Highfall (18 page)

****

Annika’s mobile was ringing, from what seemed to her very to be far away.  She could not open her eyes.  Finally, when she opened them and looked around, she realised that she must have fallen asleep, sitting on the carpet, leaning against the sofa.  Annika’s mobile was still ringing, but in her sleepy state she could not work out where it was.  She looked around and saw the phone lying on the coffee table.  By a huge effort she moved closer to it and picked it up to answer.  In so doing, Annika suddenly remembered what had happened, and the panic came flooding back again.

“Hello,” she was practically shouting out of tension and fright.

“Hi, babe.”  It was the sweetest thing she had ever heard in her life.

“Vasko!”  Relief overwhelmed her.  “Are you okay?”

“Well.. physically yes... but it's hell over here.”

“Yeah, I’ve been watching the news... but is everything fine with you?  Are you injured?  I tried to call you for hours... I was going crazy over here...”

“Everything is fine, don't worry dear.  I switched off my cellphone before a meeting and didn’t remember until just now... Look, I can’t talk now, but I just wanted to let you know that everything is fine and there is nothing to worry about, okay?  I will call you tomorrow morning. Hopefully things will have stabilized a bit by then.”

“Ok dear.  I love you.”  Annika kissed the phone.

“I love you too,” said Vasko, who missed her terribly.

36

Meeting Annika again and then losing her a second time had a devastating effect on Stefan.  Once he realised that it was really over and he would never get her back, Stefan's life became only about heroin.  He cared nothing for the future.  All he did was make sure that he had his shot that day.  The hypodermic helped him to forget that there would ever be another tomorrow.

As usually happens with drug addicts who reach Stefan's stage, Stefan started selling everything valuable he had in order to pay for the heroin.  A few days after he had met Annika at the funeral, he sold the black car.  It was the only thing left from their past, and he thought that by getting rid of it he could run away from his love for Annika.

Before the car went, he had sold the apartment and rented one tiny cheap room in a suburb... Time was passing, money was running out... and one day it had almost all gone.

That day Stefan sat in his small room and considered what options were left...  Suicide?  He was not that strong... Going back and living with his parents? Well that was not very different from suicide, he thought.  Becoming a thief... no, not his style... What was he best at? Hmmm…. bullshitting, sweet talking, lying... maybe he could be a good sales person... And sell what? Well...  how about what he knew best? – Heroin.

That was it!  It was decided.  Within an hour of thinking to himself, a new drug dealer was born!

****

A week after the tragedy Vasko flew to Amsterdam with a small suitcase.  That was all the belongings he was taking with him.  But his luggage was far too heavy.  Vasko was also carrying terrible memories which were going to torture him for a long time.  Besides the memories he also bore a heavy feeling of guilt for being one of those who had survived.

That same evening, as he was sitting with Annika in her living room, he told her about the “hell” he’d briefly mentioned over the phone.  For the first time he summoned up the courage to tell her the full story of the horror and pain he’d lived through.

“We were in the middle of a meeting in the conference room, discussing an investment project, when Charles suddenly said: “Holy shit!”.  We all looked towards him.  His eyes were staring at the window.  We followed his gaze and saw the plane flying straight at our building.  It was like one of those slow-motion sequences in action movies.  For a few seconds we all stayed paralyzed.  The plane moved on in and down and, as we found out later, crashed a few floors below us.  So many smart finance people all in one place, and not one of them could grasp what was happening.  Someone shouted that we should get out immediately.  On autopilot we ran out. People gathered in the corridor.  No one knew what was happening, what to do, if it was dangerous or should we stay where we were.

After ten to fifteen minutes we went to the brokerage office as someone remembered that there were plenty of TV monitors hanging from the ceilings with Bloomberg and similar channels on all the time.  The news most probably showed what you saw over here...  It was totally unbelievable and one thing was for sure, we needed to get out of the place.  There was panic in peoples' eyes.  All everyone could think about were the people they were supposed to get back to.  Their wives, children, parents...

Most of us rushed to the stairs and started going down.  A few floors down we could smell the smoke and the stairs were half-destroyed.  With each step the smoke got denser and breathing harder.  At some point people started arguing about whether we should go back up and try to get up on to the roof.  One smartass recalled that after a terrorist bomb exploded in the basement of the North Tower in February 1993, a police helicopter had evacuated people from the roof.  That was a strong argument.  It convinced a lot of people to follow the guy and start climbing back up.  Jesus, how I wish he hadn’t been blessed or cursed with such a good memory!  Not a single one of those people on the roof survived.  But the roof seemed an obvious choice.  It also seemed to be the only one available to people on the upper floors.  Why I and a few others did not follow them, I still can’t explain.”

Annika shivered.  The thought that Vasko's chances of survival at that point were fifty-fifty made her weak.  Vasko took a deep breath and continued.

“I and five others continued going down.  At some point there were just no more stairs.  The only way to continue was to go in to the corridor, go along it and try to get to the stairs on the other side.  When we got to the corridor we could see the offices behind the glass walls.  The offices were burning and there were people stuck between the fire and the windows.  I guess they had no air to breathe because they were throwing computer monitors and trying to break the windows.  They faced a terrifying choice: to jump or to wait to be burned alive.”  Annika's eyes filled with tears and horror.  Vasko took another sharp breath and continued.

“Then I saw something that has haunted my dreams every single night since then – I doubt I’ll ever forget it.  A guy took off the jacket of his suit and stood on the window ledge.  I could hear the sound of his tie flapping in the strong wind outside.  For a few seconds he just stood there before he jumped.  I stood there and watched the guy jump from the 73rd floor!!!  I heard afterwards that he was not the only one...  I still think of that guy in the white shirt and dark blue tie.  And I can't get rid of the thought that I could have been him...”

At that moment Vasko's eyes filled with tears too.  Annika hugged him tight.

“Shhhh... Everything is ok.  You made it.  You survived, and that's the important thing.  I could not go on living without you!” Annika told him.

“Besides all that I can't forget the face of the fireman.  I don't even know who he was, but he came to save us.  He rushed back inside the building as soon as we were finally out.  He did not make it back...

Can you imagine, the guy risked his life and eventually lost it for people he had never seen before?  In all likelihood he was younger than me...”

Annika knew that he needed to talk it all out.  She also knew that he would never get right over it, nor would she ever entirely understand what he’d been through that day.  All she could do was comfort him.  Listen, hug and cry were all she could do, and she had no idea whether that helped him at all.

“Can you imagine, Annika?  Two thousand eight hundred innocent people died that day.  Some of them, just like me, were from the old country.  Very probably they thought that they were finally living their dream.  Living in the country of opportunities and working in the best possible place in the world.  They considered themselves extremely successful and lucky, just like I did.  But ultimately, if they hadn’t been so lucky they would still be alive today... How ironic is that?”

Annika did not answer.  She hugged him even tighter and closed her eyes.  What she’d heard weighed heavily on her.  She felt a lump in her throat.

****

Once Stefan decided how to earn the money for his heroin, he designed his basic business plan.  Nothing sophisticated, nothing complex.  He was going to continue doing what he did every day, but make some money from it.  Each day Stefan would drive to the city nearby in order to score. That's what all the others did as well.  Their small town did not have its own drug dealer and they all had to go and get it for themselves.  The demand was there - Stefan would ensure the supply. The fee he would charge for his service would be enough to get along.  As for the dose – if he took just a couple of unnoticeable pinches from each dose sold, it would be more than enough for his own.  He felt proud of his plan...actually he thought he was a genius and was amazed nobody had thought of doing it sooner.

It went like clockwork.  Their town was very small and word spread fast.  As a result, within two weeks Stefan already had all the town’s heroin addicts as his faithful customers.  They were as loyal to Stefan as they were to the heroin – and that was a divine bond!

That's how the days dragged by one after the next.  Stefan's daily life hardly changed at all.  He still drove to the city once a day.  It was just that now he had more people coming to his place. They called, ordered, then came, paid, took the small plastic bag and left.  Stefan never knew that there were so many people who found escape the same way he did.

Most of them were young... very young.  Some were still carefree, still in their first stage, when it was just a recreation, something to surprise their party people with, and something new to try, some new sensations to feel...  Sometime those carefree and still joyful people would meet the drug addicts who were already deeply sunk into that white powder.  The latter were very skinny, had shaking hands and completely blank eyes.  Amazing how even when confronted face to face with their most probable future, it never occurred to the “beginners” to consider stopping... They failed to understand that if you are a drug addict, you cannot be anything else, because doing heroin is all you will ever be doing.  The other thing they could not grasp was the fact that while they thought that drugs gave them personality, what they actually did instead was deprive them of their real identity.  In other words, through drugs they were losing the identity they were trying to get through drugs.

Flame was terrified when he found out about Stefan's new “business”.  He felt in his bones that the end would not be good.  Although Flame was not very familiar with the drug trade, he knew that the people who usually get caught are the ones like Stefan, the “little” fish, with no special protection.  Given how small the town was, he was sure it could only be a matter of time before Stefan fell foul of the law.

He shared his concern with Stefan, but Stefan did not even want to listen.  He was sure that Flame was just paranoid, that he was overestimating the danger, and that he, Stefan, knew far more about drugs than Flame.

It took a while, but in the end Stefan had to pay a very high price for all the “drug commissions” he had earned.

37

The results of the 9/11 terrorist attacks were devastating.  What happened that day brought the world’s most powerful nation to its
knees.  New York City alone lost 131,300 jobs in 2001 and nearly two-thirds, or 84,000, of that 131,300 job decline occurred during the post-September 11 period.

Vasko and Annika watched the news every evening.  No matter how painful it was for Vasko, he insisted on seeing and hearing what was going on there.  They watched interviews of people with extremely sad eyes, holding their cardboard boxes of personal belongings.  They were some of the 84,000 people who lost their jobs and had to leave.  Vasko was one of them too...

That was how their dreams of a bright future, career and a happy family life in the country of opportunities came crashing down just like the twin towers.  Annika and Vasko
knew how much more they could have lost and tried to adjust to the new challenge as best they could.

Vasko had already brought his tiny suitcase to Annika's apartment in Amsterdam.  Now it was Annika's turn to pack her belongings, so they could go back to their motherland.  Unfortunately there was no other option and they both knew it.  Along with the job, Vasko's savings and investments were lost too.  Annika and Vasko were like those sad and unhappy people with their cardboard boxes.  Just like them they had lost everything and had no idea what the future held in store for them.  They felt shocked, uncertain and afraid – just like the vast majority of US citizens.