Summer at Tiffany by Marjorie Hart

Author:Marjorie Hart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2013-02-10T16:00:00+00:00

SATURDAY MORNING MARTY and I were asleep at just before ten, when we felt a sudden jolt. Marty sat up, startled. I ran to the window. “What was that?” she called.

“Can’t see—the fog’s too thick,” I said, dashing for my clothes. “I’ll go to the lobby and find out.” Halfway out the door, I heard our Russian neighbor shrieking, “It’s a bomb—a bomb!” I headed for the stairs, not waiting for the elevator. In the lobby, people were gathering around the radio.

The startled desk clerk turned to me. “The Empire State Building—a plane crashed into it!” I was shocked—and moved closer to the radio. An army plane . . . lost in the fog . . . the Empire State Building was on fire! Unbelievable.

I ran up the stairs two at a time to tell Marty, urging her to join a group of us leaving for downtown.

“It’s too foggy,” Marty said, putting on her slippers. “I’m not ready—you go ahead.” I grabbed my purse and joined a gaggle of people waiting for the Riverside bus, passing shadowy shapes half hidden by the fog. We asked each other if the buses were running, but soon saw the headlights of one approaching. It was crowded as we squeezed our way in—everyone talking at once. Reaching midtown, the bus driver announced, “Everybody out, can’t go any farther.”

The police had cordoned off the streets and a misty drizzle filled the air; a fire siren wailed a block away. Though the weather obscured the Empire State Building, I overheard snatches of conversation as more people surrounded us with umbrellas: “It sounded like a train wreck—” “I heard the roar of the plane and then this horrible explosion—” “There was screaming in our hotel—we saw flames down the whole building—” “Remember the man who jumped off the tower and killed a tourist—something bad is always happening.”

A stocky woman holding a striped umbrella spoke up. “My office—it’s on the thirty-second floor. I was there yesterday,” she said tearfully, as if the Empire State Building were a person and a treasured family member. She tried desperately to get a glimpse of the building, but the dense fog hung like a gray sheet. Black smoke mixed with water circled above.

It wasn’t long before the acrid smell became overwhelming. I coughed as my eyes smarted from the caustic fumes. I recognized that bitter smell. I knew it all too well. When I was a freshman at Iowa State College, in Ames, a fire had started in the chemistry building’s third floor while I was in a lab class on the second floor. We ran for the door at the first sign of smoke, but a guard would not let us leave our lab. We ran to the windows—fire trucks and the firemen were below, looking up at us, while billows of black smoke poured out from above.

That third floor! So secret that there was a guard posted each day at the entrance to the building, and the stairway was blocked above the second floor.

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