Twenty Years Later(49)

“Where was your office located?”

“On the eightieth floor of the North Tower. Victoria was sitting in front of my desk when an enormous explosion happened. The best way I can describe it is a concussion. The building rocked and thundered. It actually leaned to the side and for a moment I thought the tower was going to topple over. Everything broke and shattered. Pictures fell from the walls, items on my desk rattled to the floor, ceiling tiles came down, and the overhead sprinklers turned on. The fluorescent lights went dark and the emergency lighting came on. I remember the sudden darkness outside. It went from a bright sunny morning to midnight. And, of course, the smell. I wasn’t able to identify the smell, which was everywhere, and didn’t put things together until that night after I had made it safely home. It was then, while I watched and rewatched the footage on the news, that I realized the odor I smelled had been jet fuel.”

Avery waited, not wanting to push too hard.

“It’s funny how the memories come back to you,” Manchester finally continued. “I remember going over to a window and looking out once the dark smoke had dissipated. I remember papers floating through the air like confetti. I remember looking down to the street and seeing the regular crowd of lower Manhattan but noticing something strange. Only later did I figure out what it was. The crowd and the cars and the buses and the taxis, they weren’t moving. Everything outside the building had stopped, as if God himself had pointed a remote control at New York City and pressed pause. Then I remember seeing this clear sludge slowly running down the window. It looked like gel, thick and soupy. Again, in that moment I had no idea what I was seeing. It was only later that night that I realized it was the jet fuel that was coating the outside of the building.”

Avery remained silent. A chill ran through her at the thought of what this man had gone through.

“Anyway,” he continued, “after the initial explosion I made sure all my employees and partners were okay, and then we began to evacuate. It was early for us. Some of my partners didn’t come in until after nine, so there weren’t many of us at the office. We all knew that in case of fire, the elevators were off limits, so we headed to the stairwell and started down.”

Avery pinched her eyebrows together. “You started down?”

“Yes. Eighty flights of stairs was a daunting task, and we didn’t know which part of the building was on fire, so we prayed we could make it through the floors below us.”

“You started down?” Avery asked again, almost to herself this time. “Was Victoria with you?”

Manchester shook his head. “You know, I’m ashamed to admit that I checked on my people—my employees and partners—and we all sort of took a quick head count before we entered the stairwell.” He shook his head and momentarily closed his eyes. “I don’t remember seeing Victoria Ford after the chaos began. I . . . forgot about her.”

There was a sorrow in his voice that was nearly palpable. A survivor’s guilt, Avery assumed, that came from cheating death during an event that took so many lives.

“I listened to a recording of an answering machine message Victoria left her sister. In it, she said that she was with a group of people who decided to go up the stairwell, not down. Up to the roof where they believed they might be rescued. Do you remember that?”

Manchester nodded his head. “Yes. There were probably a hundred people on my floor and we were all in the hallway and stairwell at the same time. No one person was in charge and things were hectic. There was a lot of confusion and misinformation being shouted, as you might imagine. It’s hard for me now, twenty years later, to differentiate what I knew in those moments from what I’ve learned since. It all sort of mixes together to form its own reality. But for sure, in that moment, none of us knew that a plane had struck the building. We thought it was just some sort of explosion. The idea that a plane had struck the building started being thrown around only after people began calling home. In that chaos, no one knew what to believe or who to listen to as far as a strategy to get out of the building. As soon as the crowd started an orderly descent of the stairs, it was like a vacuum and nearly everyone followed. We made it down twenty flights or so before we ran into congestion. For a long time we barely moved. Just one step every minute or so. Then we heard the second explosion, which I later learned was the second plane hitting the South Tower. When that happened, people started panicking. There was talk about the stairwell being blocked below us, and some people peeled off. Some went back up, some headed to the other set of stairs on the other side of the building.”

“What did you do?”

“I stayed put. I didn’t stray from that first stairwell. Eventually, the bottleneck ended and we started moving again.”

“How long did it take you to get out?”

Manchester shook his head. “I’m not sure. I don’t remember looking at my watch that morning, but I’d guess forty minutes to an hour. It was before ten o’clock, I know that. And it’s documented that the first plane struck at eight forty-six. When I made it outside, I took in the apocalyptic scene and then started my hike uptown. The subway was not working, so I walked. I’d made it to Washington Square Park when the South Tower came down.”

“So after the initial impact, you never saw Victoria Ford again?”

“I saw faces. I had conversations with people but can’t remember what was discussed or who they were. After I checked on my coworkers, I hardly remember being with any of them. Victoria could have been one or two heads in front of me but I don’t remember. I only remember people shuffling down the stairs.”