Banquo's Ghosts (5 page)

“But many feel Norman Ewer lost the poetry battle to Cecil Browne, who replied,

This got a general chuckle, and suddenly, drunk as he was, Johnson realized that not one person in this circle, including himself, believed in God at all. That the idea was as foreign to them as a plague of frogs falling from the sky. It wasn’t piety they despised, but sheer pluck. And the power of belief. Any race that had survived five thousand years was an insult. Any race that survived five thousand years and
thrived
—after being scattered to the four winds by Caesar, raped by Cossacks, and nearly liquidated by Germans—was to be reviled. Such history shattered
that myth called “equality of man,” and anything that threatened the common safety of common failure was to be repelled at all costs. Along with the God Who chose them. What was despicable wasn’t that the Jews had made the ten common rules for living in a civilized society, but that they had the audacity to still expect the world to adhere to them.

One professor attempted to bring the conversation back along the lines he intended. “It’s not like Jews have a monopoly on suffering, but they play it like a violin at Dachau, and the world is tired of that concerto—”

Johnson knew full well that might have been the fellow’s drink talking, but he had an urge to toss the remainder of his Knob Creek at that filthy mouth. He raised his glass—

But a hand restrained him, drawing him away from the circle. He was looking into a pair of very sober gray eyes. A strong and handsome fellow, mid-thirties, not the type to be at this kind of party at all. Such a Boy Scout. Former military? And something else about the man—Johnson glimpsed the sharp edge of a human dagger. A ruthlessness narrowed the corners of his eyes. The kind of man who could take a punch and give one back, stick an ice pick in your eye just to leave it there.

“Orwell said, ‘Only an intellectual could say something so stupid. ’ ”

And that made Johnson smile. He looked into the tough gray eyes, then down at his half-finished drink. “You’re right. And maybe I’m too tight to suffer intellectuals gladly tonight. Let me know who wins.”

And with that he went home to Brooklyn.

Nobody missed him.

But that very next morning after the party, Johnson discovered who won. Nobody. Instead,
everyone lost.
He awoke on the living room couch about 9:30 with the fish hook of a moderate hangover under one eye, still wearing his suit jacket but no pants, and the phone ringing in his ear. He picked it up.

“Look out the window, Mr. Johnson.”

“Who the hell is this?” But he went to the window anyway. His Brooklyn Heights condo faced straight across the East River near the Brooklyn Bridge, and there he saw what everyone saw that morning. World Trade Tower One was burning, and there came another plane.
At first he couldn’t grasp what he was seeing. “Who the
hell
is this?” Then, “What the . . . ?” into the phone, having no idea who he was talking to, and not caring as he watched the second jetliner from a mile away sail silently into the side of Tower Two. A gleaming missile sailing purposefully into a building, almost floating on its irrevocable glide path to hell. “What the . . . ? What?” he kept on saying, until it came back to him that he was still on the phone with the mystery caller. “Who the
hell
is this?”

“We met last night.” A vague memory began to surface in his brain: Yeah, the voice with the sober gray eyes. But that meant nothing. Not now.

He hung up, tossing the telephone onto the couch, transfixed by the shimmering towers—so otherworldly even on a normal day, now with plumes of smoke pouring into the unbelievable blue of that September sky.

Then he remembered yet another nagging thought—his life a long, haphazard habit of forgetting and regretting. Giselle. She worked at Salomon Smith Barney right beside the towers. The ice pick under his eye went from crappy hangover to mortal wound, slid sideways, and then dipped toward his heart. Fear. He dialed her cell. No signal. Work number? In his Blackberry. Where was his Blackberry?

And then the plume of smoke across the river widened and began to spread downward, and the whole building cascaded toward the ground in a grainy gray umbrella of smithereens, and nothing was left but a lighter colored smoke, air and empty space. The Tower was
gone
. Gone?

Where was Giselle?

The coffee pot was plugged in, the way Giselle always left it for him when she went to work. Where the hell was the damn Blackberry? He got down on his knees and tore at the sagging cushions of the couch. The stupid thing was lodged down a crack. He searched for G and dialed the work number. Busy signal. Bizzy-bizzy-bizzy.

He didn’t know what to do.

One last hope. Maybe she didn’t go to work today. Maybe she was still in bed. He stumbled to her room. Of course, he let her live with him. What father wouldn’t? Monstrous New York rents, taxes, food,
taxis—besides loving to see her every day. He yanked her bedroom door open, desperate to see the lump in bed, the tousled head. He almost shouted,
Giselle!
But the G died on his lips.

An empty unmade bed, no Giselle. In his frightful state he pawed the covers. No Giselle. He knocked on the bathroom door, no answer, then yanked it open. The empty tub and toilet sneered at him.

Out the apartment window the Single Tower was barely visible through the smoke and seemed to be beginning to tilt. The hallway quiet and still, but the chaos across the river ran riot in his mind, the screams, the sirens, the sinister patter of falling debris. He started to weep. Tears of pure bourbon coming, the whole of last night running from his head. Nostrils, eyes, from his slobbering mouth. He threw the phone on the couch, disconnecting it. He’d have to go find her. Walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. Now. He clutched his slept-in suit jacket, stared down at his boxers. Find your pants. Your pants.

The sound of the key in the door made his heart stop, and for a brief moment he didn’t grasp its significance. The door opened, and relief flooded through him. Giselle padded into the room in her pajamas, carrying a laundry basket with a
Vogue
magazine stuffed under her arm: “I didn’t feel well, but couldn’t sleep. I was downstairs in the laundry room. I’m going back to bed.” She passed her hand across her tummy clearly uncomfortable. Her hair matted in a sleepy-head rat’s nest. “Can you call Mitch at the office for me?” She was in her poodle jammies, elegant women walking high-nosed poodles. They always made him laugh. Now it made him cry again.

“Dad, what’s wrong?”

He led her to the window, to the terrible sight. They stood there, and she clung to his shoulder, and he let her cling. Then wrapped his arms about her and desperately pressed her to him with every fiber of his being. The second Tower collapsed into itself, and a great plume stood in its stead, reaching to the sky.

“I don’t understand.” Giselle said.

Johnson’s relief gave way to horror again. Johnson realized there might not be an office to telephone anymore. And something worse. No more Mitch. God, he’d never even met the man. Just heard the gracious
timbre of his voice, the occasional work-related call, asking kindly for Giselle. He really seemed to like his daughter. What else did he know about him? Lived in Jersey. Married. Wife with early signs of Parkinson’s.

The clean white toilet in his bathroom beckoned him, and he offered up his guts to the holy sewers of New York. But nothing came, a poor offering, just retching and a little blood.

After a while he caught his breath, and the bathroom mirror gazed at him. That magnificent specimen of British-American manhood: the sodden eyes, the belly pouch, the stringy legs of a fifty-year-old who sat on his ass too long, the rumpled but expensive Brooks Brothers’ suit jacket and once-starched white shirt. He wiped his mouth on the sleeve. Let the dry cleaners have it. Then he remembered: he used the same one as Giselle, Fleur de Lys French Dry Cleaners on Liberty Street right by Tower Two.

He should really take a shower and get dressed—get it together. People would be trying to reach him. When he emptied his pockets and tossed his apartment keys on the washbasin shelf, a business card came out with them. Ah, yes, the Boy Scout with the sober gray eyes:

After the shower, a shave, and three aspirin, he came out of the bathroom in his robe and slippers. The TV droned. Giselle was standing at the window looking at the blotted city. Without turning she spoke to the window.

“Why did they do this?
Why?
”

He didn’t trust himself to speak out loud. The answer too ugly for words. Then they did what so many other people did that day. They watched it up close. They watched it on the news.

The rest of the day proceeded in a blur. The best thing about it—besides Giselle feeling under the weather—the hangover vanished before noon. Jo von H, chipper and crystalline as always, finally reached him. The woman’s voice dripped honey.

“I want 750 words from you for the website. ‘Why We Are So Hate-able. ’ ”

“All right. Tell me again, Jo. Why
are
we so hate-able?”

“Peter,” she replied with a touch of impatience in her voice. He knew that tone from way back, as though speaking to a simpleton. “The rampant commercialism. Santa Claus before Halloween. The arrogance and self-delusional imperialism. Teeth-whitening for the middle class. Disposable diapers manufactured on the burnt ruins of rain forests. The parasitic hegemony masked as do-goodism. You’ve written it a hundred times, and the chickens have come home to roost. We practically learned it from you,” her voice rising, angry at the end.

He felt very quiet inside. Everything had changed. Couldn’t she see that? God, if she’d only ask him to write something
new
. Fat chance.

“Don’t go all flag-wavy on me, Peter,” she continued. “And listen carefully . . . I
want
this piece from you. And I want it posted before the day is out.”

He paused and thought, what Jo von H wants, Jo von H gets. . . .

“I’m on it.”

His practiced fingers found the laptop keys; while a knot grew in his stomach, growing worse all day as he watched replays of people flinging themselves out of buildings on TV. Soon he’d be watching firefighters pulling body parts, a leg, a femur out of dusty rubble. Still, he typed on,
what Jo von H wants
. . .

Evening came, and the glow outside the window cast light inside the apartment; an island of smoke drifted over Brooklyn. Giselle and he hadn’t moved from the couch all day. They’d ordered Indian takeout, but for some reason everything tasted sandy, bitter. The Styrofoam platters lay on the coffee table, lamb vindaloo growing cold. Johnson felt claustrophobic and went to the window and with a sudden impulse opened it; ugly streaks lashed the glass. He wanted to feel what the air was like.

“Dad, don’t open it,” Giselle warned him. “I can smell the outside from here already.”

And indeed, it did smell, a sour reek. The odor of gas and metals and chemicals and probably something worse.

What people smelled like when you cooked them. Mutton.

He was going to close the window as Giselle wanted—when he stopped. The sill, the
outside
sill. He looked closer and closer and closer, leaning over. It looked like a piece of . . . He didn’t know what it looked like. And then it hit him—it was a finger. A woman’s finger with a manicured fingernail and a wedding ring attached. How?
Fallen
from the sky?

Without thinking he flicked the thing from the sill with a jerk of his hand, and it fell off into invisible depths.
No!
That was the absolute
wrong
thing to do. He should have taken it. He should have gotten a plastic ziplock baggie from the kitchen. My God, somebody would want to know! He grabbed the phone again, dialed 911 to tell them there was
a finger on my sill, on the sidewalk, below the window,
a finger in the bushes on Hicks Street between Montague and Fuck Me Street! A finger. But of course 911 was busy-busy-busy, and who was going to rush out for a reported finger? Was he crazy?

Johnson slowly slid the window shut.

He was going to scream, not a human word, but some primal howl without any conscious thought. Yes, he was going to scream right now, but he could feel the finger that belonged to that poor woman, the burnt finger going down his throat, going down his throat making him gag and bring up vindaloo.

Azadi Grand Hotel, Tehran.

Nothing grand about it. A cramped couple of rooms with a view.

The call of the dawn muezzin out the slightly open window drifted across the city.
Somewhere in this country someone was always praying.
He should have closed the stupid thing and let the air conditioning do its work. He had fallen asleep with his clothes on again, his clothes damp from his sweat. A soft knock came to the suite door. Room service. Breakfast. The usual, surely. Yogurt, fresh figs. Black coffee. Even sober, the thought of eating anything right now wasn’t enticing. Maybe if he closed the window, took a shower, let the air-conditioning do its work, he might get his appetite back.