Overhead the speaker crackled.

Uma, paying little heed, assumed it was a captain or first mate announcing their departure, but instead of the speech, oddly, there was silence.

Uma looked up.

A gasp of distress from somewhere forward of their seats left her agitated, ill at ease. Someone had become sick, she thought, a heart attack, or worse, the gasp of a child whose parent was suddenly incapacitated. Instinctively she rose, trying to move forward and help but quickly discovered more than one passenger was complaining, gasping, choking or exhaling from some sudden illness, some unanticipated, unknown despair.

Uma saw, aware of acute danger, her ancient sub-cortical brain suddenly active and exerting control, there was commotion all around, uncommon sounds and sense, the startled noises that come before comprehension might quantify what was, in fact, happening. In a moment she saw passengers everywhere rising, gesticulating, and pointing to the window or at something on the tarmac.

There was, as suddenly, a crush of people to the same side of the aircraft where the first person, she had thought, had grown ill.

In their faces she saw unabashed wonder, consternation, a tinge of horror and, leaning down to look, to see through the porthole what had occasioned their upset, wondered if even the unthinkable had happened and a plane had crashed or run into another on the runway. Seeing nothing on the tarmac, only when she raised her eyes and her view did she begin to understand.

In the distance, black smoke and a fiery red plume emanating from what she thought was a skyscraper, perhaps even one of the towers in the belly of her own home, Manhattan, punctuated the otherwise bright and cloudless view of an early autumn sky.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” spoke the captain, “this is your captain, David Brennan. I am sorry but there has clearly been a terrible accident at the World Trade Center which many of you can probably now see. The information we have from the tower, from our air traffic control tower is limited now, and the most I know, the most I can really tell you is that we have been asked to move off the taxiway, stay in line, and wait for further instructions.”

All three hundred plus people from bow to stern fell hushed. Those who had remained seated, locked in their routine, knowing the rigors and expectations of repeated travel, their seat belts still fastened and readying themselves for sleep or settling in for the hour-long journey, seemed suddenly to come awake. On cue, as the captain’s voice fell away, sucked up into the vacuum of quiet within the shiny silver space capsule, nearly half those on the left side of the cabin stood and pressed their way, suddenly, to the right.

…..………

“And Mr. Merceau, Mr. Dempsey,“ Rose continued, “had me make reservations for you and him for tomorrow morning for Washington. He says to tell you the big dogs want the big boys to join them, at the FCC and with one of your favorite clients. Here are your tickets.”

…………

In the jet way, they had merged. All of the personages from the traveling public, those warehoused in the Admiral’s Club, spacious comfortably upholstered chairs and the less fortunate, in gray industrial-carpeted public spaces filled with rows of gray naugahide seats, came together. They waited to step across the gap into the aircraft, obtain the steward’s receipt of their boarding passes and with the customary but quick nod off in the direction to which they should move to find their assigned seats.

…….………

“So you know what this is all about, Henry?” While Jack Dempsey spoke he carefully monitored the alchemy of the vodka and tonic he poured from the decanter left by a server in a freshly laundered and flawlessly white linen apron.

“Well I thought so, Jack,” Henry allowed, ”but it’s clear from your tone and our years of travel that there is some enlightenment you are about to offer.”

“You know Henry,” Jack continued speaking in a tone quite particular and idiosyncratic, Henry thought, a tone that seemed in a curious way to suggest that no matter what or how one replied, Jack would continue, even if no one were there and he was speaking to himself. “That is exactly why I tell the senior partners there are no juniors in the firm who aren’t worth their salt. Very astute.” Dempsey continued to study the small silver containers holding the distillates of liquids. “You know Henry, there are some who think the public airwaves, the airspace, as they say, is a public trust.”

“A public trust?”

Dempsey looked out the large wood trimmed windows surrounding the Admiral’s club, providing a broad and wide view of the heart of this commercial enterprise, the center of the busiest airport in the world.

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