"It would appear so."
"If you're having problems with your sex life or feeling the urge to race around town killing men in turbans, I don't want to know about it."
"It's nothing like that. I'm not going to make you blush, I promise." Which wasn't quite the same as saying I promise not to shock you or You won't think I'm crazy. "Just lunch and a little advice, that's all I'm asking. What do you say?"
I was surprised-almost flabbergasted-by my own persuasiveness. If I'd planned the conversation in advance, I almost certainly would have blown the whole deal. I suppose she was curious, and I'm sure she heard a degree of sincerity in my voice. She may also have surmised that if I was the sort of man who liked to try his hand picking up women, I would have had a go on that day in August when I'd actually been alone with her in her apartment, the elusive Edward in France or Germany. And I have to wonder how much actual desperation she saw in my face.
In any case, she agreed to have lunch with me on Friday at Donald's Grill down the street. Donald's may be the least romantic restaurant in all of Manhattan-good food, fluorescent lights, waiters who make it clear they'd like you to hurry. She did so with the air of a woman paying an overdue debt about which she's nearly forgotten. This was not exactly flattering, but it was good enough for me. Noon would be fine for her, she said. If I'd meet her in the lobby, we could walk down there together. I told her that would be fine for me, too.
That night was a good one for me. I went to sleep almost immediately, and there were no dreams of Sonja D'Amico going down beside the burning building with her hands on her thighs, like a stewardess looking for water.
As we strolled down 86th Street the following day, I asked Paula where she'd been when she heard.
"San Francisco," she said. "Fast asleep in a Wradling Hotel suite with Edward beside me, undoubtedly snoring as usual. I was coming back here on September twelfth and Edward was going on to Los Angeles for meetings. The hotel management actually rang the fire alarm."
"That must have scared the hell out of you."
"It did, although my first thought wasn't fire but earthquake. Then this disembodied voice came through the speakers, telling us that there was no fire in the hotel, but a hell of a big one in New York."
"Jesus."
"Hearing it like that, in bed in a strange room...hearing it come down from the ceiling like the voice of God..." She shook her head. Her lips were pressed so tightly together that her lipstick almost disappeared. "That was very frightening. I suppose I understand the urge to pass on news like that, and immediately, but I still haven't entirely forgiven the management of the Wradling for doing it that way. I don't think I'll be staying there again."
"Did your husband go on to his meetings?"
"They were canceled. I imagine a lot of meetings were canceled that day. We stayed in bed with the TV on until the sun came up, trying to get our heads around it. Do you know what I mean?"
"Yes."
"We talked about who might have been there that we knew. I suppose we weren't the only ones doing that, either."
"Did you come up with anyone?"
"A broker from Shearson Lehman and the assistant manager of the Borders book store in the mall," she said. "One of them was all right. One of them...well, you know, one of them wasn't. What about you?"
So I didn't have to sneak up on it, after all. We weren't even at the restaurant yet and here it was.
"I would have been there," I said. "I should have been there. It's where I worked. In an insurance company on the hundred and tenth floor."
She stopped dead on the sidewalk, looking up at me, eyes wide. I suppose to the people who had to veer around us, we must have looked like lovers. "Scott, no!"
"Scott, yes," I said. And finally told someone about how I woke up on September Eleventh expecting to do all the things I usually did on weekdays, from the cup of black coffee while I shaved all the way to the cup of cocoa in front of the midnight news summary on Channel Thirteen. A day like any other day, that was what I had in mind. I think that is what Americans had come to expect as their right. Well, guess what? That's an airplane! Flying into the side of a skyscraper! Ha-ha, ass**le, the joke's on you, and half the goddam world's laughing!