A man was wandering crosscurrent to the crowd, shouting into his phone: "I want everyone in the E.R. now!" At that moment what was so disturbing was the idea of a parade of the wounded, the burned, filling overwhelmed triage centers; of course what ended up being more disturbing was 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 charge in the air, like anything might happen. You couldn't get a phone signal. We dropped off Daniela with her boyfriend Guy, who was waiting across from Grand Central. Guy held Daniela in one arm and told us they hit the Sears Tower in Chicago. I parted company with Brian and walked up Madison. 

People were generally calm. Some seemed strangely cheerful, like the guys hitching rides on flatbeds and in the backs of pickup trucks. I walked alongside a middle-aged woman with glasses and curly hair who was weeping so uncontrollably she was choking on her tears. I passed a posh Upper East Side restaurant and noticed people inside eating and drinking, seemingly oblivious. They had to know. It seemed outrageous that anyone could be doing anything so indulgent at such a time but then again, maybe no one could take the measure of this event and respond accordingly yet. Still, it was jarring to see their faces dimly through the glass, the glint of silverware before them and glasses on their lips.

The first call I was able to make on my phone was to John. 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, and when he came back upstairs one of the towers was gone. He took some film of a police officer who had helped 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. John wondered what he could do with this footage but confessed to feeling guilty for his "mercenary" inclinations. He never did say anything about it again.

Back home, Jill called. She said Lis was over at her place and did I want to come over. I said I did. I got on the downtown bus at Fifth Avenue. It was crowded and I stood near the front. People were talking animatedly about the disaster. There was an eerie glee about the talk. People 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 hard.

"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 out of 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, our bodies had been suffused with a processional solemnity. In a way, though, it was just like a beautiful afternoon of families in Central Park. There were lots of children, acting like children, skipping and swinging their parents' arms by the hand, but it was clear that they knew. One inquired naively about the thing: 

"Daddy, did the airplane really hit the building?"

"Yes."

"What happened to the people inside?"

A roaring fighter jet pierced the empty sky above us.