I've been a receptionist for over two months. The Paxil kicked in about a week ago, I take it every morning with a cream cheese and jelly bagel, banana and OJ. I feel so good I've even started exercising. Just a bunch of sit-ups and push-ups in the morning before I spend my day in Soho answering phones. I've got 1010 WINS on while I sweat on the hardwood floor. I hear a dumptruck hit a brick wall out on Delancey St., but the radio soon informs me this wasn't no dumptruck. I flip on the TV and see what you see. Emilie works on Broadway too and I want her to hurry up her morning routine so we can walk and gawk. Besides, she's the photographer. This is what I do with a camera:
At Broadway I head north and Emilie heads south. Despite the morning's events I still need my cream cheese and jelly bagel. I walk out of the deli with my breakfast as the first tower falls twenty blocks away. Out of psychotic fear I run up eleven floors- I'm not eating my bagel trapped in an elevator. Following a blur of phone-calling, television and e-mail I make my way to the roof of my office to watch the second tower fall. Someone I don't know decides to start smoking again, and I happily oblige the cigarette. I also manage to work the camera:
Life on Ludlow is on lockdown for the next week. No subways. No traffic coming off the Billyburg Bridge. ID checkpoints at Houston. Downtown is a ghost town. Absolute New York City silence while I sleep.
Every time a plane flies overhead now, I have to look. I have to. I still live here.
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