Double Play

52.

Jackie was wearing a gray tweed topcoat with raglan sleeves and a military collar, turned up. It was two weeks to Christmas and snowing. Not a heavy snow, big flakes that came softly and were very white where they landed on Jackie’s bare head. Burke wore a trench coat. He too was bareheaded, and between the two men, Lauren wore a camel’s hair coat with a scarf over her hair. They were standing near the statue of Prometheus, looking down at the ice skaters.

“Mr. Rickey says I’m on my own next year,” Jackie said.

Burke nodded, looking at the skaters.

“And I’m out of work,” Burke said.

Lauren glanced carefully at each man, then back at the skaters. She didn’t speak. The skaters were moving to “Beautiful Ohio,” which Burke thought was probably a waltz. Burke had his arm around Lauren. Jackie stood on the other side of her, not touching.

“Well,” Jackie said, “you won’t miss the travel.”

“No,” Burke said. “I won’t.”

He looked at Robinson over Lauren’s head. Robinson looked back at him. They were silent for a time. Lauren looked up at both of them again and still said nothing. The skaters moved softly below street level, on the dark ice, in the comforting snow, under the Christmas glitter, with Rockefeller Center rising above them into the snowfall. The music stopped for a moment, then returned. “Beautiful Ohio” was replaced by “Blue Danube.”

“I couldn’t have made it,” Jackie said to Burke, “without you.”

“Me either,” Burke said.

Lauren didn’t speak. She kept her head against Burke’s shoulder and her right arm around his waist. As the skaters circled below them, she put her left arm around Robinson’s waist.