Drawing closer toview , the constructions of steel and tubing rise from the groundagainst the azurescape of the sky not as if placed there but ratheras the Badlands’ two most enormous buttes, shadow stalagmites of the most possessed geography of a possessed country: skywardly launched tombstones of a lakota mass grave. What once surrounded the Towers is gone. The customs office that stood at Vesey and West, the small bank once at Liberty and Church, the Marriott, and the underground mall where, on that doomsday twenty years ago, a funnel of fire flashed down ninety floors of elevator chutes before exploding into the concourse and sending thousands of morning pedestrians fleeing in panic past the boutiques and eyeglass vendors, newsstands and ATMs, the bookstore at one corner and the music shop with the flower stall behind it at the other corner across from the South Tower, past the entrances to the uptown Manhattan subway and trains to the river’s Jersey side. When the sprinkler system burst, a small tidal wave swept everyone along . On that day, the people at the Towers’ bottom had a more immediate sense of what was happening than those at the top where it happened. But on this day here in the Badlands, all that’s left is the Towers themselves and the wind that has gusted through , and the granite and dirt at their massive forty-thousand-square-foot bases now piled in some places as high as the structures’ third level , like hardened black wax holding two candles erect .
Saw first her face asthough it was just floating down there under the water; but it wasn’t floating, he could see her coming toward him. And just as she came up to him from out of the river, he leaned over and reached his arms to her; from out of the water she shot up. His hands caught hers and pulled her the rest of the way. He almost stumbled as he pulled her into his arms.
