By the time the second tower came down, Chuck was in a rental car streaking toward New York. The airports were closed indefinitely and he had to get back home as soon as possible. He had the radio tuned to an AM news station; not that it mattered, every radio station with a license to broadcast was talking about the same thing. No music that day.

At the car rental counter he had watched the television that was mounted on the wall, saw the endless replays of the second plane entering the building, violating it. Dark gray smoke tainted the beautiful blue sky. Just like in his dream.

Chuck pressed the gas pedal, pushed the Chevy past seventy, held it steady at an even eighty. He wasn’t concerned about getting nabbed for speeding. Every cop—hell, every person—was glued to a television set.

Ever since he was a kid, he could always differentiate his regular, run of the mill dreams from the other, special type. His Aunt Diane’s car accident. His mother’s fall which necessitated a hip replacement. His wife Jenny’s miscarriage. It wasn’t just tragedies, however. Lotto numbers netted him a cool $1,200 one time. The winning kick during Superbowl XXXVIII scored him fifty bucks. And minor, mundane things too, nothing even worth mentioning—missing keys, etcetera. He had had doubts with this latest dream, though. How could he not? He refused to believe it could be true. Sometimes the special dreams would take days to happen, but they would happen. He had never been wrong, never misread one before.

Chuck turned on the TV that morning in the hotel room before getting out of bed. The images on the screen didn’t seem real; for a second he thought he was still dreaming. But he wasn’t.

He kept a dream journal, ten years and counting, and whenever he entered a new one he’d title it with what he thought was the theme of the dream. The Superbowl was an easy one. Mom’s Hip was another obvious one. This time when he woke, and before he turned on the TV, he wrote something he didn’t at first understand: nineleven. It wasn’t even a word. Not until he saw the news, heard the date, did he understand what it meant. Yet another day that would live in infamy, the reporters said.

Florida to New York is a long drive, especially for one person. Chuck knew he could do it in two days if he only made short stops for bathroom breaks and fast food. He kept the radio on the whole way, though mostly they rehashed the same bits of information, along with unprofessional speculation, and sound bites from witnesses.

He’d stop at roadside diners for burgers and coffee to go. Everywhere was the same, stunned people watching the news, saying what a tragedy it was. He’d only glance at the TV screen; he already had the images in his head. The planes, the smoke, the falling bodies, the aftermath of the collapses. Smoldering rubble, two tall twisted jagged pieces of steel stabbing the air like two shivs in the back of America.

Exhausted, he stopped at a Best Western in Virginia that night. In his room he couldn’t resist, had to turn the TV on. The president was talking, trying to console the nation. Evildoers must be caught. Then New York City’s mayor speaking plainly, no bullshit. He had been there, running for his life like everyone else.

Chuck clicked off the TV and fell into bed. He was tired, but when it came right down to it he couldn’t sleep. Didn’t want to see what happened next. Eventually his body gave in and he slept. When he woke the next morning he was thankful for having a dreamless night.


The next morning’s news topics included the number of dead and missing, survivors’ tales, and the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Strange how they knew who was responsible despite the fact that no person or organization had claimed responsibility. Chuck stopped for gas, picked up a newspaper. The headline left no doubt: It’s War! He folded it, tucked it under his arm for later.
Back on the road he drove in silence, until curiosity got the better of him. He was drawn to the talk on the radio, his connection to the outside world. He wanted to hear it and he didn’t want to hear it. He wished he had brought CDs with him, to help him forget for a while. He couldn’t get the dream images out of his head.

It was the jumpers who got to him most.

The faceless people taking the plunge, some of them holding hands, jumping in unison. Except they really weren’t faceless. Just unfamiliar. He could see every damn one of their faces. But there was one vision possibly worse. He couldn’t fool himself any longer, couldn’t keep it locked in the back of his head. He let it come up front, turned it over, examined it.

Jenny in a stairwell, descending—or at least trying to. There was a logjam, too many people in one place, some overcome by smoke or grief, injured, falling to their knees. Hands pulling them up, supporting them. Then the firemen coming up the stairwell, with all their gear, taking up one whole half of the stairwell. For the most part, people were calm, orderly. It just wasn’t working.

Chuck took a deep breath, tried to calm himself, kept the car steady in the center lane.

Jenny had taken her heels off to make the descent of over eighty floors easier. Her expression was placid; more likely it was one of shock, or survival instinct. Her stockinged feet splashed through small pools of water from the over-taxed sprinkler system. Gray dust tinted her hair, rested on the collar of her blazer.

Some new event shook the building, maybe yet another plane crashing. Shouts from below made their way up the cement walls of the stairwell. The firemen were being told to retreat, come back down. A slight panic moved like a wave throughout the crowd. Whatever had happened outside, they knew they had to get out now. There wasn’t much time.

Chuck knew it was the collapse of the south tower that shook the north tower. He saw it happen in his dream at the same time he was watching his wife’s descent, like watching a picture-in-picture television set. He also knew there would be twenty-three minutes until the second collapse.

That’s when his travel alarm clock buzzed, pulled him from the dream. His heart was pounding, like waking from a nightmare in which you were slowly fleeing from an unseen terror. He entered the dream in his journal, nineleven, found the remote, and clicked on the television. He hoped against hope that for once he would be wrong. He prayed that all he’d see was the local weather report, the sports recap, the silliness of morning news shows.

He called Jenny’s office phone first. The insistent beep told him the lines were down, or flooded. Her cell phone number was next; her voicemail answered without even a ring. Her lovely voice instructed him to leave a message.

“It’s me. Call me, call my cell phone. Honey, please.” He hesitated, trying to think of something else to say. “I’m coming home.” He pushed the off button and began to pack.

The closer Chuck got to New York, the more American flags he saw on the other cars on the interstate, strung across overpasses, in the windows of buildings. By the time he hit Jersey, he felt naked without a flag waving from his antenna.

Chuck and his wife lived in Westchester County, north of the city, in a town called Sunset Hill. Since there was no way in to Manhattan—the bridges and tunnels were still closed—he cut across, skirted north, up the Palisades Parkway and across the Tappan Zee Bridge, bypassing Manhattan totally. Midway across the bridge he looked south, where on clear days such as it was, you’d be able to see the faint clump of buildings that was Manhattan. They stood there as if created by an artist’s brush; the blurry gray vertical lines suggesting height and distance. A smudge of dark gray smoke hovered above.

The phones were working again, but he still couldn’t get through to Jenny. He tried her parents and they knew nothing more than he did. He wasn’t far from home now and he tried to formulate a game plan. But what could he really do? Make missing posters like the ones he saw people holding on television? Go down to Ground Zero and dig through the rubble with his bare hands? Wait by the phone for news—good or bad?

He left the parkway and entered the streets of his town. Soon he was turning onto his own block, and as he got closer to their house he saw Jenny’s car parked in the driveway. He enjoyed a momentary ecstasy before remembering that she walked to the train station when the weather was nice. He parked behind her car and carried his luggage inside.

For the hell of it, he called out, “Jenny, I’m home!” Then it hit him that it would probably be the last time he would ever say that.

He dropped his bags in the living room and went into the kitchen. He was hungry and he wasn’t hungry. He opened the refrigerator door and looked inside. He had only been gone for four days on business, but the contents of the fridge were totally different, as if in his weariness he had mistakenly entered someone else’s house. Yogurt, eight-grain bread, soy milk for crying out loud. He grabbed a banana yogurt and sat at the kitchen table and spooned it into his mouth.

He was so tired.

He kicked his shoes off, rinsed the empty plastic yogurt container in the sink out of habit. Jenny had trained him to do that. She used to get mad at him for putting the empty in the recycle bin without washing out the remaining yogurt. He stared at the container a moment, then threw it in the bin on top of other empty containers. He went over and picked one up at random, read the label. Strawberry. He pictured Jenny eating it, rinsing the empty, tossing it as he had just done. How was it possible that she would never do such a simple thing again?

He couldn’t think straight, he was exhausted, having morbid thoughts. He went into the bedroom and collapsed onto the bed. He felt himself drifting off to sleep and wondered if he could somehow make his mind finish the dream that was interrupted. If somehow he could just follow Jenny’s progress, know for sure what happened. But that was the catch—his special dreams only showed him the future, not the past.

He fell into a deep sleep and began to dream. He saw Jenny walking from the train station, passing the familiar landmarks of their neighborhood. She wore a long beige skirt, a maroon top he didn’t recognize, sneakers. She was at the end of their driveway now, getting closer, coming up the walk. She opened the front door, looking tired but happy to finally be home. Chuck got out of bed, met her at the door, hugged her tight. But, even in his sleep, he knew it was just a regular dream.