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Others 57 Waiting So we waited. We waited for all the other planes still in the air to land and be accounted for. We waited for the second tower to fall. We waited for the president to come out of hiding and say something. We waited to know what the hell happened and whether a war had started. We waited for the moment when we wouldn’t have to be waiting anymore. We waited for Fourteenth Street to reopen so that traffic could flow again, so that grocery stores and, most importantly, bars could replenish their stocks. By Tompkins Square Park, the joint with the painted sign that said it never closed, closed. At Starlight, on Avenue A, the staff was passing around free booze. Every bar was full, and everyone there was drunk. No one wanted to stay home, it seemed. It was like a party, but sad. Some waited for their friends or relatives to reappear and say, Look, I didn’t die! Some waited to hear if they knew anyone who wouldn’t reappear. And after a few days the wind turned and that smell flooded our neighborhood .We all decided to believe that it was coming from melted phones and computers and just leave it at that. But all the same, it was like breathing death, and we couldn’t wait for the smell to go away. It is always the case with waiting that something that hasn’t happened yet or may never happen at all is shaping our present. Something unknowable , something that essentially doesn’t exist, makes our lives what they are. In the end, today’s material conditions and tomorrow’s hypothetical ones become inseparable. We do not all wait for the same thing or things, of course. And we do not wait in the same way. There is no single way to wait. You may wait patiently or impatiently. You may hope or dread, be confident or doubtful. You can wish or pray for something to happen or not to happen. What we wait for and how we wait for it—­ what we do while we wait—­ says a lot about who we are. Or is it how we wait that shapes who we are? Does a desire for revenge emanate from a vengeful personality, or does it produce that personality? Is a person waiting for the second coming of Christ because he or she is a devout Christian or the other way round? What about Jews and the Messiah? Does the very act of waiting together somehow bring us closer to one another? If so, could it be because whatever it is that we wait for and makes us different is in fact exterior to us and hasn’t happened, doesn’t exist? Was it when answers, revenge, and traffic finally came that the closeness some felt that day vanished into thin air? 58 Others I’m not one to believe in a nation miraculously unified in the wake of tragedy. I’m talking about a feeling more basic, vibrant, and real than that. I’m thinking of the guy, walking down endless flights of stairs inside the World Trade Center alongside a woman, a complete stranger, who was also trying to get out.Today I don’t remember which tower and what floors, but at the time every detail of the story mattered. Both were in their late forties, I’d say, maybe older, frightfully normal, and now they were in that East Village bar, and the guy was regaling the crowd with the story of their narrow escape. He relished the attention and the free drinks. She was speechless, in a stupor almost, but he was from Brooklyn so there was no shutting him up, and he started wondering aloud about how complicated it would be for him to get home.And that’s when I realized that the guy didn’t want to go home at all! He was just putting the moves on the dame,see? (Sorry,but there was something very Jimmy Cagney about the whole scene.) In the middle of a cataclysm, someone was trying to grab a chance encounter and turn it into full-­ fledged contact. Look, the guy seemed to be saying, something terrible has happened that may very well change the world forever, and the subway’s not working. Wanna get a room? How inappropriate yet completely fitting. And why not? To move around in a city, to want to move...

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