The Business Interruption Facility was a large room filled with rows of tables with old computer monitors on them. There were little American flags on sticks taped to the side of each monitor. Two hundred or so people from various departments sat elbow to elbow at the tables in third-hand office chairs or folding chairs. It was loud and hot. In the back was a room with more tables and coolers. The tables were covered with baskets of Pop-Tarts, Nutter Butters, Oreos, Hershey bars, Fritos, Rice Krispie Treats, chocolate balls, chocolate drops, SunChips, pretzels, potato chips, Lorna Doones, Famous Amos, snack-size peanuts, Quaker Oat bars, Nutri-Grain bars, Sunflower Nutty Nuggets, shiny waxed green apples, bunches of spotted bananas. The coolers were stocked with water and juice and hundreds of cans of Pepsi and Coke. There were dispensers of regular and decaf coffee, baskets of sugar-free sweeteners and nondairy creamers. Every day around noon a free lunch was wheeled in. A line formed along the far wall of the BIF. People entered the food room on one side and came out the other side holding paper plates piled high with pepper steak and curly fries or eggplant parmesan or cheese tortellini or hamburgers or veggie burgers or General Tso’s chicken or tuna salad sandwiches. In the front of the room were two tables for eating or lounging but those filled up quickly so lunch was typically eaten at your work station, where you were packed so tightly you could hear the people around you biting, chewing, sipping, swallowing, burping under their breath. There were few food options outside the Harborside complex so if you wanted to eat elsewhere you could take a prepaid meal card and eat at a food court called the Harborside Club that had grill, sandwich, and pasta stations. If you wanted to step out for some air you could walk to the waterfront, stand at the rail, and look over at the smoke billowing out of the hole directly across the river.
There weren’t enough seats for our group in the BIF. A rotating schedule was established where people worked in the BIF some days and offsite other days. My offsite location was on Spring Street, in the offices of the design firm that produced our materials. At either location I did very little.
In the BIF I ate constantly and fried my mind on the Internet. Billie and Sarah were seated on another part of the floor that had actual offices and cubicles. I spent a lot of time over there talking to them.
There were dozens of new women around, displaced workers from other groups and other floors. I ran sex fantasies nonstop. I wanted to fuck constantly. I would fixate on new women daily, imagine fucking them in some hidden nook somewhere—or better yet in the food room, business-casual clothes sweaty, torn half off, bare asses crunching bags of cookies and chips.
On Spring Street I read the Internet and wrote in my journal. Often I would leave the office and take long walks. One day I went up to St. Mark’s Bookshop and saw that Baines’s story had come out in the Paris Review. I read the first couple pages and put it back on the shelf.
I stopped shaving, figured I would try to grow my first beard.
Frank, Patrick, and I left work early and took a ferry across the river. We made our way without speaking up to the site. The sidewalks were jammed with tourists taking pictures. Certain streets were blocked off. It was difficult to get around. The air had an acrid burning-chemical smell. Black smoke rose from the pile. The charred, broken shell of Five World Trade Center was visible. We stood looking for a while. None of us spoke. Then we started to make our way south. On Broadway and Dey Street a woman stood holding a tray of cookies in front of a new establishment called Cookie Island. A banner over the sign said GRAND OPENING. The woman smiled helplessly as we approached.
—Free sample? she said.
—Sure.
We each took a cookie and ate.
Shortly before the attack, as a result of Bush’s massive tax overhaul, I’d received my three hundred dollar rebate check from the government. I brought the check to work and put it in a drawer. Along with a folder of old manuscripts it was the only thing of any value in my desk. I’d been conflicted about the check. In a weird way I saw it as a slap in the face. Certainly three hundred dollars was nothing to sneeze at. But I knew the real beneficiaries of the tax cuts were the wealthy and to those most in need three hundred dollars would likely be negligible. In a minor act of protest—my first—I’d planned on donating the money to charity rather than using it for its stated purpose, shopping. I’d been trying to decide which charity when the building was destroyed.
Now I felt differently. Now I wanted my money.
Sitting in the BIF I dialed a general information number for the IRS. I was transferred around till I got the right department. I explained the situation, thinking the words World Trade Center would open all doors. I was told the period for cutting new checks had passed.
—Right but surely you understand. This is sort of an usual situation.
—I understand that, sir. But—
—I mean I’m not making this up here. This isn’t some scam.
—Sir I’m not sug—
—Check your records, your logs or whatever. I haven’t cashed it or anything. The check doesn’t exist anymore.
—Sir if you had—
—What? If I had what? Called a month ago, before the check was destroyed?
—There was a window in which we were cutting substitute checks.
—Yes?
—And I’m afraid there’s not—there’s just nothing we can do at this point. Now what I can do is put you in touch with a taxpayer advocate who c—
—A what?
—A taxpayer advocate.
—Okay. What’s that?
—A taxpayer advocate is someone who’ll work with you t—
—You know what? No. I don’t wanna talk to any taxpayer advocate. I just want my three hundred fucking dollars.
—Sir please—
—Do you understand what I’m telling you here? My check was in the World Trade Center. Do you know what that means? Do you watch the news?
I sensed watchers, listeners. Charlotte sat an inch from me, staring at her monitor. I raised my voice and continued.
—I didn’t even want that check. Did you know that? I mean come on, three hundred dollars? Do you have any idea what three hundred dollars even buys these days?
—Not a whole lot. And I’ll tell you another thing. I didn’t vote for George Bush and I didn’t want his fucking tax cuts. But what I want you to do now is click the little box on your computer that says you’ll send me a new check. My other check blew up. And I need a new one.
Silence.
—Sir I’m truly sorry. I am. But there’s noth—
I slammed the phone down. Charlotte’s Coke splashed on her keyboard. She cursed me. I sat there shaking. I got up and left.
Saturday night I ordered Thai food and watched a Yankees–Devil Rays game on TV. It was a boring game and the Devil Rays won. After that I called Billie. We talked for a while and then I called Sarah. I knew she’d bought a used car in Atlanta and had driven it back to New York. I told her I was lonely and begged her to come pick me up. Sarah said she was strapped and made me promise to pay her gas money. An hour later she called from the street. Ozzie was in the passenger seat, sleeping through Alicia Keys. I got in back. We drove to Sarah’s place. She put Ozzie to sleep in her bed. We lay on the couch in the living room. We held each other and talked. It was the first time we’d ever been this close.
The lights were out. The TV was on at a low volume, filling the room with its soothing glow. I was attracted to Sarah but there was something else tied up in it now too. The thing I’d been looking for in Jenny’s eyes at the Chinese restaurant—a mix of ecstasy, horror, fear, the awareness of the frailty and absurdity of life—was here in this room. We lay there talking till after midnight. It was comforting just to lie in her arms.
She slept in her bed with Ozzie. I slept on Ozzie’s twin bed in his closet-size room. I made Sarah dig out a fan so I could hear the white noise.
Ozzie woke me early the next morning by grabbing my hand and slapping me five. We watched Looney Tunes together till Sarah got up.
On the drive back to my place Ozzie put in a Jadakiss CD and cranked it. “We Gonna Make It” filled the car. Listening to that song on the BQE, Brooklyn speeding past me, I felt large and powerful, like the three of us—and maybe only the three of us—were safe and would be all right somehow. Fuck the frail shit.
Later that day Erin rode her bike over. I hadn’t seen her since the weekend at Paul and Trish’s, though we’d talked on the phone a few times. We sat in my room talking. I got up and went to the bathroom. When I came back she was sitting at my desk. I lay on the bed. There was a moment of silence. Erin turned to me.
—So what’d you say you did last night?
—Last night? Nothing. Ordered Amarin. Watched the Yankees.
—Who’s Sarah?
—What?
She looked away. —I’m such an idiot, she said.
—What are you talking about?
—I read your journal.
—You w—
—Just now. When you were in the bathroom. I read it.
It was there on the desk next to her elbow.
—You read my journal?
—I didn’t mean to. I saw some papers sticking out of it and opened it for a second. I saw the date. You wrote you were lying around with a girl named Sarah.
—Sarah’s my coworker. I work with her.
—Right. Just like you worked with Samantha.
—Erin—
—I thought it was one of your stories. You always show me your stories. And I went to look at it and it just happened.
—Erin listen to me—
—What? You’ve done it. You read Elise Pratt’s journal. Remember? You used to tell me about it and laugh.
I lay back and stared straight ahead.
—Maybe you should leave.
—What? It was an accident, Bryan. Bryan. Look at me.
I looked at her and didn’t say anything.
—You are so cruel to me. How can you be so cruel to me, Bryan?
—I don’t know.
—God the way you’re looking at me right now. If you could see your face. If you could hear your voice the way I hear it. What’s the matter with you?
I turned away from her. She sat in the chair and cried. I lay there looking at my stereo. After a few minutes she stood and walked out of the room and out of the apartment. I could hear her crying in the hallway and all the way down the stairs. The window was open. I heard her unlock her bike and pedal away.
I came out of the PATH station and walked toward Harborside. Across from Harborside at another big complex hundreds of people were standing on the sidewalk and in the street. Office workers continued to file out of the building. There were several cop cars and an ambulance out front.
—What the hell happened? I asked a guy next to me.
—Bomb scare, he said.
I continued on to the BIF, where I sat with Whelan and some others. Soon we all left. We rode in a convoy of vans through Jersey City and arrived at a church. The pews filled in. Tom Swift’s memorial service began. I stared at a laminated photo that had been given out with the programs. It had been taken the day Tom got his MBA. He wore a cap and gown and was smiling. Some of Tom’s friends spoke and then his brother came up. His brother resembled him and as he was speaking I started to cry.
—I love you, Tommy, he said, —forever and ever and ever.
I began to resent the firefighters-and-cops-as-heroes narrative being spun by the mayor, the media, and to a certain extent the firefighters and cops themselves. Initially I’d been swept up in it too. I referred to rescue workers as heroes in several interviews. I praised the steady hand of Giuliani, whom I’d long considered a creep. As the days wore on—as people continued to applaud and salute passing fire trucks, to speak and write with reverence of the unparalleled bravery and quick thinking of the firemen they claimed had saved countless lives—it began to eat away at me. I’d seen the photos of firemen going up the stairwell as everyone else went down. But I’d personally seen no rescue workers or security people till I was down on the mezzanine. That didn’t mean they weren’t there. Obviously they were and several hundred of them had died. I didn’t discount that. But of the casualties, many hundreds more—into the thousands, no one knew the precise number—were workaday employees of all varieties doing unglamorous jobs. Weren’t their lives in a sense heroic? Didn’t they deserve elaborate funerals with heads of state in attendance and dramatic bagpipe salutes? Didn’t they deserve the applause of the masses? Yes, the firemen had gone against human instinct and entered a burning building. But thousands of people were already inside, fighting fear and chaos and the unknown. It’s not like each one of us was carried to safety on the back of a cool-headed fireman. No, the only official word we got was that things were under control and to go sit back down. Wasn’t there anything heroic about confused and scared-shitless office workers keeping it together—banding together—enough to buck the odds and make it out alive?
The terrible days passed. I waited for the other shoe to drop. Every time the subway or PATH train slowed to a halt in the tunnel a deep sense of unease would permeate the train car. I panicked if I didn’t hear an announcement immediately. When the announcement came I’d study the conductor’s voice for a sign that it wasn’t just train traffic that delayed us, that in fact something was terribly wrong. The feeling was especially acute if we were under one of the rivers.
I braced myself daily for further explosions. My nerves were constantly crackling and hot. I started tuning in to Smallville weekly. I scoffed at the very notion of Superman and ran make-out fantasies starring the babe who played Lana.
Other times I’d sit on the couch and just stare.
Ginny stopped by and asked if we could talk for a second. We walked into an office furnished only with two chairs. She closed the door and we sat.
—How are you doing? she asked.
—All right. How are you?
—Good days and bad.
—It’s strange that your wedding was there right before it happened. You and Ward must have been some of the last people to get married there.
—Yeah. I’ve thought about that.
—I didn’t want to go down there on a weekend. A Sunday. I thought why couldn’t she have picked somewhere else to get married.
Ginny smiled.
—You and Frank both.
—Now I’m glad it was there. I’m glad I went.
—I am too.
She looked at her hands.
—I don’t want to pry, she said.
—All right.
—It’s just, you don’t seem like you’re taking things well.
—Well. It’s a hard situation. The BIF’s an uncomfortable place.
—I don’t mean just the BIF.
—I know what you mean.
—Have you thought about talking to someone?
—You mean like a therapist?
—Or … yeah. A therapist.
—Have I thought about it? Sure.
—They have counselors here, onsite. You can go anytime.
—I’ve heard that.
—Dana and I were talking about going. Why don’t you come with us.
—I don’t know. I don’t think so.
—You sure? It might be good to talk to someone.
—I know. It might be. I’m just …
—Yeah?
I looked at her and shrugged.
—All right. Do me a favor though?
—Sure.
—Just think about it at least.
—All right.
—You mean it?
—Yes. I’ll think about it.
—You know Lois came up to me and mentioned your shoes.
—My shoes?
—She said why is Bryan wearing tennis shoes?
I glanced at my feet. I was wearing gray Nikes with a blue swoosh, the ones I’d bought at the Mall of America. My work shoes had been under my desk. I hadn’t gotten around to buying a new pair.
—I like these shoes. They’re my lucky shoes. They got me down seventy flights.
—Lois wants you to wear work shoes.
—Does she? What about the executives she’s so happy survived. Does she approve of their footwear?
—Probably, said Ginny.
—I’m sorry. I don’t want to put you in a weird position.
—It’s okay. Just think about what I said.
—I will.
Morgan Stanley was launching the Charitable Gift Program. Max’s group had written the materials. The hook was that many investors had achieved stupendous wealth in the last decade and surely were now looking for ways to give back. The Charitable Gift Program offered potential do-gooders easy, one-stop philanthropy—as well as a host of attractive tax breaks. It was to be the feature story in the next issue of Fund Update Quarterly. I was told the surge of donations in the wake of the attack would make a nice tie-in. At my work station in the BIF I wrote:
In the days after September 11, the families of the victims of the attacks on New York and Washington DC received a tremendous outpouring of emotional and financial support. Now, as we move into 2002, our nation is stronger than ever and Americans realize that giving is a year-round activity. We must never forget the events of that tragic day. Embracing the humanity it brought out of us by continuing to give all that we can is a good start.
Writing these words sickened me. It also brought me a measure of relief. I saw what I would have to do now to try to stay sane.
The novel would be called Stay Cool Forever. It would begin the day Vim Sweeney graduated high school and would follow him through the summer. In the early pages he would quit his dishwashing job and have adventures. I didn’t know what those adventures would be. I only knew he’d fall in love with a girl who was dating the drummer in his band and meet an older woman to whom he might or might not lose his virginity. I had enough material for the first thirty or forty pages. What I needed now was time. I needed to get away from the BIF. I needed to see who and what I could be without this job that was tearing me to fucking pieces. I needed to write this book. I had almost died. I would have died doing something I hated in a place I didn’t want to be. Giuliani had said somewhere that innocent people were in the World Trade Center nobly pursuing their dreams. But I’m no innocent and I wasn’t pursuing my dream there, I was watching it die. I knew if I didn’t quit my job and try to write this novel it would only get worse. I would hate myself. I already hated myself. I would hate myself more. Very few people end up doing what they want with their lives. I’d been deferring the day that I would try for something more and then a plane hit my building and I had almost died.
I thought of dying constantly. I lay in bed at night and could feel the floor give way beneath me, saw the ceiling cave as the building collapsed. I dreamed my body was a plane flying over the harbor headed straight for the World Trade Center. I dreamed I was inside the World Trade Center and knew what was going to happen and exactly when the planes would hit. Then they hit and I knew how much time we had to get out and watched the minutes tick down on a huge digital clock. I imagined being trapped in a burning conference room with nowhere to go and no way to get out except ahead through the shattered windows. What would I have done? Would I have jumped? I imagined sitting at my desk scrolling through two dozen meaningless e-mails and having a plane crash into me, vaporizing me instantly. I imagined shooting myself, hanging myself, slashing my wrists, overdosing on pills, throwing myself onto the subway tracks as a train entered the station. I didn’t want to die, I was terrified of dying, yet I thought of killing myself daily and at times almost wanted to do it. I imagined being in the stairwell when the building collapsed. What would I have felt? What would come next? Sarah told me I’d felt cold when the plane hit because I had no relationship with god. She said if I believed in him I would have felt something different at that moment, I wouldn’t have felt cold. Billie agreed with her and urged me to read a book called Conversations with God. She said it would help me. I told her I’d think about it. I wanted to say no, don’t bother because don’t you see there is no fucking god. Think of someone’s mother or father or son or daughter sitting on a plane crashing into a building or in a field in Pennsylvania and then tell me there’s a god. Think of someone’s mother or father or son or daughter burning in a conference room or falling a hundred stories to their death in their work clothes or crushed under two hundred and twenty stories of rubble and then tell me there’s a god. Tell me there’s a benevolent figure called Jesus who will rise again and walk the earth. Tell me again how he’ll save us.
Hasna walked into the apartment and gave me a hug. It was the first time I’d seen her since July of 2000.
—You’re a good hugger, I said.
—I see you have a beard now.
—It’s a new thing. I never tried growing one before.
—It suits you.
—You think so? I’m not so sure.
I laughed. —You’re the only one.
We sat on the floor of my room listening to records. All her skin was covered except her face and her hands. I watched her mouth as she talked. I leaned over and kissed her. She was a good kisser and we moved up to the bed. We kissed and I pulled back and looked at her and tried to imagine her hair and what she’d look like without her scarf. I kissed her again.
I wanted to go further. I wanted to see everything. I wanted to remove her scarf, her hooded sweatshirt, her shirt. I wanted to kiss her breasts and stomach and arms. I pressed hard against her. My beard brushed her face. She put her tongue in my mouth. I felt her breath on my lips. I looked at her hands and into her eyes and at her mouth. I kissed her again. I came in my pants. I kissed her some more and then we stopped and just lay just there. I felt dizzy. I moved down on the bed and put my head on her shoulder. I didn’t tell her what had happened.
Soon I got up, went to the bathroom, and changed.
My mom would call and ask how I was doing. I told her the truth: that I was so depressed I barely had the energy to walk up the stairs to my place.
—Hmm. Do you want me to come out there and cheer you up? she asked.
—No, I said. —Please.
She came anyway.
The night she flew in we went to an Italian restaurant in Williamsburg. We split a bottle of wine and tempers flared. I had sent her a letter telling her I was thinking of quitting my job. She told me that was a bad idea. She said the best thing for me now would be to move on. I said that was easier said than done. I said the whole experience had fucked me up and didn’t she understand I’d just been bombed by terrorists?
She shot forward in her seat and jabbed a finger at me.
—Hey! I lived with a terrorist. Okay?
She meant her father, who by all accounts could be an abusive brute. I’d been hearing the stories my whole life, from my mom and her brothers and sisters. I’d seen it myself as a child on those long-ago drunken Thanksgivings.
—This is what you came here to tell me? I open up to you and try and tell you how I feel and this is what you say to me? That you lived with a terrorist?
It was almost worse when I flew home for Christmas.
Ed picked me up from the airport. Five minutes after we walked through the door my mom mentioned casually, almost as an aside, that the Gazette reporter had called for me earlier. He was writing a series of holiday-update stories. He wanted to talk to me and wondered if by chance I was home. My mom had said yes, I was due in today. She told him I’d call him back at three. We had another long argument about her setting up interviews with the press. The more I pushed for an apology the more she insisted she’d done the right thing.
—This is your place in history, she said.
—My what?
—That day, after we finally got your call, I was watching all those people talking on TV and I just thought—my son was there. Good god. And it just struck me, I mean how huge this all is. And I picked up the phone and called the Gazette. The minute they heard me say my son was in that building they had me talking to a reporter.
—Great. So now every two months Brad Hoorn’s family opens up the paper and they see my fucking face and another goddamn story about how I lived.
—I know you feel bad about that.
—Bad? It’s not … I don’t …
I didn’t have the strength for this. I’d gotten up before dawn to catch my flight. I chewed Xanax like Tic Tacs. It didn’t help. The whole time in the air I was certain the plane would crash somehow and that today was my last day alive.
—Why can’t you just say you’re sorry? I said.
—Because. I think—or hope—that in time you’ll agree with me.
—About what?
—I really do feel this is your place in history.
—What bullshit, I said.
I called the reporter at three anyway. I knew that I would even as I chastised my mother. She may have taken it a step further than I would have liked. She may have acted rashly and without my permission. But I was more pleased with her media overtures than I admitted. Seeing my name in print was a gas. For years I’d been writing stories and sending them into the world. No one would publish them. No one cared. Now everyone wanted to hear the story I had to tell.
The reporter asked what things had been like for me recently. I told him there’d been a big change since the last time we talked.
Several weeks earlier, just after my mom left New York, I approached Ginny in the BIF and asked to speak with her. We returned to the same empty office where she’d suggested I see a therapist. I told her I couldn’t do this job anymore. She said she knew and that she understood. I told her I couldn’t do this job anymore and that I wanted to write a novel and I just had to see. She said she thought I was brave. I said I didn’t know about that. Ginny convinced me to stay till January so I could at least get my bonus. So I stayed for two more months—endured the BIF for two more months—and as it turned out my bonus was next to nothing. Lois revealed the paltry figure and reminded me we were in the midst of hard times. I said nothing. I didn’t care. Lois couldn’t touch me now. None of them could touch me now. Nothing and no one could touch me but I was not free.
My last day passed with little fanfare. I was given a card with some cash in it, I don’t remember how much. By early afternoon I’d been locked out of the system. I sat waiting for the day to end. I said goodbye to some people but there was no after-work drinks gathering. I left the BIF and went home alone.
The following Monday the clock radio alarm went off at seven. I made coffee and drank it in the living room as I read. I finished the coffee and sat there a while. I walked to the kitchen and rinsed out my cup. I went to the back room and turned on my computer. I opened the document called Stay Cool Forever. I stared at the screen and then started to type.