Flying Man

As if in a dream- the wind blasting through my hair, over my body, I am flying faster and faster, in perfect form.  The horror is gone.  There is nothing but certainty now, and though awful, there is relief in certainty.

 

I was working at the restaurant today, helping with a special brunch we were hosting for some bank execs.  Lucy asked me to fill in for her because her kid is sick.  She’s a sweet girl and her kid is always sick.  I try to do whatever I can to help. 

       

Anyway, it was going to workout well for me today because I could get off early.  I still had to buy Grace something for our anniversary and I could pick up Nathan after his first full day of pre-school.   

         

In the early morning, I was taken by the skyline with the sun rising over the harbor and the warm yellow light that bathed the dining area.  I was never up there in the mornings, so while I’d seen a hundred or more sunsets, the sunrise was a new experience.  In my forty short years I’d come to value new experiences the same way I valued a good bottle of wine or glass of scotch, or taking Nathan anywhere for the first time.  

         

Sasha was calling about something from the kitchen so I broke my trance and ran in to see what she needed.  Apparently, the platters of fresh fruit hadn’t arrived yet from the warehouse downstairs.  I offered to run down to the basement levels to try and hurry them along, but she needed me to stay put, to make sure all the place settings were in order.  The morning staff were mostly new and she wanted to make sure they didn’t screw it up.  I grabbed a stack of plates from the dry bin and turned right back around for the dining hall.  

         

People were bustling, I was busy doing something I do well, which is make sure things looks nice.  

       

I’m good at my job.  It only takes me an hour to memorize an entirely new menu and I haven’t used a notepad since I was twenty-three.  I can manage five to seven full tables at a time and my average tip is twenty-five percent.  

       

I haven’t served in years but when I did I could balance a forty-two pound tray in one hand and hold five plates in the other.  All with a smile on my face and a quick-lipped joke at the ready.  

         

Maybe it was the change-up of the shifts or the new faces or leaving Nathan at school for the first time, but I felt uneasy.  I tried to identify the source of the anxiety, to shift it out of my mind, but it kept returning between brief lolls in the work.  

         

I walked past Axel, a young man who would be waiting for the first time this morning.  He’d been a server for over a year and looked a bit nervous, gazing over the empty dining tables like it was a gladiator arena.  I had put a reassuring hand on his shoulder as I walked past.  

    

 

I’m still flying, though my mind wanders the hills connecting the before with now.  The before when everything was normal, routine, and full of hopefulness that years left to do things tend to embroider, with the now of finality.  

    

My posture is like Superman with my right arm extended in front and my left leg tucked up high as if ready for a soccer kick.  The posture seems to stabilize me, make me more aerodynamic, more perfect.  

         

 

Earlier this morning, Sasha was calling from the kitchen again and I realized I’d left my cell phone at home.  

     

Another pin in the anxiety cushion, but not really a big deal.  I’d be off work by three, and Nathan’s school finished at four.  Plenty of time.  I had just spoken to my parents yesterday, so no worries there.  

     

Sasha had gotten a call from the service level.  The fruit was ready but they needed someone to go downstairs to sign for it.  

     

It was a hundred floors down but the elevators are fast.  I glanced at my watch, it was eight forty-five.  It should have taken me about fifteen minutes round-trip, including the inventory and sign-off.  I told Sasha I’d be back and asked Gerald, one of the senior waitstaff to keep an eye on things.  I took my apron off and threw it on one of the counters in the outer corridor, hoping the cooking crew didn’t throw it on the floor in their haste to ready the entrees.  

     

I walked out of the restaurant and into the hallway.

     

My mind started to wander and the anxiety was back as I walked through the common areas toward the elevator banks.  Strangers rushed past me on either side, scurrying to work in their business suits, holding briefcases and looks of hypnotized scorn. 

     

My eyes locked on a pretty young woman, an accountant probably.  She was a petite redhead with green eyes.  I’m not sure if I heard it, or saw the expression on her face first.  I’m not sure what clued me into the terrific shock that ran through my body, through the floor and the walls and the air around me. 

 

It almost knocked her over and I nearly lost my balance as well.      

 

Everyone stopped and looked around at one another for some kind of confirmation of the thunderous jolt that had erupted from somewhere in the building.  It was definitely the building itself, not something outside.  

  

   

Flying again now, the building sweeps past me immune from the wind.  Glass windows blur like a wave of water as I take a glance in the hopes of admiring my own form in the reflection.  It won’t be long now and I’m ok with that.  I’m the decider.  

 

 

     

Back inside, an hour before, there was a commotion.  People stopped and then continued with equal suddenness, only faster.  I kept walking toward the elevators.  There were lights blinking.  A siren was sounding.  There was a voice over the PA.  There had been an explosion.  A fire.  We were to remain calm and await further instructions.  

     

Not long after there was another loud noise, another thunder, but this one didn’t shake the building.  Someone came out from a side door and yelled an announcement to the common area, to no one in particular.  

     

I understood the words, but not their meaning.  “A plane has crashed into the building,” he said.  

     

People kept moving toward their respective offices as if they didn’t understand him either.  I turned around and returned to the restaurant.  When I got there I saw a gathering at the windows.  They were looking down at an orange pile of smoke ascending in a thick plume.  And they were looking at the twin building across from us, burning in an orange and red ember.  

     

“Two planes,” said a man into a cell phone standing next to me.  I thought he was on the cook staff.  I didn't recognize him.  

     

“Two planes have hit the buildings.  Both towers,” he was now talking to the room. 

 

No one panicked.  It was the kind of commotion the people sitting in upper Manhattan might have been experiencing at this very moment, watching this unfold on CNN.  

     

It was shocking, mysterious, and unnerving but otherwise not life threatening.  

     

“Somethings happening,” said Alex, one of the busboys.  “I need to get home and check on my wife,” he said.  

     

He was asking me for permission to leave.  It was the first real indication to me that this wasn’t something unfolding on another planet.  I had no authority but nodded my head.  

     

The PA system was telling people to remain calm and to remain where they were.  Some people, in a trickle, ignored the instructions and left.  I went into the kitchen to look for Sasha.  

     

I found her sitting in a corner smoking a cigarette.  Her face was pale.  She grabbed my hand.  She was shaking.  

     

“It’s going to be fine,” I told her.

     

She shook her head.  

     

“The building has all kinds of safety systems….fireproof stairwells, sprinklers…even in-house firefighters,” I said.  

     

“Even the building safety department said its ok,” I said after a moment. 

       

She’s from the former Soviet Union and had a different take on public safety announcements.

       

I thought to call Grace, to tell her I’m fine, and then I wondered about Nathan.  Was he alright?  Was this happening all over the city?  I could have borrowed a phone but I didn’t remember anybody’s number.  

     

A moment later I was watching CNN report on the plane crashes with a group huddled around a small portable TV someone had set up on an outer rim dining table.  I could feel the tension that gripped most of them in their clenched fists and stomachs.  

     

Someone murmured that the fire escape stairs were blocked by burning smoke.  

 

 

 

Flying now in the last rush, I’m certain this is something in my life I’ve done right.  Its a decision I’ve made and I’m trying to do it perfectly.  I hope the very end, the landing, or whatever, it will be will be perfect too.  It will be my last moment.  My last words to Nathan.  I’m not going to flail or scream or beg.  

 

     

Not long before, the commotion intensified as smoke started to seep through the floors and windows.  I stopped seeing familiar faces and started to see only fear stricken expressions, with big questions, that desperately needed answers.  

     

There was a rumbling sound like air-conditioning, but it wasn’t cold air that was rumbling.  It was coming from several floors below us, swallowing one floor at a time, swelling up from below and pushing us in a panicked run for any kind of safety.

     

Some people hid under desks, others inside bathroom stalls, and a few in the freezer.  We could hear the building moaning in pain, like a giant dying elephant, crying out for mercy as steal walls bent, folded and buckled - each burst shaking the floors like an earthquake.  

     

I ran around directionless with the rest of them - smelling gasoline, coughing smoke, and listening to panicked screaming.  A way out, there had to be a way out.  Each corner, each door, every window was blocked by smoke and heat.  It was the heat of an oven and might as well have been a wall of brick.  

     

I saw people wrapped in blankets, coats and table clothes to shield themselves from the air that had become like a tornado of hell.  Their faces were blistered and red.  I felt sunburned and knew I probably also had blisters on my skin, but I was too desperate to notice.  Desperate to find a way out.          

     

I found an open wall of ruble, by a window, broken open with a chair or a table, surrounded by twenty or so others.  No one was saying anything. We were all huddled together looking out on the cool blue morning.  Heat and smoke were blasting from behind us, like a dragon promising to devour us whole, its breath singing us like roasted meat, scraping us away one blister at a time.              

     

Then, in slow motion and without a word, a man and a woman, holding hands as a couple might walk to a dance, stepped off the edge.  

       

We had all been thinking the same.  We’d all watched at least one person melt into hell at the surprise burst of a fire plume through the floor.  There wasn’t anywhere else to run.  The heat was melting us, our sweat sizzling like oil in a pan, layers of skin peeling off, trying to escape the body that was betraying them.     

       

Another voiceless couple jumped, holding hands.  Agreements made with the eyes, partners for eternity.  

       

My mind raced.  So much lost. The Nathan I would never know, the Grace I would never see again.  Who would take care of them?  

     

Two more and then a third and then a fourth.  I didn’t watch them fall.  I didn’t look at anyone else.  I stared at my feet, taking deep breathes, holding my hands together tightly, crouching on the floor, looking out at the sky for anything - maybe a rescue helicopter or a ladder or a rope or a net.  

     

The wind bursted and it was like being on a mountain top, a straight edge down, not even a place to put your hands.  

     

I knew I had to do this. So much left undone.  Those imperfections left imperfect.  

     

I had tried out for the diving team when I was in high school, but didn’t make it.  I had good form off the lower boards, but lost my courage on the higher ones.  I couldn’t arrest those little doubts in my mind and it made me fall.  My form was off.  

     

I jumped off a thirty foot cliff in Mexico a few years back, into a waterhole in the middle of the jungle.  It was part of a jeep safari Grace and I took from Cancun.  The fear would build up in the stomach as I approached the edge and reach a crescendo as I stepped off.  Just a simple step, as if I was walking into the shopping mall.  

    

For that brief moment, when its clear there’s only air beneath my feet, I realize there’s no going back, that I’m committed to this decision.  The rest unfolds with a fall into the water below and then the exhilaration that water, a fundamentally different dimension than air, has enabled my soft landing, my continued existence.  

    

Maybe another dimension below, like the water, will enable a soft landing.  

    

I stood up.  I didn’t look at the rest of the people remaining around me.  I didn’t look at the skyline or back at the invading flames.  I was inside myself.  Far away.

    

I stepped out.  Committed.  There was nothing beneath me.  

    

My stomach hit my throat.  I closed my eyes.  I felt the wind as if battered by a thousand pillows, thumping harmlessly against me.  I shifted my body into a dive. 

 

    

And now I focus my form.  Try to visualize how I look, off the diving board, using my arms to shift my position.  Hold them against my side to be aerodynamic, hold my leg up, make my body straight.  Like Superman coming to the rescue. 

    Yes.  Like Superman.  I’m flying like Superman in a race to the ground, and when I get there I’ll swoop around and pick up all the others who’ve fallen from the building - then back up to blow out the flames.  

    I’m going faster and faster, but my form is made more perfect by the speed.  I see Grace and Nathan.  I’m smiling at them.

    I see myself, gliding through the morning light:  cool, comfortable, calm and free.