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The Pentagon?
My boss showed up
to work and offered her Manhattan apartment to
those of us standing there in a panic. We started gathering “things,” all unsure of exactly what
was happening in the world.
I sat at my desk and checked the New
York Times web site. Service was very slow. Many
people would be checking to see what had
happened, I guessed.
The headline read that two airliners
had crashed into the World Trade Center.
Another headline said a plane had
crashed “near the Pentagon.”
Near is better than into, I thought,
and I clicked on the article.
More people behind me reacted to what
was going on in shocked whispers.
On the screen, I watched the little
blue bar slowly inch its way up.
Someone said something about Madison
Square Garden using the words “get out”
and “target.”
Target?
Finally, the screen changed.
What I saw was the log-on screen,
asking for my ID and password before I could
read the article. I entered it, cursing at the New York Times as I did, and
began making phone calls.
I called home to my
mother. The
line was dead.
I called my girlfriend.
Again, the line was dead.
I called my friend and co-critic,
Christian, and again, the line was dead.
Two planes hit the World Trade Center,
one hit the Pentagon, and I was still sitting
in New York City.
I set the phone on the hook and started
gathering my things: paperwork from the office
to work on from home, since I didn’t know
when I’d be back, and a copy of the novel
I’ve been working on and letting people from
work read.
I packed it in my bag and began
unplugging connections from my laptop.
The screen changed and I finally got to
the article.
One sentence.
Something to the effect of “at 9:50,
a plane apparently crashed near the
Pentagon.”
All the news…
I shut down the
laptop, packed it up, and headed for the
elevators.
Before I left I stopped to look at the
burning buildings one more time.
The last time.
More smoke now trailed up into the sky.
Two women behind me walked in to watch.
I turned and left.
My co-worker Pam and I waited for our
boss to come.
Someone walked by and said, “You
better get out of here.
I wouldn’t want to be at the
Garden.”
Someone else said, “It’s not the
Garden that’s the problem.
It’s Penn Station.”
Penn Station? Somewhere down the hall, possibly from an office cube, I
heard more whispers, and the word
“target.”
Pam and I decided
to leave then and meet our boss Eberly at
street level.
Instead, Eberly and her husband Wayne
met us in the elevator.
Getting
Nowhere
The street was eerie.
People were quiet, cars were sparse,
and the wind blew strangely.
The color of Manhattan had faded to a
washed 8-pack of crayons.
I was trying to call home on Pam’s
cell phone, but it, too, was dead. Perhaps the antenna on the towers had been damaged when the
planes hit.
I looked down Fifth Avenue as we
crossed; a light brown cloud of smoke engulfed
the southern end of Manhattan.
Down every street I crossed I could
only see about 15 blocks south before the
enormous cloud.
Wasn’t the fire in the towers above?
I looked up, and there were no towers
above. Someone
nearby said something about number one being
“down.”
I handed the useless cell phone back to
Pam. By
the time we got to the lobby of my boss’
apartment on Third and Thirty-fifth Street,
another stranger told us that number two was
“down.”
We got to her apartment,
not-so-safely on the fifteenth floor, and sat,
almost afraid to turn on the television.
After a few minutes, someone did, but
it was connected to another system, so they
fiddled with the different buttons, knobs, and
remotes until Wayne came over and turned the
right knobs.
The image came on. It was the base of the twin towers, surrounded by smoke and
flames. The
base? No,
the base was the Twin Towers.
The Towers were indeed down, and for
the moment, I was staying there, a view of the
Empire State Building out the window to my
right.
Target?
Trains were shut down,
the news said.
I needed to get home, a train ride of
about an hour and a half north, but Pam and I
had agreed that a train would not be the
safest place to be.
Now, I had no choice.
There was no escaping Manhattan.
The news showed footage of the plane
crashing into the second tower.
I winced, shocked, and I listened to
the sirens outside, and again looked at The
Empire State Building.
Someone on the news said
something about another plane going down in
Pennsylvania.
Near Camp David.
The third plane had actually hit the
Pentagon, according to the flames on the
screen, regardless of the web-site words
earlier.
The news showed the first building
fall, crumbling to the ground.
Someone near me made a Godzilla
reference.
I had been thinking about Independence
Day since I had stepped outside.
The news said planes had been grounded,
but there were three more in the air, and they
didn’t know where they were.
They reported the Washington Library on
fire, and a plane circling Dulles airport.
I looked to the Empire State Building
again, as someone behind me whispered the
words I had heard before that morning, and
have heard since, no longer in shocked
whispers.
Next
on
Now we walk the halls.
We type.
We work.
We assign, we are assigned.
We pass those in the office who we had
thought we may be spending last moments with,
and we nod and politely say hi.
The skyline is down, 5,000 people or
more are dead, and people talk of unity and
war. Polar opposites in one statement. The planes hit the towers again and again on the screen.
The President talks War.
Others say it’s not really war.
Debates on prime time about the
semantics of war.
The dig goes on, no survivors.
People rejoice at the ability of New
Yorkers to come together, while the mayor
talks of body parts.
60,000 body bags. For 5,000 presumed dead, and their respective parts.
They say Arabs are responsible, so
anger goes to Arabs.
They’re Americans, we unite, except
for them.
The President speaks more, and I wait
for words in defense of Arab Americans.
All I hear is offense.
And offensive. We are at war. With
whom? We
don’t know. Business as usual.
Targets?
Things made more sense in
the streets of Manhattan at the end of the
world.
Check
here for the Dallas Morning News article on Terrorism and Film Fiction
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