Unexpectedly, Milo - Matthew Dicks [47]
Their country was under attack.
As the south tower began to collapse just before ten A.M., someone behind him shouted. “It’s falling. Jesus Christ Almighty, it’s falling!” Gasps, shouts, and a muffled scream filled the space as the building disappeared from the sky, replaced by an enormous cloud of smoke and ash. Christine buried her head into Milo’s chest and began to cry. A middle-aged woman standing beside Milo dropped to her knees in prayer. Several people pushed their way out of the shop, suddenly fearing for the safety of loved ones in the city. A man in a business suit advised everyone to head for Central Park. “It’s the only place where a building can’t fall on you!” he shouted as he pushed through the crowd and out onto the street. An older Jewish man sitting on a stool at the counter dropped his head into his hands and began to weep.
They remained in the shop until almost two P.M., eventually finding stools at the counter as the crowd began to disperse. The quiet and reverence of the first few hours of that morning was slowly replaced with the sharing of news as people came in and out of the coffee shop with stories to tell. An Indian cabdriver who helped transport police officers to Ground Zero. A high school English teacher who had watched the towers fall with his class on CNN before school was canceled for the day. A thin man in his twenties, white dust still trapped in his hair and goatee, who stumbled in around noon, the only eyewitness that Christine and Milo would meet that day. He had been four blocks from the World Trade Center when the south tower fell and couldn’t stop talking about the sound of the building as it collapsed. “It was just so fucking loud. Like you couldn’t even think, it was so loud. I can’t even describe it. Have you ever heard something so loud that you couldn’t even think straight? That’s what it was like. It was just so goddamn loud.”
Though the U-boat captain in Milo’s head was never loud per se (the only auditory component of his demands were the repetition of words and that damn song), Milo understood the concept of something in your head being so powerful and omnipotent that it prevented you from thinking straight.
Others came into the shop throughout the day, regulars who knew the waitresses by name and strangers looking for a cup of coffee and a place to watch the news. Some arrived bearing information that had already been reported on television while others carried rumors of additional impending attacks. A pipe bomb outside police headquarters, a truck bomb on the Brooklyn Bridge, and one more plane circling above Washington, searching for a target.
The day was especially difficult for Christine, who didn’t stop trembling until well into the evening. She had suffered from a serious case of claustrophobia since childhood, the result of being accidentally locked in a closet for more than six hours as a toddler, and though she loved the city, it always made her feel a little uneasy. “Too many people squeezed onto one tiny island,” she had told Milo more than once. Whenever the couple was visiting New York, they did their best to avoid Times Square and other places where large crowds gathered, and they never, ever took the subway. Even the lower level of Grand Central Station and the ten minutes that their Metro-North train traveled underground before emerging in the outskirts of the city could send Christine into a near panic.
The attacks on the World Trade Center and the subsequent bridge and road closings only served to heighten her sense of feeling closed in and trapped and so increased the chance of a panic attack as well. Six hours after the second tower had fallen, Christine was still pale and sweaty, her dark hair matted against her forehead. Her breathing was rapid and shallow, and her grip on Milo’s hand, which she latched on to with every opportunity, was strong and unyielding, as if to let go would be to allow the panic to consume her. Her condition prior to one of these panic attacks reminded Milo of that of