THE SURVIVORS:
I was on the 9 train the day the bodies fell from the sky. I was going to pick up a proofreading check on Wall Street. I remember I was alone among all the lawyers and suits -- bare knees, combats, oversized flight jacket -- watching the ghost stations flash by through the grimy open window of our subway car. Sparks off the tracks illuminated the labyrinth of underground tunnels and lit up the squalid mugs of vagrants that shunned the light of day for their dark, forgotten passageways.
There was the horrible stench of a man that had urinated on himself. He sat bundled in a Yankees’ sweatshirt by the door while everyone else stood in their pressed slacks on the opposite end, glancing at their wristwatches. I was no fan of the reek of piss, but I wondered if anyone knew how broke I was and how I didn’t blame the smelly man for giving up on himself.
Suddenly, there was a horrible sound. The conductor hit the breaks and the train’s wheels squealed like a drove of slaughtered swine. Then, silence.
It was only September, but it was cold that day. I huddled deeper into my flight jacket and waited for some kind of announcement.
About a month earlier, I’d purchased the jacket at Metropolis on Third Ave for $95 dollars, the remaining sum from my first short story sale to DIVA magazine. It was about three sizes too large for my body and the hood was so enormous it swallowed my entire face like a furball eclipse. I wore it to Barnes and Nobles and stood menacingly in the magazine aisle waiting for the off-chance miracle that I might catch someone reading my words. But I always got bored and ended up ordering another mocha before wandering home to my Tokyo-style shoebox on St. Mark’s.
“Ladies and Gentlemen….” the intercom crackled to life. “There’s been an explosion up ahead. We’re gonna sit tight for a bit. We appreciate your patience and we’ll get the train moving as soon as we can.”
The suits groaned. The man who had peed remained asleep, his head mashed into the corner beneath an advertisement full of white, toothy grins.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a stout little fellow dart past me into the next car, a screenplay tucked under his arm.
“Dan,” I thought, hugging myself and rocking back and forth to the hum of the stalled train.
It had been about four months since Dan jumped off the George Washington Bridge. I saw him constantly since that time – at the pizza joint, at the movies, on the subway. He seemed really busy since his death. In life, he had been what people called a "nobody". A nobody that was my friend.
“MY FRIEND!” I screamed under my breath, under the sound of the mumbled discontent that now rose from the suits and the vagrants alike.
“What a rip-off, Dan,” I cursed him in my head.
I pictured his body sinking to the bottom of the Hudson River and I pictured his round, pink cheeks filling up with anchovies and bottle caps. Then with sickening clarity I saw his dead blue lips mouth, “What’s the one thing that has always saved your life? Cause I know it wasn’t god…”
We were in a dingy church basement when he asked me that question and I remember his Zeke tee shirt and black cons were out of synch with the stained glass windows and red velvet prayer kneelers. A half hour later we were out eating pizza on 12th street and I felt I could trust this guy with my life.
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” the conductor spat through the racket of radio static. “It appears some kind of bomb may have exploded. We’re waiting in line to arrive at 14th street, at which point we will evacuate the train. Until then, your patience is greatly appreciated.”
A frost of fear settled over the subway car. The suits looked up like lost young boys, blue eyes wide with apprehension.
To pass the time I thought about my goldfish, Charles Bronson, and how much I hated his guts. He had once had a twin -- a weaker, paler version of himself named Billy, and once when I went out of town, the two fish were left alone with a housesitter. Charles, the bully, ate his brother’s food pellets and Billy fell ill and died.
The train lurched forwards.
I thought about it some more, and felt that Billy probably died of a shocked and broken heart, not understanding the true nature of competition. Pitted against his own family, he just lost his appetite and floated peacefully to the surface, gold fins shimmering in the fluorescent light of the shoebox.
The train finally crawled through the blackness and into the station. The doors flew open and the businessmen hurried out to chase down taxis. The homeless man opened his eyes.
“This is our stop, Buddy,” I said to him.
He shuddered, and with an angry tug of his baseball cap he tried to get back to dreaming.
I got up and made my way to the street. Black flecks of snowflake soot floated through the air and got marooned on my eyelashes.
“It’s the End of the World,” a man shouted. “The End with a capital E!”
He ran an index finger across his throat, slitting it.
I looked down the street. The people were rushing towards Sixth Avenue. Everyone was running in heels and oxfords. A few of the women wearing suits had their Reeboks on and they ran faster than everyone else.
The wind blew newspapers into the street, a gust of New York Times. A sheet of the op ed section stuck to my leg. I pried it off and the wind sucked it back into the sky where it sailed above the buildings like a dragon, full of rage and defiance.
On the corner everyone shoved into the narrow belly of a bodega -- potato chips and lotto tickets. I made my way to the back of the crowd and found a spot next the licorice bucket.
Up on the wall, the TV showed a plane sticking out of a building. The building was burning and tiny bodies leapt out of its sides. Bodies the size of ants leaping into the flames.
“OOOOOOHHH!” The crowd gasped in shock as a second plane exploded into the second building.
I was out the door. I was running fast now. Running downtown. The stiff leather of my white docs sliced into my ankles. I ran down Sixth Avenue towards the smoke. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Dan. He was running too.
11th, 10th, 9th. I ran east to A and cut through a church where people were trying to pray.
All the eyes turned towards me in horror.
And I was gone again, back out on the street running downtown. The Red Cross had erected a shelter on 5th. They were giving out peanuts and crackers and inside a gymnasium they’d set up cots with blankets and pillows. I kept running.
The police had set up barricades. I felt the orange and white bars plunge into my solar plexus as I tried to get past.
The sky was completely black now. People covered their faces with handkerchiefs and sleeves, squinting. I saw Dan had gotten through the barricade and was wandering down into the debris.
“Do you live down here, Miss?” asked a cop.
Dan put a finger to his lips. “Shhhhhh.”
I shook my head. I’d seen the Towers every night from my window growing up. There were no children in my world, only buildings, the skyline, the snow, the asphalt dynasty of my city that no one could crush. And now someone had taken a plane and smashed it all to smithereens.
Everyone was on the phone calling the people they loved. I stood in the intersection staring at the clouds of ash, searching, searching.
“LOVE SOMEONE. LOVE SOMEONE!”
But I didn’t.
Dan shook his head. “You must love… someone?”
A woman was on her knees wailing. The cops were trying to get her out of the street. Her husband was dead. I turned my back on her and started walking back to 9th and A. I was going to need some money. It would be a while before my temp agency could cut me a check.
I passed the Red Cross again. They’d opened a counseling station for people to go talk about their grief, for people to express their shock. I ducked inside the little shack and sat down on a folding chair with mangled, metal legs. My hands felt like uncomely racks of lamb tied to my wrists with twine.
“Are you alright?” said a kind woman as she tried to nurture me with tap water from a paper cup.
I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. For the next three hours nothing would.
Later that night as the Empire State Building flashed the silent red-blue alarm of an ambulance siren, I wandered back to St. Mark’s to my shoebox. It was a long flight of stairs to the 4th floor and when I got to the top, I found a plastic bag hanging on my doorknob. Inside were two Little Debbie’s cakes, one with raisins and one with pink coconut.
I retraced my steps down the hallway and knocked on a door at the end of the corridor. The door opened a crack and an aging, craggy face peeked out of the dimness. A face chocolate-chipped with pockmarks, moles and scars. This was my magnanimous neighbor, Reno. He was our resident over-the-hill rock star who taught me licks and left me snacks. A relic of the LES who took the time to care for the other refugees shacked up in the adjacent shoebox efficiencies.
“Thank you,” I said, taking a chunky bite out of the cake.
I smiled for the first time all day, my teeth notched with pointy shards of pink coconut.
He mumbled a few bars about “as a friend, as an old enemy” and returned to his pipe. I went back to my room and played some tunes on the guitar with the missing D string.
Then, because I could bear no more death that day, I fed Charles Bronson an extra serving of fish pellets.
