On the screen the towers stood stricken, smoking furiously. The anchor repeated what little was known in a tremulous voice, betraying shock but clinging determinedly to professionalism, to that formal tone and lingo by which we've come to identify The News itself—except this wasn’t news, it wasn’t what you consume with dinner at six or peruse drowsily on the morning train. Her mannered delivery seemed suddenly inappropriate, as though she were saying these things sitting right beside us on the couch. In case you're just joining us… as you can see from these images… two aircraft struck the World Trade Center towers this morning… the first hit the North Tower at 8:48 a.m., the second hit the South Tower 15 minutes later at 9:03… We also have word from Washington that the Pentagon was hit by a plane at approximately 9:40… Authorities suspect these are terrorist attacks…

Lucy sat watching, so did Paul. Other coworkers drifted in and out, unable to sit or stand or anything. Everything around me seemed precarious, uncertain; right down to the coffee table I sat on and the air I breathed. It occurred to me that we had suddenly been plunged into a new world of utterly chaotic possibilities and that perhaps it was not a world that was worth living in.

We watched.

I went to my desk and called Su because I thought she had jury duty downtown. You were supposed to call everyone you knew who was closer to the action than you I guess. There was no answer so I tried her at work and she was there after all; the court had been closed for some unrelated reason. She was crying and shaky. I called Mel, who was oddly calm. She’d been up to her roof to see. She said she was trying to call the editing studio where she was freelancing to see if they needed her to come in.

"I… don't think you're going to be working today," I said.

"I have to call them,” she said, annoyed. “I don't know that."

"Nothing after this will be the same."

"I know."

Lucy called out from in front of the TV: "Oh my God one of the towers is falling!" I ran in to see it evaporating in an enormous cloud of ash and debris that quickly climbed to obscure its twin. I went back to my desk. To stare at the screen awhile. I don't know.

"Oh my GOD the second tower fell!" screamed Lucy. A trace of outrage in her voice mixed with the grief. For some reason this was the real shock—the first one could almost be rationalized as a freak accident, something outside of human control so not of our concern. The falling of the second made both systematic, the conclusion of a grand design. Lucy and Julie were crying.