by Craig Birk
Interlude Twelve
Alex (26)
In the fall of 2001, Alex made it a point to be in the office before the New York Stock Exchange opened at 6:30 a.m., West Coast time. On this particular Tuesday morning, he was running a few minutes late. During dinner at Elephant Bar the previous night, after a few gin and tonics, Roger had talked him into going to Viejas where he found a 4-8 Texas Hold ’em poker table with some very loose and stupid players. The result was he only got four hours of sleep, but he felt fresh anyway, invigorated by the crisp, clean morning and the extra $625 in his wallet.
Anyways, he was already on Interstate 5 and just a few minutes away from the turnoff for La Jolla, so he would be just ten minutes late at worst. One of Alex’s pet peeves in life was the fact that no radio stations played much music in the morning. Instead, they preferred to let a bunch of dorks who tried to appeal to soccer moms and imitate Howard Stern at the same time babble on about whatever came to mind. The San Diego market seemed among the worst to him. Even so, for some reason Alex was too cheap to buy XM or Sirius so he usually spent his commute flipping endlessly between the preset channels of his silver BMW.
At 5:49 a.m., one of these channels finished playing White Wedding by Billy Idol, a song Alex always enjoyed. Naturally, the disk jockeys began talking in that same peppy tone that suggested hunger, poverty and disease had somehow been cured overnight.
“Well Maria, get a load of this,” one of them began, “there are reports that a small plane has crashed into the World Trade Center in New York.”
“Sounds like someone needed a second cup of coffee before starting their commute,” Maria replied cheerfully. She continued, “Speaking of coffee and work, we are going to go to work for you. That’s right, its morning commute collection time! Just be the seventh caller right now and we will put you to work, giving you $101 for each of the last seven songs we have played that you can correctly name!”
“Whoooohoo, Maria! That sounds like the start of a great day!” her co-host added lamely. Alex was about to change the channel when, remarkably, they played another song. This time it was Every Rose Has It’s Thorn by Poison. Alex had never been a big Poison fan, but he figured this was his best bet and left the tuner untouched. The radio version was less than three minutes long and ended with the male co-host returning to the air. “Well Maria, it looks like everyone in New York could use a cup of coffee! Now we are hearing a second plane has crashed into the other tower.”
Maria concurred, “There must be something in the air today with those crazy New Yorkers,” she said, laughing. “And I thought the traffic was bad on the 5/805 merge,” she added. At this her co-host let out a peppier-than-usual howl. “Whooo-ha, you’re right about that, Maria!”
“What the fuck is with these people?” Alex asked himself in the car a bit louder than he intended. His annoyance at this point was with their dorkyness rather than their stupidity, as he also had not yet grasped the situation. However, two planes crashing in New York sounded strange enough to him to switch the radio to one of the AM news channels.
He listened in silence for the next sixty seconds before again speaking aloud in the otherwise empty car, this time in a much more solemn and controlled voice. “Jesus Christ.”
It took Alex another fourteen minutes to get to his parking space, where he remained in his car with the radio on for another twelve minutes. During this time, there were reports of another plane crashing into the Pentagon, light weapons fire inside the Pentagon, explosions at the Capitol building in Washington DC, explosions in Chicago, and reports of several additional missing planes.
Alex scanned the skies above La Jolla. Seeing nothing unusual, he opened the door and ran to his office, something he never did, even when it was raining. When he arrived, the usual buzz in the building was dead. Everyone stood completely still, eyes glued to one of the many TV sets. Usually they would have been tuned to Bloomberg TV or CNBC, but all eyes were now on CNN. On the screens, two iconic towers stood, giants peering down at a city of dreams. They emitted plumes of dark grey smoke into the pale blue sky of an otherwise still world. “Jesus Christ,” Alex muttered for the second of many times that day.
Alex walked with purpose to his office (really more of a cubicle at that time), put down his briefcase and went to find a Bloomberg news terminal. Surprisingly, as he was leaving the cube, the phone rang. Alex wondered which of his clients would be the one to call him first in such a situation. When he looked at the caller ID, however, he realized it was not a client at all. It was Taylor, a friend of his who was a bond trader at Cantor Fitzgerald. “Holy shit,” Alex thought, realizing that the Cantor offices were at the top of towers.
The trader, trapped above the flames, was professional, but there was clearly fear and terror in his voice. He was unable to reach anyone in New York and was checking to see if Alex had any information on the emergency response to the towers. Alex told him that he was unable to filter out any truth from rumor and couldn’t offer any help. He said goodbye and thought back to the fun times he and Taylor had in Manhattan and also remembered that Taylor had once helped him reverse a bad trade where Alex had accidentally entered an extra zero, saving Alex from personally having to cover a meaningful loss. He had always respected Taylor, professionally and personally, and would never forget that phone call. In the future, he would refer to it to remind himself not to be lazy, and to take pride in anything he put his name on. But at the moment, he had the same zombie look as everyone else in the office and wasn’t thinking about much that made sense. He quickly walked to a Bloomberg terminal.
News updates were arriving every few seconds, though it was tough to know what to believe. There were reports of explosions at the White House, another plane crashed into the ground in Indiana, and Russian intelligence, which apparently tracked these things, counted eleven planes unaccounted for. Major buildings throughout the US were being evacuated. A consensus began to develop that Islamic fundamentalists were to blame.
At around 6:45 a.m., the news flow on the Bloomberg terminal abruptly cut off. This was no doubt an order from the government. Alex returned to watching CNN with everyone else. The first tower fell fourteen minutes later.
Alex stayed at work until after six in the evening that day, despite the fact that not one client called him. He left work and drove home under the still-bright San Diego sky wondering what would happen next. Only when he was home alone in his kitchen, drinking a beer, again watching CNN, still largely in shock, did he realize how mad he was. For most of that night he was pretty sure he was going to quit his job and join the military, which of course never really came close to happening.
Like many Americans that day, Alex lost a sense of innocence but gained a greater feeling of love and pride in his country, the greatest ever known in the brief history of our small planet. A battle was lost, but a war that was really already underway was a long way from decided. Alex knew with certainty that eventually it would be won. Alex had never believed there was any particular meaning to his life. Nevertheless, from that day on he felt a patriotic duty to engage in all pursuits in life more aggressively.
To be more present.
