Has it been another thousand miles? Have they lost another hour?
Will he recognize morning when it comes?
Why does it feel like Andy is still holding his hand? Will he ever let go?
How does the heart keep from breaking every second of every day?
II.
Today is the last day of the Mies van der Rohe exhibit at MoMA, and Ted decides to go see it and go into work late, because lately, the world has been blessedly free of calamity and catastrophe, and even though he and Lorraine and Piotr fill their days filing reports, great sheaves of papers to document who, where, when, and how much, an accounting that never concludes or balances, in these brief periods after disasters, they catch up and catch their breath, and on some days, the good ones, Ted doesn’t think as much about Andy, or John, or Gujarat, or Arequipa, and the times when they do pull at him — a momentary shudder, a sudden vertigo, a burst of tears — Ted waits until this old friend has concluded his business and decides to move on, so today, Ted takes the L into town, but at Union Square, the conductor comes on and says that, due to a shutdown, everyone needs to get off, and Ted doesn’t mind, because this late summer morning is warm and dry, perfect for walking, and as he exits the station and walks up the stairs, he closes his eyes to the sunlight and emerges into the day, but as he walks up Fifth, he notices that everyone is looking south, and he’s the only person facing north, and it’s discomfiting, like he’s being willfully obstinate in his refusal to turn around, like there’s something wrong with him and not everyone else, and he’s only passed four blocks when the noise comes, not a single noise, but an aggregate noise, as if the entire city were concentrated in this one sound, and when he turns to look, black smoke rises into the sky and — he can hardly believe it — the first tower sinks into the ground, as if deflating: the concrete collapses, the glass collapses, people collapse: this is the source of the sound, and it happens so suddenly that Ted almost doesn’t believe it’s real; no, it can’t be real; Ted’s throat is very dry, and he feels it crack like a brittle bone, and he wonders, What can I do? but he’s too numb to move, and he stares at the space where something should have been, but there’s nothing, just a trail of smoke that should have been attached to something; on the other tower, the second plume of smoke hangs there, as if waiting for a signal, and Ted, like the others around him, stands and watches as if there’s nothing to do but watch: disasters cannot be prevented; they can only be witnessed; and so he witnesses the second tower’s fall with another monstrous noise that makes him want to cover his ears and turn away, but he witnesses this too, and a numbness settles into him, into his chest, a cessation of thought, his mind stops its chatter, and in its place, an eerie stillness takes over, a stillness that feels as unreal as anything else today, and Ted sits on some nearby steps; in the distance, in the air, things flutter down, irretrievable things, motes of dust and ash, whispering sheets of paper, things that did not escape the destruction but just take longer to fall; Ted watches their final descent and loses sight of them in the cloud billowing on the ground, but even as he realizes that the cloud won’t reach him this far uptown, he wonders,
What can I do? — but there’s nothing to be done; in the days and weeks to come, maybe, there will be things to be done, but right now, nothing, and as Ted sits and traces the path of objects in the air, a woman kneels in front of him, and she clasps his hand, sandwiches it tight between hers, and Ted has never seen her before in his life, this old woman, and she tells him, “It’ll be all right,” and Ted wants to ask, Will it? but he’s too numb to speak; he’d almost say it’s shock, but he sees too clearly for that: morning still overhead, the unblinking sun, traffic lights going through their cycles of stop and go, and everyone around him, themselves stunned, dazed by what they’ve seen, trapped in the same dream as Ted, a willful suspension of reality, and the old woman presses his hand tight, gives it a little shake, and lets go; Why is she comforting me? he wonders, and he decides that he should do something, though he’s unsure what, so he keeps walking north, away from the unreal part of the city, the shrouded city, and reaches, at last, the Museum of Modern Art, but the revolving door won’t revolve, and the entrance door won’t open: they’re closed; they might never have opened, and the workers inside huddle together, glowing by the light of a television, and Ted wants to knock on the glass, to catch their attention, but they don’t see him, and he feels upset, not that he’s missed the exhibit, but because life has somehow changed in ways he can’t begin to foresee: here is the precipice of the unknown, and here he is, on its edge; here is the water, and here he is, walking; he fears this unknowability, and it rains down upon him like sunlight, like ash, and he continues farther north, into Central Park, where each tree seems unfamiliar and the smell of cut grass doesn’t comfort him; it’s late summer, and this will be the last mow of the season, and some of the leaves are dying on the trees, edges crisp and brown; the rest of the world has accepted this new order of things, and Ted — well, Ted continues toward Belvedere Castle, along the paths, and once again, he’s the only one not facing south, but he blunders forth anyway, because what else can he do? — he feels like he too could collapse at any moment, disappear in a puff of dust and smoke, and as he approaches the sturdy brown stones of Belvedere Castle, looming in front of him, a park ranger waves his hands: “Go back, go back,” the ranger says. “You can’t come up here,” as if the castle were also in danger of collapse, as if nowhere were safe, and Ted can do nothing but turn around and make his way south, though by now, the afternoon has passed him by, and the sunlight makes where the towers should have been a golden haze, and some people are crying, some people are discussing what has happened and what they should do now, and Ted walks through conversations, the detritus of words left in the air, and he hears speculations, fears, and angers — no different, really, from any other disaster, except that this one has happened to us, and we don’t know what to do, and there, in Gramercy Park, he comes across movers who have stopped their work to stare, and they lean, wordlessly, on a heavy chest of drawers, as if it alone keeps them upright, and the dresser’s owner pleads with them, “I’ll give you extra to keep working,” and Ted doesn’t understand why they don’t jump at the chance to do something that will, if only momentarily, give them purpose, and Ted, still purposeless, returns to Union Square to find the L back in service, and as the subway cars trundle underground, the passengers sit quietly, consumed by their own thoughts; couples comfort each other, and tears fill their eyes and spill out, and Ted thinks of what’s above him, the feet, the tires, the flow; he thinks about people in other places of the world, how they’ve resumed their lives; maybe the missing buildings to the south are too far away from them to be real, and it seems, to them, like a mass hallucination because, for them, it’s as if nothing has changed; and Ted wishes it were true, because if nothing has changed, then his course of action should be clear — but it’s not; his path is occluded, like he hasn’t fully woken yet; he’s a sleepwalker in the city, and this dream has pressed down upon him all day and refuses to let up, and when he gets home, maybe he can get some sleep and the dream will finally release its grip on him, but when he reaches his apartment, he has six voice mail messages waiting; the first is from his parents: did he see what happened, and isn’t it terrible?; the second doesn’t leave a message, but dangles for five seconds before hanging up; the third is Lorraine, telling him that they’re having an emergency meeting, she’ll tell him all about it tomorrow, and be ready for — something, she isn’t sure what yet; the fourth is another hang-up, a longer interval this time before clicking off; the fifth is obviously a wrong number, because a woman chatters in Spanish, breathless and excited, and Ted hears, in her voice, confusion, excitement, fear; and the sixth waits for what seems like a minute before speaking: “I’m just calling to make sure”—and Ted catches his breath, it’s Dev, and Dev lapses into silence, as if all language were a failure, and in the background, Ted hears a child yelling and a baby crying—“to make sure you’re all right,” Dev concludes before pausing again, maybe suspecting Ted was screening the calls, and he lets loose an exhalation of breath that’s almost a sigh, which cuts off as he hangs up, and Ted picks up the phone to hear a tone totally unfamiliar to him, a sharp, piercing sound that tells him that all the lines are busy, but he dials anyhow and doesn’t get through: everyone in New York is calling out, and everyone in the world is calling in; the air is clogged with failed communication; cell phone towers melt under the strain, satellites overhead explode, unable to keep up with the demand, but he tries again, with still no luck; the news shows the planes flying into the towers repeatedly, as if repetition were a method of confirmation, and from where Ted sits, he sees the southern tip of Manhattan, an unreal city on a cloud, something out of a fairy tale, but Ted can’t look anymore; he can’t take it, he can’t take the collapse, the damage, the dust; he wants to know that the world hasn’t forgotten him; that, in this moment, someone will make sure the fracture isn’t a break; that, in these moments after disasters, people are reaching out, so even though all the lines are still busy, all the lines are occupied, he tries, again and again and again, until — finally — he connects—