To the Lost Boy at the Top of a Very Tall Building
I first saw you through a sea of legs. We were up high, very high: standing on a rooftop platform, looking out over the city. It was barely September, and the night breeze was soft and warm. Tourists from Japan, from Israel, from Saudi Arabia, from Idaho and Maine, mingled and murmured, pointing at the sights — there’s Queens; there’s the Chrysler Building; that stream of lights is the Brooklyn Bridge. The night sky seemed to have poured itself under our feet: glowing buildings, streetlights, neon signs, fast-flowing headlights. But I wasn’t looking at the sights. I was scanning the crowd, anxiously trying to find my parents who were visiting from Australia and had persuaded me to squeeze in just one more tourist adventure on their last night here. I couldn’t see them anywhere. Instead, I found another lost person — you.
You were very young, maybe four: a small brown boy standing solemnly amidst the swirling adult legs. Maybe someone had said don’t move, because you were rooted to the spot, looking around. Your eyes were just starting to look scared. I had the queasy sensation of time slowing, the gears of the world about to shift: like that brief, suspended moment on a seesaw when both sides hover in mid-air. It could tip either way. I weaved my way through the bodies and squatted down beside you.
—Have you lost your mommy?
You looked at me, eyes brimming, then nodded. You were wearing olive-green cotton pants and an elegantly embroidered matching top with the remains of an ice-cream on it.
—Shall we go find her? I said, and held out my hand. You took it. It was that easy. Your hand was so soft and small. You trusted me, which made my palms sweat: I could have been anybody, leading you away. We maneuvered our way through the crowd.
After a while — I don’t know how long, time was still holding its breath — we found your family, an elegant group of tourists, laughing and looking outward over the rails. I remember gold bangles, a bright red smile, the flowing garments of the women, the glitter of a filmy headscarf. I don’t know where they were from; it didn’t matter so much, back then. You let go of my hand and ran to your mother, who hugged you and smiled her thanks, but no-one was too worried. You’d probably only been gone a moment, not long enough for anyone’s inner alarm to go off. I didn’t hang around; I still had to find my own lost parents.
The whole thing took maybe three minutes, and in fact, nothing bad at all happened that night; you found your family, eventually I found mine. That’s what mattered, not the sense of foreboding, so at odds with the crowd, that drew us together and lingered with me for hours. Indeed, I may well have forgotten all about you, except for the fact that we were standing on top of a building that, in a little over a week, would be destroyed along with everyone on it.
Nine days after our encounter, after the bustle of commerce and chatter of tourism, after the bright young staff pointing out the giant maps of the boroughs lit up by tiny lights; after the salted bagels, the large Cokes and fries; the smiling servers and tired, worn-down cleaners — after all this, on a lovely blue-sky morning, two passenger planes smashed into this building and its twin tower and turned them to fire and rubble.
“I had the queasy sensation of time slowing, the gears of the world about to shift: like that brief, suspended moment on a seesaw when both sides hover in mid-air. It could tip either way. I weaved my way through the bodies and squatted down beside you.”
Now, when I think of that night, I wonder what happened to you. You’d be a young man now. Maybe you studied, started a business, a family, bought a house in Karachi or Connecticut or London. Or maybe you were swept up in the decades of war unleashed after the towers fell. Are you even still alive? I remember how self-assured and relaxed your family seemed, enjoying a warm late-summer evening together, looking out over one of the world’s great cities. It’s hard to picture that now.
I thought of you just the other day, in a moment of vertigo, as I waited in line in my mask at the grocery store. Like that day, everything was so ordinary and so ominous at the same time.
And you? If you remember me at all, maybe I’m the stranger in one of your family’s shopworn and jokey travel stories — the night you almost disappeared in New York! Or just a single dream-like image — a big face looming, a friendly hand — mixed in with the smell of popcorn, the streaming silvery lights of the city, the sense of dread. What did that night foreshadow in your life?
I hope you’re still safe. I hope you never lose your family again.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Christine Evans’ plays have been produced and won awards in her native Australia, the US, Canada, the UK, Austria, and New Zealand. Her play Trojan Barbie is published by Samuel French (UK and US). Recent honors include a 2020 Howard Foundation Award, serial MacDowell Fellowships, and three DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Fellowships. Her novel-in-verse, Cloudless, was released by UWA Publishing (2015). Current projects include the Russian-American play festival, Flash Acts; the libretto for Three Marys, a contemporary chamber opera composed by Andrée Greenwell; and a novel, Nadia, about a Bosnian refugee in 1990s London. Christine is a faculty member of Georgetown University’s Department of Performing Arts.
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Header photo by Axel Houmadi.