“It’s a song?” the director asks. He doesn’t understand.
“It’s on a Wings album,” I’m saying. “It’s on the Band on the Run album.”
“And?” the director asks, confused.
“It’s not a flight number,” I’m saying.
“What isn’t?”
“Five-one-one,” I say.
“Five-one-one isn’t the flight number?” the director asks. “But this is it.” The director gestures toward the video screen. “That’s flight five-one-one.”
“No,” I’m saying. “It’s how long the song is.” I take in a deep breath, exhaling shakily. “That song is five minutes and eleven seconds long. It’s not a flight number.”
And in another sky, another plane is reaching cruising altitude.
0
Night over France, and a giant shadow, a monstrous backdrop, is forming itself in the sky as the 747 approaches 17,000 feet, climbing to cruising altitude. The camera moves in on an airmail parcel bearing a Georgetown address, in which a Toshiba cassette player has been packed. The device will be activated as the opening piano notes to the song “1985” by Paul McCartney and Wings (Band on the Run; Apple Records; 1973) start playing. The bomb will detonate on the final crashing cymbal of the song—five minutes and eleven seconds after it began. A relatively simple microchip timer and strips of Remform equaling twenty ounces are in the Toshiba cassette player, and the parcel has been placed near the skin of the plane, where it will break through the fuselage, weakening the frame, causing the plane to break apart with greater ease. The plane is traveling at 350 miles an hour and is now at an altitude of 14,500 feet.
A giant crunching sound interrupts the pilot’s conversation over the cockpit recording.
A violent noise, a distinct crashing sound, is followed by massive creaking, which rapidly starts repeating itself.
Smoke immediately starts pouring into the main cabin.
The front end of the 747—including the cockpit and part of the first-class cabin—breaks away, plunging toward earth as the rest of the plane hurtles forward, propelled by the still intact engines. A complete row near the explosion—the people strapped in those seats screaming—is sucked out of the aircraft.
This goes on for thirty seconds, until the plane starts breaking apart, a huge section of ceiling ripping away to reveal a wide vista of black sky.
And with its engines still running, the plane keeps flying but then drops three thousand feet.
The noise the air makes is like a siren.
Bottles of liquor, utensils, food from the kitchen—all fly backward into the business-class and coach cabins.
And the dying comes in waves.
People are rammed backward, bent in half, pulled up out of their seats, teeth are knocked out of heads, people are blinded, their bodies thrown through the air into the ceiling and then hurled into the back of the plane, smashing into other screaming passengers, as shards of aluminum keep breaking off the fuselage, spinning into the packed plane and shearing off limbs, and blood’s whirling everywhere, people getting soaked with it, spitting it out of their mouths, trying to blink it out of their eyes, and then a huge chunk of metal flies into the cabin and scalps an entire row of passengers, shearing off the tops of their skulls, as another shard flies into the face of a young woman, halving her head but not killing her yet.
The problem is that so many people are not ready to die, and they start vomiting with panic and fear as the plane drops another thousand feet.
Something else within the plane breaks.
In the next moment, another roar as the plane starts breaking up more rapidly and the dying comes in waves.
Someone is spun around frantically before being sucked out of the hull of the craft, twirling into the air, his body hitting the frame and tearing in two, but he’s still able to reach out his hands for help as he’s sucked screaming from the plane. Another young man keeps shouting “Mom Mom Mom” until part of the fuselage flies backward, pinning him to his seat and ripping him in half, but he just goes into shock and doesn’t die until the plane smashes haphazardly into the forest below and the dying comes in waves.
In the business section everyone is soaked with blood, someone’s head is completely encased with intestines that flew out of what’s left of the woman sitting two rows in front of him and people are screaming and crying uncontrollably, wailing with grief.
The dying are lashed with jet fuel as it starts spraying into the cabin.
One row is sprayed with the blood and viscera of the passengers in the row before them, who have been sliced in two.
Another row is decapitated by a huge sheet of flying aluminum, and blood keeps whirling throughout the cabin everywhere, mixing in with the jet fuel.
The fuel unleashes something, forces the passengers to comprehend a simple fact: that they have to let people go—mothers and sons, parents and children, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives—and that dying is inevitable in what could be a matter of seconds. They realize there is no hope. But understanding this horrible death just stretches the seconds out longer as they try to prepare for it—people still alive being flung around the aircraft falling to earth, screaming and vomiting and crying involuntarily, bodies contorted while they brace themselves, heads bowed down.
“Why me?” someone wonders uselessly.
A leg is caught in a tangle of metal and wires and it waves wildly in the air as the plane continues to drop.
Of the three Camden graduates aboard the 747—Amanda Taylor (’86), Stephanie Meyers (’87) and Susan Goldman (’86)—Amanda is killed first when she’s struck by a beam that crashes through the ceiling of the plane, her son reaching out to her as he’s lifted out of his seat into the air, his arms outstretched as his head mercifully smashes against an overhead bin in the craft, killing him instantly.
Susan Goldman, who has cervical cancer, is partly thankful as she braces herself but changes her mind as she’s sprayed with burning jet fuel.
The plane ignites and a huge wave of people die by inhaling flames, their mouths and throats and lungs charred black.
For some, a minute of falling while still conscious.
Onto a forest situated just seventy miles outside Paris.
The soft sounds of bodies imploding, torn apart on impact.
A massive section of the fuselage lands and because of an emergency backup system, all the lights in the plane continue flickering as a hail of glowing ash rains down.
A long pause.
The bodies lie clustered in clumps. Some—but very few—of the passengers have no marks on them, even though all their bones have been broken. Some passengers have been crushed to half or a third or even a quarter of their normal size. One man has been so compressed he resembles some kind of human bag, a shape with a vague head attached to it, the face pushed in and stark white. Other passengers have been mutilated by shrapnel, some so mangled that men and women become indistinguishable, all of them naked, their clothes blown off on the downward fall, some of them flash-burned.
And the smell of rot is everywhere—coming off dismembered feet and arms and legs and torsos propped upright, off piles of intestines and crushed skulls, and the heads that are intact have screams etched across their faces. And the trees that don’t burn will have to be felled to extract airplane pieces and to recover the body parts that ornament them, yellow strings of fatty tissue draped over branches, a macabre tinsel. Stephanie Meyers is still strapped in her seat, which hangs from one of those trees, her eyeballs burned out of their sockets. And since a cargo of party confetti and gold glitter—two tons of it—were being transported to America, millions of tiny dots of purple and green and pink and orange paper cascade over the carnage.
This is what makes up the forest now: thousands of steel rivets, the unbroken door of the plane, a row of cabin windows, huge sheets of insulation, life jackets, giant clumps of wiring, rows of empty seat cushions—belts still fastened—shredded and covered with blood and ma
tted with viscera, and some of the seat backs have passengers’ impressions burned into them. Dogs and cats lie crushed in their kennels.
For some reason the majority of passengers on this flight were under thirty, and the debris reflects this: cell phones and laptops and Ray-Ban sunglasses and baseball caps and pairs of Rollerblades tied together and camcorders and mangled guitars and hundreds of CDs and fashion magazines (including the YouthQuake with Victor Ward on the cover) and entire wardrobes of Calvin Klein and Armani and Ralph Lauren hang from burning trees and there’s a teddy bear soaked with blood and a Bible and various Nintendo games along with rolls of toilet paper and shoulder bags and engagement rings and pens and belts whipped off waists and Prada purses still clasped and boxes of Calvin Klein boxer-briefs and so many clothes from the Gap contaminated with blood and other body fluids and everything reeks of aviation fuel.
The only things that suggest living: a wind billows across the wreckage, the moon rises into an expanse of sky so dark it’s almost abstract, confetti and glitter continue raining down. Aviation fuel starts burning the trees in the forest, the word CANCELED appears on a big black arrival board at JFK airport in New York, and the next morning, as the sun rises gently over cleanup crews, church bells start ringing and psychics start calling in with tips and then the gossip begins.
5
9
I’m walking through Washington Square Park, carrying a Kenneth Cole leather portfolio that holds my lawbooks and a bottle of Evian water. I’m dressed casually, in Tommy Hilfiger jeans, a camel-hair sweater, a wool overcoat from Burberrys. I’m stepping out of the way of Rollerbladers and avoiding clusters of Japanese NYU film students shooting movies. From a nearby boom box Jamaican trip-hop plays, from another boom box the Eagles’ “New Kid in Town,” and I’m smiling to myself. My beeper keeps going off. Chris Cuomo keeps calling, as does Alison Poole, whom I rather like and plan to see later this evening. On University, I run into my newly appointed guru and spiritual adviser, Deepak.
Deepak is wearing a Donna Karan suit and Diesel sunglasses, smoking a cigar. “Partagas Perfecto,” he purrs in a distinct Indian accent. I purr back “Hoo-ha” admiringly. We exchange opinions about a trendy new restaurant (oh, there are so many) and the upcoming photo shoot I’m doing for George magazine, how someone’s AIDS has gone into remission, how someone’s liver disease has been cured, the exorcism of a haunted town house in Gramercy Park, the evil spirits that were flushed out by the goodwill of angels.
“That’s so brill, man,” I’m saying. “That’s so genius.”
“You see that bench?” Deepak says.
“Yes,” I say.
“You think it’s a bench,” Deepak says. “But it isn’t.” I smile patiently.
“It’s also you,” Deepak says. “You, Victor, are also that bench.”
Deepak bows slightly.
“I know I’ve changed,” I tell Deepak. “I’m a different person now.”
Deepak bows slightly again.
“I am that bench,” I hear myself say.
“You see that pigeon?” Deepak asks.
“Baby, I’ve gotta run,” I interrupt. “I’ll catch you later.”
“Don’t fear the reaper, Victor,” Deepak says, walking away.
I’m nodding mindlessly, a vacant grin pasted on my face, until I turn around and mutter to myself, “I am the fucking reaper, Deepak,” and a pretty girl smiles at me from underneath an awning and it’s Wednesday and late afternoon and getting dark.
8
After a private workout with Reed, my personal trainer, I take a shower in the Philippe Starck locker room and as I’m standing in front of a mirror, a white Ralph Lauren towel wrapped around my waist, I notice Reed standing behind me, wearing a black Helmut Lang leather jacket. I’m swigging from an Evian bottle. I’m rubbing Clinique turnaround lotion into my face. I just brushed past a model named Mark Vanderloo, who recited a mininarrative about his life that was of no interest to me. A lounge version of “Wichita Lineman” is piped through the gym’s sound system and I’m grooving out on it in my own way.
“What’s up?” I ask Reed.
“Buddy?” Reed says, his voice thick.
“Yeah?” I turn around.
“Give Reed a hug.”
A pause in which to consider things. To wipe my hands on the towel wrapped around my waist.
“Why … man?”
“Because you’ve really come a long way, man,” Reed says, his voice filled with emotion. “It’s weird but I’m really choked up by all you’ve accomplished.”
“Hey Reed, I couldn’t have done it without you, man,” I’m saying. “You deserve a bonus. You really got me into shape.”
“And your attitude is impeccable,” Reed adds.
“No more drinking binges, I’ve cut down on partying, law school’s great, I’m in a long-term relationship.” I slip on a Brooks Brothers T-shirt. “I’ve stopped seriously deluding myself and I’m rereading Dostoyevsky. I owe it all to you, man.”
Reed’s eyes water.
“And you stopped smoking,” Reed says.
“Yep.”
“And your body fat’s down to seven percent.”
“Oh man.”
“You’re the kind of guy, Victor, that makes this job worthwhile.” Reed chokes back a sob. “I mean that.”
“I know, man.” I rest a hand on his shoulder.
As Reed walks me out onto Fifth Avenue he asks, “How’s that apple diet working out?”
“Great,” I say, waving down a cab. “My girlfriend says my seminal fluid tastes sweeter.”
“That’s cool, man,” Reed says.
I hop into a cab.
Before the door closes, Reed leans in and, offering his hand after a pause, says, “I’m sorry about Chloe, man.”
7
After some impassioned clothing removal I’m sucking lightly on Alison’s breasts and I keep looking up at her, making eye contact, rolling my tongue across her nipples and holding on to her breasts, applying slight pressure but not squeezing them, and she keeps sighing, content. Afterwards Alison admits she never faked an orgasm for my benefit. We’re lying on her bed, the two dogs—Mr. and Mrs. Chow—snuggled deeply in the folds of a neon-pink comforter at our feet, and I’m running my hands through their fur. Alison’s talking about Aerosmith as a Joni Mitchell CD plays throughout the room at low volume.
“Steven Tyler recently admitted that his first wet dream was about Jane Fonda.” Alison sighs, sucks in on a joint I didn’t hear her light. “How old does that make him?”
I keep stroking Mr. Chow, scratching his ears, both his eyes shut tight with pleasure.
“I want a dog,” I murmur. “I want a pet.”
“You used to hate these dogs,” Alison says. “What do you mean, a pet? The only pet you ever owned was the Armani eagle.”
“Yeah, but I changed my mind.”
“I think that’s good,” Alison says genuinely.
A long pause. The dogs reposition themselves, pressing in close to me.
“I hear you’re seeing Damien tomorrow,” Alison says.
I stiffen up a little. “Do you care?”
“What are you seeing him about?” she asks.
“I’m telling him”—I sigh, relax—“I’m telling him that I can’t open this club with him. Law school’s just too … time-consuming.”
I take the joint from Alison. Inhale, exhale.
“Do you care?” I ask. “I mean, about Damien?”
“No,” she says. “I’ve totally forgiven Damien. And though I really can’t stand Lauren Hynde, compared to most of the other wenches that cling to guys in this town she’s semi-acceptable.”
“Is this on the record?” I grin.
“Did you know she’s a member of WANAH?” Alison asks. “That new feminist group?”
“What’s WANAH?”
“It’s an acronym for We Are Not A Hole,” she sighs. “We also share the same acupuncturist.” Alison pauses. ?
??Some things are unavoidable.”
“I suppose so.” I’m sighing too.
“And she’s also a member of PETA,” Alison says, “so I can’t totally hate her. Even if she was—even if she is—fucking what was once my fiancé.”
“What’s PETA?” I ask, interested.
“People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.” Alison slaps me playfully. “You should know that, Victor.”
“Why should I know that?” I ask. “Ethical treatment of … animals?”
“It’s very simple, Victor,” she says. “We want a world where animals are treated as well as humans are.”
I just stare at her. “And … you don’t think that’s … happening?”
“Not when animals are being killed as indiscriminately as they are now. No.”
“I see.”
“There’s a meeting on Friday at Asia de Cuba,” Alison says. “Oliver Stone, Bill Maher, Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger, Grace Slick, Noah Wyle, Mary Tyler Moore. Alicia Silverstone’s reading a speech that Ellen DeGeneres wrote.” Alison pauses. “Moby’s the DJ.”
“Everyone will be wearing camouflage pants, right?” I ask. “And plastic shoes? And talking about how great fake meat tastes?”
“Oh, what’s that supposed to mean?” she snaps, rolling her eyes, distinctly less mellow.
“It doesn’t mean anything.”
“If you heard about leg-hold traps, the torture of baby minks, the maiming of certain rabbits—not to even mention medical experiments done on totally innocent raccoons and lynxes—my god, Victor, you’d wake up.”
“Uh-huh,” I say. “Oh baby,” I mutter.
“It’s animal abuse and you’re just lying there.”
“Honey, they save chickens.”
“They have no voice, Victor.”
“Baby, they’re chickens.”
“You try seeing the world through the eyes of an abused animal,” she says.
“Baby, I was a model for many years,” I say. “I did. I have.”