know.
“Tonya Gregson.” It was as if she was in a trance. There was something in her eyes,
though, something so terrible I could hardly stand to look at it. Nevertheless, I stored
the name away. Tonya Gregson, Rahway. And then, like some guy doing stockroom
inventory: One Lucite cube with penny inside.
“He tried to crawl under his desk, did you know that? No, I can see you didn’t. His
hair was on fire and he was crying. Because in that instant he understood he was
never going to own a catamaran or even mow his lawn again.” She reached out and
put a hand on my cheek, a gesture so intimate it would have been shocking even if her
hand had not been so cold. “At the end, he would have given every cent he had, and
every stock option he held, just to be able to mow his lawn again. Do you believe
that?”
“Yes.”
“The place was full of screams, he could smell jet fuel, and he understood it was his
dying hour. Do you understand that? Do you understand the enormity of that?”
I nodded. I couldn’t speak. You could have put a gun to my head and I still wouldn’t
have been able to speak.
“The politicians talk about memorials and courage and wars to end terrorism, but
burning hair is apolitical.” She bared her teeth in an unspeakable grin. A moment later
it was gone. “He was trying to crawl under his desk with his hair on fire. There was a
plastic thing under his desk, a what-do-you-call it—”
“Mat—”
“Yes, a mat, a plastic mat, and his hands were on that and he could feel the ridges in
the plastic and smell his own burning hair. Do you understand that?”
I nodded. I started to cry. It was Roland Abelson we were talking about, this guy I
used to work with. He was in Liability and I didn’t know him very well. To say hi to
is all; how was I supposed to know he had a kid in Rahway? And if I hadn’t played
hooky that day, my hair probably would have burned, too. I’d never really understood
that before.
“I don’t want to see you again,” she said. She flashed her gruesome grin once more,
but now she was crying, too. “I don’t care about your problems. I don’t care about any
of the shit you found. We’re quits. From now on you leave me alone.” She started to
turn away, then turned back. She said: “They did it in the name of God, but there is no
God. If there was a God, Mr. Staley, He would have struck all eighteen of them dead
in their boarding lounges with their boarding passes in their hands, but no God did.
They called for passengers to get on and those fucks just got on.”
I watched her walk back to the elevator. Her back was very stiff. Her hair stuck out on
either side of her head, making her look like a girl in a Sunday funnies cartoon. She
didn’t want to see me anymore, and I didn’t blame her. I closed the door and looked at
the steel Abe Lincoln in the Lucite cube. I looked at him for quite a long time. I
thought about how the hair of his beard would have smelled if U.S. Grant had stuck
one of his everlasting cigars in it. That unpleasant frying aroma. On TV, someone was
saying that there was a mattress blowout going on at Sleepy’s. After that, Len Berman
came on and talked about the Jets.
That night I woke up at two in the morning, listening to the voices whisper. I hadn’t
had any dreams or visions of the people who owned the objects, hadn’t seen anyone
with their hair on fire or jumping from the windows to escape the burning jet fuel, but
why would I? I knew who they were, and the things they left behind had been left for
me. Letting Paula Robeson take the Lucite cube had been wrong, but only because she
was the wrong person.
And speaking of Paula, one of the voices was hers. You can start giving the rest of the