“Dax, take this to Mr. Devlan. Make sure you place it in his hands. Don’t give it to his secretary. She’ll promise to give it to him, but she’ll stick it in the middle of a stack of papers and he won’t read it until next Tuesday.”
“I think he’s in a meeting.”
“Then, stand outside his door until they finish. Either that or barge in and give it to him.” He rests his hand on a hip and watches his lackey head off. A perpetual frown etches the edges of his mouth. “Alright, what were you saying?”
“Mr. Jacobs is here to see you.”
“Mr. Jacobs …?” He lets the phrase tail off so his secretary will fill in the details.
“From Barger and Hillman.”
“Oh.”
I heard less disgust when the Saudis thought they were working with a Jew.
“I thought we were scheduled for nine-thirty.”
“I got in early,” I answer for the secretary. It catches you off guard, I think to myself.
He raises a brow. His eyes burn through me. I take a slight breath and casually scratch at my cheek. They always give me that look. As though they want to strangle me. As though through sheer intimidation they can drive me off so it won’t happen. It will. As for the look of intimidation, they can save it for the interns running around, stabbing each other in the back for the lone open position which would ‘change their lives.’ Change their lives. Whatever. Half of them went to an Ivy League. The other half came from some other top school. Same with every other person in here. I struggled my way through State. Not academically. Not intellectually. I run circles around these bootlickers, around daddy’s money leaking out their wallets. I mean financially. It gives me extra pleasure when I watch their dreams go up in smoke and I’m the one who gets to deliver the bad news.
“I have a few things to finish up,” he tells me. “You can wait in the conference room if you’d like. Anything you need, Denise can get it for you.”
He lifts his chest and struts out of the room. I can see the fear in his eyes. I notice the fear when he walks, the false bravado as the alpha male keeps up an appearance of being in control just before his power is stripped from him. Denise doesn’t notice it. She probably has no clue why I’m here. Her main concern is making it out by five so she can go out on the town with her girlfriends or to let the dog out before it wets the crate. She’s one I could actually have pity on. Depending on a few things.
“Can I get you something, Mr. Jacobs?”
“Sure, Ms …” I read the nameplate again. “… Thomas. I’ll take a coffee.”
“Cream and sugar?”
“A dash of cream and one sugar.”
“I’ll bring it to you if you want to wait in there.”
She points to an office with glass doors and glass windows all around. I hope the glass is thick so the employees don’t hear the braggadocio. And the whimpering. I enter the office and sit down. He’ll make me wait. An impotent power play. At least, the chairs are comfortable. They usually are.
I check my watch. 8:42. This office reminds me of the fifteen offices the other companies have made me wait in. The solid mahogany table imported from Africa. Paid ten-thousand for the table while the workers got fifty cents a day to make it. And the chairs. They could have bought the same thing at Office Warehouse for half the price. Probably a third of the price. Everything screams, ‘I’m rich and powerful!’ Not as rich or powerful as the people I work for, though.
Denise comes in with the coffee. “I brought an extra packet of sugar and another cream in case you wanted it.” She lays them down next to the coffee and a cherry Danish. “You don’t have to eat it,” she says. “I just figured ….” Her smile completes the sentence.
Yeah, she’s one I could feel sorry for. Maybe she’ll get to keep her job once the dust settles. If not, I could use my connections to help her out. There’s Richard on thirty-fourth …
The room goes dark. The air forms into a locomotive and slams into my body, slams into the large window overlooking the street, and keeps going. The force throws me against the back wall. My legs come to rest above my head, my neck bends at an angle. A hit at a high school football game flashes through my mind except more than just my ribs hurt. Another couple feet to the left and my body would have blown out the window along with the mahogany desk and half the chairs. They tumble to the earth like wooden birds with broken wings. Denise’s body tumbles with them. She looks surprised more than scared.
Glass sails through the air in crooked, jagged splinters, most of it from the offices down the hall. A large slice, like a spear tip, pierces my upper thigh. The pain doesn’t register at first. It can’t. Not with the heat which soon follows and sears my skin and burns my lungs. I hold my breath, hoping the heat will disappear before I need another gulp of missing oxygen. My forearm bubbles and turns red. My mind goes dark.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
“Hey. Hey! Get up. We got to go.”
Go where? What’s going on? I shake my head and white dust falls out of my hair. I’m too groggy to notice it’s pulverized drywall. I think it’s a performance enhancer left over from a party. It covers my sleeves. Red streaks blot my dusty sleeves. My shirt is torn into shreds and lies off my arm in long strips. I’m too groggy to notice the long strips of skin which lie beside the strips of shredded shirt.
Hot air surrounds me. Not as bad as when I blacked out. I can take small sips without soldering my lungs. Most of it rises into the sky. A coolness blows in through the missing window. Papers flutter outside the opening and drift lazily to the earth. I prop myself onto an elbow and imagine myself as a piece of paper. Two people imagine they are pieces of paper, falling, spiraling, yet managing to hold hands in their desire to cling to a final moment of humanity.
“Come on!”
He grabs my arm and lifts. Acid travels towards my spine at the speed of pain. I scream as his fingers continue to dig into an exposed muscle. The scream comes out as a groan. He seems to understand and lets go. Wind and papers blow at his back as he walks around behind me. His shirt billows like a sail catching an east breeze, like a white flag with red stripes. Two powerful arms pull beneath my armpits. In a moment, I stand on my feet but need to lean on this man with the powerful arms. I smell the iron seeping from his red shirt. His cologne – a hint of ambergris – counteracts the stench of molten metal and charred wood and charred flesh. My knees buckle but not from the injuries. From the odors which overwhelm my senses. Sight constricts into a tight circle, a shrinking dot drifting into the background until it vanishes. Strange, though, that I am aware of the voices around me.
“He’s alive. I had him on his feet a moment ago.”
“Leave him.”
“I told you, he’s alive.”
“We need to get out, Dan. Now.”
“You go. I’ll be down in a minute.”
“Don’t be a fool. It’s right above us.”
“Take Stairwell B. I’ll be behind you.”
It’s right above us? I hear a rush like a waterfall. In its midst, a powerful voice speaks a language I don’t understand. The wind swirls and echoes and calls out, nature given voice to mock, to underscore our powerlessness as it consumes us. I call out to a God I never believed existed and ask him to save me. My eyelids flutter as I moan out the foxhole prayer.
“You’re back. You doing alright?”
I nod. My lips open. “Yeah. Just a little dizzy.”
“Can you stand up?”
I breathe out. “I think so. What happened?”
“We got hit.”
“By what?”
He doesn’t answer the question. “My name’s Dan.”
His hand reaches out to me. I take it but don’t tell him my name. My legs are firm beneath me. I check my other injuries. Other than the flayed flesh on my arms and the pounding in my head, I’m doing OK.
“I think I’ll be alright,” I tell him.
“You sure?”
“Once I catch my breath.”
“Take Stairwell B.”
“Where’s that?”
“Stairwell B,” he repeats with a little agitation as though everyone knows where to find it.
I realize the source of his agitation. “I’m visiting,” I explain.
“Oh. Bad day for a visit.” He loses his bearings for a moment and looks around. “There,” he points. “See the red emergency light?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s to the right of that. You can’t miss it. Watch out for glass on the floor.”
The comment doesn’t make sense until I look at my feet. For some reason, both shoes and one sock are missing. My brain assumes someone stole them and ponders the mystery for the eternity of a few seconds. Dan climbs over a mountain of chairs and cubicle walls, computers and bodies blocking the former hallway. The soles of his shoes are dark with soot. They disappear on the other side of the mountain.
My first few steps are tentative, plodding. I stumble forward like an amputee familiarizing himself with prosthetic limbs. Each step sends a shock of electricity through the bottom of my feet. A pair of black oxfords rests next to motionless legs. I leave them, as if taking them would be sacrilegious, and pick my way through the field of dusty, red glass.
The emergency light smiles on me, oblivious to the devastation. I open the door to the stairwell and join the start of a parade heading downstairs. The sign reads ‘Stairway B, Floor 82.’ We try to walk side by side but the narrow halls force us into almost a single file. By the time the sign reads ‘Floor 70,’ the parade falters and backs up. More than once we come to a complete stop. The wait to move becomes intolerable. The only thing moving is the building. It sways like a tree in the run up to a hurricane. A woman with red eyes falls into me. She apologizes. I’m still in shock and make no reply. Why didn’t I take the elevator?
“They’re out.”
I must have said it out loud.
“Ten people were trapped inside one of the cars when the fire swept down. I heard them screaming and banging on the doors.”
“What happened?” I ask.
She looks at me as though I’m an idiot. “They’re dead.”
I know they’re dead. What happened to the building? I want to ask a fireman pushing his way towards the top. He doesn’t have time for my questions. I take one step at a time. Pausing, moving. Pausing, moving. The building sways like a woman rocking her dying infants to sleep.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
We walk around like ghosts. Covered in plaster and pulverized concrete. Covered in disbelief or shock or numbness.
The wail of sirens bounces of the tall buildings on each side. Fire blazes in the South Tower now. We heard the explosion, felt the wave blow into us. I was sure someone had bombed the building, that the explosions came from the offices where we stood thirty minutes earlier. No one understands what happened until we step onto the street. And then we know. Not at first. First comes that awful realization which carves knots into the stomach while the mind rationalizes what took place. As the mind denies the evidence the eyes send it. Pieces of airplane – part of an engine, a melted wheel, twisted shredded metal without form – littering the pavement. Remains. Destroyed, obliterated remains of what used to be people. Red imprints on a dusty gray canvas. The woman next to me, not the same woman who escorted me the last eighty floors, turns her head so she can’t see the bodies. She makes it halfway across the plaza before her knees give out.
A warning flies across the plaza. “It’s going to fall!” Sore, tired legs fueled by fear find renewed strength. Scores of survivors flee towards safety as if they knew where that was. I stay behind to help the woman. Two months ago – heck, two hours ago – she would have been on her own. The strong survive; the weak don’t. But today I stop. So does another guy I’ve never met. Lean with strands of brown hair peeking out from a field of gray. Splotches of brown skin peeking out from dusty arms. He takes one arm; I take the other. We slide our shoulders beneath her armpits and haul her away. Her feet leave two trails through the debris. A few blocks away, we sit her beside a police car. The officer looks at us for a second. His mind is elsewhere. He can’t tell if we’re real or if we’re an illusion. He speaks into his radio and runs towards the place we fled.
My partner hands me his shoes. I start to argue but look at my feet. He runs off as I sit down to try them on. I finish but I don’t want to get up. My subconscious tells me the world has changed into something I can no longer control, into something it was never meant to be. I’m right. I just don’t know it yet.