But I have seen thee, bunting, to tatters torn, upon thy splinter’d staff.
Or clutch’d to some young color-bearer’s breast, with desperate hands,
Savagely struggled for, for life or death – fought over long,
‘Mid cannon’s thunder-crash, and many a curse, and groan and yell and rifle-volleys cracking sharp,
And moving masses, as wild demons surging – and lives as nothing risk’d,
For thy mere remnant, grimed with dirt and smoke, and sopp’d in blood;
For sake of that, my beauty – and that thou might’st dally, as now, secure up there,
Many a good man have I seen go under.”
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, September 7, 1871
“KILL THE ROCKEFELLERS!”
Kurt Cobain, Diaries, 2002
You know how it ends: everybody dies. Death, of course, comes to most people one day or another. The novelty of this story is that everyone dies at the same time in the same place. Does death forge bonds between people? It would not appear so: they do not speak to each other. They brood, like all those who got up too early and are munching their breakfast in a lavish cafeteria. From time to time, some take photos of the view, the most beautiful view in the world. Behind the square buildings, the sea is round; the slipstreams of the boats carve out geometric shapes. Even seagulls do not come this high. The customers in Windows on the World are strangers to one other for the most part. When, inadvertently, their eyes meet, they clear their throats and bury their noses in their newspapers PDQ. Early September, early morning, everyone is in a bad mood: the holidays are over, all that’s left is wait it out until Thanksgiving. The sky is blue, but no one is enjoying it.
In Windows on the World a moment from now, a large Puerto Rican woman will start to scream. A suited executive’s mouth will fall open. “Oh my God!” Office workers will be stunned into silence. A redhead will scream, “Holy shit!” A waitress will keep pouring tea until the cup overflows. Some seconds are longer than others. As though someone has pressed “Pause” on a DVD player. In a moment, time will become elastic. All of these people will finally come to know one another. In a moment, they will all be horsemen of the Apocalypse, all united in the End of the World.
That morning, we were at the top of the world, and I was the center of the universe.
It’s half past eight. Okay—it’s a bit early to drag your kids up a skyscraper. But the kids really wanted to have breakfast here and I just can’t say no to them: I feel guilty about splitting up with their mother. The advantage of getting here early is you don’t have to queue. Since the 1993 bombing, security controls on the ground floor have been tripled, you need special badges to work here and the security guards who search your bags don’t fuck around. Even the buckle on Jerry’s Harry Potter belt set off the metal detector. In the high-tech atrium, fountains gurgle discreetly. Breakfast is by reservation only: I gave my name at the Windows on the World desk when we arrived. “Good morning, my name is Carthew Yorston.” Immediately you get a sense of the place: red carpet, tasseled velvet rope, private elevator. In this vast airport lounge (350 square feet under glass), the reservation desk stands like a First Class check-in. It was a brilliant idea to show up early. The queues for the telescopes are shorter (pop a quarter in and you can stare at the secretaries arriving for work in the neighboring buildings: cellphones glued to their ears, dressed in pale gray figure-hugging pantsuits, coiffured hair, expensive sneakers, pumps stuffed into their fake Prada handbags). This is the first time I’ve been to the top of the World Trade Center: my sons both loved the Skylobbies—the high-speed elevators which ascend the first seventy-eight floors in forty-three seconds. They’re so fast you can feel your heart leap in your chest. They didn’t want to leave the Skylobby. Finally, after four round trips, I was annoyed.
“Okay, now, that’s enough! These lifts are for people going to work, it’s not marked Space Mountain!”
One of the restaurant hostesses, identifiable by her lapel badge, escorted us to the other elevator which whisks you to the 107th floor. We have a busy schedule today: breakfast at Windows on the World, then a walk in Battery Park where we’ll catch the Staten Island ferry to have a look at the Statue of Liberty, later a visit to Pier 17, a bit of shopping at South Street Seaport, some photos of the Brooklyn Bridge, a tour of the fish market just for the smell of it, and finally a medium-rare hamburger at the Bridge Cafe. The boys love big juicy hamburgers smothered in ketchup. And large Cokes full of crushed ice—as long as they’re not Diet. Kids think of nothing but food, parents of nothing but fucking. On that score things are pretty good, thanks: shortly after my divorce, I met Candace who works at Elite New York. You know the type…She makes J-Lo look like a bag lady. Every night she comes to the Algonquin and climbs all over me, moaning (she prefers Philippe Starck’s Royalton which is just down the block) (it’s because she’s never read Dorothy Parker) (remember to give her a copy of the Collected Dorothy Parker, that’ll put her off relationships).
In two hours I’ll be dead; in a way, I am dead already.
We know very little of what happened in Windows on the World that morning. The New York Times reports that at 8.46 AM, the time at which American Airlines flight 11 flew into floors 94 to 98, there were 171 people in the top-floor restaurant, seventy-two of whom were employees. We know that the Risk Water Group had organized a working breakfast in a private dining room on 106, but also that, as they did every morning, a variety of customers were having breakfast on 107. We know that the North Tower (the taller of the two, crowned with the antenna which made it look like a hypodermic syringe) was the first to be hit and the last to fall, at 10:28 AM precisely. There is therefore a time lag of exactly an hour and three-quarters. Hell lasts an hour and three-quarters. As does this book.
I am in Le Ciel de Paris as I write these words. That’s the name of the restaurant on the fifty-sixth floor of the Tour Montparnasse, 33 Avenue du Maine, 75015 Paris. Telephone: +33 1 40 64 77 64. Fax: +33 1 43 22 58 43. Métro station: Montparnasse-Bienvenue. They serve breakfast from 8:30 AM. For weeks now I’ve been having my morning coffee here every day. From here you can look at the Eiffel Tower eye to eye. The view is magnificent since it’s the only place in Paris from which you can’t see the Tour Montparnasse. Around me, businessmen shout into their cellphones so their neighbors can eavesdrop on their brainless conversations:
“Listen, I can’t babysit this anymore, it was actioned at the last meeting.”
“No, no, I’m telling you Jean-Philippe was crystal clear, it’s not negotiable.”
“Look, the stock’s printing on the ‘O.’”
“Look, take it from me, sometimes you melt and you don’t even cover your nut.”
“Well, you know what they say: Rockefeller made his fortune always buying too late and selling too early.”
“Okay, we don’t want to get whacked on this. I’ll get my secretary to snail you a hard copy and we’ll nail it down.”
“Like a shot, the value split.”
“I’ll tell you something, if those assholes don’t shore this fucker up, the stock is going to tank.”