“What tower?” asked Luis.

“The two towers,” Bobbie said. “The two towers in New York. The ones that are so big you can see them —”

“Oh, she means the trade center!” Luis muttered with contempt. “What, was there a fire?”

“No, a plane. I’m reading it,” Bobbie said crossly. Then, after a pause, she murmured, with awed gravity, but not without excitement, “They’re saying here that everyone on the plane has to be dead.”

Luis, now getting excited as well, and impatient, spat out, “A plane?” Lizette came in then in her long turquoise skirt, having heard about it on the portable radio she now had in her hands. Annika stepped back from the computer to let the three of them figure it out. She mentioned that perhaps the weather was bad in New York this morning; it must be foggy, if the pilots couldn’t even see.

She backed out into the hall to see whether or not the black-haired woman was still waiting for her and Luis. She was, and craning her neck over the counter to try and see what the trouble was. When she saw Annika, she threw her hands up again.

“Well?” she called.

Annika held up one finger. “Just a minute. We’re figuring it out.”

Luis rolled his eyes when she came back in. “That woman is stupid,” he said. He was now reading aloud from Bobbie’s computer screen and offering commentary. The people on the top of the tower had to be dead. Annika heard that and felt her first deep twinge of pity and sorrow.

They discussed how not one of them in the office had ever been to New York, unless you counted Luis flying out of La Guardia. How tall did the towers look really? The pilot might have been drunk, or maybe he was working too hard. Lizette had heard something, not too long ago, on the radio she had heard it, about pilots working too many hours, and complaining that they were too tired and it wasn’t safe. But no one had listened. Maybe the airline companies would sit up and take notice, now that this had happened.

They all stayed in Bobbie’s office until they said on the radio that meanwhile a second plane had hit.

“Well, Jesus,” Luis said after a moment, “now it sounds like it’s on purpose.”

“Oh, not really,” Annika said, letting her tone tease him a little.

“What, you think it could never happen?” Lizette retorted in a hard voice, then turned sharply and walked out of the room. Annika was shocked and felt tears sting her eyes. Lizette was smart and tough, but she and Annika were friends; she had always treated Annika with especial kindness. Luis walked out, too.

What was really remarkable was how easily all of them did register it; immediately Annika felt them all become sensitive and alert — in the way monkeys, on hearing the screams of other monkeys being killed, run not to help but to save themselves.

“Well, honey,” Bobbie said dramatically, turning to look at Annika and raising her penciled brows, “it looks like New York has been attacked!”

“But it doesn’t have that much to do with us?” Annika asked softly.

When she went to her desk, Lizette, her eyes still blazing, nonetheless came over to apologize for snapping at her. Luis came over too and helped Lizette answer the question that Bobbie had not. Oh, yes, it could have a terribly big amount to do with them. It was about all of them, said Lizette fiercely, in fact it was an indictment on all of them — but when Luis began to tell some of the gory details that were coming out of the city, Lizette’s lip trembled and she went immediately to her desk to be alone.

What was really remarkable was how easily all of them did register it; immediately Annika felt them all become sensitive and alert — in the way monkeys, on hearing the screams of other monkeys being killed, run not to help but to save themselves.