The Verizon guy, his face smudged black on the handsome side

Lights a cigarette, and flicks a thumb

At the NO SMOKING sign on the scorched and buckling wall

“You don’t mind, I hope,” he says, and smiles

An ironic little smile 

From his desk, Jim Gordon looks up from where he is writing

A farewell note to his wife and shrugs, “Be my guest.”

The Verizon guy makes the shattered glass tinkle as he walks near the

Spectacularly empty window. Pillars of acrid smoke roll in columns

From the other tower, and stinging noxious fumes assault his nose

From twenty stories down. He smokes quietly

As Jim writes on.

 “Peggy,” he begins, then crumples in his fist the powder blue memo paper

 bearing the logo of his world famous investment company 

“Dear Peggy,” he writes now, and crumples again.

“Dearest Peggy…”

“I was in  ‘Nam, “ the Verizon guy says. “Before your time, I guess.

What were you, two, three in ’69?”

Jim hunches lower at his desk, barely hearing the words over the rushing wind

And screams and somewhere in the distant down below, the sirens rising

As a cacophonous off-key choir in the unholy air.

Sometimes, fleeting thoughts of rescue make Jim stop writing.

He looks at the staircase door and dreams of firefighter angels

Bursting in, but the Verizon guy just shakes his head

“It’s a chimney in there,” he says. “And that ain’t smoke I’m talkin’.”

Jim nods, and writes again,

 “Dearest Peggy,

I may never have found the words till now to tell you that I love you…”

While the Verizon guy smokes on. “Anyways, I was near Cam Ranh Bay, and this Phantom overshoots the runway,

Hits his wing on the tarmac and pinwheels, over and over, like this…”

“...Love you and the children as often as I could, or should, “ Jim writes…

“...And boom! He goes up in a bright orange ball, poof, he’s gone, but there’s jet fuel all over, spilling out, this whiplash of hot flame all over and some of it hits my arm…”

“...Hell, I probably said more words of affection to the dog when I went out the door each morning…”

“…The shit burns and burns. It blackens my skin in no time, like fried chicken, and  then it touches bone, and I’m screamin’….”

“…and Right now it seems important I say all that I have not said in the ten years we’ve been married, so you know just how I feel at the end…”

Jim furiously scratches out, “at the end,” and looks up at the Verizon guy.

The Verizon guy is saying:

“I’m screamin’ for three days, I think, and sometimes, even now, I wake up in cold sweats, feeling the flame and smelling this smell I can’t describe.  I’m thinking, this’ll never go away till the day I die – “  and he abruptly stops.

Takes a drag of his cigarette and looks at a grim-faced Jim.

“The thing is, I ain’t goin’ out burnin’, “ says the Verizon guy  “Know what I mean?”

Jim nods slowly. “Yes I do,” he says.

“Okay then. Good luck, man,” says the Verizon guy

Jim writes another line and the next time he looks up,

The Verizon guy is gone.

Jim writes, “ Everything we ever shared is coming back to me, but there is no time to write it all.

Whatever happens, I want you to live.

I want you to hold on to life to make what we had together worthwhile.

It is important to me.

I want you to raise the kids the way we planned.

The way we talked about at dinner, and even in bed.

Go to their recitals and Cub Scout jamoborees and open school nights and cookie sales and help them sell lemonade on the corner.

 Bite your sweater when Todd strikes out the first time in little league and yell your fool head off when he   hits that home run to win the game.

 Make Amy a soccer star, as you were.

 Help them do their homework but make sure they get out in the afternoon to play. Make them smart, but let them breathe. And you better make sure they laugh.

Whatever else, Peggy, you make damn sure they laugh.”

Jim looks at the paper now, smudged with charcoal grit and wet

From some liquid he realizes is falling from his eyes.

For the last time, he remembers watching the first plane hit the other building

And the way the people in the office scuttled from their desks

To the high, rectangular windows to watch the show

“A freakin’ accident,” someone says, but in his gut, Jim Gordon isn’t sure

Having been here in ’93, when the bomb went off, he jumps up and cries

“Get the hell out now. Go, go, go.”

Some flee at the sound of his voice. Others take their time, grabbing coffee, going to the bathroom,

And the staircase door is barely shut when the building shakes below

The deep rumbling boom a death knell

As surely as the bright sun shining mocks the horror of the day.

“So how many got out,” he thinks. Half? Ten? Twenty?

The Verizon guy appeared then, and the two men broke the windows, to let the dead breathe poisoned air.

 For the last time, Jim looks out at the blue-brown horizon of New Jersey

And is filled with a terrible sense of fear. And absolute frustration. He screams now.

And the sound whirls in the black smoke rising before it forever disappears

Now, he moves his shaking hand to the blue note paper and writes, “I love you,. Peg. I always will.” And signs it, “ Jimbo”

He is folding the note and licking the envelope when the new intern appears at his desk

Her doe-eyed terror evident, her trembling lips a mirror to her surely rattling heart.

“Mr. Gordon,” she says. “I was upstairs. I didn’t get out…I couldn’t…”

And she is mute, the tears flowing form her eyes.

“Pamela,” he thinks. “Her name is Pamela.” He remembers she was hired just a week ago and started only yesterday.

A sweet young black-haired Asian girl. Graduate of Pace.

It is okay, Jim Gordon says, rising form his desk. It will be okay.

Unbidden, the young girl folds herself in his arms, and he can feel his new silk shirt

Growing hot and wet, right below his heart.

Jim sighs and says, “I want you to walk with me, Pamela, okay?”

She says nothing, letting him bring her closer to the light

She cries out and clutches him

She knows.

“No one ever told me that they love me, “the girl sobs loudly in his arms. “Isn’t it strange to think

That now?”

Jim smiles. “Take my hand,” he says. “Hold on tightly.”

“Whatever happens, don’t let go.”

She folds her dovelike fingers in his palm and he shudders for a ruined life

That died too young

Standing by the window’s maw

Holding her hand in his right, the envelope in his left, Jim says, “I love you Pamela,”

And they step out into that last, bright cobalt morning.

09/25/2001

Author's Note: Begun in New York City, on Wednesday, Sept. 12th, 2001, and believed from that day on to be the last in this series. Maybe. Fans like Pags and Carolyn may get their way as I remind myself what I always tell others: Never say never.

Posted on 01/24/2003
Copyright © 2024 Ken Harnisch