Amy's Story. Anna Lawton

in a field in Pennsylvania, south-east of Pittsburgh, not far from the town of Shanksville. Apparently, a group of passengers showed extraordinary courage and took on the hijackers. They engaged the terrorists at the controls in the cockpit. Relatives on the phone reported that the plane was rolling wildly before crashing. The plane was allegedly directed toward the Washington Capitol in a suicide mission.”

      Joe manages to bring a TV set into the dining room. It is 10:28. They witness the collapse of the North Tower. It is like a movie replay, a déjà vu, but not for this less horrific—another implosion, another wave of dust, more victims trapped in the rubble, more dead. Survivors keep coming in through the front door. Now, they are everywhere. They sit on blankets on the floor.

      By the end of the day everyone is gone, picked up by loved ones, friends, or paramedics. Chris escorts out a few people who had no assistance.

      In the empty room, the three of them sit in silence. The TV is still on. At the disaster site the fire has been extinguished, but the ashes are still burning. In the dim daylight the area is a flat, snowy-like landscape. The remains of the towers are contorted skeletons standing out sharply against the white background, Gothic silhouettes from a horror movie set for chiaroscuro effect.

      Joe turns off the TV. The three of them get up and walk toward the door. They hug. Amy leaves.

      At her desk that night Amy finds it difficult to work. Her eyes wander from the page to the window—a transparent wall, connecting, rather than separating, the interior space to the lights of the big city that never sleeps. One step through the glass, and she would be gliding among the stars of that electric firmament.

      She lives in Larry’s penthouse. He died recently in a car accident. At seventy-eight, still in love with sport cars. She inherited his estate, and with it the publishing house. She had been working with Larry at L&N for many years as editorial director and, after the accident, she filled his chair as president.

      I love New York, Amy thinks... since that far-away summer of my childhood, when I was first struck and forever conquered by its aggressive charm. Today, her city has been violated. Lady Liberty has been raped. She recalls the words of the cabbie that morning, “A pack of mad dogs...” It seems that, in this case, the mad dogs have only been facilitators. The pundits on all TV channels speculate that the mastermind behind this heinous operation is a Saudi by the name of Osama bin Laden, the head of a terrorist organization known as Al-Qaeda.

      In the optics of a perverse aesthetics, today’s tragic event looks to her like the conclusion of a cycle, the unhappy grand finale of a historical era. And, what is worse, it also looks like an ominous sign at the dawning of a new century, a new millennium.

      Amy does not want to speculate about tomorrow. She clicks on Stella’s Story, brings up the digitized manuscript, and plunges into yesterday.