Part 3
Chapter 9
New York, 2001–02
It was a beautiful day: He remembered thinking that. “Severe clear,” pilots called it. Or so he read later. He didn’t know anything about pilots or their lingo. He had always hated flying. Now he loathed it.
But he liked the sound of the words together—”severe clear.” A crisp rhyme yielding a pristine image—stark blue sky, more sea than sky really, without a trace of diaphanous white, and soft, late-summer air. A beautiful day.
That’s why they chose it, although he didn’t realize it until later. Only then did he know it with the certainty with which you recognize something either terrible or wonderful. Otherwise, they would’ve picked Monday, the first day of the week.
But Monday it rained. Not a downpour or a steady patter but an iffy on-and-off kin
