Below is an excerpt from my 2nd novel Sauls Last Book which I completed in 2007. This is a piece that talks about 9-11. Christopher Hanley Christopher walked out into a bright September morning, feeling the warm Indian summer air permeate his skin, noticing the whiff of fall. Most of the trees were green but some were beginning to turn to russet and gold and he kicked up a few fallen leaves underneath his brand new wing tip shoes. The air was warmer than he expected, little beads of sweat on his brow. His pale pink shirt and the Ralph Lauren tie did nicely with the mid-gray pinstriped suit he’d just bought. He had just had a picture taken of him for Keith, Bruyette and Wood, where had been hired just after completing a masters degree in Finance at Harvard. In the picture he is smiling wide, with a cigar in his mouth, a wicked little glint in his eye as if to say “Gotcha buddy!” Life was on the up and he felt he was on the fast track to everything wonderful. He had made plans to take his boss’s secretary, Maria, to Windows on the World, the restaurant they often ate at. Maria had done a lot of extra work on an account he had been working on and he wanted to treat her to lunch. She had four kids and worked really hard at her job. Keith, Bruyette and Wood had an office in the North Tower of the World Trade Center, on the 104th Floor. He arrived at work at eight thirty. He told his boss that he always endeavored to get to work an hour early, but this morning had been a little different. His wife had just had a baby, their first, Colleen after his grandmother, and the baby had been up all night. Both of them stumbled out of bed and Chris spent some time in the shower waking up while his wife Terry made him coffee and an English muffin. He didn’t have time to finish the muffin so he left half of it on the plate next to the sink and kissed Terry on the lips before he gulped some more coffee down and headed out the door with his deep red briefcase in one hand and The New York Times rolled up under his left arm. Her full breasts because she was nursing were on his mind when he walked toward the subway heading north on 23rd street toward 59th. When he got to the Towers he made a trip to the cafeteria on the 57th floor to grab a donut, something he rarely did, but his body just wasn’t working on the usual adrenalin and he felt he needed a boost. In order to get to the 57th floor he had to take the elevator to the 44th floor and then take the local elevator to the 57th floor. He had just left the cafeteria to get back on the local to his office on the 104th floor, when he noticed people pouring out of rooms and offices and the elevator seemed to be stuck on a higher floor. Usually the elevators were swift but things seemed to be moving slower than usual. He took a bite out of the donut, and noticed that the grapefruits in the stand just outside the cafeteria were rolling back and forth, back and forth. He wondered if maybe there was a strong wind or something. Sometimes people said the Towers swayed in the wind but he never noticed it. He heard something loud that he thought was the fire drill. They had often had these drills in the past so he knew the routine: go to the stairwell and move on down to the street level. He decided that his Boss would probably ignore the drill, as he sometimes did, and he knew there was a meeting at 9. Anyway, he wasn’t sure if it was a drill or not. The elevator arrived finally and he got on with a group of others traveling to the upper floors. When he arrived on the 104th floor there was panic and a flurry of people running in every direction. He heard a loud explosion and the whole building started to sway. Someone from another office shouted: “Get to the stairs! Get to the stairs!” Christopher Hanley was not one to panic. He ducked by a bunch of people standing in a huddle outside their offices and made for his Boss’s office, but the Boss was not there. Maria sat at her desk looking out the window. “What should we do?” Mike Cosgrove ran by shouting, “Call 911!” and someone else screamed: “Get the hell out of here!” “Come on, Maria, let’s leave.” Maria got up from her desk and followed Christopher to the stairwell. “We should take the elevator,” she said. “No. If there’s a fire it’s better to take the stairs.” She held onto his arm. In the stairwell there was room for two people so they went down side by side. There was smoke and Christopher smelled something that he thought might be gasoline. Maybe the furnace exploded, he thought. There were now a hundred people in the stairwell and things were moving slowly. They reached the 102nd Floor. There was no panic. Everyone seemed to be moving along at a leisurely pace, making jokes, laughing and wondering when things would be back to normal again. Maria always wore flat shoes because she was so tall. “I’m glad I wear sensible shoes,” she said and Christopher smiled. “I hope this doesn’t mean we won’t get lunch!” The people behind them laughed. Christopher finished his donut. Above them a crowd of firefighters appeared and started shouting orders. “Move to the right! Injured coming down!” Injured? Christopher had no idea how this could be. Injured from what? When the injured walked past them you could not tell if they were black or white, they were all charred with skin hanging off their bodies, they looked like the walking dead. The sound of the firefighters shouting and the injured people moving down the left side of the stairwell chilled the jovial atmosphere and everything became abruptly somber. Beepers flashed and someone said, “A plane has hit our building!” A cold feeling hit Christopher in the stomach. Maria said, “I’m going to be sick,” and someone else said, “Not here.” It was such a beautiful day, Christopher thought just as someone else answered his cell phone and shouted: “A jet plane just crashed into the other building!” Two planes in one day? Christopher thought. This was impossible. Maybe there was a radar scramble or something. “Jesus Christ,” a man behind him said. Chris pulled out his cell phone and called Terry. She answered right away. He could hear Colleen crying in the background. “OH GOD Christopher! It’s terrible! Are you all right! Are you all right!” “I’m fine, honey. Don’t worry. I’m heading down the stairs with the others. Everything’s fine.” “Christopher! I saw it on TV!” “Hang up honey and take care of the baby. I’ll be home soon.” “I love you honey.” “I love you too.” Christopher had no idea what was going on. He just knew to keep heading down the stairs, but the smoke filled the stair well, someone said they could not breath, the heat was intense, he took off his suit jacket, Maria pulled out her Rosarie beads and began to pray. The North Tower collapsed into rubble before he could get to the102nd Floor. It had been a dazzling fall day full of promise, but the sky turned ash gray, then black, the smoke rising and billowing and moving across Manhattan, enveloping it like a large and hungry monster. Terry received a personal note from President Bush. “Now is the time when we should be so proud to be an American.”
Posted on: Thu, 11 Sep 2014 19:34:43 +0000
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