Crash 2

I put down the toenail clippers and changed the channel. I stopped on Mark Haines who'd forsaken the market news for the excitement of a plane hitting one of the World Trade Center buildings.

Wow. That's some news.

I picked up one of those little wooden sticks that almost looks like a pencil but is thinner and is used for pushing back one's cuticles. I began pushing back my toenail cuticles. A 2nd plane then whacked into the other World Trade Center building.

What the?

All hell broke loose on the t.v.

One tower fell; then another.

An edge of histrionics seeped into the normally composed delivery of the newscasters.

Everything of significance that happened that day is already well documented. There was nothing unique to my reaction. There's no need to recount the ash covered disbelief, the silent detachment. The tears that would come for no one because I didn't know anyone in New York, yet still I cried and felt foolish for doing so.

I sat in the hotel room, which had been my home for the past 7 days. My Man was in Brussels; there was no one to call. Instead, I finished pushing back my cuticles, put on a black skirt suit and, looking professionally uniformed, went downstairs to meet my interview.

The lobby was candlelit.

The power had gone out.

I half heartedly talked about myself and my reams of experience and my moxy and can do attitude and moral fibre and ...

Can you believe it? Did what I just saw on t.v. really happen?

The interviewer half-heartedly asked me questions about myself and my reams of experience and my exceptional talents ...

Am I really having an interview by candlelight? Did terrorists really just attack New York?