by Greg Smith
“Do you know this handsome man, hey?”
“Not a clue. Everything I know about him is written on an index card taped to a bathroom mirror.”
Alex had put on pants and a shirt, pulled on socks, slipped into his shoes.
“What that card tells me is that my name is Alex. I’m suffering from amnesia. I’m Albanian, for whatever that’s worth. I have a twin brother named Binyak. Our parents are…Nene and Baba. I don’t know if they’re alive. I don’t know if Binyak is alive. For all I know, they were killed when America was attacked and the Twin Towers were destroyed.
“I got that from the Post-it Notes.”
He stared absently in the direction of the World Trade Center site. Where the Twin Towers would have stood.
“Is that true, old man? Are the Towers gone?”
Griggor bobbed his head.
“Da.”
“And America’s not at war?”
“Nu.”
“If Manhattan was attacked. And the Twin Towers were destroyed. Why aren’t we at war with…someone. With whoever attacked us? Was it Russia? China?”
“Nu. Not Russia. Not China. Nine one and one, it is teroristi attack. It is one day only, hey?”
“But…the Pentagon…?”
“Da. Pentagon, it is hit by plane. Four attacks, Alex, hey? Four planes. Nine and ten teroristi. All dead now.”
“But, the terrorists came from somewhere.”
“Da. America, she fights Afghanii now. But government does not say it is war on them, hey? Government says it is war on teroristi.”
Alex looked thoughtful. Though he was relieved that America had not been attacked by another country, the news that terrorism had reached American soil was unsettling. He was especially disturbed that the Twin Towers had been destroyed. People worked there. He and Binyak worked there. There would have been casualties. Many casualties.
Not realizing he’d just remembered he and his brother had worked in the Twin Towers, he pursued his line of questioning.
“What day was it?”
“Nine one and one? It is Tuesday morning, hey?”
Tuesday. A workday, Alex thought with dread. A workday morning.
“Whuh–uh…what time in the morning?”
Griggor pushed his lower lip out, shook his head as though the time was inconsequential.
“Eight four five. Nine of clocks. North Tower first, then South. They collapse one hours later, hey? In opposite order. First, South Tower. That is about ten of clocks. North Tower one half hours after.”
Nine o’clock in the morning.
Alex realized he and Binyak would have been in the office by then.
“What about…?”
Binyak?
“What about all the people? The people who were in…who were…working? Did they get them out?”
Griggor looked at him glumly.
“Most. But nearly five thousand, they still go missing, hey? They are most likely dead.”
Five thousand!
And Alex knew. Binyak would be among them. The missing. The likely dead. Binyak would have been at work that morning. He would have been in his office. On the eighty-ninth floor of the North Tower.
But how did I…?
“You are not there,” Griggor said, anticipating the question. “Nadia, she finds you before planes hit. Before Towers collapse, hey?”
Before? But how…?
Alex wondered why he hadn’t been in the office that morning. Had he overslept? Had he been jogging? Did he have a meeting somewhere? If so, how did he get hurt? How had he been injured if he wasn’t hurt in the attack? If he hadn’t been in the Tower. And, if he hadn’t been in the Tower, maybe Binyak hadn’t been there, either.
His familiarity with his brother’s personality dashed that hope. He knew Binyak would have been in the office. Binyak had a strict work ethic. The strictest. He was in the office, at his desk, every morning by eight o’clock. Often much earlier.
A flicker of images skipped through his mind. His tattoo. Painted on a wall. The black, two-headed eagles on a red background. Then, a beautiful blond woman standing in a doorway. Followed by a struggle with someone. Next, a pair of astoundingly blue eyes. First alluring. Then frantic. Then lifeless. Glassy. Staring doll-like.
“Alex. Our breakfast, it gets cold. Do you come downstairs today? Show Nadia handsome new face, hey?”
Alex absently nodded his assent, his mind still on the images. Who had he been struggling with? Who was the blond? His wife? Binyak’s wife?
He looked at his tattoo. Why had that been on the wall of that office?
By the time he and the old man entered the dining area, Alex was convinced Binyak was dead. That his brother had died during the attack on America.
Nadia nearly dropped the serving plate she was carrying when she saw a clean-shaven Alex sitting in the booth next to Griggor.
“You shaved!” she exclaimed.
Alex ran a hand over his hairless cheeks.
“I thought a new face might spark a memory. I thought wrong.”
Nadia had considered her bearded stranger to be quite handsome. She now saw he was even better looking without the beard. She couldn’t stop ogling, stole several glances at him as she served breakfast.
“Nadia, why don’t you sit down and eat with us?” Alex suggested after the dark-haired woman had shuttled back and forth from the kitchen to the booth several times. “Please. Sit.”
Nadia smiled demurely. She was used to serving. Eating only after her guests had been fed. At Alex’s invitation, however, she sat.
“Where is everyone? Where are your customers?” Alex asked.
“Oh. Nadia’s doesn’t serve breakfast,” the Romanian woman explained. “And anyway, we haven’t had a single customer since 9/11. Four weeks now with no business. Things just aren’t back to normal. Probably never will be. People aren’t venturing out much. The tourists aren’t coming.”
Griggor muttered something about New York City never being the same ever again. Alex was anxious to go outdoors, see for himself how his beloved Manhattan was faring. He forced himself to take his time eating. When he was finished, he wiped his mouth with a napkin, stood to go.
“Thank you. For breakfast, Nadia,” he said pleasantly. “It was delicious.”
He excused himself, strolled to the window, glanced out. Nadia’s faced west, didn’t provide the view he wanted. He stepped to the door, opened it. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been outside.
He closed his eyes, breathed deeply, was immediately repulsed by a rancid stench. Worse even than the usual Manhattan air, which was a combination of smog, exhaust, ocean and other odors. Depending on where one was breathing it. This smell was bitter, pungent. He noticed a haziness to the air. A peculiar coating of ashy residue seemed to dust every surface. The streets were eerily empty. Most peculiar of all was the uncanny quiet. The lack of sound. No blaring horns. No rush of traffic. No shouting voices. Nothing.
It was as though he’d opened a portal into an alien world. Another dimension.
This can’t be New York City.
Turning his gaze south, he scoured the skyline, hoping to glimpse the omnipresent Twin Towers. Hoping the unfathomable hadn’t truly occurred. The Towers, however, were not to be seen. In their place, a rivulet of sepian smoke spiraled skyward above the tops of lesser buildings.
Nothing could have prepared him for the absence of the Twin Towers from the Manhattan skyline. For their nonexistence.
He stared in defiant disbelief. The Towers couldn’t be gone. Terrorists could not have destroyed them. He wanted to accept any other explanation, no matter how implausible. That it was all just an illusion. An elaborate hoax. That David Copperfield had made the Towers disappear. Just as he had the Statue of Liberty.
He couldn’t accept the truth. At the same time, he couldn’t deny the reality. The Towers were gone. The section of azure Manhattan sky they’d dominated for nearly three decades screamed of their obliterati
on.
The absence of the Towers put the finishing touch on his sentiment that he couldn’t possibly be standing in his native New York City.
He felt suddenly dizzy, touched a hand to his head, used his other hand to support himself in the doorway. Nadia appeared at his side, led him back into the restaurant.
“It’s…it’s like another world. Like when The Wizard of Oz goes from black and white to color. Only just the opposite. Like the life has been sucked out of this city.”
The analogy was wasted on Griggor, who was unfamiliar with American cinematography. Nadia, however, understood. The Wizard of Oz had been one of her favorite movies as a young girl newly arrived in America. She could relate to Dorothy. An orphan stranded in an alien land.
Alex sat, turned his attention to the television on the wall. Either Griggor or Nadia had muted the sound. The noiseless scenes of Ground Zero, confirming once again that the Twin Towers had been annihilated, that New York City had been desecrated, that thousands of lives had been extinguished, were even more disturbing viewed with their eerie silence.
The tall man found the news that America had been attacked difficult to accept. The Pentagon hit? Unbelievable. The Twin Towers destroyed? Unfathomable. Yet, the disaster was undeniable. The catastrophic event had happened.
His own situation seemed miniscule by comparison.
He was intrigued by Ground Zero, felt inexplicably drawn to the hallowed ground. He wanted to go there. Wanted to personally confront the evil. Offer his recognition of those who had lived, worked – and died – there.
He believed Binyak was among them. The blond, as well. He had to go there.
“I-I’d like to visit Ground Zero. See it for myself,” he announced.
“You want to go out, you should go, Alex,” Griggor said.
Alex was hesitant. The old Romanian sensed that the tall man was reluctant to go out alone.
Maybe just worried he gets lost. Or mugged. Or, maybe he does not want to be recognized.
“If you want, Griggor goes with you. I take you to Zero Ground, hey?”
“Yes. I’d like that.”
“Afterwards, I have surprise, hey?”
• • • • •
CHAPTER 37
The deaths of three loved ones in as many years proved to be both devastating and, oddly, beneficial to the Bagdasarian brothers. Serving as the impetus driving the twins toward their final destiny. However, not without a few more growing pains.
After Baba’s startling suicide, Step felt he’d put his life on hold long enough. He was ready to begin exploring the job offers he’d been ignoring. Get back on track with their plan. He hoped his brother could return to the same level of commitment.
But Aleks was adrift. While Step lost himself in finding a new job, then lost himself in the new job he’d found, Aleks floundered. He’d never fully recovered from Jill’s traumatic murder. Baba’s startling suicide, on the heels of Nene’s untimely death, sent him into a complete tailspin. Contributing to his crash and burn was the toll of a two-year high from an overindulgence in drugs and alcohol. Along with the comedown from coming off his fast-paced joyride in the exclusive boys-club lane. No one could sustain that level of intense, self-indulgent abuse for long.
Aleks was actually relieved to off center stage. Happy to take a back seat. The problem was, his pendulum swung just as far to the side of squalor as it had to affluence. He became reclusive, rarely left his apartment. He wouldn’t answer Step’s phone calls. Or return them. When he did go out, he’d head straight to any nearby bar, drink himself into oblivion, stagger home. Most times, he’d wake up in his own bed the following morning. More than once, he’d woken up in a front-entrance stairwell.
He stopped working out. No longer jogged or played basketball or volleyball. He bathed infrequently. Let his hair and beard grow out. He spent his days sleeping late, smoking weed, listening to music. Or just vegetating in front of the television. He existed that way for nearly three months. Before the U.S.S. Salvation pulled into harbor.
Aleks didn’t hear the doorbell or the pounding on his apartment door. He was smoking a joint, listening to the Grateful Dead, dancing by himself around his trash-littered apartment. He spun, hopping on one foot, bumped into a wall, bounced off. The wall yelled out to him.
“Alpo! Alpo! Hey man! It’s Oak!”
Aleks glanced toward the talking wall, moved the curtain of hair covering his face with one hand, peered out of his marijuana haze to see his large friend eclipsing the doorway.
“Oak! Hey, man! How’s it hanging?”
“I won’t brag. Only to mid-thigh,” the large man responded.
The two friends embraced. They hadn’t seen each other since Jill’s funeral almost two years earlier. Oak had spent a portion of that time in rehab. A portion relapsing. Another portion back in rehab.
“Gimme that.”
The large man took the reefer from Aleks. His lips and fingers engaged in a long tug of war with the joint. He paused, squinted at the ceiling, exhaled slowly.
“This stuff is shit,” he remarked, handing the doobie back to Aleks. “I never liked weed. Doesn’t do it for me.”
He surveyed the catastrophe that had once been his best friend.
“Looking kinda Aqualungish, Alpo,” he observed, referring to Jethro Tull’s record album. “How ya been?”
Aleks plopped into a chair.
“How the fuck you think I’ve been? Jills is gone. My parents are gone. My job’s gone. Binyak is… Well Binyak is Binyak is Binyak…” he trailed off, took another hit of the joint.
Oak crossed his arms, grimaced.
“Only one thing to do, my friend.”
He paused for dramatic effect.
“Road trip.”
“Road trip?”
Aleks wasn’t following Oak’s logic.
“Delta Tau Chi? Eric ‘Otter’ Stratton? Bluto Blutarsky? Boon? I refer, of course, to that classic American film, Animal House. Fucking-ay, road trip!”
Three days later, Aleks found himself residing in the passenger seat of a new 1995 Range Rover, heading west on Route 80 to Chicago. He’d been outside of New York City only a handful of times. A school field trip to Gettysburg. A few concerts in New Jersey. Jersey City for their tattoos. Though Jersey didn’t really count. Other than those excursions, he hadn’t ventured beyond the borders of the great state of New York. No Florida spring breaks. No Vegas trips. No vacations.
“After Chicago, we stop at the Kowalski family farm,” Oak directed from his place behind the wheel. “Say hello to Ma and Pa Kettle. The brohans. Then it’s on to sunny Cal-ee-forn-i-ay. With a quick stop in Sin City,” he chuckled. “And what happens in Vegas…”
Oak paused to allow his friend to fill in the gap with him. When Aleks didn’t respond, the large man finished on his own.
“Stays in Vegas!”
Oak grinned, pulled a flask from some hidden compartment, took a swig, offered it to Aleks.
“Which one of the J-triplets is travelling with us?” Aleks asked, declining the drink, rummaging in his pocket for a joint. “Is that Jimmy, Johnnie or Jackie?”
“Johnnie, Alpo. It’s always Johnnie Walker. He’s almost as near and dear to my heart as you, my friend.”
Aleks fired up the fugitive roach he’d located, took a long drag, held the smoke in as he spoke.
“Got a Jay-trip of my own,” he quipped, pinching the roach between his thumb and forefinger, finally exhaling.
Oak chuckled.
“Did you know,” Aleks espoused. “That John Walker, the Scottish grocer who introduced the world to his whiskey, was, ipso facto, himself, a teetotaler?”
“I did not know that,” Oak admitted.
Aleks exhaled, grinned.
“Oh, that’s a fact,” he said, took another toke.
Again he held the marijuana smoke in his lungs as long as he could before exhaling.
“Mary G. Wahna is finah,”
he drawled. “But they say liquor is quicker.”
“Lick her? I don’t even know her,” Oak joked.
He took another sample of Johnnie W.
“Liquor in the front,” Aleks said in an exaggerated stoner voice. “Poker in the rear, man,”
Oak roared.
“Now, that’s the Alpo I remember.”
He was happy to see his old banter buddy emerging from the devastation of the guy sitting in his passenger seat.
Their Road Trip lasted nearly eight months.
• • • • •
CHAPTER 38
Friday, October 12: Day 34 post-9/11
Griggor and Alex stepped outside Nadia’s into a day that would, at any other time in history, have compelled New Yorkers to say, “Put this in a bottle and save it for February!” Clear skies. Temperature in the upper sixties. Indian Summer.
But it wasn’t any other time in history. It was Day 34, post-9/11. Four-and-a-half weeks after the attacks. The air was ripe with a pungent, acidic odor. The skies were too clear. Missing The Big Apple’s trademark Twin Towers. The streets were too quiet. Too empty.
The men set off for the trek through the Village, SoHo, Tribeca. Ordinarily, Griggor loved walking the neighborhoods of Manhattan. Especially the Civic Center, with its older, lavish architecture. The Woolworth Building, City Hall and the County Courthouse were among his favorites. Today, however, the omnipresent ash and litter were a constant reminder of what had taken place only a month earlier. The quiet – the stillness – was overpowering.
He led them down 6th.Avenue. Officially, the Avenue of the Americas, though the name was seldom used by New Yorkers. 6th merged into Church Street at Franklin. Church would take them to St. Paul’s Chapel, the 200-plus-year-old church that had been spared damage despite sitting directly across the street from the World Trade Center, just a block away from the Twin Towers. The entire trip would take upwards of thirty minutes.
As they ambled along, Griggor asked Alex if he recognized his whereabouts.
“Some store? Some street? Some restaurant or tavern maybe, hey?”
“No,” Alex replied. “None of this is familiar. It’s like I’m seeing it for the first time.”