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I've written about 9/11 off and on in this blog over the years. That day changed my life. My novel "Doing Time on Planet Earth" is specifically about a post 9-11 NYC. The people in my work-place who read it -- strongly identified. If it weren't for 9/11, I'm not sure I'd have gone online and become as obsessed as I did about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I'd been pursuing a separate path before then. Of course a lot of things happened at the same time, which I won't bore you with. This, however, is how I chose to write about it in my novel and put out to the world.
It was hard not to think about the robbery on her way to Essex Temporaries on Friday morning. The weather didn’t aid her mood, brisk and beautiful with a hint of dried leaves - it felt like nine-eleven weather, even though it was late October. Her skin prickled with it, reminding her of how she’d felt after nine-eleven, a number that still held the taint of the lives lost that day. But it was more than just lives, although that in and of itself was pretty major, she thought, just as the robbery was more than just a laptop. It was her sense of security, a shift in perspective, having what she believed to be secure, to be true, be messed with, and to an extent, unraveled. Everyone, she thought, went a little bit numb after nine-eleven. It was either that or become consumed by fear and rage; in some cases, she supposed, numbness was better.
On nine-eleven the earth, or rather Americans’ perception of it, shifted to the right. She wondered if that was how her grandparents and parents felt when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1942. That sudden shift in perspective. That innate sense that all was not right with the world no matter where you were or who, that there was no place that felt safe -- and you’d give anything to change that. Fear ruled you whether or not you wished it to. Everyone had a story about where they were during nine-eleven and what they lost. At first it seemed as if everyone had lost a cousin or a friend of a cousin, or a cousin’s cousins’ friend. Six degrees of separation was the term like that old nineties film of the same name with Will Smith and Stockard Channing that her mother took her to years ago. No matter who you were or what nationality, the events of nine-eleven affected you – to the extent that the number itself entered the international lexicon as shorthand for the events of that day. You didn’t have to elaborate further. Everyone knew. 9/11. Nine-Eleven. Just that week a local business man who’d rung her up on his register had gotten the amount $9.11 and it jolted them both – like a spark of static electricity. He erased the amount and made it eight dollars even. He’d rather lose the dollar and eleven cents than keep that number in his records.
After nine-eleven she became obsessed with shows like Spywitch. She watched it every day, joined internet fan forums on it. Sans laptop she couldn’t do that now. She couldn’t escape to that other world any longer, a world made up of letters printed on a screen and where the bullies, albeit nameless, could be avoided. She’d felt secure in that bubble. And wondered if today was the day Fiske would give her that loaner laptop he kept promising. If she hurried through the interview she might have time, after their lunch with Hope, to jog back to his office and play on the computer there. Fiske had told her to call him after the interview. So had Hope. This was the day for their ambush. Everything scheduled for Monday morning had merely been pushed to Friday. Fitting, Caddy thought, the days bookending each other as they did.
She looked up at the sky one last time before entering the building. It was one of those days… beautiful, shiny, yet Caddy felt as if storm clouds were hovering above her head. Nine-eleven weather with a scent of dead leaves drifting in the air.