Scareship_Issue8

Probably a waste of energy but he doesn’t have much to do this
week.
Back down to the river and uptown, and as the highway rises,
he ponders the choice he will soon have: to follow the curve of the
highway over the GWB to Jersey, or to cross to The Bronx or
Queens. He looks around, and sees what he hadn’t seen before:
remnants of smoke like thin silk scarves, twisting and spreading
and fading, out by the airport.
He walks quickly downtown, across the Triborough Bridge,
through Ward’s Island and over into Queens. Cars here and there
like dead insects. The smoke vanishes and reappears, and when he
gets to the airport, he finds the strewn jumble of a jet. He’s not sure
what he would do if he found any bodies in it (there are none
apparent from far away) and he decides against further
investigation of the wreckage. Instead, he wanders through the
airport, past sad luggage circling unclaimed, past a bar where
cigarettes are stubbed out, some with lipstick. He sits for a few
minutes, grabs a beer and a bag of chips, and pretends that he is
waiting for a flight, and it’s late, and the bartender’s gone the to
bathroom, and life is there.
But that isn’t true. There are planes at other airports, scattered
and charred, and other planes sitting there waiting for passengers
and pilots who will never come. The rows of flights on the wall all
say “On schedule” or “Delayed” but they are all gone. He grabs a
bottle of expensive vodka, and leaves.
It’s too late now to get to Jersey and back, and while there is
no danger in the darkness, he is more terrified of it than he ever has
been. (Were there traffic copters then, whirring in the pre-dawn
black? Might have been too early for them.)
Tommy heads back home, watching the light between the
buildings, red and silver reflections off glass and steel on the newer
buildings, while red and clear lighting touches some decoration or
ornateness on the older buildings and shadows brush over stone
spirals and grooves around windows and rooftops. He imagines the
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