F. Scott Fitzgerald’s best-known novel chronicles the star-crossed romance between Louisville debutante Daisy Fay Buchanan and a local soldier, the future tycoon Jay Gatsby. In this passage set in summer 1922, Gatsby; Daisy, and her husband Tom Buchanan are in a suite at New York’s Plaza Hotel. Daisy’s childhood friend Jordan Baker is also there, and a wedding is taking place in the ballroom below.
“Imagine marrying anybody in this heat!” cried Jordan dismally.
“Still — I was married in the middle of June,” Daisy remembered, “Louisville in June! Somebody fainted. Who was it fainted, Tom?”
“A man named Biloxi. ‘Blocks’ Biloxi, and he made boxes — that’s a fact — and he was from Biloxi, Mississippi.”
“They carried him into my house,” appended Jordan, “because we lived just two doors from the church. And he stayed three weeks, until Daddy told him he had to get out. The day after he left Daddy died.” After a moment she added as if she might have sounded irreverent, “There wasn’t any connection.”
