I

After the Trade Towers fell, we stopped worrying what we looked like when we ate or what we ate. The gash behind the black rust beams gave off foul orange curtains. We huddled together and numbly decided who would be charged with going out foraging. If it were me, I would always smash the last cracked glass pieces with joyous bursts. I’d go inside and even before deciding what I should bring back to the others, I’d squat on the linoleum floor and begin tearing open red foil containers with my teeth. Whichever were on the racks closest to hand, I’d gnaw open then dig into; amber smears staining my fingers and spreading a rim around my mouth. Bag after bag I’d devour before even trying to consider what I ought to bring back to the others.

In the first weeks, when I’d come back there were would always be one fat man and one thin man mumbling over something that happened at their work in the last days.

I remember the fat man wore a button down shirt with red holes and nothing on his lower half. He sat on the floor with his legs wide. He said, “I didn’t know she worked there. It just wasn’t the right proposal for her. It went to the wrong department. But then I got the name of a woman in another department, the right department. And I was sending it off to her. I thought I might have run into the woman in the wrong department somewhere and mentioned something about running the project by her. But it had never been followed through on. That wasn’t quite true. But when I saw her initial reaction, I knew there was no purpose in following through.” The oily white shirt of the fat man was crumpled. He had little wisps of blondish gray hair coming off his mostly bald head. And he stared glassily up at the aperture which led to where a forest of charred girders writhed in mean low flames.

The thin man just said, “I couldn’t stop checking my e-mails. I just couldn’t stop. The day would race by. I couldn’t stop seeing whether anyone had written me. I wanted so badly to have letters from people. I couldn’t do anything but check my inbox. Incessantly.”

Very late at night, we would creep out of the pit and look around. There was nothing to see except for heavy trucks, twisted steel and, on the periphery, the buildings that hadn’t fallen. A woman lay on a broken cardboard box talking about how she couldn’t remember her dreams. Another man crawled up over her and a second woman began pretending she was a television commentator giving a news report. An endless news report. A third woman began pretending she was a plane, no, a bird. She went swooping around the space with her arms outstretched making whooping noises. She had short hair and she wore suspenders. Her blonde hair had gray mixed in with it. She beat her wings against glass with glittery silver electronics behind it. Another man stood in a corner working out with imaginary exercise machines. Three children sat holding hands in a ring. I crawled back further than any of the others to where there was the most food and sat on the floor gorging myself.

Sometimes one of us, a man or a woman would demand that everyone listen to them. They would say, they would shriek, “I am calling a meeting!” The person would make the mutterers be silent by walking up to them and hitting them on the mouth several times. If they still weren’t quiet, the person would pick up a shovel and slam them across the face. Then they would say they were sorry. But it was very important that there be perfect attention. Because the situation was unbelievably serious. If the person struck across the face fell over and was bleeding, sometimes one of us would go up to help them. Other times we would let the person lie there bleeding. And if someone were weeping, one man would start pretending that person was singing a children’s song. And would begin clapping. The person who made everyone pay attention, the man or the woman, would pace up and down with their eyes on the ground or occasionally up at the hole looking into mangled metal. The person would tell us, this situation is a terrible crisis. “It is a matter of life or death.” the person would insist. “And the only hope for us is—to organize!” they would shout. “This is the only way we’ll ever get out of this.” “Out of what?” someone might ask. And that person would be ignored. “If we act together,” the organizer would continue, “we’ll survive. If we don’t act together, we will die. It’s as simple as that,” he or she would insist. Some of the men rolled over on their backs and began masturbating. This would drive the organizer into a frenzy. He or she would pick up the shovel and begin wildly swinging the shovel blade at the masturbating men, often at their genitals, until one or the other of us managed to get the shovel away and calm them. Telling the men who were masturbating to stop touching themselves. One of them in particular would say over and over at this point, “I’m touching myself I’m touching myself. What am I touching? I’m touching my self.” We hated this man and three of us decided to kill him on the first possible night.

II

We imitated beasts. None of us were playing “beasts.” And in fact, if the children saw us, and watched, someone or other would go up to them and begin strangling. We imitated beasts by dragging ourselves around the glistening ashen linoleum as though we were not bipedal. That was the whole imitation. Although, invariably, someone would cry out at the top of their lungs, “I’m a tiger.” Or, “I’m a snake.” Or, “I’m a beast without a name.” It was never the person dragging themselves around the linoleum. When I imitated a beast, I did not picture to myself any beast in particular. I waited for someone to give me my name. Though I did feel, when I heard them yell my species, that is the beast that I am. And sometimes, I would imagine things while I was dragging myself that might or might not have been visions of the beast. These were not visions of particular things. Though now, when I think of dragging myself, I might see my father’s face repeating, “well. Well. Well. Well.” Stony and gray. I would not be able to say, though, what I saw when I dragged my body on the floor, craning my head back. One woman would say things like, “I am ready to meet someone. I am ready to meet someone.” And some of the men would begin throwing themselves back against the walls, spread-eagled and making a noise like an animal. “I am ready to meet someone,” the woman would repeat. I ran up and down the corridors, turning corners. There were bodies lying everywhere. I ran up and down the corridors and did not look at the bodies. After the first moment, none of us looked at the bodies. We did not make fun of the dead. We did not mourn the dead. We said, “I am not crazy. I am crazy.” And we threw our heads back against every remaining fragment of glass, trying to make the shape of our heads. Red insects never seen before flew in and out of the opening. And someone said, “They are making honey of the dead. The dead are making honey.”

All of us felt the situation was deteriorating. All of us were running up and down the corridors and there was still so much smoke we invariably fell down moaning and coughing. Periodically, even those of us who were not organizers would go up to others and start shaking their shoulders saying, “the situation is getting worse. We have to do something!”

All of us found a book on God and began reading. We turned the pages so fast someone said, stop fucking the book. But we did not slow down. We read the word God every time it appeared on a page. God god god god god god god. We read. And then we looked up at the opening. Black metal smoking. Then we’d plunge our heads down into the books, reading God god god god god god. And sometimes, the. Sometimes, if we’d read god and read god we began reading the the the the the the the the the the. But never ‘the God.’ Never ‘God the.’

III

One day, it came over us. One of us said, “What time is it?” And it caught like an itch or a plague. What time is it, What time is it? We were buzzing with it. Shrieking and whispering, what time is it what time is it. We found pens and began writing it all over the walls, all over each other’s skins. On the roofs of our mouths, up inside our orifices. What time is it? What time is it? Someone pulled off our eyelids, and said, “until I know”—We began chanting in unison. What time is it? What time is it? Above us we could hear the trucks we could always hear above us. Clearing away the remains of the Trade Towers. The biggest man among us, went around touching us and bringing us together. He told us he was not trying to organize us. But—we could see…Everyone asked for a speech. He said, “I know most of you are wondering whether you’ll ever be secure enough with your savings to leave your current employment. Or rather, whether you will be able to retire when you still have enough energy to enjoy life. I know all of you are wondering what is it that will define whether I’ve really lived my life in a manner that will make it feel worthwhile when I am dying. I know all of you are saying to yourselves, how can I change everything this late in the game? I’ve got an answer. It’s already happened. It’s already happened.”

We began hissing him at this point. We’d been expecting a speech and now to be told this. The light was going brilliant in the hole. We began booing and shaking our fists. He kept trying to go on. Wiping his brow. We began rushing up to him, digging our nails into the red star of his lips. “What time is it? What time is it?” we screamed in our most hideous voices. At last we crawled off of him. All of us went separate ways. I went back to where most of the food had been. I had eaten every last blood foil wrapped snack. I began pulling over the racks, one after the next. I opened jars of anything and dumped everything out. I lit things on fire with matches. I said. “I am the Trade Towers. I am the Trade Towers” There was a feeling of ridiculous, distracted peace. The next morning, they told us everything had been cleared away and it was time to start building again.

IV

We did not shake each other’s hands. We did not say goodbye or look into each other’s eyes. Many of us refused to stand upright. And we would not accept the cardboard sign that said “beast” on it. Gnashing and shutting our eyes. Each of us spent the morning off by his or her self making a tiny sculpture of Ground Zero with dirt and lint. We had no way of preserving the sculptures and left them unmarked when we were at last lifted up onto our feet. I saw the face of someone I had not seen once in all those stories waiting for me and I moved forward, over the arms of the firefighters, weeping, taking this person into my arms. My eyes become hot now when I think about it. Each of us was given a tiny photograph in a ruffly pink frame. But I did not even notice the photograph and it fell from my fingers down the pit that was still being excavated. I just looked at this person and felt such a sense of everything human. The long face of someone who has not been with us. The black dress. I tried wringing their hands. But they were so overcome with emotion they averted their eyes to me. I kept trying to bring back their face and their face kept turning from me. The sun was playing into the opening with a boundless youthfulness. But to have seen this person again was too much for me.

V

The last time we looked back, the whole site was inverted. It formed the sky and the sky made the hole of it. We could not remember having been inside. And we could not remember having been outside before the fall of them. We could not believe and we were not believed when we spoke about it. They put us before real announcers and then they took us away and put us inside a room with fresh bags of red foil. I began eating. And we could hear the announcers from the room we’d been removed from. “Every year. At the same place. In silence. Still. Like a bird. Not a bird. Pick a little hole in the backs of their skulls and reels come spooling out of them. We fill our beaks and fly off cawwing to make nests again.” And we could not block out the sound. Even when we put our hands over each other’s ears and made constant noises, stamping our feet. Hurling ourselves around the space, roaring and exploding. Clawing each other’s faces until our eyes widened and took over our faces. “Every year. At the same place.”