So this was the plan: I left the city after 9/11 - actually walked to Pennsylvania until I collapsed in the woods. When I awoke it was clear to me what had to be done. I needed to let my family believe I was dead. In spite of a yearning for them like I'd never had before, I knew it was time to take the worst punishment I could imagine. I could never see them again. So many years not giving a shit about them, resenting my wife, fearing my own children. So many years in the arms of prostitutes and girls, hiding from the life I'd built, building another one entirely for God knows what reason...
Then the towers fell and I woke up a day and a half later in the woods realizing my loved ones were sure I'd been killed. I was supposed to be in my office that morning - left the house early, explaining to my wife and the boys that I'd be home that much earlier that night if I could get some work done on the front end of the day... In reality, I was screwing one of two mistresses in a studio apartment I'd rented under my alias two blocks from the World Trade Center. The apartment had a phenomenal view of the Towers - a selling point for me, as I could look at those massive phallic symbols and all the so-called power they represented while feeling like the most powerful man in the world, living my little lie.
On the morning of 9/11, I watched the first plane hit, and was so numbed out on coke, I pulled Adriana back into bed and fucked her again, sure I wouldn't be missed at work with the pandemonium of a plane crash in the other tower. Then the second plane hit my tower, 15 floors below our offices, and I couldn't hold on to my high no matter how hard I tried. We just sat on the edge of the bed (there was no other furniture in the apartment) and stared at the burning buildings, not moving, not speaking. As my tower began to collapse, Adriana raced out of the apartment, screaming. I didn't move. I knew Roger and Kyle and Suzanne would be trapped on our floor, or on the roof. Maybe one of them jumped. I liked Kyle. He had a son my age. He was always the first one in - opened the office for the rest of us. Suzanne's daughter was born a month after the twins. They were probably pissed at me for missing the morning staff meeting again.
The top part of the building leaned, then dropped onto the rest of it and the dark gray cloud that grew from the wreckage swallowed the massive antenna, then hit the windows of my apartment with the deafening pelting sound of a billion grains of sand, darkening the studio completely as I sat numb, paralyzed, exhilirated.
In the Pennsylvania woods I started to formulate my plan. I was going to do what no army could do, I knew. I was going to go there and get him. I was going to go there and avenge the deaths of thousands. I was going to have to prepare, physically, mentally and - how could such a thing be possible? - spiritually. And then I was going to go to him and erase him from existence.
But first, I would have to erase myself from existence.
