Rockefeller Plaza is the setting for Nora Hayden and Haley Saxon’s visit to New York’s enormous Christmas tree. Framed by a crowded skating rink and the bustle of the holiday season, the plaza offers Nora a rare, uncomplicated moment of enjoyment; nearby in the narrative, Christmas also marks the last celebration Jimmy Peaches expects to have outside prison.

Setting and Holiday Scene

The plaza is crowded with tourists gathered around the enormous Christmas tree beside the skating rink. Carols blare from loudspeakers; Salvation Army Santas ring bells, and street-cart vendors sell warm chestnuts. The details make the space a public holiday spectacle rather than a private refuge: music, crowds, bells, and street commerce press in around the tree.

The setting is also sharply seasonal in its physical conditions. New York’s clear, cold air feels startlingly frigid, and wind rushes down the avenues, stinging faces and bringing tears to Nora’s eyes. She tells herself the cold explains her tears as she looks at Haley, leaving her feelings unspoken even as the outing begins to affect her.

Nora and Haley’s Visit

Haley asks Nora whether she has ever seen the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center. Nora says she has not, and Haley urges her to come along. At the tree, Nora and Haley stand looking up at it; Nora admits to herself that she is having fun. The visit gives the location its personal significance: what begins as Haley’s suggestion becomes a shared experience Nora genuinely enjoys.

Nora’s remark to Haley that it is quite a tree registers the scale of the display without diminishing the intimacy of their exchange. The scene holds the immense public attraction and the two women’s small, private response in the same frame. Nora’s enjoyment is a shift from her earlier reserve, though the narration keeps that admission inward rather than turning it into a declaration to Haley.

Christmas and the Prison Contrast

The narrative turns from Nora’s visit to Jimmy Peaches speaking with Sal Scachi by telephone. Peaches says he expects this to be his last Christmas outside prison: he believes the federal case against him is conclusive and anticipates a sentence of thirty years to life under the Rockefeller Act. He wants the holiday to be his own, imagining a large steak, a night at the Copa with a beautiful woman, a Vic Damone performance, and sex before imprisonment takes those freedoms away.

That conversation is not presented as another visit to the plaza. Instead, the Christmas tree and Peaches’s impending imprisonment become adjacent meanings attached to the same season. For Nora, the plaza supplies an unexpectedly happy outing; for Peaches, Christmas is a deadline, measured against the pleasures he fears losing. Rockefeller Plaza’s festive abundance consequently sits beside the threat of confinement without erasing it.