Before, During, After

by Richard Bausch

  They entered the lobby, with its slowly turning ceiling fan and its plush chairs and benches and all the shapes of civilized enjoyment and recreation, the paintings and the statuary and the lush green plants, leaves the size of capes, several of which now screened some of the people—an alarming number of people—gathered there. The television was on. Natasha heard the voice of a newswoman say the phrase “minutes past the hour.” On the screen was a wide panorama of New York with smoke rising from it, a video taken from a distance, probably from a traffic helicopter. It did not quite register in her consciousness. It was something bad in the city. News. In the twelve days she had been here, she had not seen anyone watching this TV, which was hung from black wires on the side wall; only a few of the rooms had TVs in them. Now everyone crowded nearer the screen, and through the gathered others, Natasha saw the Twin Towers capped by the churning clouds of smoke. A little frame inside the larger picture showed the second plane cruising into its own shocking ball of flame.

  “My God,” Constance said.

  “What happened?” said Natasha, feeling the helpless absurdity of the question. Then, under her breath: “Michael’s there.” No one spoke. They were all staring at the screen. The images were like elements of an awful dream, one that played out impersonally, “witness dreams,” Natasha had always called them, where she saw things in the distance, as if she had just happened upon them in some series of events unwinding in general unconsciousness, a property of night, set to prey on anyone sleeping at that hour. On the television with its pixels and little strands of failed light, doubtless from a cameraman in a helicopter, she saw what she came to realize was a man and a woman standing in the open side of one of the buildings. They were holding hands; you could see that they were holding hands, flames licking up the widely spaced vertical steel ribs on either side of them. They seemed to falter, and then they leaped, and let go of each other, separating and disappearing into the smoke.

  Everyone in the lobby of the hotel in far-off Jamaica screamed.

  The newswoman went on talking, speaking carefully, slowly, in clipped phrases, inflectionless, concentrating on the smallest details, as a person might think of measurements and minutiae in order to preserve some hold on sanity. And now the camera caught another body hurtling down, that of a man, his suit jacket open to a white shirt and tie. The female newscaster tried to report it. “My God, are you seeing this,” she got out in a tearful voice. A video cameraman from a helicopter hovering near one of the openings made by the planes focused on a woman in light orange slacks and a dark blue blouse standing in the ruin and smoke. She actually appeared calm, so small there in the wide gash with all the destruction behind and around her. She lifted her hand and waved. That simple, forlorn, graceful motion looked almost like a greeting. The mind wouldn’t accept what it really was. She clung to the shattered place at the edge of the opening, leaning out slightly, and then turning, facing into the rubble edge of the wall. When smoke or steam began to come from her whole body, the image abruptly shifted, the cameraman evidently having turned the camera away from what was coming.

  As the first tower began to collapse, another cry went up among the people in the lobby, and the young newscaster’s voice carried above it. “I believe there’s been some kind of further explosion. Are you seeing this?”

  No one spoke. The crowd gathered in a tighter circle around the screen, another news voice talking about the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and still the cameras in New York showed the churning ash and smoke, the street-level cameras capturing the panic, people running, the yellowish-brown dust covering everything.

  “The whole of southern Manhattan’s coated with this dust now,” said a male voice on the TV.

  And Natasha turned to Constance. “Michael’s there. He was talking about going to the top of—he said he was—he was going up to the top of—he was—”

  The other woman stared, beginning to comprehend.

  Natasha, gasping for breath, felt all the strength go out of her legs. Constance gripped her by the arms. “We don’t know anything definite,” she said. “We don’t know anything. He’s probably not anywhere near it. Natasha, listen to me.”

  Crying, Natasha said, “I think he—I can’t—no. No.”

  “He’s probably still asleep in the hotel. There’s always a long line down there. And—and listen. I was there a couple of years ago, and I don’t think you can get up to the observation deck until something like ten o’clock. Now, really, honey. I remember that.”

  They were both quiet a moment, and they saw the second tower collapse.

  “Oh my God,” Constance said. “Those poor people. Those poor, poor people.”

  “I have to get home,” Natasha told her, beginning to cry. “Oh, I have to go home. I want to go home.”

  3

  Faulk rose from the bed and finished dressing, and as he was tying his shoes the phone rang. He thought it might be the hotel desk.

  It was Aunt Clara. “You all right?”

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Where are you?”

  “My hotel room.”

  “Look out the window.”

  “I was just doing that.”

  “And you’re all right.”

  “Clara?”

  “Turn the TV on.”

  He reached behind him on the bed to get the remote. “What is it?”

  “They’ve hit the World Trade Center.”

  The television came to light, and there were the towers, burning. He looked back out the window and saw the spotless sky. “Who hit them.”

  “Planes. Extremists. Airliners. Somebody.”

  “Airliners?” he said. Then: “Airliners.”

  “Where are you?” Clara said.

  “Fifty-Fourth Street.”

  “You tried calling Natasha?”

  “They’ll be out at the beach.”

  “Gotta try leaving a message for her.”

  “My God,” Faulk said, watching the clip of the second plane hitting.

  “They’re saying another one hit the Pentagon.”

  He stared at the bloom of fire in the side of tower one being played over and over—the second plane. For a few moments, Aunt Clara just breathed into the phone, and he listened. “Are you okay?” he said.

  “I’m all right. But oh, God, how many people—”

  “These were passenger planes?”

  “Are you looking at it? Planes. Yes.”

  As the first tower went down, the newswoman began breathlessly repeating the word incredulous. Faulk, watching it happen, said to Clara, “The building’s collapsing.”

  Silence.

  “Clara?”

  When he understood that the line was dead, he tried once more. Nothing. And no answer at the front desk, either. Hurriedly, he packed his bag and then realized there was nowhere to go. He made another attempt to call Clara, with no success. He tried long distance to Jamaica, got the ring, but the phone simply went on ringing. Sitting at the end of the bed, he waited. No answer. He put the receiver back in its place and then picked it up and punched the number again. Nothing.

  There wasn’t anything else to do but watch. He saw the second tower collapse. He tried to pray. At last he made still another attempt to phone Jamaica. Now there was no signal at all. He hung up, and almost immediately it rang. It was his father. “You’re okay,” the old man said almost as though trying to reassure him. “I just talked to Clara.”

  “I’m way up on Fifty-Fourth Street. I lost her. The line went dead.”

  “That’s what she said. You believe this shit?”

  “No.”

  “I’d better call her back. She thinks the building you’re in might’ve collapsed because the connection got broken and you were talking about the building collapsing. She was pretty upset. And I told her there wasn’t anything about buildings collapsing uptown. But she couldn’t get through.”

  “Tell her I’m okay.”

  “When’re you getting out of th
ere?”

  “I don’t know yet. Today for sure now if I can. I want to see if I can get hold of Theo.”

  “Get on out of there, Son. You don’t know what else they might be planning.”

  “I’ll let you know,” Faulk told him.

  “I’m gonna tell Clara you’ll be in later today.”

  “Yes, do.”

  After he hung up, he tried to open the line, but it was dead again. He pushed the buttons down, and there was a dial tone. But nothing happened—nothing interrupted the dial tone.

  Downstairs, the lobby was crowded and quiet. People were checking out and checking in as usual. He waited in line with his bag. No one appeared willing to look at anyone else. It was very quiet. He went out to Fifty-Fourth Street. There was a subdued something even in the normal traffic sounds. The sunny sky was unchanged. When he got over to Fifth Avenue, he heard the sirens, and looking south he saw the massive ash-colored cloud. The cloud was bizarrely contained, one spiral-shaped strand extending out from it to great height. He saw clear pale sky above it all.

  He started down the avenue. Trinity Church, the planned site of the wedding ceremony, was in the vicinity of the World Trade Center. Yesterday, he had seen the towers from the window as the train neared the city, and seeing the two structures looming above everything, gleaming with reflected sunlight, he thought of being inside, high up, looking out.

  Remembering this made him momentarily short of breath. He went to the curb, intending to flag down a cab. But none of the cabs were stopping. Most of them were coming from the opposite direction.

  It occurred to him then that he was in fact headed to where the calamity was taking place. There would be no wedding today. He stopped. The entire morning remained. He had been wandering south. His headache had returned; his mouth was dry. The street now seemed nearly deserted. He saw some people sitting in a sandwich shop with a phone booth at the back. No one seemed to notice him. They were all talking quietly, huddled together, or simply staring with dread out at the sunlight and the buildings opposite. A woman sat crying while two others attempted to calm her.

  In the phone booth he was absurdly elated to find that there was a dial tone and that the phone was working when he touched the numbers. He called the downtown Marriott, and to his surprise someone picked up, a woman, who sounded hurried but nothing like someone in the grip of panic. He asked for Theo Ruhm, and she immediately clicked off. He heard a buzzing, and Ruhm answered. “Hello.” It was nearly a shout.

  Faulk said, “This is Michael.”

  “It’s awful,” Theo Ruhm moaned. “Total confusion. Nobody can get ahold of anybody. But the wedding’s off. They’re setting up to do triage at the church. Triage, for Christ’s sake. Oh, God—I saw it. I went over there and saw everything. It’s awful. We’re headed out. Back to the house. Can you get here?”

  “I’m almost to Penn Station,” Faulk said. “I’m going down to D.C.”

  “They hit D.C., too.” Theo began to cry. “The sons of bitches.”

  “Is everybody all right?”

  “We’re all going home. If you can get to Brooklyn, you know you’re welcome.”

  “I’m gonna try for D.C.,” Faulk said. The other had hung up. He put another quarter in and tried to call Iris, Aunt Clara, and then Jamaica. Nothing was going through.

  He went out and walked down the blocks, hearing the sirens, his head throbbing, the gritty air smelling of exhaust and drywall and plastic and, scarily, of jet fuel. All his training and all the years of practicing his vocation rose in him, and he looked for some way to help those he encountered on the street—but no one looked at him; they were all moving as if in a kind of severe blundering trance, northward.

  4

  It was impossible for Natasha to absorb what she saw as something really happening. She couldn’t think past the images on the television.

  In the crowded lobby, people were lined up at the row of public phones, waiting to try calling relatives in the States. She saw several people with cell phones, but no one was having any success. There were six wall phones. The sixth was broken, the wire hanging from the silver cabinet without a receiver.

  The phone lines to the United States were overloaded. But people kept trying. They kept redialing and putting money into the phones while the crowd waited behind them.

  There was a movement to drive the twenty miles to Kingston, to try calling from there. Several people stepped forward, Natasha and Constance among them. They climbed into a van with three older women in shorts and blouses who wore big straw hats and sunglasses, a very heavy middle-aged man in a flowered Jamaican shirt, and a thin, ascetic-looking man in his thirties, whom none of them had seen before. The three women were together. They muttered back and forth about where they would sit, getting settled, and then they were still. Natasha saw the strands of red hair coming down over the ears of the nearest one. No one spoke. Ratzi drove. Constance was in the passenger seat in front; Natasha was in the middle seat, next to the window, the two other men on her right. The three ladies had jammed together in the far back. They were sniffling and murmuring to one another, and it sounded like a kind of whisper argument. Constance kept chewing her cuticles and sighing, staring out at the narrow road. She looked back at Natasha and repeated, “It doesn’t open until something like ten o’clock. I’m certain of it. He couldn’t have been in either building yet unless he worked there.”

  One of the women in back, the one with the red hair, said, “I lived in New York for thirty-three years. Those buildings don’t open to the public until nine-thirty.”

  “There,” Constance said. “See?”

  “You have someone in New York?” the woman said to Natasha.

  “Yes.”

  “My whole family’s there. In Queens.” She sniffled. “My whole family. I’m so afraid for them. What else is going to happen?”

  Ratzi turned the radio on, but it was all static. He kept turning the dial. It had been mostly static before, Natasha remembered, though it was difficult not to think of it as part of the catastrophe. Palm trees shaded the road thinly on both sides. There were mountains to the left. Through the palms to the right was the sea with its repeating foamy waves tumbling across the green surface and crashing ashore. The sight seemed unreal, pitilessly immaculate in the clarity of the sun. She felt sick to her stomach, looking at it, so beautiful, and it occurred to her that there was something ruthlessly insensible, blank, heartless, about the exquisite beach and every natural wonder out the window of the Jeep she and Constance rode in with the six silent others. Absurdly, she thought of the senator’s expansive back lawn and the little pleading statues.

  Now the young man spoke. “It must have been the pilots. They must’ve infiltrated the pilot force.”

  “Force?” Constance said.

  “The roster of pilots,” said the heavy man in the flower-print shirt. He had his big hands folded across his belly. His eyes were red and shadowed, and the sclera were faintly yellow. The odor of alcohol came from him through strong cologne. He had a bulbous nose, with little red lines forking across the tip of it.

  “Surely no one could force a pilot to do that to his own plane?” Ratzi said.

  No one answered. The young man turned to Natasha. “My name is Nicholas Duego.”

  Constance glared back at him from the front seat.

  He shrugged and then muttered low, dispiritedly, as if it weren’t even worth saying, “We might as well know who we are.”

  “You an American?” Constance asked.

  “Cuban American.” His demeanor changed slightly. He was plainly buoyed by the question and felt the need to talk. “On my father’s side. I lived in Cuba. We went to Canada for a vacation when I was nine years old, and my father got us to Detroit. We moved to Orlando, Florida, when I was twelve. My father was a horse trainer. I did not speak English until I was ten.” Constance stared. There was a curious formality in his speech. No one else said anything, and after going on a little more he seemed to
wind down, with a sort of sullen embarrassment. “We might as well know,” he muttered into the silence of the others.

  On the outskirts of Kingston, houses and huts and shacks lined the road, teeming with Jamaicans, all going about the business of life in their native city. Children ran and played under the spray of water hoses, and there were many roadside stands selling goods—coffee, exotic fruits, vegetables, barrel-cooked meat and fish. The proprietors stared after the crowded car as it moved by into the busy stream of traffic, but people on the streets scarcely glanced at them. On the side of one building was a big painting of an imperial-looking black face superimposed on the form of a lion, with the phrase JAH RASTAFARI below it.

  “What’s that?” said the heavy man.

  “It’s a religion,” Ratzi said.

  When they reached Kingston city center, they saw more roadside stands, including one built out of bamboo and containing bins of melting ice in which stood dozens of different kinds of bottled beer. They drove past a big crowded marketplace under a long bamboo roof. There were a lot of taxis—more than usual, it seemed. The Hilton was too crowded. Every American was trying to contact home. When Natasha finally got to a phone, the voice on the other end said all lines were busy. She tried her contact numbers for Faulk. His cell phone, the hotel. And she tried Iris, Aunt Clara. Nothing was getting through. Every circuit into the United States was over capacity. She went to one of the four televisions in the big orange-carpeted, palm-shaded lounge and watched with the others. She had missed the news about the fourth plane—the one in Pennsylvania—and she saw the reporting about that, and when the TV showed the flames and smoke still erupting out of the side of the Pentagon, she thought of all her friends on Capitol Hill. Constance had gone into the English-style pub and was watching the television there. She had ordered a drink. Natasha sat across from her and buried her face in her hands. “I’m numb. I can’t think.”

  “You have to know I’m right,” Constance said. “He couldn’t have been there.”

  “If I could just get through to him.”