We All Fall Down (7 page)

“Come on … pick it up … be home.” It kept on ringing until the answering machine kicked in.

“Mom, it’s me … we’re fine. It wasn’t our building, it was the North Tower that got hit. But we’re leaving anyway. We’ll probably be home before you get this message. We’re fine … bye-bye.”

People were already starting to leave. They had put on their jackets, grabbed their briefcases or bags and headed toward the stairwell. I looked up at the TVs. Now every single one of them was showing scenes from the North Tower. This had to be the biggest news story of the day, and I was a witness. I shook my head. I wasn’t seeing anything different from anybody else, anywhere in the world. I had to see it with my own eyes.

I slowly walked back into my father’s office. He was on the phone.

“We have to redirect all our business to the L.A. office … Yes, I know that it won’t be open for another two hours. The London office can handle
things until then … I
know
it wasn’t our tower that was hit, and no, I won’t be leaving a skeleton staff. They’ve already left. I’ll be home in about two hours. You can direct calls to me at that time … Yes … Yes, don’t worry. I’ll simply field calls from my house as soon as I get home. I can make up for things then and I’ll work until all the important deals are dealt with … Yes … Yes, I understand that you’re not happy, but it’s my call. Fine … yes …”

It was obvious that while my father was going to leave he wasn’t going to take the advice he’d given his staff about spending time with their families. He was just going to do his work from home. How typical. Even a plane crashing into the World Trade Center and his office being evacuated wasn’t enough to stop him from working.

I eased over to the windows. I was caught by an irrational fear that somehow what was happening over at the other building would jump out across the open space and get me. That was stupid. We were here, safe, separated by the distance of the plaza.

My father finally hung up the phone. “The big boss doesn’t agree with my decision. He said there was no need to take such extreme measures.” He shook his head. “The old fart would have wanted us to keep working if it had been
this
tower that was hit. Let me get my things, and then we have something else to do before we leave.”

Slowly I edged toward the window. I looked up. The smoke was even thicker and it didn’t look as though it was just coming from four or five of the floors now. What had happened to the people on that floor when the plane hit? No, it wasn’t
floor
, it was
floors
. And what was happening to those people on all the floors above the fire? Had they been able to get down the stairs, or would they be trapped up there until the firemen climbed up to save them? Could they get off from the top? Could a helicopter land up there or dangle a rope and ladder like I’d seen in movies?

“Oh my God,” I gasped as I stepped back from the window. There, just before my eyes, two small figures, hand in hand, had leaped from a window.

“Will, what’s wrong?” my father asked.

I backed away from the windows. I didn’t want to look down. I didn’t want to see what I knew had happened.

“Will, are you okay?”

I numbly nodded my head. “They … they … out of the tower … two people … they … they …” I couldn’t get myself to finish the sentence. I felt like I was going to be sick. I had just seen them for a split second, and thank goodness they were too far away for me to see their faces, but I knew it was a man and a woman and they were holding hands.

My father got up from his desk and reached over and put his hands on my shoulders.

“What did you see?” he asked.

“Two people … they jumped from the building.”

My father shook his head. “Poor souls.”

“But … but why would they do that?”

“They must have been trapped by the fire and saw no way out. Maybe it wasn’t even deliberate. Maybe they just fell. I’m just so sorry you had to see that. So sorry that you had to be here instead of safe at school.”

“Safe at school … aren’t we safe here?”

“Of course we are,” he said, sounding reassuring. “I just meant safe from what you witnessed. We have to leave now.”

Suzie popped her head into the doorway. “Everybody has gone.”

“Even Phil?”

“Even Phil. I chased him out personally. None of the traders were too happy, though.”

“Well, if they’re not on the phone working a deal, they’re not making money. I bet most of them will be on their cellphones talking business before they hit the base of the building,” my father said. “Now I need you and Will to leave.”

“What about you?” Suzie asked.

“Yeah?” I wanted an answer to that myself.

“I’m going to be a while still. I have to go to the other offices on the floor to make sure they all leave as well.”

“Why do
you
have to do that?” I asked.

“I’m the fire warden for this
entire
floor. I’m responsible for the safety of everybody here.”

There was that word,
safe
, again. Each time he said it I felt less safe and more concerned.

“I want to go down with you,” I said.

“I’d rather you just got out of the building.”

“And I’d rather stay with you. Unless you think it isn’t safe in the building, and if you think that then you should come with us right now.”

“It is safe. I’m just being cautious. Fine, you can stay with me and we’ll hurry.” He turned to Suzie. “We’ll walk you to the stairwell and then you can head down and we’ll quickly go to the other offices.”

“You sure you don’t want my help?” Suzie asked.

“The best way you can help me is to go home and start connecting to the London office. You live closer so you’ll be able to make contact before I can. Let them know I’ll be online by eleven.”

Work, again with work. I was willing to bet he’d be on his own cellphone and taking care of business before we hit the train home.

We walked back out to the main office. It was empty and eerie. The bank of televisions had been turned off. The computer screens were blank. But the telephones never stopped ringing. We walked to the stairwell where we’d come in that morning.

“Suzie, I’ll call you at eleven. Try to keep them calm,” my father said.

“I thought we were all supposed to leave and take a day off?” Suzie said.

“That advice isn’t for you and me. Don’t you think I’d take a day off if I could?” he asked.

Before I could think to control myself I laughed out loud. The sound was so strange coming just then.

“I guess I deserve that,” my father said. “I’ve missed a lot of days off. I’ve missed a lot of things. Let’s do what we have to do and get out of here.”

“I’ll be waiting for your call,” Suzie said, and she disappeared into the stairwell.

I felt a little pang of remorse. Part of me did want to just go with her and get out of the building as soon as possible. I really didn’t like being there. Again, it didn’t make any sense to be nervous, but I was.

Then I started to think how long it was going to take to climb down the stairs. If you could go down two floors a minute—and I didn’t know if you could keep that pace up for eighty-five flights—it would take over forty minutes. Of course that would only be possible if the stairs were clear, and if every floor was evacuating then the stairwells would be incredibly crowded. People would be bumping into each other, and the slowest would be holding up everybody all the way behind them for floors and floors.

“You coming?” my father asked.

I snapped out of my trance. My father was standing at the glass doors that led out to the corridor. I could see a bank of elevators just down the way. I hurried over to him and he locked the doors behind us.

“Some people try to take advantage of situations like this to loot or rob,” he said as he gave the doors a shake to make sure they were locked.

Just to the other side of the elevators was another set of almost identical glass doors. The gold letters identified it as a law firm. The lights were on, but the office looked deserted. My father gave the door a push. It was locked.

“I’m glad they made the same decision. That’s good,” he said.

It was looking like this was going to be easy—and fast.
That
was good. We continued down the hall. There was another door—big, solid, wooden. According to the door it was an engineering firm. I could just hope that it was locked and that they’d already—my father opened the door. I followed in after him. There were ten or eleven people huddled around a small TV. The screen was filled with the image of the tower. The smoke seemed to be thicker and blacker, staining the blue sky, almost blotting it out above the towers. It was obvious that the fire was getting stronger, and it looked as though it was spreading to other floors. Was that why those two people had jumped? Were they
trapped and chose to die quickly rather than burn to death?

“Hello,” my father called out and they all turned around. “Who’s in charge?”

“I guess that would be me,” a man said. He was wearing a suit but he was so young—maybe in his twenties—that he looked as though he had borrowed the clothes from his father.

“You?” my father asked.

The man shrugged. “All the senior partners are out today. I’m it.”

“My name is John Fuller,” my father began. “I work just down the hall. I’ve asked all my people to leave the building.”

“We were talking about that,” he said. “It’s not like we’re doing any work. It’s just that I’m only a junior and I don’t really have the authority to close down the office. I don’t want to get in trouble.”

“You won’t. I’m the fire warden for this floor. I’m
ordering
you all to leave. If anybody gives you a hard time you tell them you were just following my orders.”

The man shrugged again. “That works for me. Okay, everybody, gather your stuff and let’s get out of here.” People started to get up.

The picture on their TV screen suddenly changed from the building to a close-up of a man sitting behind a desk. “We have an update.”

Everybody stopped and turned back toward the set.

“It has been confirmed that the plane that crashed into the World Trade Center was American Airlines Flight
11
. It carried eighty-one passengers and a crew of eleven. It departed Boston en route to Los Angeles. It was reportedly hijacked shortly after takeoff and it can only be assumed that it was deliberately crashed into the building in an act of terrorism.”

There were gasps. I felt my head spin. Somebody had deliberately crashed a plane, killing themselves and all the others on board and everybody where the plane hit … it was beyond belief.

“That explains the severity of the fire,” one of the women said. “The fire is being fed by the jet fuel aboard the plane. A plane flying cross-country from Boston to L.A. would have had over ten thousand gallons of fuel on board. The flight to New York would have burned off less than a tenth of that. That would be some fire, an
incredibly
hot fire.”

“We are now going to return live to the scene,” the announcer said, “where one of our reporters is at the base of the tower, and has, standing by, an official from the Fire Department.”

The screen changed again and we all stood there, transfixed, hypnotized by the TV. There was a reporter, microphone in hand, standing beside a man in a uniform. Somehow I’d expected him to be in full fire-fighting gear—and
younger. He almost looked like a grandfather. Both men had serious, stern faces.

“I want to start off by saying that we have had to relocate our remote away from the plaza below the tower due to the debris that is falling. It was no longer safe to remain at that location. With me is Captain Raymond of the New York Fire Department. Captain, can you give us an update?”

“Certainly. We are in the process of evacuating the building. It is being done in a very orderly manner.”

“And what can you tell us about the fire? Are your men having success in battling the blaze?”

“As yet our men have not reached the scene of the fire.”

The reporter looked shocked but didn’t say anything.

“Our firefighters have to climb ninety floors. We expect they will reach the site of the fire within minutes.” That made me think about what my mother had said about there being no such thing as a “fat, unfit fireman.” That would be a hard workout—even worse carrying a firefighter’s gear. James’s father was based in Manhattan—would he be one of the guys racing up ninety floors to help?

“Do you have any word of casualties?” the report asked.

“We have no official word about deaths or injuries in the building.”

“Can we assume there were deaths?” the reporter asked.

“I don’t want to make too many comments based on speculation at this time, but I can’t imagine that there weren’t some deaths on the floors where the plane hit.”

“And what about the people in the floors above the fire, were they able to be evacuated?”

“Again, I have no information at this time. I just want you to know that everything that can possibly be done is being done.”

“I’m sure it is,” the reporter said. “Thank you for your time, Captain. And now, back to the anchor desk.”

My father walked over and turned off the TV to break the trance. “It’s time to stop watching and start leaving. Please, all of you, use the stairwells to evacuate.”

“Stairwells?” a woman asked.

“There is no guarantee that they won’t turn off the power to the buildings,” my father said, “and anybody in the elevators would be stranded. Take the stairs and take your time.”

“I just wish I’d worn my hiking boots instead of my high heels today,” a woman said, pointing down at her very high, stiletto heels.

“Take the shoes off and go barefoot,” another woman suggested.

As they all started to scramble away my father led me out of their office and back into the corridor.

“One more to go.”

At the end of the hall was another office, with big glass doors.

“This one’s another trading company,” my father said, “like ours.”

As we got closer I could see that there were still people inside. We walked in and there were dozens of them, all at their desks, working at computer terminals or talking on the phone. It was strange—nobody looked up as we entered. They all seemed to be working away, oblivious not only to us but to what was happening in the next tower.