What?”
“I insist,” he said, with a smile, which made me certain he was serious.
“That’s... unexpected. All the way to Long Island proper?TheLong Island,” I said. “Is it an actual island? Like Coney Island?”
“I live on a lake, so it looks like an island, but you can get to it by car.”
“Okay. Why not?” I went along with it because I lacked motivation to decide what to do next. Plus, the first part of the evening was fun!
I liked Jay, but as much as I yearned for his friendship, part of my brain couldn’t trust him fully. It whispered that all the mysteries I wished for Jay to reveal about himself could also hide untold dangers, the very dangers that made Jordan so wary of the Gatsbys. The only way to know if that part of my brain was irrational was to spend more time with him.
The plot that his home was built on must have been two hundred acres. In fact, you could build four different houses in the space that was occupied by long, trimmed hedges and walkways.
A gate opened to a long driveway where ground lights led usdown a gravel path. A roundabout circled a fountain, where a statue was also illuminated by tiny lights. I tried to subdue my wonder to act like I’d been somewhere similar before. The closest I’d come was the Vanderbilt estate where Isaiah worked, but that home did not have quite as much space on the property, nor did it have as many windows or a long staircase leading up to where the house really was.
Questions popped into my mind as we left the vehicle, like,Who waters the plants and the flowers? And does the fountain never stop? Who could manage all this space?
“So... you live here,” I said, unable to hold my awe in as I looked up at the double-door entryway, the ivy which crept up the cream-colored limestone walls.
He shrugged and jammed his hands into his pockets. “For now, yeah. We’ve got too much space, if you ask me.”
Jay’s house seemed even bigger inside—so big I couldn’t imagine it only belonged to one family. But it did. In the lobby, a long staircase led to an upstairs balcony that could be seen from the front door. The entire house was like a breath of fresh air.
“Must be nice to have the whole place to yourself,” I said as I followed him up the stairs.
“Is it nice if all you hear day in and day out are empty echoes? My father is off purchasing land in Canada, so he’s not here much lately. I spend most of my time alone, listening to the fountains and playing with my little cat, Meowy.”
Once we reached upstairs, said little cat appeared from around the corner and nuzzled up to his leg. Jay gave Meowyan affectionate pat on the head and started speaking in a baby voice. His humor made me smile, though what he was saying was impossible to understand.
The upstairs was a vast expanse, so open that several rooms came into view at once—the entryway and two lavish rooms on opposite sides of the hall. The hallway stretched like a regal boulevard, its polished marble floor and intricate moldings seeming allergic to dirt.
Mid-hallway, nestled into the wall like a secret alcove, was a narrow passage leading to a miniature hallway—a curious space that added depth to the otherwise airy place.
We paused near a sliding ladder, perched at the edge of a mahogany bookshelf that stretched up to five levels. At the foot of the ladder stood a table. Small magazines lay atop it, alongside classics of literature, political theory, and a literary magazine.
I picked up the magazine, impressed by the array of genres found here, and began reading a poem.“I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young—”
“I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep,” Jay finished, focusing on me. “That’s a beautiful poem you were mumbling.”
“Langston Hughes.”
“Promising new talent. He lives here in New York. I try to read as many Negro writers as I can. Not out of any guiding principle but because... what else is there to do?”
That was true—what else was there to do? Life was boring.
“I’m surprised,” I said. “I just thought you’d study the likes of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Sigmund Freud.”White writerswasthe postscript I didn’t add.Not the Negro poets.
“I understand why you’d make that assumption.” He looked at me with concealed offense, but tensely added, “It must be hard for you to come from the South and trust anyone with white in their blood.” Jay left the study and guided us to his bedroom as he spoke. “I do care though, about Negro culture and politics. It’s why I convinced Father to start West Egg in the first place.”
