DARK HUMOR

On the first anniversary of the World Trade Tower Attack I was sitting with two NYPD narcotic detectives in a bar on Avenue B. Rocco and I went back to the Milk Bar and his partner Stevie was telling us about his 9/11

“My sergeant said as we approached the north tower, “Be careful, boys, today a lot of people are going to die.” He barely finished that sentence and a body smashed in front of us and then another and another. We ran for cover. None of us were heroes that day, even though we tried.”

“Shut up, Stevie. You did your best. No one can ask for more.” Rocco drank heavily from his glass.

We each had stories of that tragic, but lost the thread as we eavesdropped on a group of firefighters toasting their fallen comrades.

“Fucking Boy Scouts.”

"Who?"

"Firemen. Everyone thinks they're heroes, while we're scum."

"You got that right, Rocco." Stevie had been partners with Rocco for eleven years. Rocco leaned over and started talking loudly about how the firefighters have looted the WTC before its collapse.

“You know there would have been no dead firemen, if someone had posted one sign on the World Trade.”

The firemen at the bar turned as one to our table.

“And what would be on that sign?” Stevie loved playing straight man for his partner.

“Nothing of value inside.” Rocco laughed and slipped a hand under his jacket, as a trio of behemoth NYFD approached us. We were friends of the owner, the firemen had their house around the corner, but this was an old fight between rivals.

“What’d you say?” The largest fireman demanded with clenched fists.

“Just that if the World Trade had nothing to steal, then none of you would have died.”

Rocco laid his Glock on the table without taking his finger off the trigger.

“You’re a fuck.” The biggest fireman waved for his comrades to ignore the insult.

"It was a joke," explained Stevie. He wasn't looking for a fight.

“It wasn’t meant to be funny.” Rocco had lost two friends in the collapse. None of us found much funny about that day.

“Now be happy campers and go back to your drinks. The next round is on me.”

“Fuck you and fuck your drinks.” The biggest fireman forced his friends back to the bar, but they drank Rocco’s round and sent us one too.

“Nice one, Rocco.” Stevie lifted his glasses. We were drinking vodka-tonics.

“To the gone, but not forgotten.”

We downed them in one go and ordered another round.

9/11 is that kind of day that was remembered forever one way or the other.

THE TRUE REWARD OF A LIE by Peter Nolan Smith

My flight from Bangkok via Taipei and Anchorage to JFK in 2008 lasted almost thirty-six hours. I wished the trip had taken even longer since I had nothing to gain in America, however we landed stateside on time ending the longest Sunday of my life. The immigration officer asked how long I had been out of the country.

"Seven years." All of it in Thailand.

"Welcome back."

He stamped my passport and I entered the USA without any idea when I might see my wife and daughter again. The 12:05AM Skytrain to Brooklyn carried few passengers, mostly airport workers coming off the late-shift. They spoke my language. This had been my city for twenty-seven years. It should have felt like home.

My friend had promised a soft landing at his Fort Greene brownstone. Andrew had told the truth. His wife was willing to accept a guest for longer than three days. His daughter was the same age as my daughter. I went to sleep dreaming of rice paddies, red dirt roads, and Angie.

Over the next week I fought off the lingering effects of international jet lag and slowly connected with friends. They bought me lunch and dinner. Several lent money. They had heard about my arrest in Thailand. I didn't say too much about my new girlfriend's pregnancy or leaving Angie's mom. I was a hard sell as it was and I needed money for my families.

I visited several galleries with my Jean-Michel Basquiat sketch, except now was not the time to sell anything. Everyone was broke.

April grew warmer with the sun and one afternoon I wandered over to the East Village. I almost rang the bell of my old apartment. Someone else lived there now and I wanted to see the change, but instead I walked down to the basketball courts of Tompkins Square Park.

No one was playing hoop.

My friend JD had said the games died several months after my departure. I stood underneath the baskets. No one in the park knew my name. The East Village belonged to skateboarders and the young Wall Street bankers and I headed down to the F train stop at 1st Avenue.

It was early evening. The sun still had another hour to set. The light glazed everyone with unearthly silver. Couples kissed on the sidewalks. Singles prowled the bars in search of a hook-up. They were young. Life had gone on without me. One person is nothing to a city of millions, especially a ghost of the past.

As I approached the subway entrance, I spotted a familiar face. Thomas was speaking on a cellphone. I decided to wait for him to turn my way, thinking maybe he wouldn't recognize me.

Thomas was a neighborhood real estate developer and I was a pseudo-intellectual seeking to stop the gentrification of the Lower East Side. Our conversations were more arguments and we almost came to blows over the sale of a 2nd Avenue variety store, whose closure he viewed as progress.

I bought my underwear there.

Afterwards a store opened selling tee-shirts for $30.

Several years later at a Christmas dinner for Ornette Coleman, we pigpiled on a TV News producer extolling the networks' sense of truth. Thomas said that all TV News was lies. I called it propaganda. We recognized that we weren't that far apart and occasionally met for drinks. I even introduced him to his girlfriend.

I was too poor for Cara's tastes.

Then and even more so now.

Thomas clicked off the cellphone and slipped the mobile into his well-tailored suit. Times were tough in the USA, but he appeared prosperous.

For a second he seemed to look through me, then his eyes lit with recognition.

"Good to see you. When did you return from Thailand?" He took off the imported sunglasses to examine me better. "You have changed. How long has it been?"

"Seven years. How's Cara?" I wondered if they were still together. Her olive-skinned beauty possessed an Iberian love of laughter.

"As lovely and difficult as ever. Up in the country right now. I bought a farmhouse on 250 acres along the Walkill River. My property was the second largest in New Paltz after a New Age commune?s pig farm. She'd love to see you."

"And me her."

"Last winter I bought a building on North Moore Street and redid the top three floors. 7200 square-feet. I'm having a house-warming this Thursday. You should come. Is your family with you?"

"No," I explained they were staying behind without mentioning about my deportation.

The story was over for the moment. I was trying to start a new chapter. I showed Thomas a few photos. He casually excused himself by tapping his platinum Pate-Philippe.

"I've got to run, but here's my card. Bring a friend if you like."

"You want me to bring anything?"

"No, just don't be late or else you'll miss the lobster."

Thomas turned just in time to avoid a collision with a beautiful brunette. They knew each other. He didn't introduce me. They walked away, speaking in whispers. After several steps she started crying and laid her head on Thomas' shoulder.

I tailed them for several blocks.

They entered the brasserie Balthazaar, where the maitre de greeted Thomas like he was the new owner. I could have been jealous of his new loft, high-paying job, house in the country, fiancee, and the tears of his mistress, except I had learned long ago the envy of other people's triumphs was best suited to those who had lost all hope of achieving their own dreams and planned on attending the housewarming with a Maine native's appetite for lobster.

That Thursday Andrew accompanied me across the river from Brooklyn. He was an architect and I thought maybe Thomas could give him work. My house warming gift of a 19th Century iron was out of place in the loft on North Moore Street.

A Clifford Still hung over the river rock fireplace. Tropical flower bouquets sprouted from the corners of the enormous living room. A liveried bartender tended a well-stocked bar, while wild salmon and thin-shell lobster overwhelmed a long table. The display of wealth was well-mannered as Cara's silver sheath whispering across the teakwood floor.

I introduced her to Andrew. She kissed me on both cheeks and fingered the diamond solitaire hanging from the platinum chain around her elegant neck. Thomas had bought the D-Flawless diamond for an engagement ring and she sensed my concern.

"Don't worry, we're still engaged and better yet I'll persuade Thomas to buy me something extra special at Christmas. But enough about diamonds, I want you to meet someone."

"A friend?" I had offended hundreds of people during my twenty-five years in New York and prayed this introduction wasn't an attempted reconciliation.

"Only time will tell."

Andrew excused himself, seeing two friends. Manhattan's upper crust was a small world.

Cara led me across the room and unexpectedly introduced the brunette from the other day.

"This is Tatiana. She works in film and I've been telling her all about you."

"Like what?" I feared the worst.

"Your diving off a cliff at Lake Minnewaska.? Tatiana?s accent bespoke good schools.

"I didn't dive, I jumped." The crystalline waters had been irresistible.

"From a hundred feet." My friends tended to exaggerate my stories and I smiled guiltily. "More like fifty feet, but it was high."

"Cara says me you're a writer." Tatiana's clothes were worth more than my earnings last year.

I spieled out my latest novel's outline, after which she arched a plucked eyebrow accusingly, "You've pitched that story before."

Before I could plead innocence, Thomas joined us.

"So you two have met."

Tatiana glared in fear Cara and Thomas expected a liaison to birth from this encounter and departed to a gaggle of admirers. Winking conspiratorially Cara left for the kitchen and Thomas asked, "What did you think of Tatiana?"

"She is a goddess, but the other day I thought she was your mistress."

"Mistress?" He sneaked a peep into the kitchen, where his fiancee overlorded the help. "Cara would kill me, if she ever caught me with another woman."

"Why was she crying?"

"She bought her loft at the top of the curve and lost nearly 20% of value with the sub-prime crash. She's fucked like a lot of people."

"Guess we all can't be as lucky as you."

"We make our own luck. Like maybe you and her?"

Tatiana stood in the gentle light of the billiard room. Her devotees were obviously rich.

"She looks like she's hunting for a millionaire.

"You underestimate what you have to offer."

"Those men drive BMWs to the Hamptons. I'm a penniless failed writer, who sells diamonds for a living." I didn't even mention Sirinthep as an obstacle. My mia noi was half a world away.

"When we first met, you didn't care anything about money!"

"That crazy poet might have lost a little of his pride." I refrained from confessing my setback in Thailand. Desperation didn't sell well in this city.

"I haven't seen any twenty-year olds dive off the cliff at Lake Minnewaska."

"I jumped."

"Dive sounds better."

"But it isn't the truth."

"People want to hear the truth as much as they want to tell it." Thomas lifted his finger, as if to signal time-out. "You think I got where I am, because I told the truth?"

I examined the luxurious loft.

"Hard work maybe?"

"Shit, hard work is overrated! Maybe that's not true, because you can't grab the ring, if you're not in position, but the business, the loft, and the country house all hinged on a lie told in the right place at the right time." Thomas eyed the distance of the nearest guest. None of them needed to hear what he had to say and I was good at keeping secrets as long as I didn't drink too much.

"Almost sounds like a deal with the Devil."

"And I would have taken his offer. Ten years ago I got into a tight spot. I owed the bank $650,000."

"Ouch!" I was losing sleep over a five-figure debt incurred in Thailand.

"My only asset was that loft on 16th Street worth maybe $450,000. I told the bank I would sell it. They agreed to this deal, because my bankruptcy got them nothing. Unfortunately the best offer was for $650,000."

"Unfortunately?" I earned barely $30,000 last year. That amount of money was a fortune in Thailand.

"$650,000 settled my debt, but left me with nothing." He grabbed two champagne glasses from a passing waiter. "I had grown comfortable with the good life, so I decided to not tell the bank about the extra $200,000."

"The lie?" We clinked glasses and sipped at the champagne. It was vintage.

"Not the important one. My beautiful plan fell apart, because the bank informed the loft board about the sale. They demanded why I was giving them $450,000, when the sale was for $650,000." His eyes narrowed, as if he were trying to remember his exact words. "I said that a sale for $450,000 would lower the value of the other lofts in the building and never be approved by the board, so I lied about the $650,000."

"And they believed you?"

"Yes, I had never lied to them before. That $200,000 bought a small property, which I flipped and soon was back in the money. I haven't told anyone this. Not even Cara."

"So why did you tell me?" Too many grand families in America had sanitized the origins of their wealth, whether it be smuggling of opium, running whiskey or insider trading for me to regard Thomas as a criminal.

"Just so you understand the true reward of lying." He shrugged and said, " Excuse me, but I have to see to my other guests."

I wandered through the crowd, listening to the schemes of rich men. They turned their shoudlers at my approach. I walked into the billiard room, where Andrew spoke with several agitated men on how to best exact revenge from the perpetrators of banking crisis. A balding man in his fifties ventured with a grim grin, "We should confiscate their yachts."

"Who? The government. They'll only waste it on propping up Wall Street," a tall man in an exquisitely black Italian suit countered with what I deemed to be the voice of reason, until he added, "Better to let everyone fend for themselves."

"We do that and we'll have anarchy within a year." A third man with a frail goatee entered the fray. They had all been watching too much business news and Andrew asked me, "Can you come up with a solution?"

"Yes, have international write-off day. All debts canceled. Nothing belongs to any other than what they hold in their hands." I had written a script about this. HEAVEN ABOVE, which had been rejected by several studios. Now might be a better time for such a tale.

"Anarchy is not a solution. Things will get better."

The tall man in the black suit tsked, as if the White House had granted him the concession for selling foreclosed houses in Florida to the Chinese.

"But not this year. Gas will hit $4 this summer. The wars will go on without surrender or victory, but in the meanwhile let's drink champagne. Morituri te salutant."

"Those who are about to die, salute you." Andrew had studied Latin too, but the rest of the men's faces betrayed they thought I was mad and I wandered away onto the terrace to stare at the few stars dotting soft black sky.

None would have been visible, if the Trade Towers were standing together.

Someone put on U2's NEW YORK and a lump choked my throat. I had been born in Boston, yet loved this city and cried like a baby, until the paean-turned-dirge was replaced by Joni Mitchell's CARRIE. Something about her high-pitched soprano dispelled my sorrow, though not as much as the sight of Tatiana in the doorway with two champagne glasses.

"I just got something caught in my eyes."

She had the decency to buy my lie.

"There's a lot of that going around and there will for quite some time." She regarded me, almost as if someone had shed a revealing light about me to which I wasn't privy. "I just hope this crisis isn't forever."

"It's not the end of the world," I told my story of giving blood with a madman on 9/11. "If the insane can recover, then so can the sane. It only takes more time."

"How long do you know Thomas?" Her eyes were steely sapphires.

"We go back."

"He thinks a lot of you." She obviously valued his opinion.

"It wasn't always that way. One time we got into an argument."

"Over a girl?"

"No, over intrinsic value."

"Intrinsic value?" She frowned with disappointment.

"This old variety store in the East Village sold every necessity. The landlord upped the rent and it was replaced by a tee-shirt shop, which Thomas considered the natural course of economic evolution. I argued that no one had taken into consideration the intrinsic value of what the store gave the neighborhood. It got a little heated and people had to hold us back."

"Over a shop selling tee-shirts?"

"Yeah." Neither the tee-shirt shop nor a Blockbusters had succeeded in the space.

"You are sure it wasn't over a woman?"

"No." My soul-kissing his ex-girlfriend had been a joke.

"Men are stupid." She sneered, as if her half of the species was the only worthy cause for a fight.

"We were never friends, until I introduced him to Cara. They were meant for each other like Adam and Eve or Romeo and Juliet. I guess that's was my intrinsic value."

"Everyone has some." Her shadowed profile belonged in a museum and I almost reached out to make sure she was flesh, but she moved to the right like a mirage vanishing from a desert road, only she stopped a pace away and said, "I can't stay here any longer. You mind escorting me to a cab. It's just a cab ride. Nothing else."

"I can deal with nothing else." Her beauty canceled out her heartlessness.

Her suitors couldn't hide their puzzlement of her departure with me. I had no intention of solving the mystery, for it was never good to question the unexpected, especially if the end result was simply a handshake.

I waved good-bye to Andrew.

I had keys and this was going nowhere.

After all I was a married man.

As the elevator door closed, Cara lovingly embraced Thomas. "I didn't suspect that they would leave together.?

"I sort of cheated."

"You tell her he was the heir to a family fortune?"

"No, I said that he had the biggest____" Thomas whispered the rest of his confession into Cara's ear. She laughed raucously and several of the guests turned their heads with knitted brows of disapproval. Cara couldn't care less about what these gringos thought. "And does he?"

"Maybe." Thomas cocked his head to the side, as if it might be the truth.

"Why would you tell such a lie?"

"Because he looked so lonely without his family and I never repaid him for making me a happy man."

"Really?" Like every woman Cara had heard too many lies to believe a single word said by any man.

"Of course, but I still don't understand why he introduced us. It wasn't like he and I were good friends."

Cara pinched his cheek. "I told him to."

"Why?" Thomas asked with all ignorance a man can possess about a woman's wiles. Cara could have hurt his feeling, but she really did love him. "Because you had big feet. Big feet, big shoes. Big shoes____?

"I get the picture." Thomas stared down at his shoes. They didn't seem big.

"Would it have mattered, if they weren't big?"

"Of course not, my love." They didn't have to say another word on the subject. Both of them were happy with the way they were and no one could blame them. After all theirs was a perfect world and that was no lie.

TO LIVE AND DIE IN PATTAYA by Peter Nolan Smith

Pattaya isn't what it used to be in the 90s or 80s. The coconut plantations have been replaced by luxury villas. Interpol and the Thai Police hunt down fugitives and the Russians have taken over the hills, so three summers ago I moved north to Sri Racha with my son Fenway and his mom. The city was a quiet refuge from the madness of the Last Babylon, which was too quiet some nights, and one Friday night Fenway's mom suggested that I go visit old friends in Pattaya.

"I came here to be with you not them."

"I know, but farang have to be with farang sometime. Same Thai have to be with Thai." Thais understand the concept of fun or sanuk better than westerners.

"Are you sure?" Pattaya was filled with temptation.

"Sure you love me forever, no, but no one in Pattaya can love you same me." Mam knows my heart is hers and hers alone and swore that my longtime fidelity has nothing to do with a magic potion. "I not need magic to make you love me."

"You're right." I loved Mam for her and she loves me for me. No one else can handle either of our special madnesses, plus at my age I was too lazy to butterfly with a bargirl or go-go dancer.

"You want go out. Go out. Not get too drunk." Mam worried about my getting into an accident or a fight more than cheating on her.

"I'll only drink beer."

"No tequila. You have son. Not want him not have father."

"Okay, no tequila."

I called Jamie Parker and we arranged to meet at an old haunt.

I kissed Mam and my son good-night and caught a slow bus to Pattaya.

Forty minutes later I walked into Chez Michel on Soi Sahm. Jamie Parker was on his first beer. He had always been thin, but the new gauntness was worrying.

"I know what you're thinking, but I'm okay." The exiled New Yorker explained that he had gone on a six-month Ice binge with little Ort, the twenty-three year-old go-go dancer from the Paris A Go-Go. "It's all over. Ice, Ort, and not eating food."

He ate three courses; salad, steak, and dessert.

Afterward we walked to the Buffalo Bar for a nightcap at a slow pace.

Jamie was in a New York state of mind.

"Tomorrow will be nine years since 9/11. Remember everyone saying how it would change the world. Nothing's changed. Nothing at all."

He paused and a second later a woman's body hit the pavement with a soft thud. We looked up to see from where.

A second-story balcony.

A groan reverted our attention to the woman. Her fall hadn't been fatal. Jamie knelt down to help her.

"Pai ke ki."

She didn't want our help. Two women came out of the shadows. They regarded us as assailants, until recognizing the woman's face. She was no stranger. We called for help, as a crowd gathered around the woman. A pick-up appeared and two men loaded the suicide onto the back of the truck. They drove off to Banglamung Hospital and I overheard from an old lady that the jumper was one of the other woman’s lover. She had found out about her seeing someone else. Her leap to the street had been an act of love. I explained the story to Jamie outside the Buffalo Bar.

"If she had wanted to kill herself, she would have jumped from the roof."

"Have a little heart." People frequently jumped to their death in Pattaya; mostly jilted lovers and bankrupt farangs.

"She broke her arm. That’s all and you know what day today is?" Jamie dragged me to the bar.

"September 10th." I couldn't recall anything significant about the date.

"World Suicide Prevention Day." Jamie ordered two Chang beers. They were stronger than Heineken. "I read about it in the Bangkok Post. She was trying to kill herself on a day like that."

"Suicides aren’t interested in dates only a relief from their misery." Four year ago during my black period I had contemplated killing myself, although only with a gun, which I couldn't afford, and I rejected jumping as too messy.

"Then she should have picked another day. The terrorists from 9/11 did."

"9/10/2001 was rainy. Ceiling visibility in New York was a 1000 feet." No way they could have found the World Trade Towers in that slop.

"I know, but the real reason they didn't pick 9/10 was that it was World Suicide Prevention Day or maybe someone talked them out of it."

"You really think nineteen towelheads had any idea about what day it was." I had never heard of World Suicide Prevention day until Jamie mentioned it.

"Yeah, I do and your'e being a little anti-semitic with a statement like that. If you're going to drive a plane into a building then you want things right. Everything. They did it on 9/10 out of respect for what they were about to do. Suicide."

"You're crazy."

"Then you give me a good reason why they chose 9/11."

"It had nothing to do with 911 being the emergency telephone call letters for many countries." I sipped the beer from my glass. The ice made it nice and cold. I had actually researched the numbers once and said, "9 is the second cube and 11 symbolizes threat in numerology. Revelation 9:11 warns of destruction. George Bush Senior declared the creation of The New World Order on 9/11/2000. Eleven years later 9/11 and 9+1+1=11. September 11 is also the 254th day of the year: 2 + 5 + 4 = 11."

"Stop it before you go mad."

"Two tequilas." I signaled the bartender to make them doubles.

I had seen a man go insane on numbers before. He was trying to figure out how much a girl loved him by the times that she didn't kiss him. The answer came up zero.

Bix was found dead in a park at the northern tip of Manhattan. His fingernail had scratched arcane formulae in stone. My fascination with number came from studying Math in university. My Multivariable Calculus professor failed me in my sophomore year. He had done me a favor, but I still respected the power of numbers and said to Jamie, "Numbers are only numbers."

"So 9/11 is just a number."

"Nothing more." I wondered how many times 9/11 had been said since 9/11.

Billions of times a day. Those numbers added up to no good, especially since the Pentago construction began on September 11, 1941.

"But not if you consider GW Bush as the anti-Christ." I lifted my glass.

"And you do?" Jamie’s eyes rolled in his head like a broken slot machine. He was no fan of GW Bush, but he didn't believe in any devil other than himself.

"I don't believe in anything, other than my son, my wife, and beer."

We downed the tequilas.

"If you don't mind, I think I'll keep trying to kill myself with beer." I ordered two more Chang. "Is that all right with you?"

"It's not like we have a choice."

"Beer." We clinked glasses. "The only way to go."

On any day of the year.

RETURN TO NORMAL by Peter Nolan Smith

Two weeks after the collapse of the Trade Towers the westerly wind shifted and a southern breeze spread the funereal smoke across Lower Manhattan. The poisonous fumes smelled of a blazing cannibal BBQ.

Later that afternoon I caught a train north to Boston. My sister put me up in her basement. I watched the Red Sox on TV. My home team were too far out of first to gain a spot in the play-offs. My sister joined me and said, "Another year of the Babe Ruth Curse, but it looks like the Yankees might make the playoffs."

"Not many New Yorkers are talking about baseball these days."

"They will one day."

"I supposed life must go on."

"It always does," answered my sister and she went up to bed.

The Red Sox lost in the late innings.

Life did go on.

On the weekend my sister suggested a drive to Newport, Rhode Island. The yacht club was holding its annual boat show and her husband was thinking of purchasing a new boat.

"I'm not really into boats."

"I'll bring my bike and you can ride around Newport." My sister understood my mindset. We were family.

"That'd be nice." I hadn't been to Newport since the 1969 Jazz Festival. Led Zeppelin closed out the show. My older brother and I left during DAZED AND CONFUSED to beat the traffic. The bass line thundered for miles, as we drove away into the night.

That Saturday in 2001 was a tribute to a New England autumn. Clouds dotted the sky and the a cool breeze shunted summer south. The trees were changing colors. We dressed for the season.

My sister's husband sped to Newport in his three year-old Audi. Work at his law firm had resumed several days after the planes hit the Trade Towers. The cars on the highway drove 10-15 miles over the speed limit. The radio was playing Gloria Gaynor's DON'T LEAVE ME THIS WAY.

I sat in the back seat with my four year-old niece. Warah was talking about her doll. Its name was Shirley. I listened to every word, wishing my name was Shirley too. Anything to get the image of a burning people hurtling out of Windows of the World out of my brain.

We arrived in Newport around noon. The parking lots for the Boat Show was packed with gleaming Benzs, SUVs, and sports cars. I unloaded my brother-in-law's bike from the roof rack and my sister suggested a ride around the peninsula.

"We'll meet you back here around 4."

"It won't take him that long to bike around Newport."

My brother-in-law liked doing things fast. He was a Yale graduate.

"I'm in no hurry." I had finished BC without any honors. I took my time, plus these days rushing around seemed senseless.

"Uncle Bubba, wear a helmet." My niece was well-trained in safety measures.

"For you always." I tugged on the plastic brain basket and waved good-bye.

I looked over my shoulder passing Brenton Cove. The Jamestown Bridge gleamed in the sunlight. The long span had replaced the old ferry.

I circled stone walls of Fort Adams. Several families picnicked on the lawn. The aroma of hot dogs wafted through the park. People were having fun.

Farther along I passed the Country Club. Men and women stood on the fairways dressed in colorful clothing. A solid whack signaled a good drive for an older man. The ball flew through the air to land on the green. The golfer wore a broad smile, as he handed his iron to the caddie.

Upon reaching Ocean Avenue I biked east along the rocky shore and wheeled into Goose Neck Cove. The shimmering white sands of Gooseberry Beach were empty. The lifeguards had retired for the summer and swimming was prohibited by law. I ditched the bike in the dunes and swam in my underwear. The cold waters of the Atlantic brought back memories of childhood visits to Newport with my parents. I toweled dry with my teeshirt and continued on my route past the summer cottages of Gilded Age.

My mother loved viewing the rich people's mansions.

Surfers dotted the break beneath the Marble House. The waves stretched like corduroy to the horizon. I ate fried clams at Floe's Clam Shack. The crisp fried batter complimented the Ipswich clams and I washed down the traditional New England repast with a Narragansett beer. It was 3 and I returned to the Yacht Club.

The Boat Show was winding down and many of the visitors relaxed around the tables with a Bud. I rested the bike against a chain link fence and sat at a bar. The nearby conversations were mostly about boats, but a trio of overweight men in their 40s were discussing 9/11.

The subject quickly narrowed to revenge.

"We should go over there and kill them all," a bald-headed man spoke in strident tones. He looked as if no one in his family had left the USA since World War II.

"Why go anywhere?" His jock friend was red-faced from either drink or sun. "Press a button and nuke them to the Stone Age."

"Who are we attacking?" I asked the men.

"And you are who?" The bald man regarded me with suspicion.

"A fellow American curious about your choice on who we should attack."

"The president says Al-Qaeda and they're in Afghanistan."

"That's a start," his friend added, signaling for a round of Bud-Lite beer.

"And then Saddam in Iraq. He tried to kill the president's father. The Afghanis and Saddam." The more athletic of the group pointed in my direction with suspicion. He wanted more than an eye for an eye from the perpetrators of 9/11

"How many Iraqis and Afghanis were on the planes in 9/11?" I knew the answer.

"Ten."

"None. Not one."

"Bullshit." He was convinced of their guilt by the wrath of politicians and TV news commentators. America was out for blood. Whose blood didn't matter as long as the red flowed from a Muslim.

"Not bullshit. The truth. The fifteen hijackers were Saudis and the four pilot came from anywhere else, but not Iraq or Afghanistan."

"Saddam financed it those towel-heads in Afghanistan." The jock had a TV sense of geo-politics. "The Taliban were sheltering the enemy."

“Why do you think we were attacked?”

“It’s unimportant. Fucking the Arabs is what we have to do. Tora Tora Tora just like the Japs at Pearl Harbor."

"No mercy."

I was into revenge too. The buildings had fallen less than a mile from my apartment on East 10th Street, although I wasn't giving the president a carte blanche for total destruction of the Middle East.

"They deserve whatever they get."

They clinked plastic champagne glasses and hooted like owls on steroids. I strangled my responses. No one in America wanted to hear any arguments against a rush to judgment. Everyone's blood was up.

Mine too, but for different reasons.

My brother-in-law motioned for me to join him. I left the bar without any good-byes.

"You have a good ride?" His hand was filled with brochures.

"It was a good day for it."

And so were the days after it, because I was alive and alive was a good thing for anyone who have lived through 9/11.

There were billions of us.

September 10, 2001

I well remember 9/10/2001.

It rained all day in New York.

The day before I had almost gone swimming at Lake Awosting, except the park ranger blocked the path to the old granite swimming hole. No one was allowed in the lake after Labor Day to avoid legal problems from drunken locals and tourists.

There was no one swimming at the Coney Island or the Rockaways on 9/10/01.

Rain and a lot of it.

I recall turning on the TV and seeing the weather report for the next day.

Sunny cloudless skies and that sounded lovely to me.