Till the Dust Settles

by Pat Young

  He smiled a tight smile and held it until she turned away. Everything her daddy worked for? Her daddy may have toiled for his first million, but he wouldn’t have made his subsequent millions without the help of a son-in-law working his butt off from dawn till dusk. Langdon Associates had earned its place in the World Trade Center thanks to him and him alone.

  He was still smarting from his wife’s comment when the phone rang.

  ‘Thank you, sweet Jesus! You’re alive.’

  He laughed. ‘I sure am.’

  ‘God, I can’t tell you how good it is to hear your voice, little brother. I saw those towers crumble and just prayed you weren’t in any of your offices.’

  ‘No, I was miles away. Stunned, like the rest of the world. Watching it at home, on TV.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘Another of those damned migraines. Hit me just before I joined the freeway. Turned around and came straight back home.’

  ‘Well, thanks be to God.’

  He heard his brother release a huge sigh and asked, ‘Bad day?’

  ‘Don’t even go there. Sorry I couldn’t call earlier.’

  ‘I get it. Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘Diane okay?’

  ‘Pretty shaken up. A bit tearful. Relieved I’m safe.’

  ‘That makes two of us. Say, I have to go. It’s crazy here.’

  ‘Any idea how many casualties?’

  ‘Classified. Talk soon.’

  What a day. Most of his workforce missing and his main business headquarters reduced to rubble and dust. Still, his brother was safe, his wife was safe, and with Charlotte out of the way, he was safe.

  He reckoned the occasion demanded a dram of something special. It might be time to draw the cork on the Macallan 1926. Bottled fifteen years ago after sixty in the cask. Only forty bottles produced and he owned one of them. He’d been waiting for a moment like this to taste the whisky inside.

  He poured a generous measure into a Waterford crystal glass whose sides were as thin as a bubble. From a matching jug he dribbled a meagre amount of water, no more than a few drops. The water did its job, releasing the celestial vapour he’d heard called the angels’ share. It smelled of majestic mountains and rushing rivers. For fifty grand, it should. Glass in hand, he walked towards the television and settled in his favourite armchair. A lazy plume of smoke rose from the ashes of the towers.

  ‘Slàinte,’ he said, and raised the Scotch in a toast to absent friends.

  5

  Silence. Complete silence. After the bedlam of the street, the lack of sound felt strange.

  ‘Hello?’ Lucie sounded like a frog with strep throat. ‘Hello?’ Louder this time. ‘Anyone at home?’

  She took a few steps, then, remembering the mess she’d made of the doorman’s uniform, looked guiltily at the floor. A track of white footprints followed her across black tiles.

  ‘Hello,’ she called again, her voice stronger.

  She slipped the Gillespie woman’s bag from her shoulder and set it on the floor. Perhaps she ought to just leave it and go. There was obviously no one here to listen to her explanation. She could tell Tommy the story on her way out. Let him explain to the family when they came home.

  Her hand was on the door when she realised how strange that story was going to sound. As well as taking another woman’s bag she was now guilty of entering her apartment. Tommy might feel inclined to call the police. Who could blame him?

  She’d only made her situation worse by coming here.

  And she still had no money to get home.

  Lucie burst into tears, telling herself it was the shock to blame. She hated self-pity. She wiped her eyes with one fingertip and looked around for something to wipe her face. She pushed gently at a door and reached for the light switch. She grabbed a handful of toilet tissue from the roll and blew her nose. The tissue came away dirty, filled with foul, grey debris. How long had she been breathing this stuff?

  She threw the soiled paper in the toilet and reached for more tissue, catching sight of herself in the mirror. Her hair was coated and colourless, her make-up and bruises lost under fine powder. Even her eyebrows and lashes were white. Her jacket and skirt might be ancient and well-worn but, obliterated by dust, they looked no different from the Ted Bakers or Ralph Laurens that thronged Manhattan’s business district. She could be any one of ten thousand women.

  Lucie turned on the faucet and splashed water on her face. It tasted sweet and refreshing. She drank as if she’d returned parched from a desert, the water healing her dust-dried throat.

  Long after her thirst was quenched, she continued to wet her face and watch dirty, grey water sluice down the drain. She leaned her elbows on the basin and wished she could wash away the last twenty-four hours.

  When Lucie raised her eyes to her reflection, the mark of Curtis’s hand was as clear as a brand on her wet cheek. The swelling round her eye was less obvious than it had been this morning but the familiar black-and-blue stain had started to appear. Lucie touched the bruise and winced. She shook her head. She would never allow him to do this to her again.

  When she came out of the bathroom the sun was streaming through an immense plate-glass window that dominated the living room. Lucie stood in the sunlight and savoured its warmth until the billowing clouds of smoke in the distance reminded her why she was here.

  She looked around, checking for signs of life. The apartment was as perfect and glossy as an ad in a magazine. Lucie made for the television set and switched it on. The screen burst into life, filling the space with sights and sounds of chaos. Sirens screamed in the background and air horns blasted from fire trucks. A news anchorman stopped his report mid-sentence while a huge armoured vehicle blared and bullied its way through the traffic behind him. Manhattan looked like a war zone.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ the news reporter said. ‘Yes, as I was saying, where once the iconic Twin Towers dominated our New York skyline, nothing remains but smoking wreckage.’

  Lucie turned up the sound and watched the towers crumble over and over again. Her legs went weak and she half sat, half collapsed onto an enormous sofa. If she’d made it to that interview, if Curtis hadn’t tried to stop her, if they’d not fought this morning, if she hadn’t missed her train. The ifs were too many and too horrific to think about.

  Curtis had been outraged that she’d go after a job without telling him. And mortified at the thought of his wife working as a cleaner. So he’d beaten her up. And inadvertently saved her life.

  She switched channels. NBC was showing footage of the dust cloud. Hard to believe she’d been down there, running in a crowd like the one on screen. No one outran something that powerful. Crazy to think anyone could.

  Lucie couldn’t bear to watch. She switched off the television, sat back and closed her eyes, trying to block out the images of mayhem and terror she’d witnessed.

  Curtis. She still remembered the day she’d first set eyes on him.

  ‘Morning, ladies,’ he’d said, when the college Principal finished introducing Coach Curtis Jardine as ‘one of the finest sprinters of his generation and the youngest track coach in US collegiate athletics’. He’d been leaning against the wall of the gymnasium, one foot crossed over the other, arms folded and head bowed, as if too modest to look at them while his boss recited his resumé. Lucie knew she wasn’t the only one impressed by the guy’s credentials. Around her she could hear other athletes murmuring their appreciation. She was wondering why he’d ‘tried out for the ninety-six Olympics’, but ‘tragically didn’t make it to the starting blocks’ when he pushed off the wall and stepped forward. The limp was not pronounced, but it was enough evidence of a serious injury to make Lucie feel an immediate sympathy for him. She couldn’t imagine not being able to run and compete. It was the very reason for her existence and why she’d won a coveted scholarship to the States.

  Her Scottish blood made her immediately distrustful of someone so good-looking and sure of himself. His hair was dark
, thick and cut close to his scalp, like a pelt. Lucie wanted to stroke it. See if it would feel soft like a spaniel. He was at least six foot ‘in his stocking soles’ as her Glasgow granny would have put it, and ‘built like a brick shithouse’ – Scottish shorthand for the classic sprinter’s build.

  Their relationship had been strictly coach and athlete to begin with, and boy, could he coach. He pushed his runners hard with track sessions and gym work that left them aching all over. The other girls smiled and simpered to his face and moaned behind his back, but Lucie responded to his style of teaching. Her coach back in Scotland was a sergeant major type who terrified his runners into training and performing well, but here each session was filled with words of encouragement and Coach Jardine always found something to praise in every one of his athletes. Like a flower that had been starved of sunlight, Lucie blossomed under Coach Jardine’s guidance. She trained so hard and ran so competitively that she soon became his and the college’s best hope of a medal at the NCAA games. When she smashed her personal best and the college record for fifteen hundred metres, gold did not seem like an impossible dream.

  She smiled at the memory of that day. The best day of her life. Without stopping to think, Lucie had dipped for the tape and run straight through the finish line into her coach’s arms. It was only when she overheard the other girls bitching about her in the locker room that she wondered if the hug was inappropriate.

  The following day she’d been going into her local coffee shop as he was coming out, coffee in hand. Classic boy bumps into girl scenario, or in their case, girl bumps into boy. Except he wasn’t a boy. He dropped his paper cup, splashing her legs with coffee. No matter how hard she tried to reassure him she was okay, he took complete control and insisted on escorting her to the ER.

  He’d been charming and solicitous. Made her laugh while they waited in the triage area with crazy, made-up stories about the other patients’ lives. Whispering them to her, his lips thrillingly close to her ear.

  The very next day he called her.

  ‘Lucie?’

  ‘Hi, who is this?’

  ‘It’s Curtis.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Curtis? Curtis Jardine.’

  ‘Oh. Coach Jardine. Hi. How are you?’

  ‘I’m good, yeah. More to the point, how are you?’

  When she assured him her legs were none the worse for their coffee shower, he asked if she’d like to meet. ‘We could have coffee. See if I can actually drink it this time? There are some new training programs I’d like to run by you.’

  And so, they’d met up that evening, and, over coffee, she’d told him about her boyfriend Josh, a medical student at Cornell and how she’d met him when they were both working the summer at Camp America. She’d been there for the money and he for ‘the experience of working with kids so I can be a great paediatrician one day.’

  Coach Jardine had pulled a face at this and she’d giggled, suddenly aware of how pompous she’d made Josh sound.

  To change the subject she’d said, ‘Which school did you go to?’

  He’d laughed. ‘Harvard.’

  ‘Really?’ Lucie had been impressed and surprised in equal measure. He seemed a little rough round the edges for Harvard.

  ‘Yeah. Law,’ he replied, without missing a beat.

  Lucie dreamed for a moment of introducing a Harvard law graduate to her father. ‘Wow,’ she said, ‘That’s impressive.’

  ‘Sorry, Lucie, I was kidding. The closest I ever got to Harvard was gatecrashing a party. Hey, I’m so dumb it takes me two hours to watch 60 Minutes.’

  After weeks with the staid and preppy Josh, Lucie liked Curtis’s infectious chuckle. Clearly he didn’t take himself, or life, too seriously.

  He’d been so easy to talk to that, over a second coffee, she’d told him all about the major fallout with her dad over her scholarship.

  ‘Are you serious?’ Curtis said. ‘It’s every athletic kid’s dream in the States, to win a scholarship to a good school. Your old man should be super proud. We don’t give these places away. Especially to foreigners. No offence.’ He held his hands up.

  Lucie laughed. ‘None taken. My mum was pleased for me. She understands me and my need to run, knows what a big deal it was to win a place at NYU.’

  ‘And on a full scholarship.’

  ‘I had to get that. My dad refused to pay for me.’

  ‘Why, Lucie?’

  ‘Oh, it’s a long story. And boring. I don’t really want to talk about it. Let’s just say he had his own agenda. He was mad at me for “wasting my brains”.’

  ‘Well, I never knew my dad, but I imagine any father would be proud fit to bust of a kid like you.’

  ‘Hey!’ She poked him in the ribs. ‘Not so much of the kid, if you don’t mind.’

  He rubbed his side. ‘God, you Scottish women are fierce. I think you’ve bruised me.’ Curtis had pulled up his T-shirt and checked his skin for damage, oblivious to the admiring glances his six-pack was attracting.

  Hard to imagine him as the same guy who lay sprawled in a La-Z-Boy last night, rubbing his belly and scratching a hairy and unattractive paunch.

  ‘Lucie,’ he’d bawled. ‘You planning on cooking any time soon?’

  ‘I’d love to, but there’s nothing to cook.’

  ‘Why don’t you quit being a smart-ass and go get me something to eat?’

  She’d tried to keep her voice reasonable, non-accusatory. Knew how easy it was to antagonise him these days. How little it took for his temper to flare like phosphorous. And she wanted him in a good mood so she could tell him about her job interview. She’d been putting it off, scared of his reaction. And even more scared he’d find out about her backup plan.

  ‘There’s no food, Curtis. Sorry.’

  ‘Damn right you’re sorry. What the hell have you done with all the food money?’

  Most of the ‘food’ money he’d spent on cans of beer, but Lucie thought it unwise to remind him of that. ‘It’s gone, Curtis.’

  ‘You kidding me? Already?’

  She’d seen that as the ideal opportunity to mention the cleaning job she was planning to get in Manhattan the next morning. He hadn’t been impressed.

  Her stomach gurgled a protest. Almost twenty-four hours had passed since her last meal. She had to eat something or she’d faint. ‘Miss Gillespie,’ she announced to thin air, ‘I’m really sorry, but I need to take some of your food.’

  The refrigerator was like a Who’s Who of New York food suppliers. Garden of Eden fruit and dairy carrying the Beecher’s logo. Dean and Deluca, Citarella, Grace’s Market. Luxury food she’d heard of but never tasted.

  Lucie’s mouth filled with saliva as she stood in the waft of cold air and touched one packet after another. In the end she took only a Greek yogurt and a plump, purple fig, surprised to find her appetite had disappeared. She carried her stolen food and a coffee cup of water to a high stool and sat at the breakfast bar. She ate the yogurt in tiny mouthfuls, thinking about all that food in the fridge. Easily enough to feed a family and yet this didn’t look like a home with children in it. There wasn’t a toy or a drawing to be seen, far less a grubby fingermark on the plate glass.

  The fig was ripe and luscious, but it proved too much for her ravaged throat. After a single bite she put it and the yogurt carton in the trash and washed up her spoon and cup.

  When Lucie returned to the living area, the room was bathed in a golden glow. The sun had dipped low in a blood orange sky and smoke from the disaster drifted lazily in gilded clouds. Far too pretty for a tragedy. Nature’s joke. Drawn to the window, she leaned her forehead against the glass and felt it cool on her brow. Way below she could see tiny people still streaming out of Manhattan, a river of humanity lost without their public transportation system. How they would ever get home, these New Yorkers who’d set out this morning for a normal day at the office. Nothing would ever be normal again. Scotland had never seemed farther away and she suddenly longed for her
home and her mother.

  She needed to phone them. Let them know she was okay. They’d definitely be worried about her, wouldn’t they, if they’d flown all this way to see her? Why would her dad agree to come, unless he cared?

  She remembered his face the last time they’d spoken, as red and frustrated as a toddler’s. She’d thought he was going to have a heart attack when she refused to call off her plans. The night before she was due to leave. What did he expect, that she’d just give up on her dream, because he didn’t want her to go?

  Lucie found a phone on the kitchen wall and dialled 192.

  Engaged. She hung up, waited, then dialled again. Still engaged. When she got the same result a third time she remembered. Everyone in the country would be trying to contact someone in New York City.

  6

  All afternoon she’d been waiting. No one had come home. No one had phoned. The doorman had called her Miss Gillespie, not Mrs, but that didn’t mean a woman was single. What else was it he’d said? Something about not wanting to leave her alone. And hadn’t he asked if there was anyone he could call?

  If no one else lived here, there was little point in waiting any longer. Trying not to shed too much dust as she went, Lucie explored the apartment, room by room. The clothes in the closet belonged to one very slim woman, and even the razor and shaving foam in the shower were a women’s brand. A single expensive-looking electric toothbrush stood on its charger in the bathroom. This was a one-woman home.

  Lucie had wasted precious hours of daylight. Beyond the window, darkness was falling fast and although she used to come into New York City regularly, it was a long time since she’d walked the streets alone, especially at night. What if she left the apartment and found she couldn’t get out of the city? What if she couldn’t find somewhere to stay? She’d be forced to spend the night on the street, like some down and out.

  She wondered if Curtis was watching TV, worried about her. Maybe he was weeping on Dylan’s shoulder, believing her dead. Maybe, if someone else was paying, he was drowning his sorrow. Or maybe he was sprawling in that La-Z-Boy, waiting for her to show up. Ready to punish her for beating him in a fight.