In high buildings, on bridges, on the subway platform, Mike has felt the idea of jumping. It is a small thought quickly overwhelmed by the constancy of life, but there on the subway platform an uneasy thought that often struck him. He wouldn’t even have to take a step, he could just fall, like a heavy tree, timber, on the tracks. This man felt that pull and allowed himself to fall. More than that, he jumped. That small desire, the heart of life, that ticks like a small clock in the brain, it broke somehow. The heat became too intense, and that survival core of the brain, like a smashed clock, issued forth springs and strange ringings, and the man threw himself out the window. He threw himself and flew out, out until the ground caught up with him. And the man, spinning through the air, couldn’t tell which way was up before he landed and cracked the concrete. And while he fell there was terror, but there was also the relief of the air. Though the air was thick, as if the whole city were choked with concrete dust, it was still a relief.

The picture that would haunt Mike later is a video still of people jumping from the top of the north tower. It’s a vertical shot, and the tower fills the whole frame, with only a swath of blue sky down one side. The picture contains few colors: the strange stone color of the building, the black stripes of the windows, a wisp of gray-green smoke, and the grainy blue sky. The figures falling through the air are black and look like shapes cut from that sky. Mike sometimes turned the picture on its side when he looked at it. In this way the building looks like the ground, like some great platform. The bodies look as though they are dancing through the air, executing some extreme gymnastic trick.

Mike believes that the greatest horror of that day belongs to those who jumped, who knew early that there was no hope.

81

Mike thinks he catches sight of his brother. The strange fog hangs in different shades. Sometimes it’s thick and dark; other places it’s a gray exhaust, approaching white. Weaving through the anarchy of victims and rescuers, Mike can’t see. But then there Lyle is, smoking a cigarette.

When Mike runs over, Lyle grabs him, pounding him on the back. This is a bad sign. When they step apart, Lyle exhales a plume of smoke, almost invisible in the haze, and produces a new cigarette from behind his ear, lighting it off the old. Mike watches this silently, stricken again by how handsome he once was.

“So?” says Lyle.

“Let’s get out of this,” Mike says.

Lyle nods as though he were about to say the same thing, and together they turn and start uptown.