Things look normal at Cafe Rafaella, with the absurdly perfect model boy in the corner, slumped in his chair, cell phone pressed to his ear. Normal outside where people sip lattes under the sun on a humid fall day.Not normal that if you turn your gaze down 7th Avenue, the sky is empty. Not normal that behind the girl in the denim dress sipping ice water, a flyer for a missing person is stapled to a telephone pole.
I remember that flyer. I saw it last Friday, too. I came down to the Village last Friday to return some movies. The whole neighborhood had been closed for 3 days - absolutely no one allowed below 14th Street unless you lived there. The police would stop you in the street and check your ID. If you didn't live there, you'd be arrested.
In New York City.
I came down here last Friday to see, to witness, to know. I came down because I could no longer bear the walls of my apartment. I sat in Starbucks and watched army trucks barrel up Sixth Avenue, past Gap stores and tattoo parlors, past diners and stores, gates down at 12 noon on a Friday. I watched rain fall and I looked out the window at that flyer, the same one I saw today, the older man with white hair and white beard, crinkly lines around his eyes, smiling out at me. Underneath his picture in 40 pt type: MISSING. 106th floor, South Tower.
There was just no way...
It is not normal to come to the Village, home of anarchy, and see American flags in virtually every window, in the window of fucking Stonewall, for crissakes.
It is not normal to see an ambulance scream up the street and stop short in front of a Rite Aid, to watch EMTs race a rescue worker inside for fast, impromptu treatment, grabbing medicine off the shelves as customers and cashiers stand frozen in the tracks to watch.
It has not been normal for me to go to work, not for the last 10 days. Five blocks from ground zero, our building was in the sealed-off zone, then was taken over by the city for use as a base of operations for the rescue effort.
But I went in yesterday. They finally reopened and I made my way downtown. The closer the A train got to my Canal Street stop, they sicker I felt. It's all in my mind, I thought. I just haven't eaten this morning and the coffee is sloshing around in my empty stomach and that is why I feel sick.
But I knew when I came up to the street than I was just sick. I knew it when I stood in that spot, that same spot where I stood last Tuesday and saw a building burning, where now I look up and see nothing.
Just empty sky.
I walked across deserted streets toward my building, as I took the same route again that I took that day, That Day. I passed the spot where 10 days ago I felt the earth move as a second plane hit, where 10 days ago I could not believe any of it.
Finally, I got to Greenwich Street. The rain fell on my shoulders and I looked straight down the block, straight into that sickening pit, the view of the towers that used to be blocked by 7 World Trade Center. Now you can just see straight down, past a dozen satellite dishes and news vans, past cranes and dump drunks. You can't stop looking at nothing.
There is nothing there. I stand in the middle of the street, unable to move, just still, and I am safe there because still no cars are allowed down to this part of the city.
I entered my building. Behind the huge reception desk in the main lobby, the one that was closed last Tuesday because the receptionists had already raced out in terror, hung the biggest American flag I had even seen. 40 feet long, 20 feet high. To my left, in front of the turnstiles where last Tuesday I watched hundreds of shaking and sobbing people evacuate, I saw metal detectors. I saw a man waiting for me to approach so he could run a wand up and down my body to see I was armed. I saw a belt on which I was to place my handbag so they could see if I was carrying a bomb. And then I cried. I cried because even in this soulless, heartless investment bank, this place I have actively hated, there was unity. A huge, poorly hung flag, out of place and awkward in the beautifully renovated lobby, but hung there anyway. Solidarity. In this city where so many lines divide us all, we are suddenly in this together.
I cried as I sat at my desk and stared out the window, down 25 stories at Ground Zero. I swore I could see those buildings, I swore I could see their outlines burned into the gray sky. I could have sworn that if I could turn my head just so, look out at precisely the right angle, I would see that they hadn't left us after all, we just couldn't see them right now.
Nothing is normal.
Everything is impermanent.
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