story6159.xml

story6159.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-12

And then ?

Early in the AM at least early for me, while I was spell checking my rant about how much I need noise and hate quiet, a rant that ended with how friggin' peaceful I felt ... I heard an explosion but did not even flinch ...

I hear explosions all the time from the projects, figured it was just the usual big firecracker in a garbage can thing

Then a client called and said, "I wanted to talk to you about business, but they just crashed an airplane into the World Trade Center." ...?? So I hung up, turned on the news, freaked out and ran up on the roof. ...

There from the roof deck of my Lower East Side building I saw the unbelievable -- the twin towers on fire, gaping holes on the tops of each. It took a moment for me to remove myself from all those Armageddon movies. This was real. In a rush that went from my heart to my stomach, I felt the fear of all those trapped in the towers. It wasn't even 9:30 a.m., but I spun around to see a sizable chunk of my neighbors climb up onto their roofs and fire escapes, their jaws hung as low as mine was.

I ran downstairs for my camera, feeling like a louse, but I just had to, and grabbed Mike from next door and the baby sitter from 5A. I needed someone else to see this and tell me I was not dreaming.

"Holy shit!" Mike screamed. I snapped some pictures, but the camera felt poisoned, so I tossed it on the picnic table and just stared.

We all just stared.

I tried to comprehend how many floors were smoldering.

"It's not so bad. ? They'll get them out," someone said, or was it me?

Then it happened -- just as I was thinking, "How much more will this burn before they find a way to put it out?" there was a flash of silver, bits of silver catching the sunlight, just trickling down ? and the first tower, just seemed to implode. It came crashing down into itself, right before our eyes. And there were screams from every window and every roof top, and one of them was mine. And I started to cry

This silver deck of cards had just collapsed right in front of us.

It was so absurd, it could not even register.

"No, no, no, no, no!" I heard myself say.

"Oh my God! Oh my God!" came the yells from roof tops stretching to the base of Manhattan.

Armin from 2A came upstairs and just stared blankly. Then we turned our sights on the second tower. The fear from all those people trapped in the top of the other tower and the ones trying to make their way down 30, 40, 80 flights of stairs was so tangible, you could feel it floating in the air amid the vast billowy black and gray smoke that came up like a nuclear mushroom cloud.

We watched, and our cell phones did not work, and our home phones did not work, and our loved ones were trying to call us. We watched.

My neighbor Ray the lawyer came rushing up. He had just escaped from the financial district only a couple blocks away. "I just climbed out of the subway, and a wall of people pushed me back!" he yelled panting and sweaty.

Mike snapped pictures with his zoom lens, shaking his head, trying to make jokes that did not work. The baby sitter bounced the baby on his lap and pointed to the black sky saying, "Man, you are going to tell your grandchildren that you saw this!" to the bewildered baby. A frozen chill began to creep up my arms and legs.

"You've got goose bumps all over you, man!" Mike said..

I ran downstairs to get coffee for myself and the baby sitter cause I felt dizzy and weak and just as I touched my door the screaming started again, ran back upstairs just as the second tower is crashing down, the unbelievable has happened twice. ? And the screams are everywhere, everywhere, and the smoke is so thick that all of downtown Manhattan is obliterated as it blows endlessly towards Brooklyn. I watched the end of the second tower disappear into a mass of black and silver.

And we can all feel the death of thousands

They died right in front of us
I could not see their faces, but I could see their faces
I still see their faces
I stroke the part of the sky where they were with my fingers

There is no peace
There is nothing but smoke

We are frozen there on the roof for a thousand moments

I have the sensation that everything I have ever known is being rewritten in my head, and there's nothing I can do to stop it.

And then the aftermath
The panic

What will happen now?
Is this our Pearl Harbor?

Ray's secretary gets through to him, and I ask her to call my brother. Kathleen comes home and we run to the grocery store for supplies. At times like this, they say to buy water.

The grocery store is filled to the walls with terrified people buying nonperishables.

I load up on anything, I don't even know what I bought.
Some sugary juice, cheap cat food, water, something frozen
Cheese
Canned pineapple of some kind, or maybe it was corn, yes, corn

The police are all around when I emerge
The off-duty officers called in
All of downtown is blocked off.

But we are downtown.

You can feel the tension
Crime yet to be born
The city filled with people who will not work today, pacing, what to do now, where to go.
"Everyone I see is drunk or high," the laundry lady says. ..
There is the sense that nothing makes sense today.

There is a strange dead burnt smell that I can taste in the back of my throat

The fighter jets buzz by
The helicopters climb through the murdered skyline

No one will vote in the primaries

Kathleen goes to Beth Israel to donate blood
Carolyn to Bellevue

I can not give blood, but I wonder what, what, what can I do

I check the air, and worry about the smoke and my cats
And see the tower collapsing, over and over and over again in my head

Carol and Tommy are bankers; they work downtown.

M.E. finally gets through on the phone. She was about to walk the 84 blocks to my apartment. She missed her flight to Washington. Thank God, I tell her. Thank god

"I love you!" I say and ask her to find out if they are ok, Carol and Tommy.
I think they work on Wall Street but I'm not sure.
Tracey calls. Calls can now get in but not out, I have her call my father to tell him I'm ok. She invites me to take the cats and come to Brooklyn but I opt for staying home with the windows shut and the A/C on to filter the air. I would have to walk to Brooklyn across the bridge and home with the cats seems a better bet for now. I've always been afraid of heights.

"Tell my father I'm alive," I beg her.

I am alive.

This day now sits before me like a pathetic afterthought.

There is nothing to do but ponder and watch the tower crumbling, crumbling, crumbling in my head.

Later on, after the news has shown me the videos of what is already taped to my eyes forever, I go back up on the roof to monitor the smoke. Is it blowing my way? Do I need to evacuate? It has mellowed, turned more gray.

Then all of sudden it is black again. Black and billowy and thick, but lower, not like the towers. It covers the buildings like a thick blanket, then spreads out piercing the gray, this new terrible thing, a floating dark ocean.

"Did you see it?" the baby's mother screams rushing up on the roof. "We just heard it on the news! The smaller building, No. 7, just came down!"

"I saw it," I say knowing I have not seen anything today since the first tower crumbled before me.

The city has become a game of dominoes.

I look at the Empire State Building and wonder, who will be next?