significant events

He found them immediately. They were waiting for him at the tourist benches at the top of the Seaport where he would meet his mother whenever she came to visit. His father had worked in One Seaport Plaza since his company moved there 15 years previous. He hugged them, and, without fuss, motioned for them to follow him. After a few paces they stopped and returned to the benches to retrieve a forgotten Macy’s Brown Bag, which his mother had filled with kitchenware from home, brought as an offering for his bachelor apartment. Then back towards Nassau Street and the subway. He hadn’t even thought to look up at the smoke billowing from the tops of the towers, two giant black snake fireworks climbing to the heavens. Someone’s monumental prank. Chaos was churning in the eyes and bellies of the hundreds of frozen onlookers, all unable to swallow the unfolding events. He could only look straight ahead. Straight back to Brooklyn. He maneuvered his parents like awkward furniture through the two or three blocks of cobbled streets, around immovable waxen sky-gazers, until they reached the subway stairwell.

Two flights lower, they had just caught the metallic wake of a departing downtown A train. He moved his parents to the front of the platform to be in an opportune spot for the connection to the G once they reached Hoyt-Schermerhorn. They took the moment to have their first mundane, albeit reassuring, interpersonal family interaction. His mom kissed him and tugged at his chin, her thumb taking a moment to rub off her smeared salmon-colored gloss. His father gave him a warm “Hi son” and pulled him in for a hug. There was something unusually vulnerable in this gesture from the quiet man, so he squeezed him tighter than usual.

Down towards the other end of the wide platform filled with commuters, an anxious buzz stirred up and quickly carried towards them. In place of the greatly anticipated next local train was a stagnant grey mass of something, heavier than smoke, creeping tentatively out of the mouth of the tunnel. It was gas. Or dust. It was not clear to him exactly, but it was clear to all that it was not wanted, and probably not safe. He could now hear yips of terror arise from the mass of notoriously aloof New Yorkers, and they became a choppy thick sea tossing each other forward and back, heaving towards the staircases. He grabbed his mother and father and pulled them behind one set of stairs. He would not let them be trampled under foot. At this moment his thoughts seemed to slow to an unintelligible pace. All that was apparent to him was that he had to get his parents out of there. They crouched there for a moment, waiting for the storm tides to ebb. His mother cracked a raspy cough and his father placed the soft fleece pullover he had been toting around his waist to her face. A stale acrid odor began to thicken the air around them…