Save Me the Plums - Ruth Reichl Page 0,48

voices emerging from the conference room and entered to find the entire staff staring, rapt, at the television. I looked at the screen: The second plane was flying into New York’s tallest building.

“Ooooh,” we said together, as if we had physically felt the impact. After a moment of shocked silence someone said, “What do we do now?” and every eye turned toward the door.

I turned too, wondering who was behind me. There was only empty air. I froze. On the television, flames were leaping from the burning building, which now had a hole in the middle. As the implication sank in, panic surged through the room. We were being attacked.

Think! I told myself, unsure what to do. I took two steps into the hall, about to call upstairs and ask for instruction. The phones! My head cleared; I went back into the conference room. “The phone lines are going to be jammed, if they aren’t already, so try to reach your kids and your families right now.” They stared at me, not moving.

“Go!” I said. “Now! Make a meeting place. Public transportation may not be working, so factor that in. If this is really an attack, the police will close the bridges and tunnels, so those of you who live outside of Manhattan may not be able to get home. Come to my office; we need to be sure everyone has a safe place to go.”

Nick! His school was in the Bronx. I turned to Robin. “Call Michael. Tell him he has to go get Nick before they close the bridges. Tell him to go quickly.”

“I’d bet anything”—her voice held terrible assurance—“that he’s already gone.”

* * *

—

SHE WAS RIGHT, of course. While most people were still thinking this a freak accident, Michael’s newsman’s instinct propelled him out of the city. On the road before the second plane hit, he was the first parent to reach Nick’s school.

“It’s pandemonium.” He was on the phone, begging me to leave the office. Behind him I could hear a small boy wailing that his father worked in the Twin Towers. “Why doesn’t he call me?” he asked, hysterical, over and over. I heard Michael pick the boy up, trying to comfort him. “You’ll come up to the country with us—” he was saying when the line went dead.

Of course: There would be no way to get back into the city. Michael would have to take Nick to our little cottage in upstate New York.

In the conference room, the television was still on and I watched, horrified, as the first tower crumbled. We’d had regular fire drills but were unprepared for a catastrophe of this magnitude, and Human Resources, usually so capable, could not be reached.

“You okay?” Gina came by to say that she was leaving. Downtown was being evacuated. We hugged each other, unsure when—if—we’d see each other again.

Phone lines were down, communication impossible, and people were desperate to find their families. As they wandered the halls in shock and I made sure everyone had a plan and a place, time slowed to a crawl. It seemed as if hours passed before I picked up my purse and made one last circuit through the now-empty office. Then, at last, I headed home.

Outside, frightened people stumbled through Times Square. Above us the neon lights blinked, eerily incongruous. The air had turned a vicious yellow and was filled with an acrid, unfamiliar stench. Subways weren’t running, bank machines were empty, and as I raced uptown, moving as fast as I could, I found streets blocked by abandoned cars that seemed to have simply run out of gas. I remembered, gratefully, that my own tank was full.

“They say they’ve closed the bridges.” The super, who was running the elevator, was always a source of grim news.

“Something must be open,” I said. “There must be some way to get out.” I ran into the apartment and scooped up two terrified cats. The dirty dishes were still sitting in the sink and I inhaled the familiar scent—bacon and orange juice—wondering if we’d ever be back. At the last minute, I snatched up our passports. You never knew.

By now every vehicle in Manhattan was on the road, desperate to escape. Fighter jets screeched overhead. Sirens blared. Blinding sun glared off the roofs of the unmoving river of cars. The cats yowled. On an ordinary day, the trip to the Henry Hudson Bridge at Manhattan’s northern tip takes ten minutes; today it took four agonizing hours. But the bridge,