There was a soft flapping sound as a steady rain of printer-paper sheets fell down around me. The dust above must have been doing something to the light, because everything was tinted with a strange, unreal bluish tinge.
I walked up the wide sidewalk around a haphazard maze of splintered desks, smashed office chairs, and cracked computer screens. I blinked down at an intact framed bachelor’s degree from Tulane University propped up against the gutter as if someone had placed it there.
As I continued my approach, a tall, skinny black bike messenger with a scratched face silently staggered past in the street, covered in a pale-gray coating of dust.
Then I came closer and saw something really amazing.
People were already up on the mound of debris, a dozen or so people. There were a few uniformed cops, but mostly they were civilians—office workers, a guy in a white doctor’s coat, a loose line of people silently passing down debris and rubble.
I climbed up over some chunks of concrete, immediately joining them. As the dry, stale taste of concrete and drywall dust filled my nostrils and mouth, I accepted a huge hunk of concrete from a short, Italian-looking guy in a ruined pin-striped suit above me. As I turned to heave it, I saw that a burly uniformed security guard had arrived behind me, waiting to accept it.
“What happened?” the guard said to me as I passed him the concrete.
I squinted at him. He was a really distinctive-looking guy. He had longish brown hair under his navy ball cap and bright, light-blue eyes. He must have played football in college or something, because he was jacked.
“Someone said it was a plane,” he said as I continued to stare at him stupidly. “Was it a plane?”
After he handed the concrete to the next person down the line, I shook my head and carefully passed him the two-yard length of fractured rebar I’d just been handed.
“It was explosives,” I finally said. “I saw it. They blew it. Someone took it down with high explosives or something. Demo’d it, like. I didn’t see a plane.”
That’s when my cell phone went off in my pocket. I crouched down in the wreckage, frenziedly wiping the dust-covered screen to see who was calling.
I closed my eyes with relief as my heart somersaulted in my chest.
All was not lost. There was still hope. A tiny drop.
“Emily?!” I yelled as I put the phone to my ear.
“Mike! Are you okay?” she said. “We got hit. I just made it out of the building. Someone said you guys were hit as well. Are you okay?”
Thank you, God. You came through. Thank you. And Saint Michael. You guys came through. I owe you.
I clenched back my tears of relief. Then I couldn’t anymore.
“Yes,” I said, wiping dust and tears off my face. “I’m fine. Perfect now. Where are you?”
“On the west side of Broadway near Worth.”
“Okay, stay where you are. I’m coming to you.”
When I stood and turned around again to ask the muscular security guard to take my place in line, I stopped and just stood there blinking.
Because all of a sudden the guy, whoever he had been, whatever he had been, was gone.