Read Online Sleeping Policemen by Dale Bailey - Free Book Online

half-jogging the four blocks to campus. Dr. Gillespie was just starting roll as he slid into his seat.
    â€œSo,” Dr. Gillespie said, snapping his roll book shut, “we spoke last time of Gatsby’s illusions—of the way he disregards the fleetness of time, insisting that you can repeat the past.” Dr. Gillespie strode slowly from the lectern, his arms crossed, his head cocked in a professorial attitude. “We saw how Gatsby’s entire life—all the opulence and excess—is caught up in his revisioning of Daisy Buchanan, the entire unwieldy scaffold of his aspirations symbolized in the ephemeral shimmer of a distant, green light.” He surveyed the class, his eyes like flint.
    â€œWhat’s your opinion, Mr. Kilpatrick?” Across the room from Nick, a pock-marked boy started from a doze and stammered a series of half-formed thoughts. Nick looked down at his book, bought well-thumbed at a used bookstore in Knoxville. The Great Gatsby , by F. Scott Fitzgerald. He had read almost half of it in a single sitting Saturday afternoon, enjoying it immensely. Carraway’s eloquent voice, his controlled measure of life won Nick over immediately. Nick had put the novel aside only when Finney and Tucker barged into his apartment and dragged him away with the promise of flesh and beer. He wished he had stayed and finished the book.
    He closed his eyes and Casey filled his mind, her face contorted, her body stretched into impossible positions, pain not nearly a big enough word for what he saw in her eyes.
    The tape ended in abrupt darkness, as if the voice behind the camera had yanked a plug. The four of them had sat silently for several minutes. Then Tucker muttered a quiet, “Goddamn.” Wordlessly, Sue stood and stalked away; with a final lingering glance at the television, Nick followed. Finney caught them at the door, his face pale and worried.
    â€œWait a minute, Nick. We have to talk about this.”
    â€œNot tonight,” Sue said, and for a moment, Nick only stood there, caught between them.
    He started to speak, his mouth dry. “Can I—” The question died on his lips as he thought how it would sound, what they might think of him.
    â€œWhat?” Finney said.
    The tape. Can I have the tape?
    â€œNothing,” he said.
    Sue tugged at his sleeve. “Come on.”
    They had barely reached Sue’s car when the townhouse door swung open once again. “We need to talk about this.”
    â€œTomorrow,” Nick called over his shoulder.
    â€œDonner’s, then. Lunch.”
    Later, in bed, Sue said, “Who do you think she was?”
    â€œNo idea.” He paused. It was 12:16. “Just a girl, wrong place, wrong time. Someone passing through. Someone they took from some other nowhere.” His voice sounded muffled, as if the dark swallowed the words as they left his mouth.
    â€œBastards.” Her voice was hard, unrelenting.
    â€œYeah,” he said, wrapping his arms around her, pressing his lips to her forehead.
    â€œMr. Kilpatrick, that’s quite enough,” Dr. Gillespie said, drawing Nick back into the classroom. “I suggest you spend a little more time with Mr. Fitzgerald tonight.” He returned to the lectern and resumed his discourse. Nick forced himself to listen.
    â€œGatsby has reinvented himself. Shedding the skin of his old self, James Gatz, a poor boy from nowhere, molting into a dazzling new self. In the same way, he attempts to recreate Daisy, forcing her, ironically, to be forever the woman—the girl —he’d known five years previously.” Gillespie paused and stared at the class, his eyes like shards of broken glass.
    â€œWhere do we first see Gatsby?”
    â€œAt the dock, watching Daisy’s mansion across the bay,” Nick said. He’d read a little less than half the novel, but he knew the game. Answer what you do know, quickly, then dodge back into the underbrush. He