The Exchange re-opened on Monday, just less than a week after the World Trade Center fell. After the opening bell, the stock market plummeted faster and harder than any of us had ever seen; the new king was fear and he was everywhere, all the time, watching us from a terrible set of a thousand eyes.
For employees of McGrath & Swinburne, that day was doubly hard. We were still acquainting ourselves to the fact that the catastrophe was personal: nearly everyone knew someone who had not survived the attacks. And on Monday a second stark fact had to be faced: unlike everyone else, those of us who worked in the Towers had no way to go through the motions and pretend life was normal—because we had no jobs to go to.
Uncertain about the present or future, all morning I watched terrible stock quotes crawl across the television screen. The phone rang and I answered without looking at the caller—anything was better than what I was doing. On the other end of the line was a sweet, Southern voice that I didn’t expect to have fill my ear:
“You calling into the party line or what, Ace?”
All morning emails had bounced between employees of McGrath & Swinburne, she said. Everyone was trying to figure out what we were going to do. Finally, Smoky sent out an email announcing a conference call at noon where he would discuss the company’s plans.
I hadn’t received any of the email notices because all the notes went out to personal email addresses. “I know you don’t have a personal email address,” Jordanne said. “So I figured I would give you the personal invite. You got to get with the program, honey, you know? This email thing is sticking around, I think.”
For the first time that morning I smiled—not just because Jordanne had thought to call me, either. She had thought of me and also she had remembered something I’d told her this over one of our shared cocktails maybe two years ago: that I existed as horace.mejeur@mcgs.com and as no one else, digitally speaking. I had neither need nor time for a personal email address, I told her. At the time I think this was meant to prove my singular dedication to our place of work.
I joined the conference call just before it started. Smoky launched immediately into a speech about keeping our chins up. I pleased to hear him toss around familiar motivational clichés. I felt charitable in part because of my call from Jordanne but also no doubt because I was just so glad to hear Smoky’s voice—to hear how he and others were definitely, undeniably, utterly alive.
Smoky told us the company would carry on, and he promised we’d have office space in Jersey City sometime in the next week. He got caught up in the moment and a flash of his old self returned when he made a joke about how he hoped no one would quit just because we were working in Jersey, and folks laughed but only out of deference for his seniority. Laughing didn’t feel quite right yet.
At the end of the call, the format went lax and people began to talk about friends and acquaintances who’d made narrow escapes—no one wanted to talk about the people who didn’t make it. The unusual fact that no one from McGrath & Swinburne had been seriously hurt was observed often, usually in disbelieving terms, as if people were sure that at any moment one of the voices on the line would admit to being a ghost.
I was about to hang up when the receptionist—who was always saying inappropriate things at the end of staff meetings—brought up John. She said that it’s too bad he wasn’t on the floor on the morning of the attacks. “John would have cleared out our floor and every floor from ours to the bottom with ruthless efficiency. Wouldn’t he, Ace?”
I made a vague noise that resembled a yes.
“Where is John boy these days?” Smoky asked.
“You’d have to ask him,” I said.
Smoky sounded casual but suspicious, and I wondered if he was still looking for clues related to the matchbook fiasco. The very idea seemed ridiculous, almost quaint—especially since I’d nailed his fake matchbook back to him. Recent events had made that whole upheaval seem like a stint of splashing around in the moral kiddie pool.
I wasn’t responding with the witty banter Smoky wanted, and so he said his goodbyes to the rest of the team and hung up, abruptly ending the conference call.
I was left sitting alone in my apartment with a dead phone in my hands. But I didn’t want to sit alone with my thoughts. I didn’t want to think about John and what he might be doing. And I couldn’t go to work. And so I did something completely out of character, at least for my character up and until that moment. I picked up the phone and dialed Jordanne Orleans and asked if she wanted to meet somewhere far away for lunch.
“You mean like in Midtown?”
“I mean, like, in Boston.”
I know more than a few flings that came off in the aftermath of the attacks. Couples who should have split, instead stuck together. People who didn’t belong in the same bed found themselves sharing sheets. Jordanne and I weren’t as tacky as all that.
We did not take a trip to Boston on Monday, but we did have a late lunch that afternoon at the oyster bar under Grand Central Station. Without jobs to do, we were left with no obligations, like college kids on spring break. Over beers and buckets of shellfish we talked about everything that we could think of that had no relationship to our jobs or the ruin downtown.
You work with someone for years and learn their habits, their verbal tics, the things that annoy them, the petty rewards that motivate them. I don’t remember anymore why I had a crush on Jordanne in the years preceding. I guess it was her good looks and her whip-smart mind.
In her professional life, she never sat still long enough to warm up a seat. She used to dictate her tech stock commentaries into a Dictaphone – the only person under forty that I ever saw speak into one – while she bounced between meetings.
At the Oyster Bar I learned her back story, rounding her out in a way that made me ache to sit near her more than I ever had before. As a teenager in Nehru, Georgia, she had spent her teenage years cruising mall parking lots in her friend’s Mary Kay Edition Grand Am and waving at the boys who wolf-whistled. She also joined clubs, aced tests, and captained a quiz bowl team. She was her micro-econ professor’s favorite pupil at Georgia Tech, and that same semester she was first runner-up in a Daytona Beach beauty pageant: Firestone, co-sponsor of the pageant, awarded her the honorary title of Miss Body & Fender.
When it was my turn, I told her all about my Uncle Horace and escaping the small town where I grew up and joining the mentorship program where I met John—and that was one moment when the present intruded upon our conversation.
“Have you talked him since the attacks?” she asked. “I mean, to make sure he is doing OK?”
I sat up. “What makes you ask that right now?”
Jordanne shrugged. For a moment I feared that John had reached out to her with his scheme. But then I realized, no, Jordanne would never fall under his sway. She was too pleased with life as it was. “Easy, tiger,” she said, “I’m not looking for another dinner date.”
“Oh, so this is going to be dinner, too?”
So the late lunch turned into drinks at the Morgan Bar near Bryant Park, at least till they closed the bar on us hours later.
Jordanne had the idea to buy iced Smirnoff from a deli on Sixth Avenue and sip them will seated in the shadowy outer edge of the Park. I kissed her there. The kiss that I’d wanted to plant months earlier, when we went for drinks after work. There had been a boyfriend then. There might still be, I reflected, a boyfriend now, but I didn’t care. She kissed me back and I didn’t ask why. This was not the era of asking why—it was the era of getting through.
* * *
Something particular and fine kindled on that Monday, and whatever it was, it lasted through for a few blissful days. Neither of us tried to figure out what we were doing or what was happening. But the outside continued to intrude—and the ridiculousness of ourselves became harder to admit.
I remember how on Tuesday night at a tapas restaurant in Union Square, we sat outside under the unseasonably warm sky. On the sidewalk near our table a few college-aged kids went by, talking loudly and laughing. We both watched them. The world was slower to return to normal than individuals were, and laughter in public was common—the two of us had certainly laughed over the last few days—but there was still something that felt not quite right about this public roving by happy young people.
As the teenagers shambled past, Jordanne reached into her beaded purse and brought out a pack of Nicorette gum. She put two caplets into her mouth and tossed the wrappers onto the table and looked at me with sad eyes. “I hate this shit,” she said. She chewed and winced at the taste and everything else that was wrong with the New York around us.
I cannot explain exactly why on Wednesday morning, I opted not to call Jordanne, despite the agreement the night before that we should meet at Central Park. Some old devil in my head whispered that I was calling too often. I was enjoying myself too much. All of it felt wrong. I was tempted to return in atonement to the rut where I’d been for the first days: watching too many news broadcasts, poring over newspapers and re-living things I’d seen on television. As a cure, I got it into my mind that I should head to the ruins of the Trade Center alone.
I reached Houston Street before I turned back home. I didn’t smell the infamous smell that everyone was talking about – the scent of demolished skyscrapers. I turned around because I felt wrong, like an apostate on holy ground. And so I walked home briskly, morosely, careful not to turn my head too far to the right or left for fear of what I’d encounter to make me feel worse.
Upon arriving home I saw that I had seven messages waiting on the answering machine. The first three were all from Jordanne. I thought she would be livid with me. But in fact she was just distraught. And that was when I first heard the terrible, fantastic new legend about John. And so it came to pass that people believed John Marion had died while rescuing strangers at the Trade Center.
* * *
Smoky’s assistant Lauren had heard from someone else who heard from someone else – well, the beginning of the tale couldn’t be easily sussed out. But someone determined that no one had seen John in a week. Someone else called Mina and she told them that she’d gone to his apartment and found it deserted. Then someone remembered how often he would visit the Trade Center in the morning to buy coffees for the receptionist and others. Someone else – here I wondered: how many “someones” can a single rumor sustain?! – someone else thought maybe he’d seen John rushing into the building after it was on fire.
The idea of John as a hero was enticing: he’d been a drug dealer who cleaned up his act and then gave up his life for others.
A few people called me and I knew what I should say but instead I just said that I had no idea what John was up to or where he’d been on the morning of the attacks. That much was true.
The calls all went the same: It’s awful, they said, just awful.
I know.
He’d made good, you know?
I know.
He was proof that you can turn your life around.
He did.
God. Sorry. It’s just such a shame.
And so on about what a person John had been. How miraculous his turn around had been. What an inspiration it had been. People spoke of him in the terms of apotheosis normally reserved for men and women who had lived the lives of saints. I went cold, didn’t say too much, didn’t add to the eulogy. I suspect that at times I sounded like I didn’t care about John at all. So I began to just go quiet while other people spoke. And it became clear that few of them really ever had known John. I don’t mean that he hid his true self from them. They simply never really knew him. They just liked the idea of what he stood for.
I tired of hearing just how good John had been, what a saint he had become, how proud everyone was of him; and I was tempted to tell the truth, to fess up to the fact that John wasn’t dead. But to do that would be to admit that I had failed. That he’d been fooling me for years. That I was no smarter than anyone else.
I don’t remember when I decided to call Harrington. I still had his card but when I called, I was told he was on leave. I sweet talked his home number out of the girl who had answered his line.
I was relieved when he answered the phone, but I was also unsure what else I wanted from him. We talked about John in respectful tones for a while and near the end of the conversation I mentioned the matchbook tentatively. I was curious as to whether or not Smoky had told the police that his fraudulent matchbook had reappeared. I wanted to know if Harrington had learned the whole thing was a fake. As it turned out, he had no idea as best as I could tell—and Smoky didn’t call off the investigation at all.
“I shut the whole thing down in August,” Harrington said.
“You did?”
“I thought I made that clear when we last spoke.”
“You said you knew—you knew who stole it.”
“Yes. And that’s why I closed it. Do I have to spell it out for you?”
He didn’t seem to want to say too much about the case over the phone. Mostly I had to read the intent of long silences. I thought at first that it was because he was worried about having his call monitored by feds. I learned later that he had other reasons: he’d lost two guys from his precinct in the collapse. One more was in the hospital and wouldn’t make it through the end of the year. Harrington was working night shifts down at the World Trade Center site digging out from the ruins. He was exhausted with real matters, with attempting to save people and dig life out. And here I was prodding him on the particulars of a case that meant nothing, really.
“Come to my place,” he sighed. “I’ll show you everything.”
I took the R train up to Astoria and walked up brisk, cold streets to Harrington’s place, a few blocks from the station. His apartment was a trim, clean place, just what you’d expect from police officer who’d clawed his way out of the projects.
After Harrington passed the NYPD exam a decade ago, he enrolled at the detective academy and with his first paycheck he rented a U-Haul and drove himself out of the projects. He left John and his mother behind but promised to come back twice a month for Sunday dinners.
He made good on his promise for the first half year, but then he started up on his beat, and he had to keep canceling dinners because he kept picking up shifts for second or third year guys. Twice a month became twice a year; and then, after a time, he’d just phone on Mina’s birthday.
Harrington and I sat in his living room to talk. He seemed bigger than when last I saw him, and he seemed to carry his bulk like more of burden than before. He exhaled like a much older man when he settled into an arm chair with an ortho bead cover. I sat on a low sofa that sank beneath my weight, making me feel like I’d never get out. A cat sat on a television screen watching us.
You might think that we talked more about the destruction of the World Trade Center, but instead we talked about anything but the last few days. Mostly we discussed the Fulton House tenement where Harrington had lived and where John grew up.
“John was a tough kid, but he never crossed the line into bad.”
“Even when he was dealing drugs?”
Harrington laughed; the laughter brought a chunky cough from his chest. “Even when this matchbook thing happened,” he said, “I could never bring myself to believe he was a bad kid. If he’d been a stranger, maybe I’d feel different. But he wasn’t. He was Johnny Marion. He used to store his comic books in my freezer. I guess that was the difference when I saw the tape. Here, I’ll show you.”
He stood up and shuffled to the television set. He shooed the cat away and pulled a VHS tape from a stack on a shelf. His VCR was old, very old, and, like a phonograph in a museum, it reminded me of a simpler time.
Harrington slid the tape inside and for a moment snow spread across the screen. Then the screen cleared to show a familiar hall with slate-gray walls and a carpet of orange, brown, and red dots. In the distance there was a wall of windows, all narrow, separated with thin slats like prison bars. The view out the windows wasn’t clear, but that didn’t matter, I didn’t need to be able to see it. The carpet told me exactly what I was looking at: the main hall of offices at McGrath & Swinburne, the fifty-third floor of the North Tower.
I studied the time-date stamp at the corner of the footage. The date was from a world that was half a year gone by the calendar, but could have been from an era more distant than the Jazz Age, for how it felt in my mind: 03/02/01. That was the day that John was laid off from McGrath & Swinburne. I waited as Harrington fast-forwarded through footage of a woman with a cart as she cleaned up the row of offices. He slowed when the time stamp on the screen reached 11:52 p.m.
On screen a blue blur entered from a side door. “That’s our boy right there,” Harrington said. The blur moved in one office, then back out, and into another. I could not see John’s face, but this figure – bent over like a spade, hurried, confident – could be no other. He repeated this until he reached the last office, Smoky’s, and then he went inside for longer than he had any of the others. John’s face was clearly identifiable as he walked out a few moments later; he was not visibly carrying a matchbook, but that didn’t mean anything at all.
“That’s it,” Harrington said. “That right there is the crime.”
“But it doesn’t show anything?”
Harrington shrugged. “It’s enough, given his likely motive.”
“If it’s so clear, how come no one came calling on John right away?”
“For one thing, the surveillance tapes went missing.”
“You mean this tape here?”
“That’s the one.”
Harrington lifted a remote and clicked off the television. He turned and looked at me. He cocked his head slightly to one side, like a man considering a face he hasn’t ever really examined closely before. “So now you know,” he said. “I had the proof. But I chose not to go with the proof.”
“But is that really your call to make?”
Harrington laughed again, coughed again. “Guess it doesn’t really matter anymore, does it?”
I stared at the blank screen. I shouldn’t be here, I thought. I should have kept the plans with Jordanne. I should have tried to make something real out of what was beginning to seem clearly like nothing more than a fling. I should just move past all this, these people, this ruined old cop, the kid who didn’t want to be saved, the junkie mother. But here I was again. I kept returning because I felt like I could fix all this. I felt like I could make a difference. Even though all my efforts obviously never had.
Maybe I knew better, I knew how wrong Harrington was, but I still found myself wanting to believe him – in fact, I actually began to believe him with a small hopeful piece of myself. What is it in the human condition that inspires us to have faith in what we have no business believing?
“Scorpion and the frog,” I muttered.
Harrington looked at me with confusion.
I explained: “You know the story of the frog and the scorpion, right?”
He shrugged, shook his head. I’m sure he had heard the story before; it’s actually an old fable. You hear the fable all over pop culture, in fact. It’s referenced in the dialogue for an old Orson Welles movie. It’s in script for the Crying Game too. But sometimes you have to hear a story over and over again before you finally understand it. Sitting in Harrington’s living room for the first time I really got it, what it meant.
“The story goes like this,” I said. “So this scorpion comes to a river. There’s a frog there. Scorpion asks the frog to take him across. No way, the frog says. If I do, you’ll sting me and I’ll die. I wouldn’t do something so dumb, scorpion says. If I do that while we’re in the river, then we’ll both drown. That doesn’t make sense, does it? So the frog takes him on his back. Half way across, the scorpion stings him, and the frog starts to fumble, and they both sink. Frog’s last words: Why did you lie to me? Scorpion’s last words: I’m a scorpion. What the hell did you expect?”
##
You can also start the novel from the beginning.
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