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.