Can You Keep a Secret? (9 page)

The doorman at the Ansonia rushed forward upon seeing Colby dragging the pale and streaky Caitlin by the hand into his foyer.

‘Terrible day, Mr Colbert.’

‘Shithouse,’ Colby agreed. It was a word he’d picked up in Australia and had not had much occasion to use. ‘But we’re alive. And that’s more than can be said about others. I’m going up to see my mother. This is my friend, Caitlin.’

The doorman nodded.

‘Not a problem, Mr Colbert. You mustn’t worry about your mother. She hasn’t left the building all day.’

‘She hasn’t left the building all year,’ Colby muttered.

They crossed the foyer, past a dusty floral display, and waited by the iron gates for the elevator.

‘How old is this place?’ Caitlin asked, looking around. The floors were marble; the walls were giant blocks of stone.

‘Ancient.’

‘It’s like everything’s antique.’

‘Everything
is
antique.’

The elevator crawled upward. Pearl’s apartment was on the sixteenth floor. They stepped into the corridor, and Colby rapped his knuckles on a door built wide enough for a grand piano to pass through. A small man in a faded uniform answered. He looked like he might be military, with a loose gold braid dangling over one shoulder. This was Reginald, Pearl’s butler. His shirt cuffs were frayed, his buttons dull, and one shoe had a stacked heel.

Colby asked, ‘Is mother home?’

‘In the parlour,’ Reginald replied. He dipped his head slightly, in what Caitlin took to be a bow, in her direction. Colby still had her hand. Reginald stepped back, and Colby strode past into a room that was both cavernous and decrepit, dominated by soaring ceilings and curved windows. The room was on the second of two floors in the building’s south turret, with stone walls that were three-feet thick, faded drapes, a parquetry floor, and heavy furniture that smelt of wet dog and stale smoke.

Pearl was sitting where she always sat, in a red velvet armchair that faced the window, her head wreathed in cigarette smoke.

‘It’s me, Mom,’ said Colby, but Pearl did not get up. She stayed in her chair, waiting for Colby to drag Caitlin around to face her. She was thin, with bright red lipstick bleeding into the vertical lines around her mouth. Not old, but no longer young. A small dog that had been lying on its stomach by her feet got up and began to yap.

‘Shut up, Miffy,’ Pearl said, but Miffy yapped louder.

‘Mother, this is Caitlin.’

Caitlin felt embarrassed. Her clothes were filthy and her hair matted with ash and conditioner. It wasn’t how she’d imagined meeting Colby’s mum, but in the circumstances, how could it even matter?

‘Hello, Mrs Colbert,’ she said. It was a bit confusing, how Colby’s mum hadn’t jumped up, and how she wasn’t saying, ‘Oh, thank God you’re alive. Look at the two of you. Sit down and we’ll get Reg to get you something to drink.’

Exasperated, Colby said, ‘Are you even going to say hello?’

‘Alright,’ said Pearl, ‘I’ll say hello. Hello.’ She was reaching for another cigarette. There was a packet on every surface, but her hand seemed to have difficulty locating the box closest to her.

‘You’re drunk,’ said Colby. He turned to look at the TV. It wasn’t on. He grabbed a remote control. ‘I can’t believe you’re not even watching this.’

‘What’s to see?’ said Pearl. ‘The same thing over and over.’

‘We need to find out what’s going on.’

‘We know what’s going on,’ said Pearl, waving her cigarette lighter. ‘Somebody has smashed some planes into some buildings.’ She took a few quick puffs of her cigarette, decided she didn’t want it, and bent it into the ashtray.

‘Bring some coffee, Reginald.’

Reginald dipped his head and shuffled back out of the room.

‘This is a catastrophe,’ Colby said, pointing to the images on the TV. ‘Where does it end? We’re going to war, I suppose.’

‘Well, you won’t get drafted,’ said Pearl. ‘They’ll take the poor and the unemployed before they take you.’

Colby’s jaw tightened. ‘I’m not thinking about me,’ he said. ‘There are so many people missing … we’ve got a whole team on that floor. I’ve been trying to reach people but …’ As he spoke, the phone in his hand rang. ‘Thank God,’ he said. It was Summer, the most organised person he knew.

‘Thank Christ you’re alive,’ he said. He was striding around while talking. ‘I’ve been calling everyone. Have you heard from Robert Brancato? I’ve spoken to Aaron, to plenty of others, but not Robert.’

Summer hadn’t heard from Robert either. She told Colby she’d arrived at the office shortly before 8 am, carrying apples for the fruit bowl on her desk. She’d answered some emails and then, at around 8.30 am, she’d got up from her swivel chair and said, ‘Okay, coffee before the bell anyone?’ There had been quite a few orders. Summer made a list and took the elevator down to the ground floor, crossed the street and was walking towards the barista when she felt the ground shake. She turned to see the gaping hole in the tower where she worked.

‘I know it’s wrong, but I just ran for my life,’ she told Colby.

‘It’s not wrong,’ Colby reassured her. ‘It’s normal. You’re alive. But, Summer, I need you to concentrate. Who was in
the office when you left? Was Robert? Was he at his desk? Who did you see?’

‘I can’t remember. I should have gone to where we go when there’s a fire alarm. Oh, Colby! I took orders from ten people. They’re saying on the TV that everyone’s dead!’

‘Everyone’s not dead.’ Colby was still striding around his mother’s parlour. Caitlin had taken a seat in one of the dusty chairs. She had her head in her hands. ‘Nobody would have gone to the evacuation spot. Nobody. Forget that. It was chaos.’

‘All this melodrama!’ Pearl said.

Colby kept talking. ‘And not everyone’s dead. I’m not dead, am I? You’re not dead. Now, we’ve got to find other people. But the phone lines have been down. It’s hard to get through. So, I need you to think. Did you see Robert in the office when you left? Did you take a coffee order from Robert?’

‘Oh, I can’t remember, Colby! My mind, it’s like soup! But look. Okay. Maybe I have an idea. Maybe I should send out an all-staff email, get everyone to respond. Like a fire drill, but on email?’

‘Very good!’ said Colby. ‘Very clever. That’s smart thinking. Tell people it’s an order. They
must
respond. We need to count survivors. Don’t be crying when we can do some good. Do it now. And copy me in on the responses you get. If we’re both counting, we’re not likely to miss anybody.’

‘Okay,’ Summer said.

‘Alright,’ said Colby, ‘and how many names are on the all-staff list, do you know? How many employees do we have?’

‘One hundred and thirty-seven.’ Summer knew precisely because she’d recently done a count for the holiday hampers.

‘Okay,’ said Colby, ‘you send that email now.’ Summer did, and over the course of the day, 111 of their staff replied, and each of those replies was greeted with joy and relief and a desire to hear more – but none was from Robert.

‘What are we going to do?’ asked Summer. ‘I just don’t get what we’re all going to do. There are twenty people – more – just missing. Lovely people, gone. The whole building, gone. Every computer. Every file. I just don’t understand what we’re supposed to do.’

Colby didn’t know either, but he was close to Carnegie’s founder, Aaron Blatt, and he knew from speaking to him that both Aaron and his brother, Adlai, were trying to find a way to get from their homes in Connecticut to New York – not easy because the bridges and tunnels were closed – to address the staff.

‘People are going to want to get to work,’ he said.

Pearl interjected. ‘But none of you have jobs! The office is gone.’

Colby let it go.

‘Aaron won’t let this stop him,’ he told Summer.

‘That would be right,’ said Pearl, ‘some people are always thinking of the money.’

‘It’s not about money,’ Colby said. He finished his call with Summer, telling her to do what she could to make contact
with people and to stay in touch with him, and turned to his mother. ‘It’s about America! Going back to work is the right thing to do. We’ve been attacked. We can’t just lie down and take it. These people hate us. We can’t let them win. The minute he gets here – Aaron, I mean – the minute he gets here, I’m going to see him, to try to figure out what we can do.’

Caitlin lifted her head from her hands. She looked horrified. ‘You’re going back to work?’ she said. ‘What am I supposed to do?’

‘What does it matter to you?’ said Pearl. ‘You won’t be here. Aren’t you supposed to be going home?’

‘I can’t go home!’ said Caitlin. ‘How can I go home?’

‘You can’t go home straight away,’ Colby agreed, ‘all planes are grounded. All airports closed.’

‘Yes, but that’s today! The airports can’t stay closed forever. They’ll be open again by the end of the week,’ said Pearl.

‘But I can’t get on a plane.’ Caitlin shook her head. ‘How am I supposed to get on a plane, after this?’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Pearl.

‘Look, we don’t have to discuss it now,’ said Colby. ‘What I need is a shower. Caitlin, you need one too. Then we have to get something to eat.’

‘I can’t eat.’ The thought of the splattered person she’d stood on was still too clear in Caitlin’s mind. But she let Colby lead her to the shower, and to gently rinse the conditioner from her hair, and she let him hold her while she sobbed. Then, like so many New Yorkers that day, they were drawn back into silence in front of the TV, watching
and waiting for news of survivors, and for a reaction from their President.

‘Enough,’ said Colby finally, sometime after midnight. ‘I can’t watch it anymore.’

He led Caitlin down a hallway. There were seven bedrooms in Pearl’s apartment. Some hadn’t been used for years.

‘I think there’s a bed in this one,’ said Reginald. He’d limped down the hall ahead of them, carrying a dog-smelling blanket over his forearm. He opened the door, and when he was gone, Colby pulled back the bedspread – it was heavy with dust – and helped Caitlin get underneath.

‘Try to get some sleep. I just want to try the phones one more time,’ Colby said, and he did, but Robert still did not answer.

‘I’m going to walk downtown, to see what I can find out,’ Colby said. It was early morning on September 12. ‘There must be a place where you can report somebody as missing. There must be a list of people who are in hospital and that kind of thing.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ Caitlin insisted. They had been forced to wear other people’s clothes: Reginald had found one of Colby’s dead father’s suits in Pearl’s closet for Colby – the fabric was stiff, and the pants were too short – and Caitlin took a blouse and shirt from a pile of uncollected dry-cleaning that had been left with the Ansonia’s doormen over the years, rather than take anything of Pearl’s.

Caitlin wouldn’t go near the subway. Colby wasn’t sure it would be open, but there were taxis on the streets, so they hailed one and took it down to what was already being called Ground Zero. Firemen had worked through the night, erecting a fence to keep distraught family
members – and souvenir hunters – off the still-smoking site. Colby seemed to think that the lists of names that had been stuck on the fence might provide them with some clues as to what had happened to Robert and the other Carnegie staff, but it was hard to get near because so many people were there, trying to pin their own ‘Missing’ posters – and folded paper cranes, poems and prayers – to the fence.

‘I can’t believe this.’ Colby looked around. The space where the buildings had been created views that were unfamiliar. He felt lost, on home ground. ‘There’s just nothing here.’

‘I can’t stand to look at it,’ said Caitlin.

‘Look, there’s no point searching here. We need to go to the apartment. We both need things,’ said Colby.

‘They won’t let us in. I saw on TV – all those buildings in Battery Park, they’re all blocked off.’

‘It’s my apartment!’ Colby said, defiant. ‘And last time I checked, this is still the United States of America. I’d like to see somebody try to keep me out of my own apartment.’

They made their way across the footbridge, past a fireman who had stopped to rest on a park bench. Even from the street, they could see that Colby’s building had been badly damaged. Most of the windows were smashed and chunks of the exterior had been gouged out, probably by flying debris. The glass in the revolving door to the foyer was intact, but somebody had stuck a handwritten sign to it, saying, ‘Closed’.

‘Will it be safe to go inside? It looks dangerous,’ said Caitlin.

‘Living is dangerous.’ Colby pushed the revolving door but it didn’t turn.

‘They’ve locked it,’ he said. ‘Where did you say you came out?’

‘Down the fire escape. It comes out around the back.’

‘Show me.’

Caitlin was hesitant but set off for the alleyway. The whole surface of the fire door was smudged with sooty fingerprints, and there was another sign saying ‘No Entry’, but the door was open.

‘Are we really going to climb seventy-nine floors?’ asked Caitlin.

‘I don’t see what choice we have.’

After two floors, Colby stopped and took off the shoes he had borrowed from Reginald – they were too small and tight – and left them on a step.

‘Remind me to get those on the way down,’ he said. They had seventy-seven floors to go.

They carried on. There was no power in the building, which meant no light in the fire escape. Caitlin kept her bearings by running her hands along the walls. Every so often, Colby stopped, opened the door to a floor, and called out, ‘Hello?’ But no hello came back, and what Colby saw in the corridors troubled him. All along the hallways, apartment doors had been forced open, and the chain-locks were hanging loose on long screws.

‘It’s like the whole building has been looted,’ he said. ‘Or else firemen have come through, looking for survivors.’ It took an hour but finally, they were in the corridor outside Colby’s apartment. The door had been kicked in, and was swinging on broken hinges. Colby pushed it back and looked inside. Caitlin was out of breath and crying. Colby was out of breath, too, and standing with his hands on his head. The picture windows in the lounge room had been blown out. The view that had once been of the World Trade Center was now bright blue sky.

‘Jesus,’ he exclaimed.

They entered the apartment cautiously. Caitlin ran a finger along the filthy kitchen bench. It left a shiny trail. She noticed that her palms were black from where she’d run them along the walls in the fire escape.

‘Get what you need,’ said Colby, ‘and let’s get out.’

There was a wheeled suitcase in the hallway cupboard. Caitlin recognised it as the suitcase Colby had brought to Australia for Trevor’s Reef Tour, about a million years ago. Colby put the suitcase on the bed – the bedcovers were black with soot – and began packing his suits.

‘Everything’s filthy,’ he said. ‘But I’ve got shoes. Jocks and socks. I’ve got handkerchiefs.’

He was rambling.

Caitlin went to the opposite end of the wardrobe. The backpack she’d brought from Australia was tucked under a bottom shelf. She’d been keeping her clothes – her torn shorts and T-shirts from Townsville, and the new things she’d bought in New York – on one shelf. It took about
three minutes to stuff it all away. She found her passport, and some other bits and pieces in the bathroom.

‘I’m done,’ she said.

‘I’ve got a few more things to get,’ said Colby.

He pushed aside the long winter coats at the back of the wardrobe, and Caitlin was surprised to see a small personal safe tucked behind them, something she had never noticed in her regular searches of Colby’s things.

‘What’s in there?’

‘Just stuff.’ Colby turned the wheels on the combination lock, took his passport out of the safe, and a manila folder containing insurance documents, his college degree, bank statements and his mortgage papers. There was also a small pewter plane, about the size of a block of butter, with a clock face under the front propeller. It had been his father’s. He took that, too.

They went back down the fire escape, this time with Caitlin carrying her backpack, and Colby carrying the suitcase. He fetched the borrowed shoes off the second-floor landing and they burst out the last door, into sunlight, straight into the path of two heavily-armed police.

‘That building is closed,’ one of them said.

‘I live here,’ said Colby.

‘You got ID?’ the cop demanded, and Colby showed him some of the documents he’d just picked up.

It was a long way back to Pearl’s but Caitlin wanted to walk, so they set off with Colby clutching her hand, dodging twisted metal on the sidewalks, and discarded shoes.

‘I feel like we’re refugees,’ Colby said, and in a way they were.

‘How long do you think it’ll be before they let us go home?’ Caitlin asked him.

‘You mean
you
, to Australia? I’ve got no idea.’

‘No, us. To your apartment.’

‘It might be weeks.’ Colby was troubled by the ‘us’.

‘But where are we going to go now? I don’t think your mother really wants anyone around.’

‘Nothing new there,’ said Colby.