Chapter 32
“Sawyer?”
Sawyer snaps to attention, and glances up to focus on the person standing in front of her desk. Her boss, Fiona, peers back at her with an expression of gentle concern, but with a friendly smile.
Sawyer realizes she’s been doing it again: staring vacantly at a blank email message, trying to think of how to write what she wants to write, and failing.
She hurries to click the X and close the browser window, embarrassed. It’s more of a reflex than anything else; Fiona is not the type to care whether or not Sawyer sends a personal email during work hours. Fiona doesn’t care when the work gets done, only that it gets done, and gets done well.
“Sorry,” Sawyer says. “What’s up?”
“I was just talking to you about the launch space,” Fiona says. She asks if Sawyer would like to leave early for the day and go check out the venue the marketing department wants to use for an upcoming book launch for one of the imprint’s lead fall titles.
“It’s an art gallery in SoHo,” Fiona informs her, handing her a card with the address.
“Ha—clever,” Sawyer agrees. The novel itself revolves around a set of eccentric characters in the New York art world.
“Is it too clever?” Fiona asks. “I don’t think we want it to come off as parody or camp.”
“No,” Sawyer says. “Marketing must like the space for a reason, right?”
Fiona sighs. “They do. I think I’m always just more comfortable in a bookstore.”
Sawyer laughs at this. “Makes sense. That’s how we wound up here in the first place.”
“Fair,” Fiona agrees, also laughing.
“But I don’t know,” she adds after a minute, biting her lip. “I’m also worried it’s too far downtown, and the tone is still wrong, considering…”
Sawyer understands.
“Everyone keeps saying the best way to support the city is to bring life back to the streets and businesses,” Sawyer reminds her. “I think there’s probably a lot of truth in that.”
“You’re right,” Fiona replies. She smiles. “Do you want to go look at the space and tell me what you think? You don’t have to, but I would love a second opinion, and I really value yours.”
“Sure,” Sawyer agrees happily. Fiona is always sincere with her praise.
“It’s Friday, so if you want, maybe you can head over around lunchtime, and then just take off for the day?” Fiona suggests.
“OK—thanks,” Sawyer says. “Will do.”
? ? ?
She thinks about calling Autumn and asking her to meet up to check out the gallery together. Autumn’s year in Japan led to an internship with a New York–based Japanese fashion designer; Autumn knows about all things arty in New York, and would be an excellent judge of the gallery space.
But Sawyer knows that Autumn’s job has been extra stressful since the city made the solemn decision to cancel Fashion Week in the wake of the attacks. She doesn’t want to bother her.
She imagines inviting Kaylee to go check it out—they’ve kept in touch. Ironically, they email each other more now than they did while working at the same company—oftentimes to compare notes and talk publishing gossip. But Sawyer already knows that Kaylee is still trapped under the watchful eye of Johanna, who would never allow her to slip out in the middle of the workday.
And so, a couple of hours later, when lunchtime rolls around, Sawyer grabs a quick hot dog from a vendor along the wall at the south end of Central Park before heading down to the gallery.
It’s October.
The month of October still sometimes makes her think of her wedding. She’d pictured golden light, lukewarm temperatures, a placid breeze. But October wears many faces, of course. Today, it’s overcast and there’s a noticeable chill in the air. Leaves are already falling from the trees near the park. They clutter the sidewalks and gutters, dry and papery, crunching into powder underfoot. On the city streets, T-shirts have been replaced by sweaters and jackets.
Sawyer understands: in life, there are major events, and there are minor events.
Personal heartbreak, she knows, is a minor, rather unimportant event. Inconsequential compared to bigger, more permanent events, like a death in the family. And even more consequential compared to bigger events that affect people in greater numbers: A war. A famine. A terrorist attack. Compared to those things, personal heartbreak is hardly the end of the world.
Still, Sawyer can’t help but think about the two girls who’d sat at the opposite end of her bench in the park a couple of weeks earlier, and about the conversation she’d overheard.
The attacks put things in perspective for him, the girl had told her friend about the ex who had gotten back in touch. Made him think about what’s important.
Sawyer recognized some quality in the girl’s voice as she continued to explain to her friend.
She’d said, The thing is, I was thinking of him, too, when it happened. Wanting to know he was OK. And wanting to talk to him again, I guess.
Later, Sawyer realized the quality she’d recognized in the girl’s voice was a sincere and palpable longing, and the reason she recognized it was because she’d experienced the same thing.
She’d thought of Nick.
Two whole summers had passed since she’d seen him last. But when she stood watching the news coverage of the attacks, her mouth open in shocked disbelief, all Sawyer could think about was Nick.
And since then, the urge to connect with Nick has not gone away. She catches herself thinking about him, composing apologies to him in her head, even imagining the conversations they might have, the jokes he might make. But when she sits down to write to him, she also sees that look on his face, the day he’d come to pick her up, only to drive away alone. The crushed look, of total betrayal and disappointment.
I guess it says something if you were both thinking of each other, the friend had replied to the girl on the park bench.
She has no reason to believe Nick is thinking of her.
It has been two years.
Now, she finishes her hot dog and walks to the subway. The address on the card says “Prince Street,” so she figures she’ll take the N train over and down to SoHo.
She’s a little bit nervous.
A friend who lives downtown told her that at Ground Zero, workers are still digging; the sounds of excavators and backhoes growl around the clock.
Sawyer agrees with what she said to Fiona: they shouldn’t abandon these parts of the city. In the beginning, it was important to make way for the emergency workers, but now, a month later, it is important to bring life back to the downtown neighborhoods, little by little.
And yet, it still feels sacrilegious in some ways. The gravity of what has happened has left its mark. It’s all around them, challenging them to be callous enough to go on living.
As Sawyer stands in the station waiting for the train, she stares at the “Missing” posters. When the train comes, they flutter violently in the whoosh and suction of the wind like a flock of panicked birds. A flurry of black-and-white bits: bright eyes and smiling teeth and bold-print letters PLEASE and MISSING and CALL.
When Sawyer steps onto the train, there are more posters inside. These aren’t new; after September 11th, they seemed to pop up overnight, all over the city. Taped to streetlamps, to the trunks of trees. And here, now, taped to the tiled walls of the subway station, and on the train itself, taped to the windows, and over the Plexiglas panel that shields the MTA map.
The train slides into motion, and Sawyer steadies herself by grabbing the overhead rail, still staring at the posters. The most unusual thing about the posters is the fact that it is October, and they are still here—that they are still everywhere in New York. They always just appear, more of them daily, despite the fact that Sawyer has yet to witness someone in the act of taping them up.
Sawyer gazes at the individuals in the snapshots, holding babies, hugging dogs, wearing paper party hats, sipping rum drinks while on vacation in the Bahamas.
LAST SEEN HEADED TO WORK AT AON CORP, WTC 2, 8AM, SEPTEMBER 11
LAST SEEN OUT TO DINNER WITH FRIENDS, ELAINE’S, 9PM, SEPTEMBER 10
LAST SEEN LEAVING 242 E 75TH STREET AROUND 7:30AM, SEPTEMBER 11
It pains her to read these lines.
Hope is a wild thing, Sawyer thinks; with enough love, it will attach itself to the slimmest of chances, and hold on tight.
Sawyer can’t help staring at them. All those faces. The faces of people someone, somewhere is longing to see, but more than likely already knows they never will. She feels the anguish of those who miss them, people who will never be the same.
The train reaches Fourteenth Street, slides to a stop at the station, opens and shuts its doors, then slides onward.
Still staring at the “Missing” posters, Sawyer feels a strange prickling at the back of her neck and turns. For a second, her heart stops.
And there—at the opposite end of the subway car—she sees an actual ghost, staring back at her.