My fear only partly subsided and I recommenced with my hustling half run still heading south on Nassau onto Broad and past the New York Stock Exchange. When I hit the front steps of my building a half block south of that I broke back into a run, side stepping crowds of calmly circled smoking stock traders talking about the market. Once inside I swiped my security card, opening the ground floor door next to the elevator banks and bounded up two flights of stairs. I burst into the office, pointing backwards at the door I flung myself through and again said, "That building's coming down! That building's coming down!"
My coworkers looked at me like I was nuts. They told me the TV said it was a Cessna. They told me to calm down.
When I got to my desk I snatched the phone out of its cradle while still standing and dialed my parent's number back home in Philadelphia. They were already at work. The answering machine beeped and I talked into the ensuing silence while watching live video footage being shot from a police helicopter that hovered around the blazing hole. I told them they were going to see some crazy things on the TV this morning. I told them that I was safe and inside and for them not to worry.
I retraced my path back down the stairwell and back out the building's big bronze front doors. I stood on the second of two stone steps leading down to Broad Street's sidewalk and slipped a pack of cigarettes from my shirt pocket. One smoke, I thought. Let me have one smoke and try to collect myself before deciding to leave. Maybe I really am overreacting. Still-trembling fingers slipped the cigarette's slim cylinder tip between my lips and I fished a lighter from my front pocket. I raised the lighter, steadying one hand with the other and as the flickering flame touched the tip's white paper...
Again.
The same sound as before, every bit as loud, every bit as thick and tangible and terrifying. It jolted me and I literally jumped; a ridiculous looking vertical leap like I was tagged on the ass with a cattle prod. The cigarette flew out of my mouth and the lighter rattled on the ground as my hands went instinctively back to my head, shielding my ears from the blast that echoed down the steep concrete corridors of downtown's tightly packed streets.
"Bomb!"
"It's a bomb!"
"A bomb went off at the Stock Exchange!"
The dense, milling morning crowds that lined the sidewalks and loitered in front of the office buildings that lined Broad Street dispersed in a random and panicked scatter-shot fashion. Men dropped their briefcases and women left one empty high heel where they had been standing as they sprinted towards the nearest doorway, cramming into whatever building was closest. I turned and ran back into my building, flinging the door open wide behind me for the others who were approaching fast, running south, trying to get away from the Stock Exchange.
* * *
Once back upstairs I immediately noticed the change in the prevailing disposition of my coworkers. As I entered the office this time people were scrambling to grab any unused phone and with a finger stuffed in one ear to block the noise of growing panic talked loudly into the receiver, leaving messages for friends and loved ones who worked in or around the towers and for family members around the country who were by now surely watching on TV. Phone lines and cell signals started to fail, the downtown networks overloaded or damaged. We watched with pained expressions the images looming on the two large TVs management rolled down the room's center aisle on tall metal stands so that we could all monitor the situation from one central location.
I breathlessly announced to the room that a bomb went off at the Stock Exchange but after I did heads turned towards me, moving side to side saying, "No," their corresponding fingers pointed towards the TV screens. The North tower was burning now, too. I paced frantically, wondering what to do. We were under attack. Management argued over a course of action. Should we stay put? Should we evacuate? Should we move into the basement? By the time someone shouted out that they hit the Pentagon I was already headed for the doors.
I burst onto Broad Street running at full tilt, dodging other skittish runners like we were dashing running backs just handed the football, stutter stepping around each other in an attempt to beat a tackle. At the corner of Exchange Place I warily eyed the columned faï ¿ ½ade of the New York Stock Exchange like it was a hungry animal ready to pounce. I was fully convinced it was set to detonate at any moment, anticipating that bomb-blown chunks of its heavy stone would come chasing me like cannon balls. I couldn't get up the nerve to run past it, so I turned right onto Exchange Place and wound my way up Williams Street, another near back alley in the tight grid of downtown's old world layout.
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