We All Fall Down: The True Story of the 9/11 Surfer Read Online Free PDF Page A

buildings, damaged and vomiting smoke out over New York, into that clear morning sky.
    The phone rang.
    Maybe it’s Pasquale, on his way down to the street, she hoped.
    But it wasn’t. It was his cousin Ralph Molfetta, the brother Pasquale never had.
    She took a deep breath and waited for the inevitable questions that she wouldn’t have answers to.
    “Er, have you talked to Pasquale today? Have you talked to him?” Ralph asked, cautiously tiptoeing around what she already knew.
    “Yes, Ralph. I talked to him a few minutes ago. He’s in the building, but he’s okay.”
    “Did you see what happened?” His voice was tentative, as if he didn’t want to take a chance with his cousin’s pregnant wife. Ralph had been best man at their wedding. He loved Pasquale as much as she did, and she knew his own feelings mirrored hers. She was sure he must have been feeling something of what she felt: that same paralyzing fear.
    “I’m…watching,” she answered.
    “I’m at home right now.” Ralph lived in West New York, New Jersey, directly across the Hudson from the Manhattan skyline, giving him a clear view of the Twin Towers. “Don’t worry, Louise,” Ralph reassured her in true Italian big-brother fashion. “Pasquale’s gonna be all right. He’ll be okay. You know Pasquale. Nothing’s going to get him.”
    “I know, Ralph. I know.”
    As soon as she hung up, the phone rang again. She answered. This will be Pasquale, and this will all be over. It will be Pasquale, and he’ll say, “Louise?” and I’ll finally wake up…
    “Louise?” said her cousin Joanne, her former maid of honor. “I’m coming over.” She’d be coming from Westchester. “I’m leaving work now. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”
    Louise nodded, as if Joanne could see her indicating, “Yes, it would be all right to come over. Please come.” She knew someone should be there with her. If it couldn’t be Pasquale, then another person she loved would help her through it. She would need others . But only until Pasquale gets home.
    She tried to sit on the bench by the phone but couldn’t stay still. She couldn’t stand and look out the window, not down at the empty yard with the mowed green lawn, the beds of colorful September flowers, and the blue of their pool. It was all too ordinary, too peaceful, and too unreal.
    She couldn’t get dressed either. She couldn’t get out of the orange Gap shorts and white t-shirt that now held her captive. She couldn’t bother with her long, honey-colored hair. All she could do was pace and watch, first the phone, then the television. There was nothing she could do; no one to call; no way to save him. All Louise Buzzelli could do was wait…and pray.
    Pasquale’s white work shirt, the shirt he’d worn the day before, still hung on the bedpost. Usually she hated when he didn’t bother picking up after himself, but not that day. That day, she grabbed the shirt and put it on. There was the feel of him to it, the smell of him, as if he were there with his arms around her, making life better—the way he always had: her big, gorgeous Italian husband. She hugged the shirt to her body, squeezed the fabric in her hand, and held on.
    He shouldn’t have gone back to work there after that ‘93 bombing, she told herself angrily as she searched the room for something else of comfort, something from their life together. I knew it! I hate that building. I hate where he works, up there near the top.
    Somewhere in her mind, there’d always lurked the fear of fire. How would he get out if the building burned? she’d often silently and audibly wondered, but Pasquale had always assured her that the building would never burn. “They have…technology,” he’d said.
    But now… she thought as she stood in the house they’d dreamt of together, soon to hold the baby they’d always wanted, now he can’t go back there. He’s okay. I just talked to him. He’s all right. They’ll have to give him time off.