Cataclysm
At my mahogany desk, I read through my work e-mails with no sound around me but the moribund whir of the central air conditioner. Fifty-two new messages from co-workers, acquaintances and just plain strangers but for an exchange of business cards one drunken night. They sent me messages of general condolence, and forwards about eerie coincidences and biblical prophecies. I felt as if some of them were vicariously trying to become part of the drama by writing to someone in the city. I played my part without bothering to explain that my apartment was entire populations away from the World Trade Center. I answered most with a brief “I’m okay. Thank you for your concern. Geez, it’s been awhile, huh . . .”
No bankers were calling that day to see the progress of their deals. Part of me wished they would, just so that I would have incontrovertible proof that they were in fact rapacious denizens of a soulless world. For a few seconds I practiced the exact intonations I would use when I responded sanctimoniously with, “Are you kidding me? You must be kidding, right?”
I did get a call at around 1:00 P.M. but not from a banker. “Surprised you’re there,” the voice said when I answered. After a moment, I realized it was George, a chubby Korean guy who had been a friend since high school. He worked as a tech support assistant at a management consulting firm near Times Square. “Boss left me a message last night asking me to make an American flag screensaver for all the computers at the company this morning. I couldn’t believe it. Well, I’m done. Moron doesn’t realize that kind of thing takes me about thirty seconds, and I’m not gonna tell him. Dude, let’s get drunk,” George said.
About 15 minutes later, we met at a Koreatown bar on 32nd Street, though I felt a little uncomfortable about being in the shadow of the Empire State Building. We didn’t go to one of the fancier bars, but one with wood panels and cheap wobbly tables. He made a toast. “Peace on earth and goodwill to men.” Then, we drank beer for about three hours without speaking much.
At 6 P.M., we stepped outside and the early evening’s weather was as perfect as the morning’s. George walked to Penn Station to catch the subway, but the thought of sitting at home made me feel pensive. I bought a 40-ounce at the corner deli, and walked downtown on Broadway until I reached Union Square, which had metamorphosized into a makeshift shrine for the victims. Entering from the north side, I realized that for the first time in my life, New York was flooded with sincere emotion. Earnest, candle-bearing vigils for missing strangers. A crowd gathered around a guitar player singing “Amazing Grace” with a spectral, empathetic voice. Clumsily painted murals entreating us to love each other in multi-hued bubble letters. Countless flowers of every variety and arrangement lying like a rainbow-colored carpet for all of the fallen. New Yorkers would have laughed at these sights just two days before. But at least for that day and a good number that followed, when everyone neglected to don the overwrought New York emotional armor that guards against showing any reaction except disdain., they were embraced without reservation. In that moment, the streets were awash with a primordial rawness that a barrage of telethons and glossed political speeches had yet to sculpt into something more mawkish.
After spending a few minutes walking around the Square drinking my malt liquor, I walked home, passing by what felt like a long hallway wallpapered by the faces of the missing. From Union Square to the Armory to Bellevue Hospital, missing person posters were plastered against every available edifice. I walked by dozens of people busily putting up more posters and waiting for news that their loved ones were alive, which at that point seemed eminently possible. Averting eye contact, I finished my bottle as I made my way through the last few yards home.
When I got to my 20-story apartment building, I mumbled a few words of condolence to my doorman and, drunk as I was, decided to walk up all 14 floors to my apartment. As I started my climb, the echoes of my footsteps on the cement steps reminded me how good the acoustics were in the stairwell, so I sang “Amazing Grace” as best I could. I felt vaguely self-aware that this was a cloyingly sentimental reaction to what was happening, like crying during a long distance phone commercial, but I couldn’t help myself.
As I collapsed into my compact apartment and lay down in my bed alone, I listened to the distended sirens by Bellevue drone on without rest. That chemical stench I noticed in the morning had wafted into my room through the vents. I knew quite acutely then that I had to absorb, remember and even enjoy that night. All of those other nights of my life in which I was supposed to undergo some life-transforming event (prom night, graduation days, and first kisses) were anti-climatic, even tawdry, and never became marking posts to look back upon for life perspective. But on a night like that night, a night like no other, I knew that in the next few transcendent days, millions would coalesce in search of purpose. Indulging myself in this tragic and surreal melodrama, I tried my best to radiate from my bedroom a psychic gift of a night without fear to all the drunken wretches like me afraid to tackle the suddenly baleful world with a sober face.
That night, I slept like I was on the edge of death, a sleep so deep that when I finally awoke in my pitch black bedroom, I had to turn on the news to check what day it was. As I watched CNN, I realized I had slept until 7:30 P.M. the next day.
Thankfully, I remembered no dreams.
