Last night I couldn't remember whether it was 2001 or 2002. I saw 01 on a computer file I thought was recent and I thought, damn, is it still 2001? Then, is it 2002? Hard to say which was more baffling. And in the morning I was chilled by the looming date on the milk carton – it seemed so far away at the store.

We are well into the future. 

The last day at Les Frauds is when Mom and I got to talking about September 11th and it was curiously contentious; she found the picture book moving yet maudlin too, and she was right, and it was exactly what I feared she might think, and what I feared about everyone's reaction to the whole thing too in a way, but I found myself growing defensive anyway. The elevation of the towers themselves as iconic vehicles for the projection of grief and rage, which was fascinating to me (those smooth facades, those beautifully square corners, so abstract, could bear anything in their unreality – after having collapsed in reality under the burden of the attack itself), seemed alarming to her. Those were our worse tendencies, she thought. The vigils reminded her of Lady Di's death, and the exploitation of a moment of genuine national tragedy for such self-indulgent melodrama was sick. Yeah, yeah. I knew she had a point. But I wished I'd articulated something else, a different view, but instead we moved on and talked about Israel and Arab anti-Semitism. I ranted about the eventual decline and disintegration of all major world religions, starting perhaps with Islam. I was inspired toward exaggeration and extreme rhetoric. We talked about the Arabs who would deny that September 11th was the work of Islamic terrorists, what a terrible portent that was. I drew comparisons between the hatred of the Arabs for the Jews with all the other great racial hatreds of modern civilization. And she said it goes the other way too, and remember, the Israelis have so much and the Palestinians have so little. Religion is racist, I said.

There's a pair of black shoes strewn ten feet apart on the rain-spotted sidewalk outside our door.

A prostitute on an HBO documentary said she tells abusive pimps this: Don't you have no respect for your mother? You came out of a pussy just like what I'm sellin'.

Eight and a Half by Eleven

A man was wandering crosscurrent to the crowd, shouting into his phone: "I want everyone in the E.R. now!" It was shocking to image a parade of the wounded, the burned, filling overwhelmed triage centers; later was a bigger shock: the idleness of hundreds of doctors waiting for nothing. 

We walked up Fifth Avenue with everyone. The Empire State Building looked vulnerable and naked in the sun. There was a fierce, raw charge in the air, like anything might happen. You couldn't get a phone signal. We dropped off Julie with her boyfriend Guy, who was waiting across from Grand Central. Guy held Julie in one arm and told us they hit the Sears Tower in Chicago. Yasser Arafat, she hissed. He took credit for it already. I parted company with Paul and walked up Madison. 

People were generally calm. Some seemed almost cheerful, hitching rides on flatbed trucks, kicking dangling feet like little kids. I walked alongside a middle-aged woman with glasses and curly hair who was weeping so uncontrollably she was choking on her tears. Then I passed a posh Upper East Side restaurant and peered through the picture window. People ate and drank. A waiter fussed over a bottle of wine in a tableside bucket. They had to know. It seemed outrageous they could do this at a time like this. But a time like what? Maybe no one could take the measure of this event and respond appropriately. Still, it was jarring to see their dimly happy faces through the glass, the glint of silverware before them, crystal on their lips.

The first call I was able to make was to Mike. We talked about how it would always be before and after from now on. He said he saw the towers burning from the roof of his apartment in Chinatown and ran down to get a camera. When he came back upstairs one of the towers was gone. He took some film of a police officer who was helping people escape. While the camera was rolling the cop realized that other guys in his squad had been crushed in the collapse and he broke down. Mike wondered what he could do with this footage but confessed to feeling guilty for his mercenary thoughts. He never did say anything about it again.

Back home, Mel called. She said Su was over at her place and did I want to come over. I said I did. I got on the downtown bus at Fifth. It was crowded and I stood near the front. People were talking animatedly about the event. There was an eerie glee about the chatter. They seemed to want to outdo each other with stories of horror, to be the bearers of worse and worse news just for the vain thrill it gave them. Or maybe if they made it worse in their heads, and asserted it, the reality would not be quite so bad.

"I heard 40,000 people died," a woman said.

"Oh no. Way more than that," said a man. "200,000."

The bus driver told his story.

"I was down there," he began. "I looked out the window and I saw what do you call it. Graffiti coming from the sky." We knew what he meant. "But then I realized it ain't no graffiti. It's pieces of paper. Eight and a half by eleven."

I got off around the Metropolitan Museum and walked across the park with a crowd. Everyone's pace seemed slow by half a step—with nothing left to escape, we instinctively adopted a processional solemnity. In a way, though, it was just like a beautiful afternoon in Central Park. There were lots of children, acting like children, skipping and swinging their parents' arms. Still they knew. 

"Daddy, did the airplane really hit the building?" I heard one ask.

"Yes."

"What happened to the people inside?"

A roaring fighter jet pierced the empty sky above us.

On the way to work the other day I noticed the menu board on the sidewalk outside Dewey's flatiron advertising "Whensday specials."

Two nights ago Sean and I were sitting watching TV.

Blam blam blam blam blam blam blam blam!

Just like that, like drums, an utterly deliberate and emphatic expression. 

"That was scary," said Sean.

"Yeah," I said. I was eating a big bowl of rice and lentils and beans, sitting deep in the fake Eames chair. "As long as they're not aiming at us."

"Eight shots," he said. Like the number might mean something.

"Yeah?" I wasn't sure he was right. It seemed high. But he probably was. They came in a hurry.

"Have you heard gunfire around here—"

"Yeah."

"Yeah, so have I."

"That is scary," I asserted, feeling like my first reaction had somehow been too flip. I wanted to hear myself say it was scary before my next mouthful of rice, my next sip of wine. And I imagined where it must have all gone down to have echoed so loudly among the buildings outside our window—103rd Street? Mad? In my head I saw the arm, the hand and the gun; the body falling and the killer run.

I awoke groggily this morning, trying to remember dreams. The name Rohan came into my head, Rohan, the sullen Indian who hung out at Richter's like Keith, Rohan who played foosball better than anyone I've ever seen; better than Keith, and Keith is pretty good. I remembered nervously tending goal as Rohan drew his toy forwards back and forth, teasing the ball, until he felt the moment was right and in less than an instant the ball was deep in the gullet of the goal with a humiliating thunk. They're repaving Madison Avenue. Men are perched in strange heavy equipment, awaiting their turn to scrape or surface or steamroll. The traffic has to go around. Peter, our CEO, seemed oddly unfazed by the unfolding events. He'd wander out of his office, glance at the TV. He said something about how people could stay in a hotel if they couldn't make it home to Jersey or wherever. He'd wander back to his office, hands clasped behind his back. Brian and Daniela and I decided to walk home at about noon. Outside, the streets and sidewalks were completely overrun by people walking north. The analogy is tired but completely true: the only time you ever see something like this, your environment transformed like this, is in movies. It was as though 10,000 extras had been hired to swarm around the Flatiron Building and up Fifth Avenue for some disaster epic. Places everyone. They'll never let us close these streets again so let's get this right. Action!