Day 3 in New York
Any moment now, in my Vanilla Sky reality, either a zebra or Tom Cruise would come running in. Yes?
I am one of those clowns who ignored my Dad, my boss and some random doomsayer on Facebook, who all collectively said: Don’t go to New York. It was a trifecta of petulance on my part. The fact remained, I recall thinking, that I was presenting the biggest campaign deck of my career, and colleagues would have come from Belgium, France and the not-so-United Kingdom. Honed by years of digitally delivered stakeholder fenaggling and my intense training from binge watching the first 3 seasons of Mad Men, I felt pretty damn prepared. I said: No, fuck it, I’m going to New York —as if it was some big life-altering decision.
The Times Square that stood empty in front of me at this present moment felt eerily like life was indeed altered. Much like pacing the confines of a thinking space, I had just walked from Katz’ in the East Village towards lower Manhattan, past Victoria’s Secret and momentarily caught a glint from T-Mobile’s neon signs on Broadway…to this.
Forty-two goddamn minutes to get to the chairs that were filled with randoms just the day before were sitting there empty. This is certainly not the hustling bustling New York city I know. There were no breeders in sneakers and pushing ergonomically designed baby buggies. No dog walkers en route to and from Central Park. The streets did not teem with the onslaught and chatter by groups of women with shopping bags, family folk here for the week, nor men and women on cellphones.
Maniacally pacing forward means that unmistakable waft of salted pretzel merges with pizzeria smells, peppered with the scent of the quintessential hotdog…but nope. Gone were the hotdog stands. That’s why I couldn’t smell a thing. That’s a bad sign, I thought. They’re always last to go — first ones in, last ones out in this montage of a city that has been epitomized in thousands of films and tv shows since time immemorial as being exactly what it isn’t right now. Right now it is still. Practically a freeze frame. That icy chill crawls up my spine.
A fever dream, maybe? Why else would I still be walking? That knot in my gut just got gnarly. The shops are all open, the gigantic billboards are slivers of neon ads and LED light towers promising beauty, love and football. Still broadcasting live; architecture cutting into the blue blue sky.
Every ten feet or so a solitary face passed me, going in the opposite direction. In the last ten minutes they all looked harried, or hurried, somewhat worried. The homeless and hard-sleepers talking to themselves and occasionally to the space in the sidewalk you just walked past were quiet, because they weren’t there. Why then was I going against the herd and towards the center at a point in time when everyone had gone home?
“Don’t go to New York!” said random tinfoil-hat-wearing doomsayer again (in my head this time, and not as a Facebook status imposition of a comment). I became acutely aware that I could actually hear my shoes on the pavement, my ears were ringing with the absence of a city’s noisy din. A car horn interrupted the sound of my breath, now labored from having walked across the city thoroughly confused.
It was a taxi I apparently called. Sometime between that thought and this moment, I had phoned for one. Strange.
‘J. Stahl’ said the Taxi Driver ID
I got into the back seat and mumbled something about how strange it all was, everything so still and empty and noiseless. Where is everyone, do you know what’s going on, I asked my cabbie. I proceeded to rant and ramble a little. The answer that came from behind the plexiglass was a surprise.
First, I hadn’t realized until then that it was a woman. Second, she had a distinctly Australian accent.
“…I was at home with my friend who was visiting from Australia,” she said. Stoic. “ My apartment was in SoHo and we had a view of the Towers. We heard a plane that sounded like it was about to crash. We then saw the shape of wings in the WTC. This was followed by smoke…” Clearly, I realized, she was retelling a story of 9/11, from 19 years ago.“We went up on our roof and saw everything happen. My heart went out for the people who were waving for help as helicopters came by but couldn’t do anything. Tears around me. Everyone is terrified. Talk. Fear. Questions. Comforting. Then, as if out of nowhere, the second tower explodes and falls to the ground in a cloud of dust. This time we are all there watching. Horrific. Panic. Hugging my friend. Hugging a stranger. Crying. Knowing there are those who did not get out. Not knowing how many there could possibly be. When the second plane hit, the explosion was unbelievable. There were more people on the roof by then, people started screaming, “you bastards!” We knew at that moment it was terrorism.”
Julie paused telling her story. From my vantage point I couldn’t tell if it was from the emotions she felt, reliving the experience I’d only read about and did not experience myself. Or maybe she was beginning to get as perplexed as I was, turning into Brooklyn, driving past brown stone homes and seeing no one else in the streets. No taxis, no pedestrians, no beard-bearing hipsters, no one but Hassidic Jews…
“…It was a very surreal experience,” she continued as if on cue with my own fearful thoughts. Of what? Yet unknown. “The avenues were filled with responders. The boys from the fire station at the end of our street were there. They didn’t come back. The next day, it was only the dead coming back.
It was the smell that I will never forget. Realising then that our world is changed forever. This is not that time, my friend. Stay safe indoors. Stay sane.”
‘Stay sane,’ she said, and I walked mechanically to my door and keyed in the security password that would unlock the first door. Just like that, 2020 came thudding back into my psyche. I don’t even recall telling her where I lived, but here I am. At home.
Glued to the TV like that kid in Poltergeist.
I hear the TV blaring as my key slips stupidly wrong side up into the lock. I mindlessly flip it right side up to open the door into a flooding of every single light in the house turned on, as if to keep the boogey man from coming and there sat Sara, staring at the television. Frightened.
Nothing rips you quicker from your solitary thoughts and irrational fears than that familiar sound of Newscaster So-and-so Live from There-and-Here reporting unfolding events. Steeped in the Time Square experience from barely half an hour ago, I walked zombie-like into the living room to hear what he had to say. Clarity will end this anxiety. My stomach turned again as I put on my brave face for Sara and figured there must be a reasonable explanation for all this.
The Ken Doll with a microphone on TV was showing us a quiet scene from what was clearly not New York. Selfishly I wanted clarity about the city I was in now. But realized quickly that he was talking about Barcelona, news footage from yesterday. The fear is back. Next level. We’re due to go home to that in 3 weeks. I don’t remember ever seeing Sagrada Familia completely empty. I needed a photo of it for my thesis sometime back and it didn’t exist. And there it was. No one in it, not a soul around it, not a single tourist ogling at or falling in line for it.
So this is what abject fear feels like. No explanations, just narrations.
I wanted to run, but I just got home. I don’t even remember getting here, all I know is this gripping feeling that tastes like copper in my mouth and I wanted to hurl. Was Julie the cabbie a voice of reason, in my head? If so, that response is completely unreasonable. I started telling myself to quit it with the shallow breaths and breathe in deep. Everything’s going to be alright. Except Ken Doll TV was still blaring and Sara was still staring. It’s never a good sign when tanks and the army are involved and other countries are named, my focus impaired.
“Solidarity…”
“the numbers are as yet unconfirmed…”
“Meanwhile in Germany…”
“….as more countries get involved…”
“The State of the Nation address…”
“We’ll know more tomorrow.”
“We’ll know more tomorrow.”
And so we slept.
Much like the haze from the day prior when I couldn’t understand how I’d arrived at Times Square from work and seen less than a hundred people, I stumbled into Day 2 to give my presentation at the office utterly perplexed. As I prepared to leave our rented AirBnb, Sara motioned to the telly again.
The Governor of New York replaced Ken on TV and announced plainly that we needed to stay indoors and that all offices, schools and restaurants were closed until further notice. There were no precise reasons given, no explanations and no virtual earplugs given to the sane to block out the noise of a rising fear. The lady next door screamed. A fearful scream — of what, who knows, no one knows. The TV screen was back announcing gibberish and frightening stories of empty streets around the world and our governments withholding the reason why.
Sleep was elusive that night as it was the night prior, and it was like living in a perpetual state of jet lag.
And there he was, the next day: The muppet of a President, finally about to announce what was really going on in the world today. He’s surrounded by the secret service and the TV screen is completely stacked from left to right with sombre faces interspersed with serious-looking, decorated Military men and women.
He cocked his head, just so, and said:
“…Last week, On March 8, Italy decreed a lockdown of its borders, ordering all citizens to stay indoors until further notice, as has Spain this morning 0800 Central European Time. We have a demonstration of the power of privatization to learn ahead of everyone else what we are protecting you from today. Our world-class advanced military intelligence teams are here with me today and have given me the go-ahead to announce that we, too, must lock down our borders and stay indoors. The truth that no other government is telling its people is this…They are here. The aliens are here.”
The relief swept through me. There were no World Wars in my childhood. No great wars. Only that Nostradamus thing and how the Cold War then could be some kind of catalyst to World War III…wow, this isn’t that. Julie Stahl, New York Taxi Driver and voice of reason was right, it wasn’t terrorists. Best news ever. Suddenly I was famished, like I hadn’t eaten for days, and man could I eat a house after that. I know now that it is what happens when your body fears the worst and then the mind says there is no real need to.
Then he ruined it all by saying: “And they are hostile.”
A #wallcrazyfiction story written in isolation.
Stay tuned. https://medium.com/wall-crazy-fiction
