I’m leaving work a little early on a September afternoon, passing by the same downtown Manhattan streets I’ve seen thousands of times until a glinting spark of silver blue hits my eyes.
The Freedom Tower is sunbathing for all New Yorkers to see. It is standing, unabashedly and patriotically, at 1,776 feet above the Hudson and East Rivers. Its steely spire pricks the cobalt blue sky as sparse cotton clouds flow to the east. The western sun is glowing amber, glancing off glass bevels on each side of the tower. Like a huge crystal that was pile-driven into the bedrock.
But even with all the new things, something is missing, here. The Freedom Tower is not a solid thing – it has a monolithic hollowness. Like Ground Zero does. But even a soulless construction of steel and glass, somehow, knows it is a replacement for something that used to stand there and cannot be replaced. That’s when I notice the trees in carefully planned linear designs at the base of the tower. That’s when I walk closer to see the marble park with small hunter green patches of lawn as green space. And that’s when I see the reflection of absence, the hollowed rock where something once stood, the waist-level bronze parapet with etched names of the 9/11 victims followed by a fountain of water falling some 30 feet into a wet abyss. I walk to where the North Tower once stood, slowly swiping my finger over the names in reverse alphabetic order until I find his — Guy B-.
I stop and rest my elbows at the base of the platform as if I’m about to pray.
20 years ago, Guy was not someone I knew well, but we almost shared the same destiny. He worked for Cantor Fitzgerald and tried to recruit me from a competitor back in June of 2001. We met at his office on the 104th floor of the North World Trade Tower. I had a great first interview with Guy, but his boss didn’t bring me in for a second interview because I didn’t have as much financial trading experience as other candidates. That’s what Guy told me on the phone a few days after my interview. But he had a positive spin on the whole thing – reminding me that other positions might open soon. He even suggested that we should keep in touch, since we both had worked at Goldman Sachs at different times in the past and knew the same people. Cantor Fitzgerald seemed like a good place to work and Guy was a lot like me. He had a balance of self-confidence and modesty — never bragging about himself, only mentioning what he accomplished as part of a team. I thought to myself: I should invite him out to grab some coffee once in a while.
I waited too long. I never had that chance.
Incoming Call from Irene: (Accept/Ignore) <Ignore>
I’m sipping my suddenly lukewarm cup of Dark Roast, walking alongside names listed by the North Tower fountain. A smell of metallic mist rushes into my face as I walk to the second fountain that marked the former South Tower; it makes the same cold slappy noise. Too loud for peaceful reflection. Irksome.
Back-bumped by someone— twice —without reason. There’s abundance of open space. I was foolishly in the way while people are taking photos and videos, posing in front of the memorial. Tourists with moronic grins wearing I Love NY T-shirts. Young girls and boys crowding around a rectangular hole in the ground to take selfies with a GoPro stick. A suit-clad man darting between a family of picture-posing people at the fountain who are not smiling. Group laughter bellowing from behind me as a woman lays a rose, diagonally by a name.
It’s been two decades since the tragedy on September 11th and everyone seems much younger down here. Generation Z is now maturing into adulthood and many of their Millennial parents were still young children then.
Many of these people were not downtown when it actually happened. They watched it on TV. So how can I expect them to understand what it means to have been here at that moment? That day I walked right past thousands of people who died here and their names are etched on this memorial.
But not mine.
I turn away from the growing crowd, close my eyes and grimace. The double roar of the fountains flood out other sound. A prolonged ping off the new buildings in this space. My middle ear makes me feel like I’m going to tip over into the dark wet bottom of the former North Tower.
I’m water-falling into the memory hole.
In early September 2001, I won a IT consulting contract for a commodities trader at the World Financial Center.
Across the street from the North Tower.
My visitor badge from the security desk had a time date stamp.
BRIAN PATRICK
MAN FINANCIAL GROUP, 27th FLOOR
TUESDAY SEP 11 2001 8:46 AM
The elevator doors opened, and I joined my project team for a quick huddle.
“Let’s get moving, guys. We have a busy day ahead of us and–“
BOOM
Someone thought it was a passing truck, but you can’t feel that kind of shock from 27 stories up. It was a booming sound, reverberating from above.
My memory after that point is a montage of disjointed images.
Fiery papers falling from across the street – the Devil’s confetti. Traders grabbing their suit jackets, leaving their desks before the starting bell from the NY Mercantile Exchange. A floor warden telling people to remain calm and wait for instructions from the building security PA system. Dozens of colleagues staring up at a gaping, smoking hole in the façade of the North Tower. CNN reporters on the overhead TV saying that a passenger plane has crashed into the World Trade Center. The sudden demon roar of another jet liner flying a few hundred feet above our building.
BOOM
A jet plane cleaving its way into the South Tower like an axe. The cold bone rattle of steel girders and smashed windows spewing more flaming fanfare. A lone trader about fifty feet away from me, still on the phone who didn’t see the second plane. My team leader racing into the data center to get the network backup tapes, slamming the fire door behind him. Me, calling out and waving to a half dozen of us to take the next elevator before security shuts them down. The frantic jog through the lobby. Being directed by a Fire Marshall to be calm and walk to our designated evacuation spot that none of us knew.
I remember standing across the street gazing up at the Twin Towers, now splotched with flares and smoke plums at the tops. Hordes of people stared—and I with them—at an unimaginable sight. A smoking, double-barreled shotgun fired straight into the clear blue face of God. An assassination of my sense of security. Too dazed to reconcile everything, I entered survival mode and motioned for people to start walking north up the West Side Highway. North and away from all this noise. North to find some refuge in a park or at the office of a friend. Mobile phones were offline and we were forced to use payphones on the sidewalk. I could still smell the burning at Hudson Street, Canal, and Christopher. And, in the sanctuary of my best friend’s office building, I heard the radio announcement that the South Tower had collapsed. Then, the North Tower minutes later. Guy’s tower. I was not there with him. I did not feel the burn of jet fuel, did not inhale smoky death, nor did I see or hear the crushing fall. But Guy did. He was dutiful and qualified to be at his post and I was spared because I was not good enough to work by his side.
And what about the person who was hired over me? I never learned their name, but they died in my place. What am I supposed to take from that?
It is a hollow sound my soul makes when I say, “Thank God it wasn’t me”.
(2) Missed Calls from Irene
I open my eyes and I can’t hear the fountains behind me, anymore. I still remember the grey footsteps from the ash people who walked away from this place thirteen years ago. I can’t stay here—I feel that same impulse to leave and lead people away. There is an emptiness in the Freedom Tower, the new 7 World Trade building, the 30-foot deep fountains marking the former site of the North and South Towers. Even as more visitors and local families enter the memorial park, this space feels more empty than open. The builders are working on a new PATH transportation hub that looks like the spine of some kind of dinosaur. As I walk away from the park, I see the huge image of an extinct animal that is a reminder of an antiquated time. Guy and the other 9/11 victim names are now inscriptions on an outdoor exhibit adjacent to the World Trade dinosaur and a 9/11 museum and gift shop.
Incoming Call from Irene: (Accept/Ignore) <Accept>
“Hey, your’re not answering your phone. Are you heading home?”
“Yeah, I left early. Just taking a walk…”
…
“Honey? You still there?”
“Oh, sorry. I was just thinking about something.”
“It’s getting late. I don’t like it when you come back late. Are you on the train
“I’m by the PATH station, so I’m going to lose you when I go underground.”
“Okay. Just come home to me.”
“I’ll see you you soon.”
I hang up and realize it’s evening.
Darkness always creeps up on me and I’m never ready for it.
I had returned to work downtown a few days after September 11th to help my firm relocate to the disaster recovery office. Ironically, it was a few hundred feet from Ground Zero. I remember my colleagues and I coming off the NY Waterway ferry, escorted by the Coast Guard and NYPD and National Guard. But we stopped before entering the building to applaud the NYFD and first responders returning each morning amidst the toxic smoke and debris.
My name is still listed in the WTC Health Registry. I have been very fortunate to not have health issues, but many others were not. My thoughts are with them as well as the victims, their families and the silent masses of people who survived and don’t know how they should feel about that day.
I can’t forget them, either.
NYC 6th Borough 