Tag Archives: memoir

Live in on the Edge

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The guy renting out the room in his apartment in Jersey City had double-booked a roommate interview. Unemployed, I sat on a couch next to a professional (a doctor, if I can remember back twenty-five years) who was well groomed, while I looked like I had just rolled out of bed. Things were grim, until I saw his bookshelf.

See, televangelist Pat Robertson had written a “novel.” I am by no means a fundamentalist Christian, or even a Christian at all, but I had actually read this book. (I’d accuse it of being ghost-written, but ghost-writers are professionals, and this book was not.) The late nineties were the End Times, and I was getting a kick out of people being freaked out about it. Ironically, I read every book I could find about the coming apocalypse. All the fiction books had a henpecked president and his lesbian, Satanist wife, who may or may not be the Beast. They got old after a while.  

I pointed at the book and said, “I’ve read that!”

The guy looking for the roommate said, “What did you think about the ending?”

I said, “It was a great twist!”

The room was mine.

I lived there six years, then another four years in the home Kate had purchased before I moved in, and the next five years in a series of private and corporate apartments that Kate took care of, until the government took care of everything and set us up in a compound in Doha, Qatar. From there, we bought a condo with my father-in-law’s money.

After that, I lived in the apartment Nicole had been renting out for years, until we moved together to a two-bedroom. Even though we are both on the lease, Nicole did most of the work. It’s privately owned by a single landlord. We paid an application fee, a security deposit, a month’s rent, and a small pet fee. It couldn’t have been easier.


My new apartment, owned by a corporation and subsidized by HUD, requires proof of employment and a month of pay stubs, a signed twenty-five-page lease, Newcastle’s photo and medical records, an account with the electric company, two lease addendums, a loading-dock reservation, one month’s rent (pro-rated), an amenities fee, a pet fee, a security deposit, a pinch of paprika, and renter’s insurance (but not the policy I already have).

I turn forty-eight this year, and I’ve never lived alone. I’ve been insulated from this process, so I had no idea what a hassle it was. I move on Friday, but I can’t pack until Tuesday. It’s okay, everything here belongs to Nicole. I left my marriage with my clothes, my note-, sketch-, comic, and just plain books and some art supplies. I’ve acquired some furniture and some organizational equipment that had one job and failed, and a huge number of toys, mostly Doctor Who related. That’s it. It will take ma a day to pack. And then, it will be Newcastle, me, and a pile of stuff to sort through. Finally, I’ll be able to start MortalMan.

This is a pretty huge adventure I’m embarking on. I feel like, after all this time, I’m finally a grownup.

Big Wheel Keep on Turnin’

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Sometimes a bad day doesn’t have to be a bad day forever. New Year’s Eve started really poorly, the kind of poorly that could have carried over into the new year. I won’t get into any specifics because they’re none of your business, but my life is going to change drastically, possibly as soon as this month.

I spent the afternoon kind of shock, but one of my oldest friends got my stunned text and helped talk me through it over the phone. I’ve worried that I don’t have many friends anymore because everybody has a life, and many of them were pushed out of my life while I was married. However, everybody I reached out to got back to me as soon as they read their texts, and I was able to process the events of the day.

The reason I didn’t have a bad day was because I got to hang out with the Nerdy Couple, a husband-and-wife duo I can trace back to Bloomington, Indiana. They had with them their Delightfully Weird Friend and another friend I could only describe as unhinged.

I told them all about my morning while trying not to editorialize (while editorializing), and after that twenty-minute conversation, we talked about Star Trek, the Star-Trek-adjacent fic I’ve been posting on AO3, but haven’t updated since October. We talked a lot about Star Trek. Nerdy Husband told me that there is a novel with some information on how Sarek and Amanda Grayson got together (a question that’s been plaguing me for a while), and we all agreed that the Kirk of the original series is actually a thoughtful, diplomatic man and not the horny cowboy everybody remembers him as (thanks, in no small part, to the JJ Abrams movies).

From there we gorged ourselves on sushi, cupcakes, and (for me anyway) Adderall and coffee before playing Cards against Humanity and observing ourselves becoming horrible people. I shared my favorite pick-up line (“You remind me of my pinkie toe: you’re small, cute, and I’m probably going to bang you on my coffee table later.”) which matched the tone perfectly. My bedtime is 8:00, though closer to 7:30 lately, so by ten o’clock I was feeling loopy, which only helped me win a few rounds. Taking breaks to show each other TikTok videos and to share horrifying medical stories, we wrapped it up in time for the ball drop. Delightfully Weird Friend dominated, followed by Nerdy Husband. The rest of us weren’t even close.

That’s how I’m going to remember New Year’s Eve 2023. It was the year I became an artist again and illustrated two-and-a-half comics. I saw Romania, which was awesome, and I kicked my marijuana habit. Newcastle came down with hyperthyroidism and arthritis, but once we put him on treatment, he’s incredibly healthy (for a cat who has those ailments plus kidney disease and cardiac failure). I finally made a new friend, at work, and we text each other all the time when we’re not being productive or going out to coffee. I lost the hearing in one of my ears, but yesterday it came back. I did put on a lot of weight, which I’m not happy about.

This year I’m going to illustrate the MortalMan story I’ve been dreaming about since 2000. I even picked up a new art board to do it with. At some point, I’m going to move to a new apartment, and I’ll be living solo for the first time in my entire life. I have a plan to take my weight off. Other than that, my year will be wide open.

This has been a very matter-of-fact post, but that’s because I’m probably going to hop back into bed shortly. Once upon a time I spent New Year’s Day nursing a hangover, treating myself to a greasy breakfast, and watching bad TV, sometimes with a girlfriend, sometimes with my sister, and sometimes alone. This year I’ve spend most of my morning in my pajamas, drifting in and out of sleep and reviewing my first round of proofs while Newcastle cuddled me. I cannot be happier at this moment. Twenty-four hours ago should have ruined me, but it failed. I’m filled with as much chill and hope as I’ve ever had.

May your year fill you with chill and hope.

And IIIIIIIIIIIIIII Will Always Love Yule

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I stopped celebrating Christmas a long time ago, around the time my parents stopped paying my airplane ticket home. After I moved to New York-adjacent, I had a lot of family in New Jersey, but I am a terrible long-distance relative, and I didn’t know any of them well enough to spend the holiday with them, except once, and that was awkward.

The second year I was there, my uncle Larry invited me to Linden, New Jersey, in mid-December, along with the extended families of himself and my aunt Christine. Christine is my mother’s sister, but I adored everyone there, even the kids and grandkids of Larry’s brother, Phil. Even though I was out of touch, Uncle Larry welcomed me into his home on Ainsworth Street as if I had always been there, and I visited them frequently on weekends.

I only saw Larry’s family once a year, though, and I watched the children grow up as I kept them occupied while Mommy and Daddy got drunk. Whenever my smoker’s lungs couldn’t keep up with them, we played the heart-attack game, which was me falling to the ground and all of them tried to revive me using their rudimentary understanding of CPR. My other favorite game was the monster game, where I’d chase them to a hiding place, safe from me, and then I went and had a beer. Eventually, they’d find me, then I’d just roar, and they split.

But that left the actual day, when my extended family celebrated with just themselves, and my found families all went home. You’d think that would be depressing, but it really wasn’t. You see, on December 25, I had plans.

My day would start out late, and I’d head into the city for brunch with Joshua. As this was Christmas, our options were limited. One or two years, he had a girlfriend from China, and she took us to a real Chinese restaurant, which was a lot like that racist dining scene from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Chicken with broccoli was not on the menu, but something horrible being done to a crab was.

From there, we’d see a movie, which was reminiscent of what my family would do when I was a kid, and we ran out of things to unwrap. For the latter, the movie I remember most was Home Alone. As for the former, the one that became my Christmas movie is Spike Lee’s 25th Hour. (All you Die Hard people are so cute.) And from there we’d go to work.

Working at The New York Post on Christmas was absolutely wonderful. Everyone there was Jewish, or without family, or hiding from their family. None of the hardcore news editors were there, so everyone was relaxed. Year-round, the sport we played at The Post was to make each other laugh, and never was it more competitive than it was on Christmas. Even though I saw them every week, there was something especially heartwarming about seeing Mike and Rob and Dom and my auxiliary dad, Barry, as well as everyone else. The magic of Christmas in New York is such a cliché, but when you pass by the tree at the Rockefeller Center and glance into the ice-skating rink on your way to an office with a sodium-heavy buffet and affectionate shouting from some of your favorite people, you believe.

I have no memory of the thirteen Christmases I spent with Kate because we treated them like normal days. Usually we’d spend the weekend before with her (but never my) family, and her family didn’t get me, so they had no idea what to do with me. The actual day was just like any other, except everything was closed. It’s not as special when you’re not waking up and unwrapping presents.

With Nicole, she has a side-hustle sitting pets, and Christmas is a lucrative day, so we’ve spent it apart, except for once, during quarantine, when we watched that smoking turd, Wonder Woman 1984. This year, she woke up at home, and we unwrapped presents together and went our separate ways, her making a dessert and me taking the new sketchbooks and expensive paintbrushes Mom and Dad got me out for a spin. Zooming with them and my sisters and my niece and my nephew-in-law was pure chaos.

Christmas is just a day. Sure everything’s closed, and there’s nothing good on TV, but the sun rises and falls, just as it always does. You need to eat lunch, you need to take the dogs for a walk. It’s okay not to do anything just because someone else is. If you really need to find meaning on December 25, you can find it. I found mine on a loud news floor, trying to think of a clever headline. (The best one I ever came up with had to do with a computer screw-up that cost New York teachers their December 24 paycheck: “The glitch that stole X-mas.”) And it’s okay to feel lonely. Boxing Day is just around the corner.

I used to be a humbug, including during my time at the paper before I realized what a holiday it was. Nowadays, I am by no means a Tiny Tim or post-ghost Scrooge. I still have a problem with how shallow this holiday is (i.e. the Black Fridays that last well into December) and how I lost the goddamned Wham! game on Christmas Freaking Eve! But even at my loneliest, I looked forward to this day, even if it is just a day.

(This essay has no thesis, it’s just a bunch of random and contradictory thoughts pouring out.)

The Sass and the Furious

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I had a brief dream where, in the next Fast and the Furious movie, Vin Diesel’s Dom Toretto gets swept up in the evil shenanigans of his old college roommate, played by some famous slab of beef wearing a fabric baseball cap and a pair of cargo shorts. This is, of course presupposing Dom Toretto, or even Vin Diesel, went to college, much less finished high school. (Considering that it’s in Diesel’s contract that Toretto can never lose a fight onscreen, I’m inclined to think he didn’t.)

Anyway, it got me thinking about my roommates in college, and whether they’d come into my life as bad guys to be forgiven and welcomed back into my family to enjoy a chilled Corona. There’s Will, who’s certainly sharp enough to be a mastermind, but he’s a big softie, and I don’t think he’d take too well to being bad.

Then there’s Jeff. Anyone who knows Jeff knows that he’s got it in him to be a madman. I haven’t seen him in over twenty-five years, but I know he shaved his head, which is a prerequisite to evil. When I knew him, he was perfecting the wicked rubbing together of palms and giggling maniacally while tossing out wicked bon mots like, “When life hands you dilemmas, make dilemonade.”

He could also get inside the hero’s mind. For example, he never swore. He took to words more colorful than “damn” or “hell” like I take to the N-word, i.e. never, ever, not even alone in a dark room with all the listening devices turned off. That’s why it came as enough of a surprise that I fell off my chair when he caught me by myself and leaned in really close, whispering, “Don’t fuck with me.” He denies it to this day, and to this day, nobody believes me but Tim Lentz, who always knew there was something shady about that guy.  

Jeff kept his cool under pressure, a necessary qualification for an overlord, but he also had little patience for malarkey. Even though we were a matched set through much of our freshmen and sophomore years, he didn’t tolerate my bullshit, and understand there was a lot of bullshit back then. Would he kill a minion for making a mistake? Maybe not at twenty, but certainly as he got older, his patience would dwindle.

The reason I know for sure that Jeff’s got amoral plans for the world is that he never left our room without a slip of paper he tucked into his breast pocket. He showed it to no one, but he’d occasionally take it out, read it, and chuckle darkly. One evening, when I was again protecting the purity of Altman Hall from behind the desk, he chatted with me for a few minutes, pulled out this paper, and opened it up, revealing the title: “Taking over the world checklist.” He crossed out a numbered item, “Befriend Jeremiah Murphy,” and folded it back up before I could read what else was on it.

To this day, I have no idea what my role in a global takeover might be. I’m all but hermit who writes novels and illustrates comics no one reads. I have a feeling we’re going to find out soon because we’re both turning fifty, and fifty’s a good age for world-domination. And if he tried to stop him, Vin Diesel find out that this is a fight even Dominic Toretto can’t win.

Like No One’s Watching

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Something unusual happened to me yesterday, and I’m still not sure what to make of it.

My office takes up five floors of our ten-story building, and on floors 6 through 9, there is an identical conference room. The rooms are made of glass and are not soundproof (which is not important for this story, but is something worth keeping in mind if you work here). They are located in the same corner of each floor as the elevators.

Every Thursday, my boss, my boss’s boss, and my fellow Editorial Coordinator meet in a conference room, very rarely the one on our floor. The table has four sides, but my fellow Coordinator Zooms in because she is disabled and works from home. Her face is projected on a forty-eight-inch screen, and therefore my bosses and I populate three sides of the table, facing her. I like to sit with my back to the window for reasons.

And here is where the event occurred. This week, we were located on the sixth floor. The only thing I know about the sixth floor is that the break room is there. I don’t know anyone who works there, but since I had the best view of the cubicle farm, I people-watched while our department talked amongst ourselves.

There is a really cute girl on the sixth floor. (I call her a girl when she’s in her twenties; also, get off my lawn.) I saw her approach from the far side of the office on a bearing that would have taken her straight through the glass conference-room wall and right into my lap (not in a pervy way; don’t forget I’m ace). It was hard to avoid watching her because my boss and my boss’s boss were seated in a way that I was facing the cubicle farm, but I didn’t want to seem like a creep, so I kept my eyes on my laptop, and eventually, she veered off.

She reappeared in front of the elevators a while later and pushed the button. While she waited, she started to dance. I am the prime audience for people being free and enjoying themselves, so I secretly applauded her. But the next time I looked up, her eyes were on me, and I felt terrible for invading her private moment. She smiled and continued to dance, and she kept turning toward me, as if to make sure I was watching. A coworker joined her, and they danced into the elevator car.

When I go to the elevators, and there’s a meeting, I get really self-conscious. At the same time, I feel like I have to put on a performance for the people who can see me. For me, that means pushing the button and stepping into the car with exaggerated panache. For this young woman, that meant dancing. Who knows? Maybe she was feeling self-conscious. I won’t dance—I have this pathological aversion to dancing—but there’s a show in me somewhere, and if I put it on, it’ll be because it was brought out of me by this nameless blonde in the white sweater.

The Limits of New Relationship Energy

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In the summer of 2000, I had grown apart from all of my friends. I was then, as I am now, socially anxious, but one day, I set a goal: I was going to have a conversation with one stranger every day after work in Manhattan before I went home. I succeeded, and a couple I chatted with about the band The London Suede (or Suede in their native England) invited me to a party. Then, as now, I couldn’t imagine a worse place to be than at a party where I knew literally no one, not even the hosts.

I made myself a deal: if I would go to the party and stay for an hour, minimum, I would go to the free concert with Mike Doughty, formerly of Soul Coughing. (There was another band playing after him, a little group no one’s ever heard of called They Might Be Larger Than Average? They Might Be Enormous People? They Might Be The NFC Football Team From New York? They Might Be Something.)

I went to the party, and I went to the concert (Mike Doughty was a huge disappointment), and keeping with my goal of talking to strangers, I forced myself to talk to the really beautiful woman dancing to the intermission elevator music like she was a marionette and her puppeteer had the hiccups. I walked up to her and internally smacked myself in the head when I said to her the following, “You must really like this music.” After a brief chat, she told me that my liking and wanting to illustrate comics was a deal-breaker, and she would not go out with me.

During our first date, she kissed me. Our second date, she tested me, and I passed. We saw X-Men in the theaters. Her last boyfriend, the reason for the deal-breaker that wasn’t, would not have found the humor in the movie that was unintentionally pretty goofy. (She tested me again later with my favorite movie, The Matrix, which has a surprising amount of comedy between the grab-you-by-the-lapels philosophy and the pointless bloodbaths.) Our third date found us on the Brooklyn Bridge and led to her falling off the bed when she was taking my pants off.

Her name was pronounced AND-ree-uh, but I pronounced it Ahn-DRAY-uh. I don’t know why.

Speaking of goofy, she was really goofy. That was one of the things I loved about her. Our honeymoon lasted the first six or seven months we were together, laughing, holding hands, being horny, and just having fun with each other. Unfortunately, the summer of 2001, I lost my job and sank into a deep depression, which led to me being unforgivably unpleasant, which I usually am between Memorial and Labor Days. Literally the day the heat broke and I started to recover was September 11, 2001. Unfortunately, her thirtieth birthday was September 13, 2001. We limped along as a couple until February 2002, when we were heading in different directions socially, and I put our relationship out of our misery.

The thing about her was that her last relationship was the worst relationship she ever head, followed by the one before it, so she exited us hating my guts. I had friends who had mutual friends with her, and my name could not even be mentioned around her without a meltdown. And that makes me sad. I’m one of those people who sees the past with rose-colored glasses (despite knowing how miserable I was through much of it), so I knew it was over, and I understand why, but I still remember how good it was when it was good.

For a long time, I thought the was “The One,” and she’s still one of the most important relationships I’ve ever had, even though we didn’t even last a year and a half. I remember walking with her through Prospect Park, listening to her laugh when we watched an episode of The Muppet Show for the forty-seventh time, spending a Halloween party dancing like we were the only people in the apartment. I was really, really in love with her, and that was a good feeling. I will never forget it, no matter how much she hates me.

That brings me to twenty-one years later and the Doctor Who fanfic I’m tinkering with. I’m not sure why, but I decided to base the Nth Doctor’s companion on her. Like my Andrea, she’s impatient, self-righteous, enthusiastic, and goofy. She’s also a gifted collage artist. When it came time to illustrate her, I found an album of pics that her professional photographer brother took and tried to use them as a reference. That did not work at all. So this weekend, I tried again, but did it entirely based on memory. This time I think I nailed it. Only a handful of people, including my parents and Barry, have any experience with her, and they have likely forgotten what she looks like, but this is how I remember her. I just wish there was some way to share it with her.

Fur Sure

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Yesterday, I was leaned back in my office chair, taking a mandated break from the sketchbook painting I was working on, my feet up on my desk. At this angle, the pear-like shape of my body makes a perfect day bed for Newcastle, who was purring and looking at me through hooded eyes, under the spell of the double-ear scratches he was getting. Once he was sated, he rested his head on my chest and drifted off to sleep, leaving me in this position for the foreseeable future, and I did something a little difficult to explain. I cried. I cried heavy sobs as I watched him curled up in a large, fluffy ball on my belly. It wasn’t particularly dignified, but I love this cat, and I don’t know what I’m going to do when he’s gone.

Nineteen years ago, I took a trip to Bloomington, Indiana, to meet my close friend, Kate. During the trip, we realized we were soul mates, and shortly after I returned home, arrangements were made for me to move from New York adjacent to her house on Stoneycrest Road. This was in June, and I would be moving in with her in August.

During this margin, she began to have dreams about a kitten who was about to die. She fancied herself a witch, so she took it as a prophecy and went to the animal shelter. She found the kitten from her dreams, and they were going to put him to sleep. He was a runt with pneumonia and a bad case of the worms. Also, he was ugly, with his greasy brown fur, looking like the transition from mogwi to gremlin. Despite the offers of a better cat, Kate adopted him and spent the next six weeks nursing him to health. She told me over the phone that she knew that this wasn’t her kitten. She didn’t know whose, but it wasn’t hers. This gross little thing was kept in the bathroom until he got better and her other two cats got used to him.

By the time he emerged, he was still a little greaseball, but he was a kitten who wouldn’t sit still for anything until he got tired and fell down to sleep. He’s also rock stupid. She named him Newcastle, after her favorite beer of the moment, because he fit in a pint glass and he had a foamy white chest.

Shortly after I moved in, he started following me around, occasionally taking naps with me when he slowed down long enough. Kate, who didn’t want to support another cat and was planning on adopting him out when he got well, knew she couldn’t break us up.

The runt grew.

And he grew some more.

My theory was that he ate some radioactive kibble. In actuality, he was either a Maine Coon or Norwegian Forest Cat mix. At only sixteen pounds at his largest, though, he was still a runt.

He never outgrew his kitten face, leading to Nicole calling him Baby Cat. (She had nicknames for all the cats when she lived with Kate and me.) Also, the brown darkened into a grayish black, with a spot of brown on his belly with the white chest, so that when we violated the two-pet limit in our high-rise apartment building, we pretended he and Magik were the same.

Like all of our cats while I was married, Newcastle is very social. He loves guests, and he especially enjoys parties, where he can beg for snacks, and he’s not even subtle. He loves people food, except for anything with tomatoes in it. When he was younger, I’d run to the bedroom and jump into bed, and he was right behind me, and we’d lie there together, cuddling. When Kate and I were taking a save-the-marriage quiz, guessing details about our spouses, her answer to “What’s your husband’s favorite animal?” was Newcastle. “You guys have a weird relationship,” she said. In our post-nuptial agreement that was the foundation of our divorce, we split up custody of the cats. She got the other two, and I got Newcastle. I almost lost him, though, because I separated broke and unable to afford his vet bills, which she generously covered for me the first three months following the split.

In 2012, we took him in for an ultrasound, and the vet made an interesting discovery. The reason he was often short of breath was not because of scarring from the pneumonia, as we’d thought, but because almost half of his liver was in his lungs. He recommended “cracking him open” and fixing it, but thankfully our second opinion said that wouldn’t be necessary. He was eight years old by that point, and he was doing fine.

Three years later, the vet noticed a heart murmur, and after another ultrasound, he was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. It had grown too big and was folding in on itself, necessitating semiannual cardiology visits and three medications every day to keep it from getting worse. two years ago, they added a fourth. Every two weeks, I cut up the pills and fit them into capsules so I can enjoy my least favorite time of the day, shoving it down his throat. Unlike most cats, he takes it like a champ, though he does look betrayed afterward. Last year, his back legs got really wobbly, and they told us he had arthritis (requiring a monthly shot), and earlier this year, hyperthyroidism (requiring an expensive ear cream). I don’t want to go broke taking care of him, and I considered not treating the hyperthyroidism, but all the pet docs say he’s pretty spry for an old guy (guitar riff). He could have three active, healthy years left if he’s properly medicated.

Sure he’s wobbly, sure he’s eight pounds lighter than he was in his youth, sure he can’t jump on my lap anymore, and sure, all he does is sleep, but he’s nineteen years old, and he’s been the most consistent relationship I’ve ever had. Since he is coming up on the end, I let him have some people food (he loves Fritos), and if he shows up, meowing at my desk, whether I’m writing, drawing, or working, I will scoop him up and give him all the attention he deserves. He’s earned it.

There were tears yesterday, but they were happy tears. He may be a big, dumb cat, but he’s my best friend. We’ve grown old together, and I love him so much.

Chapter 6

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[For context: the narrator, Nora, is a veteran assassin who thinks Julie Andrews is a righteous bitch, and Edgar is the guy she rescued from a suicide attempt.]

“Let me be the first to welcome you back,” Edgar said as he left the PATH turnstile.

I laughed “Well, let me just say I’m honored to be here.”

He led me out of the station. “The financial district is really my hood. I have done a lot of temping here.”

If you draw a shape that cannot possibly exist in a three-dimensional universe, it’s called a tesseract. You could conceivable fit infinity into one. The corridors under the World Trade Center were a tesseract. The only reason I emerged into the plaza between the towers was because I had a guide. I barely found the PATH station on my own from the subway.

We stepped off of the World Trade Center campus and went one block north. “We’re here,” he told me.

I looked around, a frown on my face. “Are you sure, because the only thing I see is a bodega.”

He nodded.

“That bodega makes the best bagel?” I asked.

He grinned and gestured me inside the building. In the back was a guy, probably Armenian, who said, “What you want.” It wasn’t a question.

Edgar reminded me, “They have everything, and everything.”

“I’ll take a plain bagel with butter,” I told the scowling man behind the counter.

While he sliced my bagel in half, Edgar said, “You have the choice of all the bagel flavors in existence, and you went with plain.”

“If they can’t make a good plain bagel,” I replied, “what good are they?”

The Armenian man put the bagel on a rolling toaster and asked Edgar, “What you want?”

“Cinnamon bagel with peanut butter,” Edgar said.

I smirked. “I never took you for a cinnamon bagel guy.”

He smirked back. “How was The Princess Diaries, by the way?”

“On reflection, I did walk into that one.”

We left the bodega and wandered the streets, unwrapping and biting into our bagels. It might not have been the best plain bagel in the city, but it was the best I’d ever had. I swallowed. “I’m coming back to this place as many times as—”

BOOM!

The ground shook under our feet.

“What the hell was that?” I demanded, looking left and right for some answers. South of us, I could make out people screaming.

Edgar looked straight up and dropped his bagel. “Fuck?”

I followed his gaze to the Twin Towers, half of which were on fire. How the fuck did something like that happen? It was probably a plane, a big one. Was the pilot drunk? Having a heart attack? Wasn’t there a copilot to keep this kind of thing from happening? That airline was going to get the pants sued off of it.

What was worse was that whole subway lines were going to be shut down over this. No cab was going to come here to pick me up, and I was wearing heels. How was I supposed to get home?

We stared at the fire for a long time, maybe even a half hour, and then a plane flew into the other tower, making that same BOOM and shaking the ground. The screams got louder.

Okay, that was not an accident. Somebody purposefully bloodied America’s nose. I was actually impressed.

The most important thing I needed to do was get out of there. Anywhere outside of the Financial District, I didn’t care. Just pick a street and go north.

Edgar took a step in the direction of the World Trade Center, and I grabbed his arm. “The way out is that way,” I told him, pointing in the opposite direction.

“I need to make sure they’re okay.”

“Everybody on the top of both towers is screwed,” I said, “and we’re probably going to get lung cancer from breathing in all this asbestos.”

“You think there’s asbestos?” he asked.

“It was built in the seventies, of course there’s asbestos. Now let’s get the fuck out of here.” Not wanting to wait around to explain it to him, I dragged him up the street with no idea where I was going. I needed a cab, a subway entrance, something.

I know I had been doing this a while because the first subway station I saw was City Hall. I pulled out my MetroCard, which was pay-per-ride, not unlimited, so I could swipe twice to get us both through.

While we waited, Edgar craned his neck to look outside, but he didn’t have a good view.

I said, “Look, Edgar, I have no idea what’s going on, but I know I can get you out of here. I will keep you safe.”

“I need to help those people,” he muttered.

“Edgar!” I snapped, holding his shoulders and forcing him to look at me, “the Twin Towers are on fucking fire. All those people on those floors were instantly burned alive or even vaporized. You’re just an out-of-shape writer without a story. I love you, Edgar, but the best thing you can do now is get out. We’ll get you to Hoboken somehow.”

The train arrived, and we stepped onboard. Considering that the previous stop was Cortland Street, inside the World Trade Center complex, I’d expected a lot more riders, but we were alone. Exhausted, I plopped down on one of the hard, plastic seats. Edgar sat beside me.

“I need to do something,” he sighed as the train pulled away from the station.

“Join the army as soon as we figure out who we’re going to war with.” Who would we go to war with? If both towers were struck by planes, that meant terrorists. I didn’t know much about terrorists, just that they attacked other countries, not ours. Destroying two of the tallest buildings in the United States was pretty ambitious for any terrorist. As long as the US treated this as a law-enforcement situation and not as a war, we had a chance of figuring out who did this and bringing them to justice. However, if we went to war with a stateless adversary, then we were in danger of another Vietnam. “On second thought, don’t join the military.”

The driver of the train didn’t announce our stop. They were preoccupied. However, we pulled into the Canal Street station as usual. The doors hung open for a minute, and, just before they closed, Edgar sprang to his feet and outside. I tried to follow, but he had timed it perfectly.

He mouthed, “Sorry!”

“Edgar, you idiot!” I screamed, hopefully loud enough to be heard through the shatter-proof windows. When the train rolled out of the station, I stated, “I’m going to kill you.” Coming from me, that was no idle threat.

I had a lot of patience, which was part of the reason I was so good at my job. I called upon that patience while the train rolled uptown, until we hit the next stop, Prince Street, close to Houston Street, which meaning not that close at all to the World Trade Center, which was where Edgar was headed. I calmly exited the train, walked up street level, kicked off my heels, and ran, barefoot, down Broadway.

Man was not meant to run barefoot on a sidewalk, and I could feel the abrasions on my feet. I’d soak them in Epson salt after I saved Edgar’s life so I could strangle him to death with my own hands.

While catching my breath, I saw one person tell another person, “They got the Pentagon!”

How many planes did these guys have? The amount of coordination involved in this endeavor was mind-boggling. Someone in a cave somewhere figured out how to bring the United States to its knees. If they had asked me to plan a way to freak America out to the bone, I never would have had the imagination to think of this. At the risk of giving them too much credit, these guys were evil geniuses.

Whoever it was, I’d kill them. Save the troops, save the billions they’d spend going to war with an invisible enemy. Just send me in there. Give me a week, problem solved.

I put up with the blisters on the soles of my feet as I started to encounter scores of people going in the opposite direction. But he closer I got, the more people were just gawking. I suppose they had a good reason. What were they planning on doing if the towers fell over? Me, I would be in a different borough, if it weren’t for—

“Edgar!” I shouted.

That was definitely him. He turned around and smiled. “Nora, I have to help these people.”

“There’s got to be five hundred firefighters in the towers right now,” I told him. “What do they want with a skinny, out-of-shape gothic boy?”

He studied the entrance to the South Tower far away and took a step toward it. I snagged his arm with my hand and held him in place. He looked at me with pleading eyes.

I said, “I did not save you from killing yourself so you can turn around and kill yourself.”

“Let me go, Nora.”

“But I barely had you,” I said.

“You don’t know me, Nora.”

I let him go. He ran off into the distance to the tower.

“Don’t you fucking die, Edgar,” I whispered. “I’ll wait right here.” He got farther away. “I’ll wait right—”

I felt like I was underwater, and a muffled roar, groans, and collisions were attacking me, and something shoved me onto my back onto the street, and the world switched to gray, with flecks of black and white, making it look like, as William Gibson would say, a TV tuned to a dead channel. A few feet away, I could make out a hunched-over shadow, and then another and another. The only thing I could think of to do was find something like a wall and anchor myself to that.

Using some of that patience I rely on, I waited until the air thinned out, and I could see for more than three feet. It was now closer to ten, maybe fifteen. I decided to take my chances, and I headed for the area I remembered the South Tower.

However, when I got there, the only thing I could see was the shadow of a section of the towers’ latticework shell sticking straight up out of the ground. The South Tower wasn’t there. I looked over my shoulder and saw more latticework and no North Tower.

I sighed, “I got to sit down.” I found what appeared to be a corner of the building and sat on that. “Ugh,” I grunted, coughing in the ash-filled air, “I am definitely getting cancer from this.”

You kill one person, you’re a bad guy. You kill ten people, you’re a monster. Is there a word for the six thousand people they probably killed today? I couldn’t think of anything big enough. I could safely say that I was literally a mass murderer, and I looked like a saint compared to these guys, whoever they were.

I got up and headed home. The searing pain on the soles of my feet focused me as I lurched forward, completely covered in ash—the remains of the people in the building, one foot in front of the other. I couldn’t let my mind wander like I usually would because the pain and the effort took so much concentration.

“Step, move my weight, step, move my weight …”

I wasn’t sure how I did it, but I opened the door to my apartment. With every two steps, I shed another article of clothing until I stood in the bathroom, naked. I turned on the shower, let it heat up, and stepped inside. Without a little cold water to cool it down, the water scalded. Good, maybe if it got hot enough, I could scrub the remains of thousands of people off of my body.

With crimson skin, I finally left the shower and laid down on my bed. It was still light out, but I didn’t have it in me to do anything tonight, not even sleep.

He was gone. I felt like I had finally found something I had never been looking for. I knew him for a week, and we only spent a few hours with each other. He got a coldblooded killer to care about something. And now he was nothing but ash.

“I don’t even know his last name,” I told the empty room.

Time passed, and my phone rang. Not my work phone, but my personal phone. I picked it up and barked, “Only one person has this number, and—”

“It’s me.”

Neither one of us spoke for a while.

“I thought,” I said with an eerie calm, “you were dead, Edgar. I’ve been mourning you for hours.”

“I underst—”

“Holy shit!” I shouted as loudly as I possibly could. “You’re alive! I thought I saw you die.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” he said. “Here I am.”

“Where’s here?” I asked. “Were you able to get back to Hoboken?”

“I’m at Union Square,” he told me. “There’s plenty of places to rest here.”

“Wait right there,” I said and hung up. I called the number for Brown Limousines and demanded, “I want a car to take me to Fourteen Street, no excuses.”

“Traffic is blocked below Fourteenth Street,” the dispatcher told me.

“It’s a good thing I’m only going to Fourteenth Street then.”

The car arrived in four minutes, and we were quickly at Union Square. The driver generously volunteered to wait for me to pick up my friend, and I quickly found a half-asleep Edgar on the lawn. I had to partially carry him, despite the fact that it was my feet that were destroyed looking for him, and we made it to the car.

The driver wasn’t having it. “You think I want to clean that shit off of my leather seats? Get a cab if you want to drive somewhere.”

“Do you even know what’s been happening today?”

“No, but traffic below Fourteenth is cut off. Is there a marathon or something?”

I closed my eyes impatiently. “Two planes crashed into the Twin Towers, and they don’t exist anymore. Apparently something like this happened at the Pentagon, but I heard that in passing, so take it with a grain of salt. The world is ending, and you’re going to begrudge a guy who was close enough to get covered in ash because you’re worried your car is going to get dirty? You’re going to do this today of all days? Where’s your generosity? Your charity?” That last bit was laying it on a little thick, but I was in a mood.

“I get it, I get it,” the driver muttered. “You can ride in my car. If you come to me covered in ash any other day but today, you’re walking home. Do you understand me?”

“I’ll tell him when he wakes up,” I said.

“This is just great,” the driver grumbled. “All the streets downtown will be closed for Allah knows how long, and the detours are going to go all the way up to the Fashion District. And don’t forget all the emergency vehicles, snarling up traffic. I tell you, I’d be better off getting blown up in the Twin Towers.”

Living in Infamy

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For the first few years, the mantra was “Never Forget.” Cruising through Facebook and Tumblr today, it’s clear we’ve forgotten. Last year, I wrote about how September 11 is fading because it’s not the worst thing that’s happened to this country in the past twenty-five years. But it’s the worst thing that’s happened to me.

After twenty-two years and an assortment of pressures in my current life, I don’t really have anything to say today. This wouldn’t be the first time. For the first ten years I only wrote two journal entries on this day, one in 2005, one in 2011. Since then, I’ve written about it inconsistently. All eight blog entries about it can be found here:

However, as I’ve noted the significance of the day receding in the public consciousness, I think it’s important for me to mark the occasion by not going into work and by writing something.

Last year, I penned a novel in need of a serious rewrite about a female assassin. I wanted to set it in New York, but I wanted to set it in my New York (see September 11, 2011), so I set it in 2001. And because it might be cathartic, I set it in September of 2001. As my memories of the actual event and the TV coverage become blurred, I wrote “Chapter 6: Living in Infamy.” It’s longer than my usual posts, but it would mean a lot if you took the time to read it.

Chapter 6