Every Friday five boxes of oranges and lemons arrived from New York. There was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour.
By seven o'clock the orchestra has arrived – oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos and low and high drums. Floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside, until the air is alive with chatter and laughter and meetings between women who never knew each other's names.
Now the orchestra is playing cocktail music. Laughter is easier, the groups change more swiftly.
When 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. Sometimes they came and went without having met Gatsby at all.
I had been actually invited. A chauffeur in a uniform gave me a formal note from his employer – the honor would be entirely Jay Gatsby's, it said, if I would attend his “little party” that night.
Dressed up in white flannels I went over to his lawn a little after seven. I was immediately struck by the number of young Englishmen dotted about; all well dressed, all looking a little hungry. I was sure that they were selling something: bonds or insurance or automobiles.
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.
I noticed Jordan Baker with two girls in yellow dresses.
She 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.
“Hello!” I roared, advancing toward her. My voice seemed unnaturally loud across the garden.
“I thought I would meet you here,” she responded absently. “I remembered you lived next door to…”
“Hello!” the girls in yellow dresses cried together. “Sorry you didn't win.”
They were talking about the golf competition 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.”
“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. She turned to her companion: “You too, Lucille?”