‘Thank Christ you’re alive,’ he said. He was striding around while talking. ‘I’ve been calling everyone. Have you heard from Robert Brancato? I’ve spoken to Aaron, to plenty of others, but not Robert.’
Summer hadn’t heard from Robert either. She told Colby she’d arrived at the office shortly before 8 am, carrying apples for the fruit bowl on her desk. She’d answered some emails and then, at around 8.30 am, she’d got up from her swivel chair and said, ‘Okay, coffee before the bell anyone?’ There had been quite a few orders. Summer made a list and took the elevator down to the ground floor, crossed the street and was walking towards the barista when she felt the ground shake. She turned to see the gaping hole in the tower where she worked.
‘I know it’s wrong, but I just ran for my life,’ she told Colby.
‘It’s not wrong,’ Colby reassured her. ‘It’s normal. You’re alive. But, Summer, I need you to concentrate. Who was in the office when you left? Was Robert? Was he at his desk? Who did you see?’
‘I can’t remember. I should have gone to where we go when there’s a fire alarm. Oh, Colby! I took orders from ten people. They’re saying on the TV that everyone’s dead!’
‘Everyone’s not dead.’ Colby was still striding around his mother’s parlour. Caitlin had taken a seat in one of the dusty chairs. She had her head in her hands. ‘Nobody would have gone to the evacuation spot. Nobody. Forget that. It was chaos.’
‘All this melodrama!’ Pearl said.
Colby kept talking. ‘And not everyone’s dead. I’m not dead, am I? You’re not dead. Now, we’ve got to find other people. But the phone lines have been down. It’s hard to get through. So, I need you to think. Did you see Robert in the office when you left? Did you take a coffee order from Robert?’
‘Oh, I can’t remember, Colby! My mind, it’s like soup! But look. Okay. Maybe I have an idea. Maybe I should send out an all-staff email, get everyone to respond. Like a fire drill, but on email?’
‘Very good!’ said Colby. ‘Very clever. That’s smart thinking. Tell people it’s an order. They must respond. We need to count survivors. Don’t be crying when we can do some good. Do it now. And copy me in on the responses you get. If we’re both counting, we’re not likely to miss anybody.’
‘Okay,’ Summer said.
‘Alright,’ said Colby, ‘and how many names are on the all-staff list, do you know? How many employees do we have?’
‘One hundred and thirty-seven.’ Summer knew precisely because she’d recently done a count for the holiday hampers.
‘Okay,’ said Colby, ‘you send that email now.’ Summer did, and over the course of the day, 111 of their staff replied, and each of those replies was greeted with joy and relief and a desire to hear more – but none was from Robert.
‘What are we going to do?’ asked Summer. ‘I just don’t get what we’re all going to do. There are twenty people – more – just missing. Lovely people, gone. The whole building, gone. Every computer. Every file. I just don’t understand what we’re supposed to do.’
Colby didn’t know either, but he was close to Carnegie’s founder, Aaron Blatt, and he knew from speaking to him that both Aaron and his brother, Adlai, were trying to find a way to get from their homes in Connecticut to New York – not easy because the bridges and tunnels were closed – to address the staff.
‘People are going to want to get to work,’ he said.
Pearl interjected. ‘But none of you have jobs! The office is gone.’
Colby let it go.
‘Aaron won’t let this stop him,’ he told Summer.
‘That would be right,’ said Pearl, ‘some people are always thinking of the money.’
‘It’s not about money,’ Colby said. He finished his call with Summer, telling her to do what she could to make contact with people and to stay in touch with him, and turned to his mother. ‘It’s about America! Going back to work is the right thing to do. We’ve been attacked. We can’t just lie down and take it. These people hate us. We can’t let them win. The minute he gets here – Aaron, I mean – the minute he gets here, I’m going to see him, to try to figure out what we can do.’
Caitlin lifted her head from her hands. She looked horrified. ‘You’re going back to work?’ she said. ‘What am I supposed to do?’
‘What does it matter to you?’ said Pearl. ‘You won’t be here. Aren’t you supposed to be going home?’
‘I can’t go home!’ said Caitlin. ‘How can I go home?’
‘You can’t go home straight away,’ Colby agreed, ‘all planes are grounded. All airports closed.’
‘Yes, but that’s today! The airports can’t stay closed forever. They’ll be open again by the end of the week,’ said Pearl.
‘But I can’t get on a plane.’ Caitlin shook her head. ‘How am I supposed to get on a plane, after this?’
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Pearl.
‘Look, we don’t have to discuss it now,’ said Colby. ‘What I need is a shower. Caitlin, you need one too. Then we have to get something to eat.’
‘I can’t eat.’ The thought of the splattered person she’d stood on was still too clear in Caitlin’s mind. But she let Colby lead her to the shower, and to gently rinse the conditioner from her hair, and she let him hold her while she sobbed. Then, like so many New Yorkers that day, they were drawn back into silence in front of the TV, watching and waiting for news of survivors, and for a reaction from their President.
‘Enough,’ said Colby finally, sometime after midnight. ‘I can’t watch it anymore.’
He led Caitlin down a hallway. There were seven bedrooms in Pearl’s apartment. Some hadn’t been used for years.
‘I think there’s a bed in this one,’ said Reginald. He’d limped down the hall ahead of them, carrying a dog-smelling blanket over his forearm. He opened the door, and when he was gone, Colby pulled back the bedspread – it was heavy with dust – and helped Caitlin get underneath.
‘Try to get some sleep. I just want to try the phones one more time,’ Colby said, and he did, but Robert still did not answer.
Chapter 13
‘I’m going to walk downtown, to see what I can find out,’ Colby said. It was early morning on September 12. ‘There must be a place where you can report somebody as missing. There must be a list of people who are in hospital and that kind of thing.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ Caitlin insisted. They had been forced to wear other people’s clothes: Reginald had found one of Colby’s dead father’s suits in Pearl’s closet for Colby – the fabric was stiff, and the pants were too short – and Caitlin took a blouse and shirt from a pile of uncollected dry-cleaning that had been left with the Ansonia’s doormen over the years, rather than take anything of Pearl’s.
Caitlin wouldn’t go near the subway. Colby wasn’t sure it would be open, but there were taxis on the streets, so they hailed one and took it down to what was already being called Ground Zero. Firemen had worked through the night, erecting a fence to keep distraught family members – and souvenir hunters – off the still-smoking site. Colby seemed to think that the lists of names that had been stuck on the fence might provide them with some clues as to what had happened to Robert and the other Carnegie staff, but it was hard to get near because so many people were there, trying to pin their own ‘Missing’ posters – and folded paper cranes, poems and prayers – to the fence.
‘I can’t believe this.’ Colby looked around. The space where the buildings had been created views that were unfamiliar. He felt lost, on home ground. ‘There’s just nothing here.’
‘I can’t stand to look at it,’ said Caitlin.
‘Look, there’s no point searching here. We need to go to the apartment. We both need things,’ said Colby.
‘They won’t let us in. I saw on TV – all those buildings in Battery Park, they’re all blocked off.’
‘It’s my apartment!’ Colby said, defiant. ‘And last time I checked, this is still the United States of America. I’d
like to see somebody try to keep me out of my own apartment.’
They made their way across the footbridge, past a fireman who had stopped to rest on a park bench. Even from the street, they could see that Colby’s building had been badly damaged. Most of the windows were smashed and chunks of the exterior had been gouged out, probably by flying debris. The glass in the revolving door to the foyer was intact, but somebody had stuck a handwritten sign to it, saying, ‘Closed’.
‘Will it be safe to go inside? It looks dangerous,’ said Caitlin.
‘Living is dangerous.’ Colby pushed the revolving door but it didn’t turn.
‘They’ve locked it,’ he said. ‘Where did you say you came out?’
‘Down the fire escape. It comes out around the back.’
‘Show me.’
Caitlin was hesitant but set off for the alleyway. The whole surface of the fire door was smudged with sooty fingerprints, and there was another sign saying ‘No Entry’, but the door was open.
‘Are we really going to climb seventy-nine floors?’ asked Caitlin.
‘I don’t see what choice we have.’
After two floors, Colby stopped and took off the shoes he had borrowed from Reginald – they were too small and tight – and left them on a step.
‘Remind me to get those on the way down,’ he said. They had seventy-seven floors to go.
They carried on. There was no power in the building, which meant no light in the fire escape. Caitlin kept her bearings by running her hands along the walls. Every so often, Colby stopped, opened the door to a floor, and called out, ‘Hello?’ But no hello came back, and what Colby saw in the corridors troubled him. All along the hallways, apartment doors had been forced open, and the chain-locks were hanging loose on long screws.
‘It’s like the whole building has been looted,’ he said. ‘Or else firemen have come through, looking for survivors.’ It took an hour but finally, they were in the corridor outside Colby’s apartment. The door had been kicked in, and was swinging on broken hinges. Colby pushed it back and looked inside. Caitlin was out of breath and crying. Colby was out of breath, too, and standing with his hands on his head. The picture windows in the lounge room had been blown out. The view that had once been of the World Trade Center was now bright blue sky.
‘Jesus,’ he exclaimed.
They entered the apartment cautiously. Caitlin ran a finger along the filthy kitchen bench. It left a shiny trail. She noticed that her palms were black from where she’d run them along the walls in the fire escape.
‘Get what you need,’ said Colby, ‘and let’s get out.’
There was a wheeled suitcase in the hallway cupboard. Caitlin recognised it as the suitcase Colby had brought to Australia for Trevor’s Reef Tour, about a million years ago. Colby put the suitcase on the bed – the bedcovers were black with soot – and began packing his suits.
‘Everything’s filthy,’ he said. ‘But I’ve got shoes. Jocks and socks. I’ve got handkerchiefs.’
He was rambling.
Caitlin went to the opposite end of the wardrobe. The backpack she’d brought from Australia was tucked under a bottom shelf. She’d been keeping her clothes – her torn shorts and T-shirts from Townsville, and the new things she’d bought in New York – on one shelf. It took about three minutes to stuff it all away. She found her passport, and some other bits and pieces in the bathroom.
‘I’m done,’ she said.
‘I’ve got a few more things to get,’ said Colby.
He pushed aside the long winter coats at the back of the wardrobe, and Caitlin was surprised to see a small personal safe tucked behind them, something she had never noticed in her regular searches of Colby’s things.
‘What’s in there?’
‘Just stuff.’ Colby turned the wheels on the combination lock, took his passport out of the safe, and a manila folder containing insurance documents, his college degree, bank statements and his mortgage papers. There was also a small pewter plane, about the size of a block of butter, with a clock face under the front propeller. It had been his father’s. He took that, too.
They went back down the fire escape, this time with Caitlin carrying her backpack, and Colby carrying the suitcase. He fetched the borrowed shoes off the second-floor landing and they burst out the last door, into sunlight, straight into the path of two heavily-armed police.
‘That building is closed,’ one of them said.
‘I live here,’ said Colby.
‘You got ID?’ the cop demanded, and Colby showed him some of the documents he’d just picked up.
It was a long way back to Pearl’s but Caitlin wanted to walk, so they set off with Colby clutching her hand, dodging twisted metal on the sidewalks, and discarded shoes.
‘I feel like we’re refugees,’ Colby said, and in a way they were.
‘How long do you think it’ll be before they let us go home?’ Caitlin asked him.
‘You mean you, to Australia? I’ve got no idea.’
‘No, us. To your apartment.’
‘It might be weeks.’ Colby was troubled by the ‘us’.
‘But where are we going to go now? I don’t think your mother really wants anyone around.’
‘Nothing new there,’ said Colby.
Chapter 14
Two days after the attacks, Aaron Blatt arrived in Manhattan. He immediately called what remained of his staff to a meeting at the Hilton Hotel, in Midtown.
‘The offices of Carnegie have been destroyed,’ he said. ‘Every note, file, computer, data storage box and diary – it’s all gone. But you know that. What we don’t know – yet – is how many of our colleagues and friends are missing. We have heard from almost everyone, but we suspect that there may be at least five people still missing. You know who they are. I know who they are. And I am here today to say that we – our team – will never give up looking for them.’
Some people started to clap, but it quickly died out. Aaron nodded.
‘No, it’s okay. I understand, people are confused about what to do. That’s why I’m here. I’m here to say that as far as I’m concerned, Carnegie will go on. I will never give in to terrorism. These attacks are designed to destroy us. All of us. To destroy America. And we cannot let them win. These are evil regimes that would take away our freedoms. We cannot let them do that. As I’ve just said, we will never give up looking for those who are missing. But from today, I will also be returning to work. Right now. And anyone who wants to join me is welcome. Because I truly believe that the best way forward for America is for all of us to get back to work. And if there’s anyone in this room who wants to join me, they can. And if there is anyone who cannot join me, I respect that. But I stand here today and say, together we can go on.’
The applause this time was loud and sustained.
‘I’m in,’ said Colby. He had his hand straight up in the air. Caitlin had urged him to let her accompany him. She stood beside him, trembling, watching as so many other hands were raised.
‘But what will I do?’ asked Caitlin, as the cheering died down. ‘Where am I supposed to go?’
Colby had taken a suite at the Hilton. Caitlin was staying with him. The airport was due to open and flights to Australia were due to resume. Caitlin had said that she couldn’t yet board – she didn’t have the courage – and Colby understood that. She would have to stay in his room at the Hilton until she felt able to fly.
In the meantime, he had important tasks to attend to, such as putting Summer – still the most organised person he knew – in charge of helping the families of people whose lives had been lost.
‘You can do this,’ he said, putting his hand on her shoulder, so he could look directly into her blue eyes. ‘It won’t be easy. But we need you to do it. It’s our responsibility to ensure they have everything they need. Is that something you can see yourself doing?’
Summer touched a tissue to her nose, and nodded, and from that day forward she became the person in charge of everything
the Carnegie families needed: emergency cash payments; applications to the compensation fund; death certificates; funerals.
Colby praised her courage.
‘It’s one thing getting the computers up and running, it’s another to do what you do,’ he said one evening. They were alone in Carnegie’s makeshift office: a series of inter connecting rooms that Aaron had rented at the Hilton, with the beds stripped out. It was late, and they were alone.
‘It breaks my heart,’ Summer said. ‘Mrs Hartmann – that’s Henry’s wife, you know Henry, from bookkeeping? – had to tell the children today: “Daddy’s not coming home.” Can you imagine?’
‘I can’t,’ said Colby.
‘I don’t know what to say sometimes.’
‘You are magnificent.’
‘And there’s still no sign of Robert … no trace. It’s hard to believe you can be here one day and then just be gone, like dust.’
Colby nodded. Hearing Robert’s name was hard for him, but he did not want to make Summer’s job more difficult by breaking down. ‘Are you sure you’re coping with it?’
‘I’m sure,’ said Summer, and she was coping. Summer was a strong girl, raised in Maine by a father who was a surgeon and a mother who was an elementary school teacher. She had three brothers, one of whom had come to stay with her, and was sleeping on her sofa.
‘I’ve got a lot of support,’ she added.
The same could not be said for Caitlin, who was struggling. Flights to Australia had now resumed, but she could not bring herself to board.
‘I can’t fly, I just can’t,’ she told Colby, but she was also terrified of being left alone in their suite.
‘I’m just next door,’ Colby would say.
‘But what if something happens?’ Caitlin always replied, clinging to him.
Can You Keep a Secret? Page 9