I remember waking to the sound of furniture being dragged from one side of the room to the other in the apartment overhead. My roommate in the other room groaned. The time on my alarm clock glared 7:00AM. I rolled out of bed, gathered my clothes that I had laid out the prior evening and stomped to the shower. The lukewarm yellow water spitting from the nozzle, the rumble of garbage trucks from the street below and the loud concatenation of Chinatown vendors on the warm morning of September 11, revealed that this would be a trying day.

On the way to the subway station, men wheeled cartons of carrots and kale in thick, dingy crates; dried leaves from the carrots protruded from small slivers of space. In the small park on Spring Street, an elderly woman with slicked back hair practiced Tai Chi. Outside of the bodega by the train station, a man arranged flowers; long poppy stalks stirred in white buckets. I skipped down the stairs to hear the screech of brakes slamming on rails. With my duffel bag slung over my shoulder, I rushed through the turnstile with my Metrocard to catch the 6 train pulling into the Spring Street station platform.

Armed with strong black coffee, I entered the elevator in the Time Warner building on 23rd and Park. I greeted engineers and co-workers in my group. Weekend plans were discussed. We all worried the warm weather would not hold up. We grumbled over the possibility of weekend showers. I stepped out of the elevator and waved to reception. I was barely at work for fifteen minutes when my boss called. Static greeted me over the line and his voice echoed.

“Is something going on?” he had asked, his voice cutting in and out. My other line blinked. I placed my boss on hold. After a minute, I clicked back.

“Sorry about that, what do you mean?”

“I’m on the bus in from Jersey and for some reason, all the traffic stopped going into Manhattan. People are saying something about a plane crash. Can you turn on the news?” The sound of his hand covering the receiver and him mumbling, “What?” collided with my reply, “Hold on, I’ll go into your office and check” and then I added, “We’ve got the meeting with I.T. at 11:00 A.M.”

A voice from the office adjacent to my boss yelled, “Oh my God, Oh my God. Felicia are you in Bob’s office?” “Yeah,” I yelled, flicking the AV switch from the cable box and and off. The reception was poor. CNN came in clear and as I flicked from channel to channel, all I could see were banners zipping across the front of the screen and reporters speaking into small fuzzy microphones. Confused, I didn’t take any of the voices in; I walked into Jennifer’s office. My boss was still on hold. My phone still sat on my chair.

Jennifer said, “There was a plane crash”. “Look,” she said, pointing to the screen on Channel 4. The monitor kept flashing repeats of the incident, a plane heading in slow motion into the North Tower of World Trade. A solemn voice-over kept repeating, “We are unsure of the airline, but a plane just collided into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. We have no other information as of yet. Reporting live…” The words reporting live bounced off the thin walls of the office where we stood. I only remember having said, “How did it get so low?” “I don’t understand,” she said, “Why it would fly that low.” Jennifer’s husband was an airline pilot. Her voice trembled. We looked at one another and then our heads darted back to the television. She flicked to CNN. It was almost 9:00 A.M.

I rushed back to my desk and picked up the receiver.

“Bob?”

“What the hell is going on? Did a plane just crash into the Twin Towers?” he asked, his voice panicked.

“Where are you?”

“Stuck in the Holland Tunnel. Everyone is on a cell. Half the people can’t even dial out. No one knows what is going on. What is going on?”

“I don’t know,” I replied.

His line went dead. I punched in his numbers on my telephone, but the call could not go through. A recorded operator’s voice greeted cheerfully, “All circuits are busy, please try your call again later”. As I returned to Jennifer’s office, I felt dizzy. Turning to the television, I recorded the time on the bottom right hand side of the screen, 9:03 A.M. A second plane flew directly into the South Tower of World Trade. The screen clouded with smoke. The buildings colored amber and were burning. The pen I held in my hand slid and fell to the carpet.

“That doesn’t look like an accident,” I whispered. Suddenly, all the televisions on the ninth floor were turned on and I felt as if a multitude of fingers punched the volume up button in unison. Reporters’ voices on CNN competed with Channels 2, 4, and 7. My co-workers darted in and out of offices revealing the small droplets of information they had just heard. We all gathered in a big huddle in Jennifer’s small office.

“Fox News says it was a terrorist attack,” Nicole said. She smoothed her newly highlighted bangs nervously.

“How can it be an accident that two planes crash into World Trade?” David said, his hands on his waist.

“What airline?” Karen asked anyone. No one responded. Feet skittered like field mice out of the office.

“I think it was American,” I replied, slightly stuttering. Jennifer and I were the only people left in her office.

“Who would do this?” Jennifer asked, her voice weak. Again, I had replied, “I don’t know”.

I walked back to my desk and the stern voices, angry voices and frightened voices hung heavy in the air. I slid in my swivel chair with frayed pieces of red upholstery and stared at the computer screen in front of me. I picked up the phone and then placed it quietly down in its cradle. My mind fell blank. Who should I call? And when I dialed someone’s number and they answered, what would I say?

My boss somehow made it into the city and I felt safe following him into his corner office. He was rational, pragmatic; he would have answers.

He had none.

We sat in his office flicking from one station to another. Our eyes held the same glazed look, our face tight and tense. All of my boss’s phone lines pulsed red. We both glanced at his caller id window and it was the President of Time Warner Cable. My boss pointed to the phone, “Gotta take this one”. The phone kept ringing. He kept pointing until I said, “Bob, pick up the phone”. He replied, “Right”. After a few grunts of agreement, my boss rose from his chair and slipped out of his office. I sat in one of the guest chairs and hugged my knees into my chest, tight. I rested the side of my head on my knees and closed my eyes.

An hour later, my boss called everyone into the frigid conference room; we shivered in nubby wool sweaters in the air-conditioned rectangular room.

“Barry wants us all to go home until further notice,” Bob announced. We all stood still, frozen. After a few minutes, we huddled together, warming one another with our fear. I walked out of the conference room, arms cradling my chest. I gathered my gym bag, my handbag and walked out of the office, into the elevator and out into the street.

When I arrived at the corner of 23rd and Park, orange and yellow tape marked off the entrance to the downtown 6-train station. Armed guards waved me away. “No downtown service!” they barked to passerby, “No trains are heading downtown!”

I stood at the corner and watched people on line for pay phones, scrambling for loose change; the chink of quarters rang in my ears. Others wove in and out of the crowd like fabric on spools of thread, heads bowed down; they frantically punched at cell phone keys for service. I looked up and saw thick black clouds downtown. It stretched about a mile the perimeter of the mid-day sky.

I walked twenty blocks south to my apartment in Little Italy. A pungent smell – the nature of which I could not describe hung heavy in the air. The air was still and dry, the sun on my skin hot. Gum wrappers, takeout fliers and street debris barely stirred. People shuffled past me, their bodies darted like bees in and out of the crowd. They rushed to the downtown apartments that they called home. I followed their movements, numb, and soon found myself on Lafayette Street, a few blocks from my home. As I walked, three men were talking and as I neared, I noticed one of them was Matt Damon. As I passed him, I heard him say, This is like the final scene in Fight Club. I stopped dead, livid. This wasn't some apocalyptic scene in a studio flick. This was not a heavily marketed campaign that involved fast food endorsements and plastic Mattel toys. I turned to shout a retort, but Matt and his friends, in their blue baseball caps and neat button down shirts had already crossed the street. I watched them for a few blocks. Keep moving, I had said to myself. Walk, I said to my legs.

Blue wooden police barricades lined the south side of Houston street. A police officer halted me with his hand and asked for two forms of identification. I fumbled through my bag for my wallet and fished out my driver’s license. He glared at me through brown tinted spectacles and spat, “This is only one. I need two”.

“Well, it’s not like I walk around with my passport!” I was four blocks from my apartment and I just wanted to peel everyone aside and run up the stairs in my building and bolt my door. The officer was silent.

“Listen, you can have someone walk me to my apartment and I can show you my passport.”

“I can’t really leave,” he said. He moved his hand casually in the air.

I pulled out credit cards, debit cards, my Barnes & Noble discount card and shoved them in his palm. “This is me,” I said. I didn’t notice that my hand was shaking. “I just want to go home”. He waved me aside and I stepped through the barricade and headed down Mulberry Street.

Little Italy was desolate. Street stands and carts that were constructed for the annual San Genaro festival were barren. Stuffed dogs and fluffy pink rabbits lined the chipped wooden shelves of the game carts. Planks of wood from unfinished stands laid in the street, surrounded by hammers, drills and hundreds of nails. The cluster of swings and jungle gyms in the park by Spring Street were untouched, the awning of the bodega near the train station lowered and the doors, locked. The Spring Street Lounge on the corner of Mulberry and Spring overflowed with people; girls spilled out onto the sidewalk clutching bottles of Rolling Rock and glasses of white wine. I slowly walked by the clear windows of the bar and a wide screen television rebroadcast the crashes in slow motion. After the second crash, the news cut to commentary. My slow walk dovetailed to a sprint.

Shutting my door, bolting my locks, drawing all the blinds in my apartment, I slid into my room, locked the door and found comfort under a large floral duvet. I reached out to the window and turned on the air conditioner. The steady hum of the air conditioner, the buzz from the refrigerator and the soft chink from the pipes lead me into a restful, quiet sleep. To lie in my bed in my home gave me a safety I had longed for since 9:00AM that morning.