Were it not for Sept. 11, 2001, you’d not be reading these words.
I’d still be living in the city. Would I be a father? Who knows? Writer? Likely not.
I got lucky. Others fared far worse. I know.
I was a stock trader then and working at 39 Broadway, less than a half-mile from the World Trade Center as the New York City pigeon flies.
That morning, I exited the subway at Bowling Green, bought coffee, and breathed the cleanest air. One of the ironies of that day was the perfect weather. You remember.
In the office, researching stocks. The building shakes.
David Faber, a CNBC anchor at the time, reports a plane hit the World Trade Center. I have 45 minutes before the stock market opens and my 27-year-old brain thinks, “Let me get closer to this crazy situation.”
I had no idea.
With my future wife (we worked together), I took the elevator down 33 floors. I stopped in a camera store (no smartphones in 2001) and bought a disposable camera. She walked with a friend up Broadway.
Camera in hand, I took a left on Rector.
The massive tire I passed should have indicated something deep was afoot, but I kept walking closer. It’s impossible now to remember life before 9/11 and its relative innocence.
In college in the ‘90s, students were disaffected because they thought Democrats and Republicans were too similar. We were like babies. We felt safe. Terrorism was elsewhere.
As I snapped photos of the World Trade Center on fire, less than a football field away, a deep spiraling whine, a plane just above. Shock. Then the explosion.
Running. Confusion. Running. Cars parked on roads. Drivers out of their cars. Suddenly no space. Where is Stephanie? I go back to 39 Broadway.
In the elevator up a co-worker says, “It’s just a plane. Do we buy this?”
My new brain is now wired to think a third plane is about to smash into Lower Manhattan. Confusion morphs quickly to fear. Steph’s not on the 33rd floor. I leave a note.
I go back down. Find her in the lobby with friends. We all run to Bowling Green.
The sky is still blue, but the air is no longer clean.
People are shouting that the subways aren’t working. Masses on the sidewalks, coming up the stairs. We go down. A train’s doors are open. It’s practically empty.
We don’t know where it’s going. We board, end up in Brooklyn. A train waiting, going east.
We don’t know where it’s going. We board.
From a train window in Brooklyn, we watch the blue sky blacken over Lower Manhattan.
End up in Garden City. My mother picks us up. We are safe. No longer feel safe.
And this is how we end up in Sag Harbor.
My company wants a satellite office. I look in Westchester and on the North Fork. Must be two hours or less to the city. Rental markets are scarce. Someone says there are rentals in the Hamptons. Never been to the Hamptons.
An October day and a few hours in Sag Harbor. Look at a house across from Canio’s. We meet Maryann. Lunch was a slice of pizza at Conca D’Oro. Dinner that night at Corner Bar. We think we can live here.
Old Sag Harbor to us. Gone too, now.
By December I’ve opened an office in Bridgehampton, and we are renting a house in Noyac. During the day tufted titmice in the trees. At night, a screech owl calls from our backyard.
Twenty-five years later, the residue remains. I wait for the worst. I wasn’t always this way. Neither was the country. My pre-9/11 self remembers.
