I’d quit my job as a reporter covering state government in Phoenix two weeks before. The morning of 9.11, a girl I was seeing called to wake me. She said we were under attack. I did not know what that meant. I was lying in an underinflated, inflatable mattress on the floor. I reached over and turned on the radio. NPR made no sense. I went downstairs and my roommate and I watched it unfold on a portable TV with rabbit ears. It wasn’t so shocking on the three-inch screen. I don’t think I’d ever seen the World Trade Center before. That night, the city sky was silent except for helicopters. A lot of businesses were closed, even the Chinese restaurant. Our favorite coffee shop was open, so that’s where we went. Sitting outside, smoking cigarettes, I said to myself, “You picked the wrong time to quit your job.”
