One Can Dream, Old Sport!

A Gatsby Fan Fiction

I’ve made no secret that my favorite author is F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby is such a powerful book on so many levels. I even did a voice post here on Substack to review this great novel several months ago. During this writing prompt challenge I do each week I have sometimes written fan fiction. Although I have a long way to go to meet the standards of such a master of this craft, here is my attempt at Jay Gatsby fan fiction.

The three prompt cards are:

Shocking announcement

This time it’s bound to work

Person with a secret bad habit

“Nick, I have a terrible secret to admit. I need to know I can trust you with it.”

That was how Gatsby approached me the evening before the tragic accident. He confessed that he had been living a lie, right down to his own last name as given at birth. He changed it before he joined the military and went off to fight in the Great War. He came back a decorated man, a changed man. He was now more a man of focus and purpose. And that purpose was to reclaim the only love he’d ever allowed himself to have. He was a walking tragedy, that Jay Gatsby.

He only had one way to gain her love. She married into old money. Her love was in status these days, but he knew he could offer her both. She longed for a pure love. And if that love was as strong as status she would have no choice but to leave Tom for him. He knew it. And he embedded himself in a dark underworld to achieve that status. The Feds were too busy monitoring the Five Families in the big city to bother with the flamboyant playboy of West Egg. He soared to crazy wealthy heights without raising too much of their attention. They were too busy trying to go after the Corleone’s. Jay Gatsby wasn’t much of a blip on their radar, even if he was the one that supplied all the illegal booze and whores to the powerful city mobsters.

“I’ll win her love back this time. She’s not happy with Tom. I can have him rubbed out, you see. It will be like before. She’ll need some time to grieve, but she wants me, Nick. She’ll have his old money, or a good part of it that his family doesn’t take back. She’ll be old money and still have the love she wants. Don’t you see? I’ll make the call next week if you don’t object. You’ve met the man many times. He’s not a quality man. He doesn’t deserve her. He cheats on her with that loose woman that lives over the garage. It’s a nasty habit, you see. That kind of dirty lust. He’s a bottom feeder trying to fill his terrible urges. That’s no way for your cousin to live. You have to see this, old sport!”

I sat quietly, not wanting to speak urgently. But murder was wrong, and he knew it in his heart. The only problem was that his experience in the war dulled his moral compass, even if he was still a terrible romantic.

Did he love Daisy? With more passion than anyone I had ever met. He held onto a love that meant more to him than every heroic action or every cringe worthy death he ever witnessed in Europe. He had clung onto something from his past that was so strong that it kept him sane in the trenches. Not many men could claim the same. War was hell. Hoping to recapture the past was a new kind of hell. Trying to win the love of one that couldn’t love you the same was a battle that Gatsby went to bed fighting every night after he looked across the water at the green light at the end of her dock.

Many nights I stood in the darkness of my cottage and watched Gatsby standing alone at the end of his dock, staring across the water at that green light. In many ways I thought of that light as a symbol of his hopes and dreams. Little did he know that he was swimming against the current of time, as that dream had passed by without him knowing. I wonder if that light ever came to haunt him in the lonely hours alone in the middle of the night. I knew Daisy all too well. There was a gap there, both physical and emotional, that no amount of money he made or lavish party that he threw could ever fill.

I imagine that the same green was the look of the tired and haggard face of George Wilson before he took his own life. Or the green hue of Gatsby’s car that struck his wife along that dirty road in front of his garage. I know that the color green now haunts me, and haunts my memories of that great man and our friendship.

I wonder all these things about my great friend, Jay Gatsby. The city was too much for me, as I told Jordan Baker that last morning we were together over breakfast. Tom and Daisy came through to say goodbye as they were taking a long needed vacation to Europe while their new mansion was being built. Old money held power in the city. I knew they were going overseas until the scandal blew over. I wanted to tell Tom that Daisy was the one driving the car that killed his lover. I decided it best to keep that secret between Gatsby and myself.

It’s ironic that the light at the end of my dock is green. I’ll call on someone tomorrow to change the bulb to a blue one, something more soothing for my soul. I want to leave that world and what happened behind me. I’m happier back home in Minnesota now. I have a sizeable home on the waterfront by the lake. I rent out a small cottage at the edge of my property to a young man who is a writer. I rent it on the cheap so that the man and his wife can have a comfortable place to live while he writes his first novel.

I owe all of this to Gatsby. You see, in many ways he and I were alike. We were both dreamers and searching for something to make our souls content. I was the sole heir to a sizeable fortune that he left behind along with a note that he left for me. I’ll keep that between the two of us to my grave. But I will be forever grateful for the wisdom that he left behind on those pages. Perhaps in time I’ll find my own Daisy to fill the void that money never will. One can dream, can’t we Old Sport!