Maybe you're like me and you've been running errands all day. KMart for underwear (so you don't have to do laundry), the photo lab for reprints, Parade of Shoes for something to wear now that it seems the chill is here to stay. It's sunny and crisp and traffic moves fast and you cross in the middle of the block and you are trying to get it all done and do some writing before you have to start work at 5. Everything is rushed and stressful and bordering on normal. You hop on the A train and head downtown. Your stop is Chambers Street and that is where you get off.The first thing you notice is the smell. Two stories underground you can smell the burning. It always smells like this now. Like a veil descending over your gaze, you feel the heaviness come over you. The shape of your face morphs into a scowl as if on cue. Your body registers where you are even before your mind does. You head up the stairs and brace yourself. In recent weeks, it has only gotten worse.
Upstairs on the street, a circus of freaks lined up at police barricades with video cameras, with point-and-shoots, virtually everyone with a camera in hand. In this sparsely populated neighborhood, sidewalks are packed like Times Square at noon. These are all imports, people who've taken a day trip so they can tell their friends back in Jersey or Georgia or Timbuktu that they were there, look at our pictures, oh you really cannot imagine what it's really like unless you are there. Trust me! I've seen it! Did I mention our pictures? Actually, let's put on the video Mike took. Honey, can you get the lights?
I attempt to navigate my way west on Chambers so I can get to work. People stop at corners to look up at street signs, slowing the traffic of the dozens behind them. Oh, honey, look to the left! Look to the left! To the left is the blackened shell of Five World Trade Center, every single window blown out, the charcoaled insides as plain as day, a thin, gray sheet of smoke covering the sky above.
A tall man in a Ralph Lauren trench coat stands in the middle of the street videotaping the line of dump trucks, each one waiting it's turn to haul away a load of the firewood that was once the Twin Towers. They will carry that load to the landfill in Staten Island where men in white jumpsuits and masks will dig through it looking for human remains. Trench coat man takes a few steps back, trying to get the best angle.
I continue walking, head down, trying not to notice the big card table where a man is hawking photos of the Towers, where people hold their cameras at their sides and paw through the merchandise, angling around each other, fighting for position. My eyes are drawn to the pictures. Nothing is more beautiful to me these days than images of those buildings as they were. There is one particularly gorgeous one taken at sunset. For a moment I consider buying it, then realize that my money will be going no where but in the pockets of the sick fuck selling them.
I keep moving, swept along by the crowd as they anxiously await the view from the next intersecting street. One girl is munching on a candied apple as she makes her way toward her next view of the tomb. My elbow finds it way into her chest as I pass, giving me a huge sense of satisfaction.
At the next corner is Starbucks. I stop in to take some coffee to work. This Starbucks is conveniently located at the corner of Chambers and West Broadway, so when you're done looking you can drop by for some refreshment and reload the camera. Three women linger around the counter, fresh from Neiman Marcus. They gaze upward at the menu, seem very perplexed by it. A camera hangs by it's strap from the wrist of the older one. "I'll get the cappuccino, you got the gas!"
I feel the scream rising in my throat, I feel it ripping into my vocal chords. I exit to the street, look at all the people standing, looking, the ones who cross in front of me, speeding on their bikes as I walk, and I want to scream. I wonder if I did, would anyone thank me? Would the cops understand, the ones guarding the barricades? Do they want to scream, too? Please don't take any pictures of America's largest burial ground, our mayor says. Have some respect. Please don't come down.
But I don't scream. I keep walking, stomping. I wonder suddenly if any of these people lost loved ones, if they are here because they have to be, because they need to see, need to grieve. I try compassion. I don't feel any better but it keeps my mouth shut.
Near Chambers and Greenwich, I see a crowd ahead. It seems much smaller here. I wonder why, since I know this is the place where you can see the most. I get to the corner and look down. They have hung a huge, white curtain the length of the street, 30 feet high. You can't see a thing.
Good for them, I say aloud. Good for them. My eyes sting and I turn up the block, heading toward another night at the office.
***