That Day

On the road. 7 am. Listening to one of my favorite CDs when the phone rings.

"Is your TV on," asks my boss, Director of Operations for our little international startup healthcare firm.

"No, why someone get shot," I laugh with the ignorant machismo of the uninitiated.

"The company's done." The line goes dead.

Switch the audio from disc to KROQ. My normal irritation with morning DJs as soon as the tone of Kevin's voice hits me. Somber. Shocked. Nigh-hysterical.

"It could be anybody, I just don't understand, I mean, who could do something like this. . ." his words are no longer in his typical coherent syntax, rather he seems to be trying to assimilate an unforgivable reality into a carefully structured world through the medium of the sound of his own voice. Car crash survivors are much the same. People babble when nervous systems are on overload as a means of reinforcing their own existence.

The car drives itself to Claire's. At the time, my closest friend, confidant, and Grand Marnier cohort. She opens the door, eyes brimming.

Hand in hand, we silently walk into the living room and watch the replays of the jets colliding with the buildings. Tears fall unabashedly until shirtfronts are soaked. Today is one day where recriminations will find no hold and all tongues are silenced.

'Dear god, those buildings won't last,' ran headlong from my subconscious until it exploded, unwittingly and unwillingly from my mouth. Claire looks at me. I walk to the liquor cabinet as television ground crews capture the sights and sounds of people leaping from 90+ stories to their deaths rather than burning. Hell of a choice to have to make.

The collapse starts, the implosion is improbable, impossible, inadmissable. People running, screaming, hiding, covered in the ash of their fellow human beings, striving to make sense of it all. Claire and I are clinging for dear life and dearer sanity to each other, sobbing, wanting to look away, to ignore, and to find some coward's exit from the hell of it. But, we can't. We drink to forget.

Hours later, or maybe minutes later, my family calls. No one go to downtown LA today. Who knows what these crazy bastards will do next? We commiserate over a cousin who was visiting Gotham with her husband, and whose itinerary called for a WTC visit that very morning. No word as of yet. Like all others this horrid day, we pray. No atheists in foxholes, no agnostics on this day.

Later, we hear the details, the truth comes out, the story is told, and blame is placed. Many of Middle Eastern lineage openly decry the attacks. Shame that they feel the need. Sikhs and East Indians in many places are treated as though they've had a hand. Shame that our country felt the need.

For a week, tears wait in the wings. The cousin is fine, decided to spend the morning in bed. Thanks be to a loving God. The death toll climbs. Workers sift. The horror slowly subsides.
The scar is there, but the pain still remains. Who knew we could ever hurt this way?