Your first instinct is to grab your cellphone. But since it’s a first instinct, everyone else has had the same idea and the networks are jammed. As I anxiously press the green “redial” button, I try to convince the boys that this suffocating darkness is just a funfair ride.
“You’ll see: any minute now they’ll send in a fake rescue team, it’s gonna be wicked! That black cloud’s really well done, isn’t it?”
The stockbroker couple look at me pityingly.
“Jesus!” says the blonde in Ralph Lauren. “Let’s get the hell out of this sauna.”
The dark-haired guy gets up and runs for the elevators, dragging his lover by the hand. I fall in behind, a child on each arm. But the elevators are out of order. Behind her desk, the receptionist is sobbing.
“I’m not trained for this kind of thing…We’re supposed to evacuate via the stairs. Follow me…”
The majority of Windows on the World customers haven’t waited for her. They’re already crammed into the smoke-filled stairwell. They cough in single file. A black security guard throws up in a trash can. He’s already been down four floors.
“I’ve just been down there, it’s hell, don’t go, the whole place is blazing!”
We go anyway. It’s utter chaos: the crash has knocked out all means of communication with the outside world. I turn to Jerry and David who have started whimpering.
“C’mon, kids, if we’re gonna win the game, we can’t let them think they’ve fooled us. So, no panicking, please, otherwise we’ll be eliminated. Just follow your dad and we’ll try and get downstairs. You both played Dungeons and Dragons, right? The winners are always the ones who are best at bluffing the enemy. If we show any signs of weakness, we’ll lose the game, got it?”
The two brothers nod politely.
I realize I’ve forgotten to describe myself. I used to be striking, later I was handsome, later still, not so bad, now I’m all right. I read a lot of books, and underline the sentences I like (like all autodidacts) (that’s why autodidacts are often the most cultivated people: they spend their whole life preparing for an exam they never took). On a good day I look like Bill Pullman, the actor (he was the President in Independence Day). On a bad day I look more like Robin Williams if he was prepared to play a Texan realtor with a funny walk, a receding hairline, and crow’s feet around the eyes (too much sun, yeah!). In a couple of years’ time, I’ll be a perfectly good candidate for the “George W. Bush lookalike contest”; if I survive, that is.
Jerry’s my oldest son, that’s why he’s so serious. The first-born have to put up with the teething problems. He reminds me of my mother. I like the way he takes everything so seriously. I can get him to believe anything, he’ll swallow anything, but afterwards, he hates me for lying to him. Honest, sincere, brave: Jerry is the man I should have been. Sometimes I think he despises me. I think I disappoint him. Oh well: it’s a father’s destiny to disappoint his son. Look at Luke Skywalker, his father is Darth Vader! Jerry is exactly like I was at his age: he believes in the order of things, he’s impatient for everything to come good. Later, he’ll lose his illusions. I hope he doesn’t. I hope his eyes will always be so honest, so blue. I need you, Jerry. In the old days, kids depended on their parents to guide them. Now it’s the opposite.
David, well, of course, being two years younger, David constantly doubts everything: his blond bangs, the point of going to school, the existence of Santa Claus or the Hanson Brothers. He hardly ever talks, except to yank his brother’s chain. In the beginning, Mary and I thought there might be something wrong with him: he’s never cried in his life, even when he was born. He doesn’t ask for anything, doesn’t say anything, remains eloquently silent; but I know that doesn’t mean he agrees. He spends his life in front of a video game and sometimes manages to cream the machine. His favorite hobby is winding up Jerry, but I know that he would die for him. What would he be without his big bro? Anything he wanted probably, just as I am now I’ve moved away from my sister. David bites his nails, and when his fingernails are down to the quick, he starts in on his toenails. If he had nails anywhere else—his nose, his elbows, his knees—he’d bite those too, you can count on it. He does it in silence. It’s great having a kid who never cries, I’m not complaining, but it’s a bit scary sometimes. I like it when he scratches his head, pretending to think. I’m forty-three and recently I’ve started to imitate him. As I said before: these days, parents imitate their kids. Do you know a better way of staying young? David is a little monkey: grouchy, scrawny, pale, irritable, and misanthropic. He reminds me of my father. Maybe he is my father! Jerry’s my mother and David’s my father. “MOM, DAD, COME AND GIMME A BIG HUG!” “Oh God, David—” Jerry sounds alarmed—”the old man’s lost it.”
David looks at me and frowns but says nothing, as usual. We’ve just reached the 105th floor.