The Girl He Used to Know(67)
“Your husband works in the financial district.”
“I know. That’s why I’m allowed to make that statement. Clay and I laugh about some of the things he hears in those conference rooms. It’s eye-rolling for sure. But they have to play the game.”
“Then you of all people can understand why it would be so terribly confusing to me.”
“Jonathan is treating you like an equal partner because that’s how he sees you. Not when he first met you, maybe, which he’s admitted. But now he feels differently. So start acting like his equal.”
“Wow, tough love.”
“You know I’m right.”
“I shouldn’t have left, but I got scared. I don’t want to mess things up for him.”
“He’s a big boy. He can take care of himself.”
And me, I think. Because there will always have to be someone in my life who’s tasked with taking care of me.
But I don’t have the courage to say it out loud, not even to Janice, who would certainly understand.
* * *
After we hang up, I go into the kitchen to make another cup of tea. When it’s ready, I pick up the cat I recently adopted and also named Mr. Bojangles in honor of the original MBJ, who died a couple of years ago, and settle him on my lap. I click on the TV. Matt Lauer and Katie Couric are making small talk on the Today show. Feeling guilty about playing hooky, I tell myself that taking a mental health day is almost the same thing as taking a day for a sinus infection or the stomach flu, and those are two things my coworkers are always citing for their absences. Matt cuts Katie off midsentence—something is happening in lower Manhattan. I lean forward a little, watching the broadcast with curiosity and a strange sense of foreboding. The cat leaps off my lap because I’m squishing him.
Someone has called in to the show to report a big boom near the World Trade Center, which is where Jonathan mentioned his team would be having their meetings. He has some kind of fancy phone called a BlackBerry, and I think maybe I should call him to see if he heard it. But if I interrupt another meeting, his boss will really hate me and maybe Jonathan won’t get the promotion he’s hoping for.
Matt and Katie are perplexed. No one seems to know what’s going on down there, but another caller thinks a small commuter plane might have hit the building. I pick up the handset of my cordless phone and place it in my lap. So what if I call Jonathan. Janice was right. They need to stop making such a big deal out of everything.
Then Matt and Katie cut to a picture of the World Trade Center, and there’s a hole in the building and flames are coming out of it! It scares me so badly that when I try to lift the phone to my ear, I drop it and it bounces onto the floor. Will works on Wall Street and so does Clay. Though I don’t exactly know how close that is to the World Trade Center, I’m scared for them, too.
This is bad. I know this is bad because there’s a fire and when there’s a fire, the first thing you have to do is get out. One of the things my parents made me do when I first started living alone was come up with a plan for the order in which I’d need to do things in the event of an emergency. If there is a tornado warning, I need to go to the most interior room in my apartment, which is the bathroom. If the smoke alarm ever goes off, I need to grab any pets I might have and leave immediately. I am not supposed to stop and call the fire department or put on a bra or any of the other dumb things I’d probably think I should do. Once I’m outside, only then should I call the fire department, from a neighbor’s house.
I scramble to pick up the handset, and I hit the preprogrammed numbers I’ve stored in my phone for Jonathan: office, home, and cell. I punch the button for his BlackBerry, but it rings and rings and finally goes to his voice mail. I hang up and try again. Matt and Katie have a woman on the line and she’s saying the aircraft was bigger than a commuter plane but that doesn’t seem possible because how would a pilot not see buildings as tall as the World Trade Center. Also, I don’t know which tower Jonathan is in. Whatever is happening seems to be happening in the North Tower.
He finally—finally!—picks up. “Annika.” He sounds weird and out of breath. It’s very noisy in the background, and I can barely hear him.
“What tower are you in?” I scream it into the phone.
“The south. We heard a giant boom ten minutes ago. Brad went to see if he could find out what’s going on.”
“Jonathan, I’m watching it right now on TV. It was a plane.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes! Matt and Katie are saying a plane has hit the North Tower. There are flames pouring out the side of the building.”
“That’s what Tom’s wife said. She said a small plane coming out of JFK might have gone off course. Some problem with air traffic control or something. We’re looking out the windows, but we can’t see anything from where we are. There’s no TV in this conference room.”
“The buildings are way too close. You’ve got to get out. Right now. Tell the others. Make them go with you.”
Jonathan shouts to his coworkers. “Hey! It was a plane. There’s a ton of fire. Go, get out. Take the stairs.”
“Go with them,” I say.
“What?” I hear him say to someone in the background. “Brad just came back. We’re supposed to stay put because there might be falling debris outside. They’re working on getting the fire contained. He said they told him we aren’t in imminent danger of the fire spreading to this building.”