Unexpectedly, Milo - Matthew Dicks [46]
Milo couldn’t help but find this dichotomy in her personality, the sarcastic shark and the compassionate caregiver, compelling.
But most of all, Christine had been the first woman to make him feel normal. Unlike the girls from high school or college or even his fellow nurses, Christine had met Milo with no preconceptions. No backstory. Their first date had been only their second meeting, so he had felt as if he wasn’t saddled with any preexisting conditions. He had not been thrown into an ocean of testosterone and forced to swim to the surface. When Milo had met Christine, there were no jocks, geniuses, or well-dressed future attorneys and stockbrokers standing to his left and right. It was simply Milo, solo and incomparable, and as such, she treated him like a man devoid of oddity and idiosyncrasy. And while this dearth of comparison may have helped his standing in Christine’s eyes, he suspected that it had actually done more for him. Absent competition, he found himself with a level of self-confidence that he had rarely possessed in the presence of a beautiful woman. It had allowed Milo to be at ease with Christine, and most important, it had allowed him to be as close to himself as he had ever been before.
Of course, as true to himself as he was with Christine, he knew that he still wasn’t even close, and though he suspected even then that this might eventually be a problem, he refused to acknowledge it. For once, he had found a woman with whom he could be happy, even if it came at a price.
As the two were exiting Central Park, turning the corner toward the conference center where Christine would leave Milo and proceed uptown to meet a college friend for a day of shopping, an ashen-faced woman stepped out from a taxi on the curb, turned to them, and said, “Did you hear? A second plane just hit the other tower?”
“Huh?”
“The World Trade Center. Both towers have been hit now.” The woman then pointed to the south, where a trail of smoke could already be seen drifting above the Manhattan skyline.
“I don’t understand,” Christine said, reaching for Milo’s hand. “What happened?”
“Two planes crashed into the World Trade Center. Look.” The woman pointed again, this time more impatiently, and as if on cue, the first of what would prove to be an endless wail of sirens that day suddenly filled the air.
“How could two planes hit the same building?” Christine asked, squeezing Milo’s hand now.
“They didn’t hit the same building. They hit both towers.” The woman was dressed like she meant business, a stereotypical New Yorker in a suit and heels, eyes shaded by a pair of Gucci sunglasses, but Milo could see that her hands were trembling as she forced them into her jacket.
A fire engine came roaring down Eighth Avenue, heading south. Milo, Christine, and their unnamed informant stood on the corner, staring at the red truck as it passed, filled with firefighters already in their helmets and gear. The driver blared a siren as the vehicle passed through the intersection, short blasts warning pedestrians that they no longer had rights to the crosswalk. Milo turned to ask the woman what kind of planes had hit the towers, but she was already halfway up the street, heading north.
“Let’s find out what’s happening,” Milo said, pulling his wife in the same direction.
They were standing inside a coffee shop, staring at the television mounted over the counter when the first tower fell. At least thirty people had crowded inside the tiny café in order to listen to the news coverage, but rarely was a word spoken as reporters described the scene and video footage from helicopters and adjacent buildings showed the buildings on fire and replays of the planes slamming into them again and again. News of the attack on the Pentagon had already been reported, and Milo could sense the fear