I always thought my friend Charles Knight had nine lives. Who knew he'd used them all up on September 11th?
Charles - or PeeWee as his mom insisted on calling him long after he'd become Senior Vice President of an international bond trading firm - lived in the house next store from the time we were first graders together at PF 123 in East Brunswick, New Jersey until we both finished Rutgers. Then I went off to med school and Charles started climbing the corporate ladder on Wall Street.
Even as a kid he was a wheeler dealer. He was the only adolescent among us who understood the genius of economies of scale, networking and using other people's money. By fifteen he had a piece of just about every after school business we neighborhood kids were into - from babysitting, to newspaper delivery, to snow removal to lawn service. Charles negotiated our contracts, arranged our schedules, collected our fees and then took a piece of the action. "That's for administration," he'd say. And we never complained. At fifteen he'd reached all of the five feet four height he would ever attain - the shortest kid on the block. But it didn't matter. We all looked up to PeeWee. He was the one we wanted to emulate- even when we knew we never could.
He loved taking risks - whether staying up all night smoking pot before the SATs or superimposing the principal's face onto the naked torso of an internet porn queen, then importing her new image to the school's website. Charles got high on the possibility of losing it all. I guess that's why Wall Street was such a draw.
I actually lost touch with Charles for almost eight years, then ran into him on a Manhattan street in late December of 1993. I was Christmas shopping for my then fiancée, now ex-wife and was exiting Bloomingdale's on Fifth Avenue when I spotted him crossing the street toward me. He was staring in my direction, but didn't seem to see me. In fact, it appeared that he was lost in deep thought and almost missed the curb, so I grabbed his arm and pulled him onto the sidewalk just as a taxi swerved to avoid him.
"Thanks," he muttered, as if to a stranger and began to head off.
"Is that any way to thank an old friend who just saved your life?" I quipped.
Charles focused now. "My God, Sam. I…I didn't see…."
"Yeah, you seemed out to lunch. How've you been?"
"I…uh…" Always quick on the draw with words, I was surprised by his stuttering. Now that I took a good look at him, he seemed just this side of disheveled - tie not properly knotted, five o'clock shadow at noon, dark circles under his eyes.
"Listen, how about a cup of coffee," I suggested, taking his elbow and guiding him into the Starbucks on the corner.
"Sure, I guess I have a minute."
When we'd ordered our café mistes and sat down at a table in the corner, I asked him to tell me what was wrong.
"It's…I don't know if I can….I haven't really told anyone…."
"Charles, we're old friends, for God's sake. We go way back. You know you can tell me anything. Besides," I smiled, "I'm a psychiatrist now, so I might even be able to help."
Charles shook his head. "Sam, I'm so ashamed."
"It can't be that bad."
Charles sighed, "I was riding the Long Island commuter train on December 7th."
At first the date didn't ring a bell and then I realized that just two weeks before a black man named Colin Ferguson had opened fire on innocent riders, leaving six people dead and nineteen injured. The story made the international wires and was still playing in this country.
"My God, you were on that train? It must have been terrible for you. Did you see the shootings?"
Charles exhaled slowly, an obvious attempt to contain emotions. "I…I…I ran away." His lower lip trembled as he explained that when Ferguson pulled out his gun, he slipped under a seat and while the shooter sought out victims near the front of the car, Charles crawled his way to the rear on his belly. At the first opportunity, he rushed through the back door into the safety of the next car. "I never even tried to help," he said, stifling a sob. "All I could think of was saving my own neck. The second the train stopped, I jumped off and ran like hell. I guess, in the confusion, no one noticed."
"You didn't do anything wrong," I said.
"Then why do I feel so guilty?"
"It's a normal reaction. We call it 'survivor's guilt'."
Charles sighed. "I keep having these bad dreams. There's a man dressed in black standing at the end of a long road - just standing there with his hand outstretched - waiting. I'm afraid to ask him what he wants, though I seem to know that it's me he's waiting for. I wake up in a cold sweat and I'm still alive, but I wonder when I'll have to pay for my selfishness."
"Charles, you couldn't have helped the others on the train. Ferguson had a gun."
My friend closed his eyes, as if hoping to shut out his demons. "You think I need a shrink?"
" A little counseling couldn't hurt. You've been through a great deal more stress than you realize."
Charles opened his eyes and leveled a tired gaze at me. "You may be right."
"I'd be happy to make myself available if you like - or I could refer you…."
"No, if I'm going to have my head examined, you'd be the one I'd choose to do it!"
I was happy to see that Charles hadn't lost his sense of humor. "How about Friday afternoon at 3PM?" I handed him my card.
Charles smiled. "I'll be there," he promised.
And he kept his word. For six months I spent a fifty minute hour with my friend and now patient, Charles Knight, helping him work through buried guilts and issues of mortality. By June Charles told me he was finally back to a nightmare-free full five hours sleep (he never required more), had gained back the weight he'd lost and was having a record year as a trader. He was ready to end his therapy.
"You know I never told you this one before," he said on the afternoon of our last session. "I never told anyone. February 26th, I was in my corner office on the 98th floor of the World Trade Center when four terrorists denotated a bomb in the underground parking lot."
Jesus, I thought to myself, recalling that six people had died and a thousand injured that day. Two major traumas in one year. Each alone would have been enough to send anyone into a tailspin of depression.
"You know how I made it?" he asked.
As a psychiatrist, I have been trained to wait for patients to answer their own questions, so I said nothing.
"I didn't try to help my co-workers. Just like on the train" He shook his head. "I saw everyone heading for the stairs that led down to the street and at first I was going to follow, but then I heard it - a helicopter way off in the distance and without even thinking, I slipped out a side door and ran up twelve floors to the roof. I was the only one that thought of it. That helicopter saved my life." Charles was quiet for a long time, then smiled to himself, as if he had just made some illuminating self-discovery. Finally, he looked at me. "First the World Trade Center bombing and now the train shooting. I guess I am a lucky sonofabitch."
That was the last time I saw my friend. I did read in the Wall Street Journal that he was named Trader of the Year. There was an accompanying picture - Charles looking every bit the Master of the Universe.
That was eight years ago. Then last month, on September 11th, the unthinkable happened. Eleven terrorists high jacked two jumbo jets and slammed then into the Twin Towers. I was with a patient when my secretary ran in, screaming hysterically that the World Trade Center was collapsing. She threw open my office drapes to reveal a nightmare tableau. Even from ten blocks away, the air was dark as night, thick with smoke and debris. Instantly I thought of Charles and hurriedly dialed his private phone number, but the line was dead.
Two weeks later, I visited his parents who still lived in the same house in East Brunswick. They seemed to have aged far beyond the sixteen years since I'd last seen them.
Mrs. Knight clutched me to her bosom. "Pee Wee called us when the first plane hit and told us not to worry," she reported in a quiet voice, her red-rimmed eyes betraying her grief. "I begged him to get out of there, to run to the lobby. But he just laughed the way he did; said he'd be okay because he was always lucky."
I don't know why, but I asked if they knew whether Charles had tried to get out and Mrs. Knight nodded. "Someone saw him take the stairs to the roof. That was about the time the building came down." Her calm finally gave way to tears. Later, when she'd dried her eyes, she looked at me with a sad smile. "The woman who saw Pee Wee said he was helping someone up the stairs. An older man. She didn't know the fellow's name, but she said they were holding hands and she'd never forget the way he was dressed - all in black. I suppose it doesn't really matter now, I'll always wonder who that man was."
Since that day I also often wonder about the identity of the man in black. Was he the hand of death in Charles' nightmare or was he just a fellow victim to whom Charles had offered a helping hand?
Determined to confront the hazy memories of his troubled youth, Oliver Matthews, a retired detective and confirmed bachelor, returns to the picturesque town of Henley-on-Thames for the first time in years.
The bulk of the collection is eight short stories that are set in yesteryear. The compilation is filled out with four entertaining fantasy pieces and three poems.
