CHAPTER 37

Music drifted from my neighbor's estate during the summer evenings. In his blue gardens, men and women flitted about like moths amidst the murmurs, champagne,

and stars. At the peak of the afternoon, I observed his guests leaping from the tower of his raft or basking on the hot sand of his beach, while his two motorboats sliced

through the Sound, pulling aquaplanes across frothy cataracts. On weekends, his Rolls-Royce transformed into a bus, transporting groups to and from the city from early

morning until well past midnight, while his station wagon darted like a lively yellow bug to catch all the trains. On Mondays, eight servants, including an extra gardener, labored

all day with mops, scrubbing-brushes, hammers, and garden-shears, mending the damage from the previous night.

Every Friday, five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a New York fruiterer—every Monday, these same fruits departed his back door in a heap of pulp-less halves. There

was a machine in the kitchen that could squeeze the juice from two hundred oranges in half an hour, if a butler pressed a small button two hundred times.

At least once every two weeks, a team of caterers arrived with several hundred feet of canvas and enough colorful lights to transform Gatsby's vast garden into a Christmas

tree. Buffet tables, adorned with shimmering hors d'oeuvres, were laden with spiced baked hams, salads of harlequin designs, and pastry pigs and turkeys in a deep gold. In

the main hall, a bar with a genuine brass rail was set up and stocked with gins, liquors, and cordials so long