Plane Plane Against the Grain

I was sitting beside the open window of my Brooklyn apartment, a book sprawled across my lap, listening to the whistling breeze, the distant tinkle of an ice cream van, mothers picking their kids up from the school on the next block. The phone chirped. It was a friend from Boston asking if I was okay. Of course, why? Because it seems a plane had crashed into a building on the Upper East Side. I went up to the roof to glance Manhattan-wards to see what I could see, but I couldn't even spot the Empire State Building through the rainy haze that was settling over the city. Everything seemed so peaceful that it felt very isolating. For all I knew the entire island of Manhattan could be burning and it would take someone from Boston who had seen it on the news to inform me of it.