12:23 p.m.
The Man in the White Shirt found himself in a blizzard of memos and printouts, business cards and stationery, paper towels and copy paper, swirling through the air.
Blowing up the street from the south, where the towers once stood.
Strangely, it reminded him of a ticker-tape parade he’d gone to a few years ago, when the Yankees won the World Series. He’d taken off work, made it a father-son outing. He smiled at the memory; it was one of their best days together.
The sound of breaking glass cut into his thoughts. He’d stepped on a picture frame: someone’s family photo. A father and son. How had it landed here, so many blocks away? Did someone drop it while running? Or had it been hurled all this distance? He lifted the photo and leaned it against a building, where someone could find it if they came looking. He knew it was pointless, but he just couldn’t leave the family behind on the pavement.
As he straightened up, he caught a glimpse of himself in a store window: a gray ghost stared back. When he left home this morning, he was wearing a white shirt and dark pants and shoes. Now, he was coated top to bottom with ash and soot; his hair, his face—even his eyelashes were coated in a fine gray powder.
He slapped at his pants, trying to knock out the dust. He noticed that even though the pants were now the color of old snow, somehow, the crease held its line. And where the fabric was creased, no dust clung to it. He couldn’t stop staring at that razor-sharp line. It seemed so out of place, a reminder of how normal and ordinary his life had been when he left home this morning.