Anye Se and Uma found themselves covered and pressed into each other and the elderly man beside them by passengers in the aisle who leaned over them trying to see better. Uma looked through the half blocked porthole and through the somewhat blurry plastic to the tower in the distance engulfed in flames and smoke.

“Do you mind,” a stern and somewhat unpleasant voice intoned behind her. She turned to see the nature of a speaker whose lack of courtesy was so publicly manifest.

“Would you make some space for others to see,” repeated an odious man, sweating, his face veined his breath deep and unclean.

Reflexively, Uma and Anye Se both pulled back, pressing their heads into the backs of the seat, holding their breaths as the man in the poorly tailored suit, eel-like and slick with his own excretions, bent over and peered through the porthole.

The man in the window seat, himself still absorbed in the sight, turned and responded churlishly when the strange and unpleasant voice whined a complaint aimed directly at him, suggesting his head was too big to see around. Uma struggled to stifle a guffaw, knowing the situation was not one given over to one’s sense of humor.

“Maybe we can have some time to finish the last brief,” Uma whispered, more a thought to herself, an admonition of how to spend this time, a reflex mindful of the clock which ticked, inexorably, enunciating the finite moments, withal, between here and her appearance in front of the commissioners at the hearing today, that might otherwise be wasted. She looked at Anye Se and realized her young paralegal, her friend as well as her employee, was increasingly fascinated, frightened and determined to see out the window along with all the others pressing and jostling. Uma wondered how to calm the already frayed nerves of this delicate and serious woman for whom she had both a matriarchal responsibility and affection as one naturally develops with people who keep enough of the essence of their childhood intact; who are endearing irrespective of the occasion. Uma put away any thought of working quietly, trying herself, now, to see the cause of the commotion.

“It’s kind of frightening,” said Anye Se, turning her eyes nearly next to Uma’s, their heads both pulled back and pressed into their headrests, other passengers taking turns, leaning into their space, trying to look out the porthole, their bodies filling the bulk of the small place where their tray table, books and papers may have been.

“It is scary,” Anye Se repeated, allowing she had never seen such a fire but seemed to have some reference to the horror of people caught in fires, natural disasters well beyond the control of humankind.

“In my country there are times of drought when fire or lightning strikes and there is nothing anyone can do.”

Uma took Anye Se’s hand in hers. She had been, Uma knew, through more in her short life than most could imagine. She didn’t want Anye Se to be frightened of anything more, but she was, remembering her past. Uma breathed deeply and tried to think of something comforting to say, but the glimpse of the smoking building she had seen through the porthole made every platitude dry and words have no worth.

“Excuse me ma’am but do you have any idea what happened?” a voice cracking with age interrupted Uma’s thoughts. She turned to respond.

An elderly woman readied for a formal gathering, as Uma guessed, who may have simply dressed as was the custom when flying was itself an uncommon event and was, for the very public and glamorous nature of it, an event not unlike a local charity gala. She stood close by in her finery, concerned and frightened, uncertain what to do.

Uma shook her head, feeling suddenly worse. In an instant she realized what was really happening. It horrified her all the more because, like most people in her position in life in New York, she had a relationship with the skyscraper, she had been near it, she had eaten in the restaurant as a young woman, and she had done business there. She had friends in its depths that had gone there today to work. She began to imagine an elderly woman, a mother who may have at this moment a son or daughter up on one of the floors from which the smoke billowed. She imagined even worse, the terror of one who had just been there and was now all the more terrified for the prospect for having just left.

“I don’t really know,” she said solicitously to the elegant woman, masking her own terror for her friends. “I don’t, but I’m sure it’s something the authorities can fix. I imagine it will all be taken care of soon.”

Uma knew she was just trying to quiet the fears of the elderly woman, but she had been taught that an honorable and estimable young woman said words to placate as a mark of gentle respect and solace. She felt empty after having said the half-truth, reflecting, wondering, if indeed one could even begin to fix such a problem.

The elderly woman shook her head, dismay so powerfully etched on her face, her jiggling anxious shaking, her head turning back and forth, unable to diminish or dispel the worry in her eye.

“Can they fix it?” Anye Se whispered, her head still pressed against the back of the seat rests. “Can the authorities fix what is happening?”

Uma looked past her to the smoking tower shaking her head slowly and wondering herself what the truth of the matter was.

“Could man build a tower so large he could get in, but couldn’t get out?” Anye Se’s voice was hoarse with clenched emotion.

Uma remembered throwing hay into the mow of the old barn, her grandfather saying, “Just take your time, step by step, make your own steps, and you can get up there, Cricket.” Amazingly, each time she made steps she could climb the length, but by the last bale they had built a pile so large, an edifice of hay in the open of the enormous building, there was no way to get down except by throwing out her feet and letting the force of gravity slide her back down. She had learned then that men could build impossible mountains.

“I don’t know, Anye, but I think so.”

She paused again and studied the distant horizon, a beautiful autumn blue, a presage of the clear cold days of winter, without moisture or discoloration to the perfect blue of a cloudless sky.

“I don’t know,” she began to say again but turned to see some commotion at the front of the passageway. There was a red-costumed steward trying to make his way through the aisle choked with onlookers from the other side of the aircraft.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the young steward began.

Uma could not easily distinguish all of the words but the language his body spoke, the determination to have his way and to restore the custom which had been usual, the response of docile and willing passengers to allow their wills to be bent to the figment of his perceived authority, intrigued her.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I am sorry,” she now heard. Some of the other passengers too had looked in his direction and, though still crowded to the left side of the aircraft, they stopped their chatter and with one ear gave him a moment’s attention. “I know the captain has said the seat belt sign would be turned off while we wait, but FAA rules do require passengers to stay seated while we are on the taxiway.”

This may have been fact, Uma thought, but there is fear in him, he is saying something more than just words and reference to fact.

Several of the passengers turned slowly and resumed their seats while others, indifferent to the words and the direction in the face of such wonder, seemed to regard the young steward, made some internal assessment of his character, his determination to remove them from the aisles, perhaps questioning the authenticity or ingenuousness of his person and declined, leaning back and resuming their regard of the events, an enormous skyscraper smoking, clearly on fire and emitting a black and quite frightening plume. Uma realized this plume was as large as a volcano’s or some other naturally occurring act of this largely incomprehensible earth. Her stomach clenched at the thought that something man could do could rival the harsh destruction of nature.

An elderly woman in the group, perhaps more likely to adhere to the social gossamer of rule and law suddenly turned, whispering an apology of sorts, and then hurriedly returned to her seat.

With the area now immediately above and beside them free, Uma could see and track the movement of the flight attendant and, not unexpectedly, saw him working his way along the aisle trying to cajole, implore, demand and otherwise impose his will or that of some higher order to get done what clearly his flight manual said was a protocol for passengers and aircraft set waiting, no matter the reason. She leaned her head back and tried to think of other things. Anye Se’s hand held hers, hard and afraid.

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