The first sign of Colby the following morning was of his hand, stretched out like a Huntsman spider, in search of the tall bottle of water that his housekeeper left out for him every day of the week.
‘Where is it?’ he muttered. His fingers made their way across the bedside table, found the bottle and unscrewed the lid. ‘Please tell me this is not a dream,’ he said, between gulps and gasps. ‘Tell me when I wake up, you, Caitlin Hourigan, will be in my bed.’
Caitlin’s blonde head was buried under a mountain of feather pillows.
‘I’m here,’ she said. It came out croaky. Her mouth, too, was dry.
‘Now, please tell me I haven’t lost half a day’s trade.’ Head throbbing, Colby reached for his digital clock on the bedside table.
He had missed maybe an hour.
‘Christ no,’ he said. He reached down to find his pants, and fished through the pockets of his suit trousers for his BlackBerry. ‘How much has this cost me?’
‘Well, good morning to you too,’ said Caitlin. Her hair was all mussed up and her face had been wiped clear of make-up. Not for the first time, Colby noticed how much better she looked for the wear and tear. He leaned over and kissed her forehead.
‘Good morning, beautiful,’ he said. ‘You’ve made my day, being here. You’re every bit as gorgeous as I remember. And now, I’ve got to move.’
The bedroom had a wet room attached, which was sleek and tiled white. Colby got up and walked into it bare-arse naked, happy and still holding the BlackBerry.
‘You’re going to take your mobile in there?’ Caitlin asked.
‘You mean my cell phone? I am. And don’t even think of complaining,’ Colby called back over his shoulder, ‘when I’ve just lost God knows how much money, sleeping in with you.’
Caitlin heard him turn on the hot-water jets. ‘You could at least tell me I’m worth it.’
‘You’re worth it.’
Caitlin grinned and snuggled down into the many glorious, textured layers of Colby’s bed. It was warm outside, but it was cool in Colby’s air-conditioned crash pad.
‘I’m glad I’m here,’ she called out. She was proud of herself for having cooked up such a good prank with Robert.
‘Are you now?’ replied Colby. He came out of the wet room, his lower half wrapped in a plump towel, and disappeared into the dressing room.
‘Aren’t you glad I’m here?’
Colby came out of the dressing room. He had put on a silk shirt, and it was flecked with water stains. He hadn’t taken the time to towel himself off properly. A silk tie hung loose and long around his neck, and his belt and shoes were undone.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, I think I am.’ He ran an index finger slowly down Caitlin’s nose. ‘And it’s lucky you’re here, because I have a present for you.’ He reached into one of the bedside drawers and took out a box. It was a small cell phone in a Hello Kitty case.
‘Yours for the duration,’ he said. ‘It won’t work in Australia, I’m afraid.’
‘Cool!’ said Caitlin, sitting up to play with the keys. ‘But what’s my number?’
‘It’s all in the box. Now, I’m going to the office and I’ll be late home. Carlos has a key for you. And he’ll give you a subway map. Go out and have a look around. Don’t get lost. If you do, call Carlos. He’ll tell you how to get home.’
‘Can’t I call you?’
‘I’m often hard to get.’
Caitlin put on a playful, pouty face. ‘When you say you’ll be late home, what time do you mean?’
‘Nine o’clock,’ said Colby, kissing her nose. ‘Maybe earlier. But not much earlier. So sleep. Explore. Have fun.’ He went out the door.
Caitlin waited for it to close – softly, gently, on its special slow-close hinge – and for the elevator to ping, and then she got up and softly, gently, deliberately, went through every drawer in the place. Not to steal. Just to see. And there was a lot to see: Colby’s shirts were colour-coded: whites, through pale blues, through darker shades, to the one or two that were black. He had nine suits, all in carrier bags. His shoes sat on special racks. There were fourteen of everything in the kitchen: bowls, plates, bigger plates and bigger plates again. There was cutlery in one drawer, and then special cutlery, still in boxes, in a different drawer.
Also, condoms in the bathroom. Hmm. Why? New? Old? How to tell? One female LadyShaver, stuck behind a masculine vanity case, itself stuck behind toilet rolls. Dusty. Good.
The looking, learning, examining took most of the day. Then came jet lag. Caitlin slept, and woke thinking it was morning – which it was, in Townsville – and decided to do what she’d always done for Colby in Australia. She’d cook. But what? There was nothing in the fridge, which she had eventually found hidden behind a false door. So, she’d shop. But where? Carlos would know.
She got dressed, went downstairs and explained to Carlos what she was after.
‘You want what?’ he said. ‘Fresh fish? Now?’
‘There must be a supermarket,’ said Caitlin, but this was Battery Park City. There was no supermarket.
‘Just order in,’ said Carlos, ‘it’s what everyone does.’
And so on that first day, Caitlin explored, as dazzled as anyone by New York, and that night they ordered in, and it was just like a scene from TV – even the chopsticks were disposable – and the delivery boy had brought beer. They had sex, of course, and after sex Colby checked his BlackBerry. Caitlin laughed at him. ‘Don’t you ever switch off?’
‘I’ll switch you off,’ he said.
Caitlin smiled. ‘I like it here.’
‘Good. I’m glad. But I think I told you, you would.’
And so the pattern for Caitlin’s holiday was pretty much set: for the first two, maybe even three weeks. Colby would get up early and come in late, and Caitlin kept herself busy doing what tourists do in New York: she went to see the Statue of Liberty and Times Square; she took photographs of squirrels, and of the signs that said Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue and Madison Avenue. She ate a hotdog and a pretzel, and she went up the Empire State Building.
Then, on Caitlin’s first Saturday night in Manhattan, she got dressed up and Colby took her to the restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center. They had steak, drank wine, and he dared her to step out onto the viewing platform in her heels.
‘Imagine falling from here,’ she said, with her hands up to the glass.
‘You’d go splat.’
‘I feel sick just looking.’
‘They’ve made it so you can’t fall.’
At work the following Monday, Colby found himself resting his shoes on Robert’s desk, with his hands behind his head. ‘I could get used to this lifestyle,’ he said.
‘What, camping in my office?’
‘Having Caitlin live in. You know she cooks for me? She sets a table, lights candles, pours wine. I mean, you know what it’s normally like with a chick: “Where are we eating tonight? Can we go to …? Can we meet up with …? What’s happening this weekend?” I never get any of that. The whole New York scene – it’s alien to her. She doesn’t want to see anyone. She has no idea what “everyone else” is doing. I go home, ask her what she’s been doing, she says, “Writing postcards.” And she’s happy with that.’
‘Can you please stop?’ moaned Robert. ‘Or are you trying to kill me with envy?’
By the fourth week, things had cooled a bit. Colby was still working long hours and Caitlin’s enthusiasm for being alone all day – and half the night – had worn away. She took to calling Colby at the office to ask when he’d be home. Colby hated that kind of thing. Work was work. And so their first fight – both knew it was coming – was about how late home he was going to be, one night in their fifth week together.
‘I sit at home all week while you’re at work,’ Caitlin said. ‘Can’t you come home a bit earlier? It’s not like I’m going to be here much longer.’
Make-up sex is supposed to be great, but that night it was only okay, and Colby found himself feeling relieved to be able to leave the apartment in the morning. He stayed
out late that night, getting in at around 2 am. Caitlin was waiting, with a tear-streaked face, on the sofa. She got up and threw a solid block of glass – a candle holder – at him.
‘
Where have you been?
’
‘Hey, hey, hey,’ Colby said. He was drunk and annoyed. ‘Settle down.’
Caitlin was crying hard, but Colby was in no condition to console her. He staggered down to the bedroom, bumping off the wallpaper. Caitlin found him sitting on the edge of the bed, his tie already loosened and his shoes undone.
‘Where have you been?’ Caitlin repeated.
Colby swayed where he was sitting. He waved her away, saying, ‘Not now, Caitlin.’ He was tugging the white silk of his shirt out of his pants. ‘Please, not now.’
He pulled his legs out of his pants and fell onto the bed, and was soon snoring like a man twenty years older. Come morning, he tried to apologise, saying, ‘I’m just feeling a bit hemmed in.’
‘You mean you’re sick of me,’ said Caitlin, tearily.
‘I’m not sick of you,’ said Colby, but at lunch that day at Balthazar, he told Robert, ‘It’s been great, but it’s a bit of a worry how clingy she’s getting. I mean, I’m not really ready to settle down.’
‘And you’ve told her that?’ asked Robert. They were drinking goblets of red, and sharing a platter of salty fries under the mottled mirrors.
‘Not exactly. But I mean, she’s due to fly out on the 14th.’
‘And what are we now?’
‘September 10.’
‘Well, I’ll try not to feel too sorry for you, shagging her silly between now and the end of the week.’
‘I’m just taking that a day at a time,’ said Colby, winking.
The next day – Tuesday, September 11 – dawned clear and beautiful. Colby rolled out of bed at around 7 am. He kissed Caitlin as he always did on the nose, and called Robert from the foyer, saying, ‘Thanks for the lunch, buddy. I hope I didn’t go on too much. I’ve got a bit of a woolly head – want to meet up at the gym?’
Robert laughed and said, ‘I’m already at my desk. Not that I’m trying to make you feel guilty! No, no! It’s okay, you go to the gym, and I guess I’ll see you when you get in.’
Caitlin stayed in bed for an hour after Colby left, flicking through the
Times
and drinking lukewarm coffee. Shortly after 8.30, she went into the wet room to take a shower and was rinsing creamy conditioner out of her hair when she heard the tremendous noise that would change their lives.
Caitlin thought it was an earthquake and her first instinct was to crouch down on the floor of the shower, but the shower head was shaking and she was scared. She reached up and turned the water off. What was going on? She strained to hear. There were sirens. Car alarms? Fire alarms? She wanted to know, but was reluctant to leave the bathroom. And yet she couldn’t stay naked on her knees in the shower.
She reached for one of Colby’s towels and wrapped it around her body. With trembling legs she stood and peered cautiously around the door frame, and out through the picture windows in Colby’s lounge room.
The building next door – Colby’s building – was on fire.
‘Oh Jesus,’ she gasped.
There was a gaping hole at the top of the tower, and smoke was pouring out into the blue sky.
‘Please, God, let Colby be at the gym.’
Darting desperately around, Caitlin found the Hello Kitty phone Colby had given her, and with trembling hands she called him, but there was no answer. The building’s fire alarms started to ring. She would have to evacuate. That was fine. That was good. She wanted to be out of the apartment. She wanted to be on the street, outside the foyer of the burning building, trying to find Colby.
Caitlin steadied her hands long enough to pull on jeans, a T-shirt and a zip-up jacket, because that seemed easier than trying to find, and fiddle with, a bra. She still had conditioner in her hair. She took her purse and the mobile phone and left the apartment. The alarm was still going and the lift lights were flashing. She would have to take the fire stairs. She opened the heavy door and was confronted by a trail of scared and trembling people, feeling their own way down in the darkened stairway. She could just make out that some were carrying pets. One was even lugging a pot plant. She could hear people ahead of her, saying, ‘Come on! Let’s get moving!’
Caitlin was young and could easily have pushed past those who were older and moving more slowly, but she kept her place in the queue and listened to what people were saying, without knowing if any of it was true.
‘It’s a plane, crashed into the building.’
‘Terrible, terrible.’
‘Why don’t you all shut up and get your fat asses down these goddamn stairs?’
‘Hey, don’t push!’
Caitlin said nothing. She had her phone in her hand and she was dialling Colby’s number over and over, but either he could not answer, or else deep within the fire escape, she could not get a signal. People behind her on the stairs started to push. She lost her footing and stumbled but kept going until she was spat out of the darkness into brilliant light in the alley outside Colby’s building. Some of the people she’d been in the fire escape with bolted. Others stood looking up at the North Tower with shocked faces.
Somebody shouted, ‘Oh no, they’re jumping!’
Caitlin broke free of the group and ran towards the burning building. She was quite near the front entrance when the second plane hit the South Tower.
The impact and the noise forced Caitlin to her knees. She got up and tried to run, but her foot landed on something wet and heavy. She could not look because she knew it was a person, and that he’d exploded on landing.
She started shaking and crying. Nothing in her history had prepared her for terrorism. She ran this way and that, and was barely out of the impact zone when the South Tower came down. A great cloud of pulverised concrete rolled towards her and coated the world with grey, and then the city was filled with grey ghosts, and Caitlin wandered
among them, dazed, bleeding, and as pale and soot-covered as the rest. At some point, she found herself in the foyer of an apartment building where others had gathered, and she was given water and told to sit.
There was a small TV on the bellman’s desk. The second tower had come down and a newsreader was saying, ‘God save the United States of America.’
‘Goddamn!
Goddamn
!’ the bellman said, pointing. ‘Ain’t
nobody
getting out of here alive.’
Caitlin felt the fear and dread run through her. ‘My boyfriend works in that building.’
They turned towards her, and perhaps because of her accent, perhaps because she was barefoot, bleeding, with soot settled like concrete into the conditioner in her hair, they showed some sympathy.
‘Your boyfriend, what’s his name?’ the doorman asked.
‘Col … Lachlan. His name is Lachlan Colbert. He works at Carnegie.’
‘Which tower?’
‘Carnegie’s in the North Tower,’ someone said.
‘You have his cell phone?’
‘He isn’t picking up.’ Caitlin looked down at the phone in her hand, as white as the hands of a corpse in the morgue.
‘
Nobody’s
picking up,’ someone said. ‘That don’t mean nothing.’
The doorman said, ‘Let me see that phone.’
He took the phone, and tried Colby’s number from the phone on his desk, but there was still no answer.
‘Where could he be?’ Caitlin said.
‘What you need to do is report him missing,’ the doorman said.
Caitlin nodded and returned to the streets. How could she report Colby missing? There were thousands of people missing. She continued to wander, dazed and confused, until
ping
. A message. Two messages. Three. Caitlin’s phone had come to life. She fumbled through the keys, trying to reach the message bank.
‘
Caitlin. Can you pick up?
’
‘
Caitlin, if you’re there, please call me back.
’
‘
Caitlin, where are you?
’
Colby was alive. Colby had left messages. She tried to call him back and finally they connected.
‘Thank God. Where are you?’ Colby asked.
‘Where am I? Where have you been? I’ve been trying to call. I couldn’t get through. I don’t know where I am.’ Caitlin had been crying so much she could barely see. ‘I’m just walking.’
Colby tried to calm her. ‘Can you see a street sign?’
‘No.’
‘Can you see a subway?’
‘No.’
‘Caitlin, you’re not concentrating. You need to concentrate. How far have you walked?’
‘I don’t know.’
She was crying again.
‘Okay, okay, hold tight. I’ll find you. Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to find some kind of landmark. A shop. What shop can you see?’
‘Starbucks.’
‘Starbucks. That’s excellent. And now concentrate again. Look at the nearest corner. There will be a street sign on the pole at the corner. Walk there. What does the sign say?’
‘Central Park West.’
‘Central Park West?’
‘And Fifty-eight.’
‘You’re at Columbus Circle. Don’t move.’
Caitlin stood rooted to the spot, and then in what may have been two minutes or ten minutes, or even longer than that, there was Colby, bounding across the traffic circle, barefoot in his suit trousers, his white shirt turned completely grey, with only his phone held up to his ear.
‘Colby, what’s happening?’
Colby put the phone in his pocket and took Caitlin’s face in his hands. ‘It’s a terrorist attack.’
‘Somebody’s attacking us? Why?’
‘They think maybe it’s … Look, it doesn’t matter. We’ve got to find somewhere to go.’
‘I saw people. Bits of people. I think I stepped on somebody.’ Caitlin’s shoulders were slumped and she was staring down at her feet, bewildered and distressed.
‘Caitlin, please! Look up. Look at me.’ Colby lifted her chin with his finger. ‘We have to go. This isn’t over. We have to get inside.’
‘We can’t go,’ said Caitlin, shaking her head, which was thick with slimy conditioner and ash. ‘I won’t go back there.’
‘Not there!’ Colby paused. ‘Look, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’ll have to call my mother.’
Caitlin looked shocked. ‘You haven’t called your mum?’ she said. ‘She’ll be worried sick.’
‘She won’t be worried sick,’ Colby said.
‘But you work in one of those buildings!’
‘I’m not sure she knows that. Look, listen, I’ll call her. I’ll do it now.’ He looked down at his phone as if about to do just that, but then said, ‘I just wish I could raise Robert. Bloody hell – I spoke to him this morning. He must have got out.’
‘Colby!’ said Caitlin. ‘Call your mother!’
‘I’m calling her! What about your mom? She’s going to be frantic, you being here.’
‘It’s the middle of the night in Townsville!’ said Caitlin, exasperated. Colby was clearly stalling. ‘She’ll have no idea what’s going on. I can call her later. You should call your mum
now
.’
‘Alright, alright,’ Colby said. Caitlin could hear only his side of the conversation, but it struck her as strange. She expected to hear him saying something like, ‘No, no, it’s okay, don’t worry, I’m sorry, I should have called earlier. No, I wasn’t in the office. I’m fine. It’s okay, Mom. I love you too.’ The conversation was more businesslike. Colby said, ‘Hello, it’s me,’ and then: ‘I wasn’t at work. I was at the gym.’
There was a pause, and then he said, ‘Look, I’m going to have to come over to your place. I’ve lost my wallet. I have no credit cards … No, we can’t go back there. We’re going to have to stay with you … We, meaning my friend Caitlin and me … She has no family – she’s visiting from Australia … No, she doesn’t have anywhere else to go … Well, that’s the way it is. We’ll see you soon.’
He folded his phone and put it in his pocket. ‘Alright,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’
Caitlin didn’t move.
‘Come on!’ Colby said, tugging her hand. ‘Jesus, we’ve got to move.’ But Caitlin had started to cry again.
‘Oh, please, not now,’ said Colby. He took both of Caitlin’s dusty hands in his, and said, ‘Look, Caitlin, we can’t do this now. You’ve got to stop. It’s going to be okay.’
‘I stepped on somebody,’ she said. Her face crumpled.
‘I know,’ said Colby, lifting her face and kissing it. ‘It’s scary. That’s why we’ve got to get to my mother’s and get inside. We don’t even know if this is over. Have you been listening to what people are saying? They’ve had a go at the Pentagon. There’s a plane down in Pennsylvania. Did you see the Times Square ticker? The subways are shut. It’s dangerous out here, Caitlin. We’ve got to get moving. We’ve got to get inside.’
Caitlin nodded. ‘I know,’ she said. She wiped the back of her hand under her nose – the tip of her nose was the only clean patch on her face – then Colby took her hand and they began to walk.
‘Where does your mother live?’
‘The Ansonia.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Seventy-third and Broadway.’
‘Is it far away?’
‘No.’
They made their way uptown, passing many others who were also trudging along under clear blue skies, covered in soot, cuts and bruises. Some grimly pushed shopping trolleys loaded with bottled water, canned food and duct tape. Colby briefly wondered whether to join one of the queues, but he had lost his wallet and Caitlin realised she had, too.
‘But we’ll be okay at your mum’s. She’ll have bottled water, won’t she?’
‘Tonic water, yes,’ said Colby. ‘And she’ll certainly have gin.’