by

Cindy Baker Gilbert

The holiday lights and sounds wafting up from thirty flights below lapped at his bare toes. From this

rooftop terrace view the edges of extruding lower arches prohibited full exposure of the city’s

New Years Eve revelers, yet their cheers cloaked Dave in loneliness.

The humid air hung thick, he thought, thick enough on which to float.  He tested the ephemeral cushion

with his feet.  The blue neon clock tower at the beach glowed 11:59:00 PM, 11:59:01, 11:59:02.   His

thoughts stretched, thin like the last passing moments of the year. And then this idea of a new year.  Of

starting over.  Erase the past like a bad dream never remembered is what he wanted. His mother labeled

him the late bloomer though eldest of her twelve children, but he felt like a loser.  Until she happened

along. She with the home-wrecker breasts between which he slept and dreamed. She with the heart and

mind that sucked him in, captive along with his eight brothers, even the three sisters were drawn to

her essence when she entered the room. Then gone, as mysteriously as she had appeared, her memory a

cancer entwined around his bones as he watched the others go back to their own lives and forget.

Over the ledge of the brick terrace wall, legs dangling in the full bodied air, he wiggles his toes. On

the loneliest night of the year he pushes off from the wall onto the thick billow of air and floats at first,

his shirt inflating then ripping away from his thin body. With increasing speed he drops feet first past a

swirl of twinkling red and green holiday lights until midway down he contorts his body into a beautiful

majestic swan dive, so is his need to prove he had not disappeared though he knew that he had.

Faces in the crowd rush at him, the thick air enfolds him, protects him, and with his last thought he

wonders why no one told him it would feel this good to be rid of it all.

He plunges and in the crowd below glimpses a young woman he has never  before seen,strands of

her long red hair sticking to the stem of her champagne glass. His eyes lock on the  glistening bubbles

in her fluted crystal and at 11:59:59 PM he dives head first, disappearing into the redhead’s bubbly brew

amidst welcoming cheers.  He breaks through the liquid surface as the blue neon clock tower glows

12:00:00 midnight.  Suddenly the lights are too bright, the sounds too harsh and he cries as the firm

hands of a doctor hand him to an attending nurse who  wraps him in a soft blue towel. Without the

burdens of the past he is much lighter.  Small and newborn.  Surrounding faces shed tears of joy  as those

same large hands lay him on the breast of that beautiful redhead and she cradles him gently, firmly

against her and he finally able to accept that feeling of an unrequited longing stemming from a desire he

understands not.

when I realized that while not everyone thought as I did, that didn’t make them

wrong.  I have attempted to sledge hammer my desires into people to no avail.

It was never it’s my way or the highway but rather it’s my way or I will hunker

down and make your life hell.  And just to make sure I received that lesson I

place myself in a situation where I have no control and am completely aware .

With the Europeans leaving at mid-term, their slot is now occupied by Debbie,

a cute Jewish girl from Long Island.  Fresh out of high school, Debbie regaled

Barbara and I  with her stories of ”but mother I love him” when caught sneaking

out with a boy.  The down side was she had irritable bowel syndrome and would

scream from her dorm room bed like she was dying. Lost in my malaise of

emotional turbulence I failed to question the acceptance level of continuing to

live with her the next year in a one bedroom dorm with no suite mates to act as

buffer.  By now I am sleeping in the top level of my psyche, the upper most sphere

where the drive by of a fly awakens me so the idea that short, young Debbie and

her tall girlfriend also with long brown hair could slip into the dorm room late

at night after a fun time out on the town without disturbing me was erroneous.

Fear of not operating at my ultimate capacity for the demanding day ahead fueled

my ire and it wasn’t long before their  profuse apologies for waking me  lapsed

into terrified giggles.  My unrelenting condemnation pushed them to offer up

an expensive pair of designer jeans as a peace offering and I simply accused

them of trying to buy my friendship.  When these two eighteen year olds said

they felt sorry for me because I just didn’t know when someone was trying to

be my friend I knew I had sunk to another new low.  And what to do about it

I knew not.

never actually had another person’s clothing officially hanging under the

same roof.  Plenty of unofficial living somewhere else for the week or month

but always my place to come back to.   With full awareness of my history, I

willingly move into a dorm on 10th Street my first summer in New York City.

The full force of my Texas life arrived bundled in twenty or so brown moving

boxes I shipped via US mail, way more than anyone in their right mind would

bring.  That I had a large walk-in closet was to me proof  my decision to head

business of learning French.  As a language it felt like a game of pick-up

sticks, a way to exercise my mind but nothing of substance that applied

to my actual life.  Sitting in class I was an imposter and my homework

a waste of time.  Nothing was sticking.  Nothing felt normal.  I thought

for sure  a nice afternoon in Luxemburg Garden would soothe my soul

and as I sat watching a little boy and girl dressed in sailor outfits play

with their real, live white duck in the fountain all I could think was what

a good job Central Casting did to populate the scene.  At night I  lay in

bed and listened to enchanting french music blow out an open window

from the building next door.  French music was one of the few things

that chipped through to my senses. Not the above ground train I rode

each day from the dorm that passed the Eifel Tower off in the distance.

Not Ponte Neuf, the bridge over the Seine River where I imagined I

was Joan of Arc in a previous life as I was unable to appreciate the

structure but instead imagined large draft horses carrying armoured

warriors heavy and in the dead of winter’s cold.  Only that nightime

music.  At a gathering for our departing class the teachers approached

us speaking French and I answered in English.  Eyes rolled and my

crowning achievement of the last six weeks, a bucket of French shame .

My plane landed in New York City and I supressed my deep desire  to

drop to my knees and kiss  my American ground.  I felt I had been

terrorized enough but my psyche was not finished with me just yet.

and imperceptible but a survey of the places I went during my off hours

telegraphed I was trending downward.  The catacombs underneath the streets

of Paris held a fascination for me that only the comfortable numbness of

depression would allow. Narrow, winding passageways of cavern walls stacked

with human skulls and bones did not ignite the creep factor in my senses and

my obsession focused solely on why there were no weird, bad odors down there.

Only now do I consider that unsettled souls of the departed have possibly attached

themselves to me as I passed, gladly living off my life as pilot fish instead of

living an eternity in the wake of the gasps and mumbles of passing tourists.

I  emerge from the Catacombs onto the streets of Paris flooded with sunshine

only now happy to be alive and make my way to the McDonald’s by the

Pantheon for a cheeseburger and fries, a sure cure for the broke and broken.

Entering the Pantheon with my bursting bag of fast American food I tour the

crypts where the famous and infamous lay for hundreds of years and imagined

what it would be like  buried alive under those thick stone slabs and the futility

of ever escaping. Parts of the Pantheon were roped off, the places where ceiling

murals were faded and chipping away.  An outside stairway spiraled to the

rooftop where again I emerged to have the sun warm my shredded psyche and

climbed to the domed portion with complete disregard for the Japanese couple

who managed to find their way to my hidden world.  I  lay against the curved

shape spread eagle, my back against the smooth surface and let the sun bleach

my pain just as I had done one month  prior on the sandy beach of Amagansat,

Long Island.

humanity, looked up a couple words in my french dictionary and nerved my

way over to claim my bag.  The one bag I was barely able to hoist onto the

check-in scale.  My one bag that weighed over the limit that I paid extra for.

Such an economy of scale I told myself when I picked it up for $15 from a

vendor on 14th street in New York City was now an  albatross choking me

around my neck.  It was as though I were traveling with a huge baby  or a

cripple in a wheel chair I could  take neither up and down stairs nor leave

behind. I push this behemoth outside and take my place among the other

travelers in the taxi queue that trailed down the curb and force a conversation

with a somewhat unwilling girl next to me who agrees to share a  ride into

Paris. Another good idea I had was to think I could get by for six weeks on

$200 cash and with a $40 fare staring me in the face I defaulted to my overly-

friendly, people pleasing effervescent self that bordered on annoying .  I arrived

at the dorm that was in a fabulous part of town and pushed my noisy behemoth

over the cobblestone courtyard and zigzagged it up the wooden  steps to a room I

shared with a young girl from a small college in New England.  What started as

a very nice relationship turned when I began to imagine her snooping through my

things.  So sure was I that while in Paris she had nothing better to do than peer

into my drawers, I started leaving her notes, hiding them in my  folded underwear,

asking if she was having fun going through my stuff.  Upon her return I would

study her face for any trace of guilt, any hint that she had actually read the notes

and had now commenced to hiding her actions.  Reality was slipping away and I

wasn’t even learning French.

A temporary destination fraught with lack of funds, a keen inability to

communicate and the chance sighting of my Dallas dentist in a café plaza

in the  16th Arrondissement  where NYU has their six-week summer session.

Thus my attempt to learn French.  It was an astonishingly great idea when I

signed up but between the attempted destruction of the World Trade Center

in February and my departure in June I managed to get myself  into an

imaginary relationship with a man from New Jersey with a bad knee that only

hinted at the crippledness with which he limped inside. He remains nameless

because it was not about him but  about my need to not feel the resulting

terrors of moving from my comfort zone into the war zone of New York City.

My worldly belongings, transported in an anonymous white bread truck by

some boys looking to earn a buck, are  deposited in a storage locker on the

east side.  In my empty dorm room I am hysterical on the phone to my friend

in Dallas.  Now a lamp unplugged from its electrical source, my emotional

pain throbs in the dark, physically crushing me since my break up.  The acute

sense of being separated by an ocean has me in melt down compounded by the

knowing I would be just as far away were I to stay.  Landing at Charles DeGaulle

I exit the plane and walk directly  to a row of orange plastic chairs attached to

the wall.   I decide these are not so bad and I will sit here as long as it takes

for me to figure out what comes next.   Hours, days, it doesn’t matter.   None

of the signs are in English, and I don’t know French.  Perfect.

thinking no one will believe me and I not wanting to justify my trauma.

When I get home the buildings are still releasing their prisoners. Thousands

of terrified people smudged with smoke stumble out the stairwells and into

the fresh cold air at the base of the towers. One hundred and six flights of

I’m gonna die. A moment of jealousy rises. I want to be on camera, reporters

thrusting microphones in my face. Tell us what it was like, those hours it

took to descend, what did you think when you couldn’t breath, the flow  of

humanity  steady then stopping.   No one has much to say and I am annoyed

on their behalf. Maybe viewers need to have their fears confirmed or imagine

themselves heros helping at the scene but from the comfort of their home how

can that happen. Like watching the Vietnam war while sitting on our living

room sofa with my little sister waiting for mom to finish cooking dinner, it’s

just a story if you let it be. The company I work for moves everyone to its upper

westside office where we double up at desks and crunch into offices. My boss

who left the tower fifteen minutes before the blast continues to ask if I need to

see a therapist. I suspect he is the one that does and keep saying no. Weeks

later I sign in at the now very secure security station in the lobby of the south

tower and am reminded of standing behind nightclub ropes and being chosen

to enter.  I ride the elevators to the 86th floor to retrieve some necessary papers

initially missed. The office is a shell of its former glory, like a body in a morgue

with its soul departed. Desks and chairs hide behind a thick layer of protective

ash and how I find what I need a miracle. Through the windows at the city below

I try to imagine the horror my co-workers felt and like a good viewer from the

comfort of her home wonder at this height if they even felt the explosion. But

mathematical formulas be damned, I truly believe the building now in a

weakened state and wipe my sweaty palms down the side of my dress. This was

not a good idea, but like jumping off the bridge that  carried Dallas cars across

the lake back in high school, it was important I do this and don’t  understand why.

estimate  to be the 86th floor a huge sense of guilt and helplessness settles in

my bones like a deep despair, like watching someone drown so far off shore

there is nothing one can do.  Around the corner, down the steps to the N train

without a thought as to why I would go underground at this point, I take what

I now believe to be the last N train passing through that station for a very long

time.   The car is almost empty and my sense of non-reality continues, like I’m

complicit with some bigger plan and happy to be aboard my train to nowhere

and out of there before I am caught. At Prince Street  I call my roommate from

the platform  payphone.  I’m okay I shout.  My roommate Barbara says that’s

nice and giggles at my dramatics. Something happened I try to explain, not

doing a very good job but  Barbara has heard nothing and  the pressure in my

chest builds because why am I not screaming out for someone to do something.

At the top of the Subway steps I enter an Urban Outfitter and keep asking the

sales clerk as she brings me clothes to the dressing room if I smell like smoke.

She keeps her distance because I am so intense and hyper alert. I purchase a

light mustard yellow sweater and matching tight pants that I never have the

guts to wear together and as I step out onto the city sidewalk I finally hear the

squawk of police radios crackling.  A sense of urgency vibrates in the air as

uniformed guards pop into action.   I want to say too late, it already happened.

I was there,  I already know  and just now you find out?  I run the few blocks

to my dorm and  burst in to find my roommates gathered around the television

listening to voices without a picture because the emergency  towers planted on

top of the  World Trade Center were knocked out.  They stare up at me, rush to

me.  Now I cry.

smoke rises to meet me.  In the movies this is where the character makes the

choice to continue into the dark unknown or retreat.  But to what?  I’d seen

Towering Inferno.  If action equals character, I did not courageously bolt down

into the smoke. I screamed like I’d never screamed before. Help me.  Help me.

A voice calls up from below saying it’s okay,  to come down. Come on down.

Down I go into the smoke wondering if it is dust and debris or smoke from a

fire full of poisonous fumes ready to take me out, and at the bottom of the stairs

while still wearing my heels and holding my cup of yogurt I do  a full speed  OJ

leap over a dolly cart stacked with boxes being pulled by an older man attempting

to jiggle the wheels  around the corner, not at all concerned with the situation.

Was he transporting gold and refused to abandon his prize or simply taking this

opportunity to steal something.  I go  down a hall I hope leads to  the Concourse

where throngs of terrified employees run for their lives.  But the Concourse is dark

and deserted.  Like a neutron bomb wiped out  humanity and left the harder, more

durable structures standing. Out of the thousands I dismissed four hours earlier

with a multitude of smug thoughts, there is no one.   So many people gone  so fast.

It couldn’t have been more than 3 or 4 minutes and with only two men appearing

to me since the explosion I entertain the crazy thought I might be dreaming. I

burst through a door which just happens to lead outside and am on a side of the

tower I’ve never seen.  But I am  free.  And still no one. I look up at the snow

flakes gently falling and finally, there they are. Hundreds of people in the

covered walkway connecting two surrounding buildings. Frozen, silent bodies

glaring down at me. Are they the lunch crowd seeking shelter or rubber-neckers

intent on gobbling up the scene?   Sitting on the curb, still holding my yogurt,

still wearing my  heels, I feel embarrassed.  Like I ended up in some restricted

area and have been found out.  Over to my left a freight door, the kind that rolls

up, was closed but bowed out and I think about the  force it took to bend that

slab of steel.   Only now do I hear the sirens, see the ambulances, the EMTs

rolling out a building maintenance man whose face is a lighter, whiter,

transparent shade of blue than his shirt.  A man appears at my side, asks if I’m

okay.  I nod yes. I mean, I guess I am.  Then he’s  gone. Why wasn’t I told

what to do.  Or where to stand, or how to feel.  Should I just leave or try to insert

myself into this recovery operation like an unwanted in-law at a hot tub party?

And if I do leave the scene of an accident, could I be arrested?