The Chosen and the Beautiful

by Nghi Vo

“Did you keep it?” I asked. I wouldn’t have been so sanguine about taking gifts from someone like Gatsby, but she gave me an indignant look. Things were different where she came from, apparently, or perhaps she wasn’t so very bright. “Two hundred and sixty-five dollars, gas blue with lavender beads? Of course I did!”

“And I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.”