Double Play

12.

“I don’t want to go home,” Lauren said.

Her voice was odd, Burke noticed, more excited than fearful. She sat close to him in the back seat of the cab.

“Where would you like to go?” Burke said.

“The park.”

“Central Park?”

“Yes. I love the park in the rain.”

Burke leaned forward and spoke to the cabbie.

“Ask him if he knows where we can get a bottle of gin,” Lauren said.

The cabbie knew where to get gin, but it would cost them fifty dollars. Burke gave the cabbie fifty dollars. He stopped at a darkened liquor store on Eighth Avenue and went out of sight down an alley to the side and reappeared with a pint bottle of Gilbey’s Gin.

They sat under the umbrella, in the light steady rain on one of the rock outcroppings on the west side of the park near Sixty-fourth Street and sipped gin from the bottle. Burke sipped very little.

“Don’t you like gin?” she asked.

“I don’t,” Burke said.

Sitting in the woods, in the dark, in the rain, he watched for movement in the park. It made him think of Bloody Ridge.

“What do you like?” Lauren said.

“We’ve been through that,” Burke said.

Lauren drank some gin.

“Do you like me?” Lauren said.

“Sure.”

“I could make you like me a lot,” she said.

Burke didn’t comment. Lauren drank some gin. The nighttime park was full of sounds. Squirrels perhaps, night birds. Burke smiled to himself. Rats.

“Louis used to lace gin with ether,” Lauren said. “It’s quite an exotic feeling.”

Burke nodded. None of the park noises sounded human. Lauren drank more gin. She was drunk. But she wasn’t sloppy. She was a contained drunk. Almost dignified. She handed him the gin bottle. He didn’t drink. She slid away from under the umbrella and stood up suddenly. She was steady enough on her feet. She had risen gracefully. She took her rain hat off and threw it away from her. Burke heard it skitter on the rocks. In the dim light that drifted in from the West Side, Burke could see the rain begin to glisten on her thick hair. She unbuttoned the raincoat and let it slide down her arms into a heap on the rocks behind her. She was looking steadily at Burke. He was pretty sure her eyes had gotten bigger. She unzipped her white dress and pulled it up over her head, and bending forward, slid it down her arms and dropped it on the rock. She wore no slip. Her white underwear had lace trim. She wore stockings and a garter belt. Still looking straight at Burke she smiled and raised her arms over her head and touched the backs of her hands together. The rain slid down her half-naked body. Her thick hair was straightening as it got wetter.

“Shall I go on?” she said.

“Up to you,” Burke said.

If there were ambient sounds in the park, he no longer heard them. He saw nothing moving.

“Would you like to take off the rest?” Lauren said.

Burke’s voice sounded a little hoarse to him.

“If you want them off,” Burke said, “you’ll take them off.”

“Yes,” she said. “I will.”

She slipped out of her underwear and stood naked in the rain except for her garter belt and stockings.

“Do you like garter belts?” she said.

“Sure,” Burke said.

“I love them,” Lauren said. “They’re so... cheap.”

Burke felt himself clench. His breath was quick and shallow. He thought of Bloody Ridge. She stood before him, her arms above her head, her face turned up, the rain making her naked skin slick.

Without looking down she said, “Would you like to fuck me? Here? On the wet ground? In the rain?”

Burke’s throat had narrowed. It was hard to squeeze his voice out past it. He took the .45 out and laid it on the rock close at hand, under the umbrella. He took a deep breath and eased the air out slowly.

Then he said, “Yes.”