08/05/2006 - Timeline (Part 2)

This is a fairly extensive timeline of the events that happen during the narrative of May Day. A lot of these are estimates but in my defense Fitzgerald’s description is so dense that there is a pretty good chance that these guesstimates are nearly correct. As I said this is fairly thorough and is probably the third in a series of drafts. All the places, too, have been researched and if there are any questions about their locations or information regarding their existence I would suggest looking at the previous entries in the blog. I couldn’t think of anything that would illustrate it any better (like the maps) but now that I think about it a visual aide probably wouldn’t have helped anyway.

May Day:
Timeline

9:00 a.m. – Gordon Sterrett enters the Biltmore in search of Phillip Dean (page 62).
~ 9:05 a.m. – “A few minutes later Phillip Dean, dressed in blue silk pajamas, opened his door” (page 63).
12:00 p.m. – Sterrett and Dean make their way to the Yale Club through the “noon crowd” (page 70).
4:00 p.m. – Dean gets up and announces that he is leaving for Rivers Brothers. Sterrett along with an unknown party follow en suite (page 72).
5:30 p.m. – “ They left Rivers’ at five-thirty and paused for a moment on the sidewalk” (page 72).
8:00 p.m. – Sterrett is suppose to meet Jewel (page 72).
~ 9:00 p.m. – A mob stops in front of the New York Trumpet and begins to “bellow at the moon” (page 106).
9:00 p.m. – Carrol Key and Gus Rose leave “a cheap restaurant on Sixth Avenue” (page 74).
~ 9:30 p.m. – Key, along with Rose, searches for his brother’s place of employment; eventually finding out he works at Delmonico’s (page 79).
10:30 p.m. – Key and Rose arrive at Delmonico’s and are “surprised to see a stream of taxis emitting marvelous, young ladies, each one attended by a stiff young gentleman” (page 79).
10:40 p.m. – The two soldiers meet George Key (page 80).
~ 10:45 p.m. – Key and Rose are escorted to a pantry where they must wait for liquor (page 80). George tells them, “It may be half an hour” (page 80).
~ 10:55 p.m. – “Ten Minutes later restlessness seized them” (page 81) and they stumble upon a liquor filled room. “For several minutes” (page 82) the two discuss whether or not to just go ahead and take the newfound liquor.
~ 11:00 p.m. – While still arguing about what to do Key and Rose hear George return and “a minute later they heard several corks pop” (page 83). George tells them that he will return in five minutes with their “stuff” (page 83).
~ 11:05 p.m. – Carrol Key and Gus Rose start to drink their “stuff” (page 83).
12:00 a.m. – The banquet begins (page 81).
~ 12:05 a.m. – “A few minutes later” (page 87) Edith and Peter begin to dance.
“A man with a mustache” cuts in on Edith and Peter (page 87).
“A man with very fair hair” cuts in (page 87).
Edith is cut in on again, this time by “ a dark man” (page 88).
“A man prominent teeth cut in” (page 88). This, of course is Dean.
“A fat man with red hair cut in” (page 89).
Sterrett cuts in on Edith and “for a minute there was silence” (page 90).
~ 12:20 a.m. – Peter, working on his third highball (page 94), finds Key and Rose in the pantry.
“Peter gave them each a highball” (page 95). This is the fourth highball of the night for Peter.
Peter finishes his highball and begins to prepare another (page 96).
Presumably, Peter finishes his fifth highball when he asks the soldiers if they want another (page 97).
1:00 a.m. – The special orchestra arrives at Delmonico’s (page 97).
1:30 a.m. – Edith glances at her watch and remembers that her brother works “in the office of his newspaper until after one-thirty every evening” (page 99).
~ 1:35 a.m. – “ A few minutes later” Edith leaves Delmonico’s for her brother’s office (page 100).
~ 1: 36 a.m. – Judith tells George Key that if does not produce Sterrett within five minutes she will find him herself (page 101).
~ 1:39 a.m. – “In less than allotted time George came down-stairs” (page 101).
~ 1:40 a.m. – “In a minute” (page 103) Edith arrives at the offices of the New York Trumpet.
~ 1:50 a.m. – Edith and Henry decide to meet for lunch at noon (page 105).
Bartholomew tells Edith about a mob that had come by the building earlier in the evening (page 105).
~ 1:55 a.m. – Another mob, coming from Sixth Avenue, returns to the offices of the New York Trumpet and “the next five minutes passed in a dream” (page 107).
~ 2:00 a.m. – Carrol Key falls out of an open window and in hysterics, Edith calls out for her brother (page 110).
~ 2:05 a.m. – “Then, it was minutes later” (page 107), that the police arrive and broke up the mob.
4:00 a.m. – “ Childs’ Fifty-Ninth,’ at eight o’ clock of any morning differs from its sisters by less than the width of their marble tables or the degree of polish on the frying-pans” (page 111). “But Childs’, Fifty-ninth, four hours earlier is quite unlike any Child’s restaurant from Portland, Oregon, to Portland, Maine” (page 111).
~ 4:05 a.m. – Rose recognizes people from the party at Delmonico’s (page 112).
Rose starts to stare at Jewel and Sterrett “for some minutes” (page 113) until Jewel gives him a “quick, resentful look” (page 113).
4:54 a.m.[i] – “Dawn had come up” (page 117).
Dean and Peter take a cab from Childs’ to Delmonico’s in search of Peter’s coat and derby (page 119).
After stealing both the “In” and “Out” signs from Delmonico’s they decide to walk to the Commodore (page 120). Rose follows the two “at about forty paces” (page 120).
“It was quite light now” (page 120).
The two arrive at the Commodore and “the minutes passed” (page 121) as “the champagne became low in the bottle” (page 121).
“After a few more gorgeous minutes they decided on another quart” (page 121).
“Five minutes later they left the Commodore” (page 121) and made their back to the Biltmore.
9:00 a.m. – “Their watches told them it was now nine o’ clock” (page 121).
~ 9:30 a.m. – After their second bottle of champagne Peter and Dean run into Edith (page 123).
Edith sees Rose and has him arrested (page 124).
~ 9:35 a.m. – Sterrett wakes up and realizes that he is “ irrevocably married to Jewel Hudson” (page 125).
~ 10:05 a.m. – “He went out half an hour later and bought a revolver from at a sporting goods store” (page 125). Sterrett fires “a cartridge into his head just behind the temple” (page 125).

[i] http://aa.usno.navy.mil/cgi-bin/aa_rstablew.pl