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The Inimitable Sadie
The best night of my life?
It took place in New York City twenty years ago, two weeks after the planes crashed into the twin towers, razing them to the ground. I was twenty-four years old, in desperate need of company on that September evening in 2001, someone who could offer her body as a balm against the acute pain and fear. Sadie, a friend from college, stepped forward.
Sadie and I had reunited at a music store situated on forty-second street and Broadway. There, she explained how she’d moved to New York City immediately after graduation, securing an apartment in Forest Hills Queens and landing a job at a financial institution on lower Manhattan, a few blocks away from where the towers fell. She was one year removed from graduating from our alma mater, Boston University.
“It still smells like it’s burning outside,” Sadie had said, wrinkling her nose. “Breathing in the air upsets my stomach and irritates my lungs, makes me feel like I want to spit it out of my body. I’m breathing in air infused with the remnants of blood and skin.”
“Yeah,” I said, somberly. “I live in Brooklyn and work in Jersey, so I’m lucky in that regard. Unlike you, I’m able to stay away if I need to. But I know what you mean. A miasma is hovering over New York City, poisoning the lungs of every New Yorker who breathes in the air.”
