I went to the WTC with a friend. She came by my apartment after 2. We both confessed to anxious mornings.

We walked up Court St. It was very familiar. Women with baby carriages and old Italian men wandered and talked. Businesses were open. It was a clear, hot day. There were some posters of the missing on telephone poles, and one apartment had wreaths on the sidewalk with “in deepest sympathy” written on the cards.

We got to the Brooklyn Promenade, which gives the best view of downtown Manhattan. Attached to the fence were dozens of cards, poems, and flowers; all the flowers had gone brown. The candles on the ground were topped with rain.

We sat on a bench. Across the river a steady plume of smoke rose above the skyscraper.

“I don't feel anything,” she said, after a few minutes. I didn't feel anything either.