Chapter 17: Shitshow

Logan International Airport, Massachusetts

September 11, 2001

As holders of first class tickets, Jake, Laura, Celia, and Pauline were among the first to walk down the jetway and through the door of the Boeing 767 aircraft when it was time for boarding. Their luggage had already been checked and they each had a small carry-on bag. They were all seasoned travelers—three of whom had more hours in the air than some commercial pilots—and had packed lightly and efficiently for their trip.

“Welcome aboard,” the pretty flight attendant told each of them.

They found their seats. Jake and Laura sat in the second row on the right side of the plane, Laura in the aisle and Jake at the window. Celia and Pauline sat directly behind them, Pauline in the aisle and Celia at the window. The rest of the six abreast first class section filled up around them until every seat was taken. Several of the people settling into these seats were—based on their appearance and conversations with each other—clearly first-time first class air travelers. They were likely frequent business class fliers who had been upgraded by the airline because all of the first class seats had not been booked in advance. It was a well-played ploy to hook them into laying down the extra money in the future. It really was hard to go back to coach or even business class after experiencing first class.

While the common people began to board, working their way further back into the plane, the flight attendant assigned to care for the first class people made her rounds and asked if anyone would like a preflight drink (complimentary, and served before drink service, one of the best perks of first class). “Coffee, tea, or perhaps something a little stronger?”

“I’ll have a bloody Mary,” Laura said with a smile. “Extra pale would be nice.”

“I’ll have the same,” Jake told her.

“Two pale Marys,” she said. She hesitated a moment and then said, “I thought the two of you were getting divorced.”

“We are,” Laura said simply. “It’s in the courts right now.”

“We can’t stand each other,” Jake added.

“But ... you’re traveling together ... sitting together.”

Jake shrugged. “She’s involved in our business and this was a business trip,” he said. “You know how it is.”

She did not know how it was. She had an ex-husband herself, a man who had not held a job in the last four years, and she would not piss on him to put him out if he was on fire. She bothered them no more, however. She simply moved onto Celia and Pauline, making a point to tell Celia how much she loved her music.

Everyone had pretty much settled into their seats by the time their drinks were delivered. They were given the standard lecture that the drink glasses would need to be collected and stowed before they reached the runway for takeoff.

“You won’t have to worry about that,” Laura assured her. “This will be in my tummy in five minutes.”

“Very good, Mrs. Kingsley,” she said, and then blushed a little. “Uh ... is it okay to call you that? You know ... in light of the circumstances?”

“I prefer to be called Laura or Teach,” Laura told her. “Mrs. Kingsley is Jake’s mother.”

“Mom can’t stand her either,” Jake said, causing both of them to giggle.

The perplexed flight attendant went on to serve Celia her own bloody Mary and Pauline her mimosa. She then continued down the aisle.

The plane was sealed up and the drink glasses were collected. Everyone put their seats in the upright position and stowed their cell phones in the seat back pockets. The aircraft was pushed back from the gate and the engines were started. Soon, they began to move along the taxiways. The lead flight attendant went into her spiel while her compadres demonstrated the seatbelts, the life jackets, and pointed out the emergency exits. Jake did not listen to her, not even with peripheral attention. He had heard the lecture a hundred times before. He knew where the emergency exits were, knew how to use a life jacket, and had long since mastered the intricacies of the seatbelt latch.

It was a busy morning at Logan, with lots of flights arriving and departing. As such, it was nearly twenty minutes from engine start before they finally reached the hold line of Runway 4R. They waited here for a few moments and then the first officer announced they had been cleared for departure. They turned slowly onto the runway and the engines revved up. The aircraft accelerated, pushing everyone back in their seats a bit. Jake, as was his habit on commercial aircraft, looked out his window as they picked up speed. He enjoyed the moment of takeoff as much as Celia disliked it.

They broke contact with the ground and began to climb into the sky. After passing over a sparsely populated peninsula of land they went out over the blue water of Massachusetts Bay, the flaps still in takeoff configuration. The aircraft banked right, turning in a broad three-quarters circle that brought them around to a westerly heading. The flaps retracted and their rate of climb decreased. They began to pick up speed as they climbed higher and higher. Soon, they were back over the city of Boston. Jake continued to look out the window until they reached ten thousand feet or so and then he turned to his soon to be ex-wife.

“Look how clear the sky is today,” he told her. “Not a cloud to be seen anywhere.”

She did not answer him, however. She had put her seat back even before the flight attendant announced that they were free to do so and was already asleep. Jake gave her an affectionate smile and patted her leg. She murmured a bit and smiled in her slumber without opening her eyes.

Jake put his own seat back into a comfortable position. He was looking forward to catching some sleep himself. After waking up at the ungodly hour of 4:30 AM and driving from Providence to Boston and then going through airport security and check-in, he was ready to snooze the better part of the flight away.

Seven hours and we’ll be on our way home, he thought happily.

He, of course, had no inkling of how drastically wrong he was about that.

Elsa did not use an alarm clock. She did not have a need for one. Her highly disciplined mind was quite capable of simply waking her up at whatever time she needed to wake up, even if that time varied due to the circumstances of the day. On this particular Tuesday in September, she was free to sleep in as late as she ever slept on a workday—6:30 AM—and she did so. Jake, Laura, and Celia were not working today and did not need to be served a breakfast before leaving for The Campus and their own workday. All she needed to worry about was feeding Cadence and Meghan, both of whom would be waking up in twenty minutes.

She climbed out of her queen-sized bed and put her bare feet on the floor. Her morning routine began. She padded into the master bathroom of her quarters and relieved her bladder. After washing her hands, she went to the walk-in closet and removed the clothes she would be wearing for the day and carried them back to the bathroom. She brushed her teeth, flossed, and rinsed with mouthwash. She then turned on the shower and got undressed, tossing her nightgown and underwear into the laundry hamper. She stepped into the shower. It was not a hair washing day, so the shower would be brief.

Elsa finished her shower and stepped out to dry herself off. Once that was accomplished and the towel was in the hamper with yesterday’s clothing and her sleepwear (she would do her own laundry after she arrived home following her workday) she put on her fresh clothes, her socks, and her shoes. She left the bedroom and went into the living room. Her quarters had an open floor plan, making the kitchen and the living room basically one large area separated only by a kitchen counter. Mounted on the wall in the living room was a forty-two inch television that Jake had had installed back when all of them had moved in. She picked up the remote control for it, pointed it at the TV, and turned on the device, which was equipped with Surround Sound speakers for her listening enjoyment. It was tuned to the local San Luis Obispo NBC station, which would be featuring the morning news at this time of the day.

She did not even look at the screen at first. It was just a part of her routine to watch the morning newscast while she ate her morning oatmeal. As she put water in the kettle so she could heat it up, she noticed that the newscasters were speaking differently than normal, their voices louder, with more emotion. And then the words “at this point there is absolutely no doubt that this was a deliberate attack and not an accident” filtered through.

Deliberate attack? What are they talking about? She turned and looked at the television and saw a horrible sight. It was the New York City skyline, a shot taken from across the Hudson River in New Jersey. The twin towers of the World Trade Center were burning. Burning! Both of them! Thick, black smoke was roiling out into the sky and being blown off by the wind. What in the world was going on? Had terrorists done this?

Her mouth agape, she stared at the television screen, listening as the frantic newscaster recapped what had happened. At 8:46 AM New York time, a passenger airplane had flown into the north tower of the World Trade Center and exploded, setting the building afire and undoubtedly killing everyone on the plane and many people in the building itself. It had been assumed to be a tragic accident until 9:03 AM when another passenger aircraft slammed into the south tower. That crash had been caught on camera, as by that point many news cameras had been pointed at the WTC site. They replayed that clip for Elsa’s enjoyment. She was absolutely horrified as she watched the aircraft slam into the tower followed by a ball of orange and black erupting out the other side. I just watched hundreds of people die, she thought numbly. What is happening?

She watched the coverage, transfixed, her mouth open, until the tea kettle behind her began to whistle. That finally broke the spell. She took her eyes off the television and went to the pantry to pull out her red and white cylindrical box of Quaker Oats. She hand poured some into a bowl and added the hot water. She then mixed in some fresh blueberries she had scored from the local farmer’s market, some sugar, and a little bit of farm fresh milk. She mixed everything up and then sat down at the kitchen counter and began to eat while watching the ongoing coverage of the disaster in New York.

Jake, Laura, Pauline, and Celia had not even crossed her mind at this point. She knew that they were flying home from Boston today and would be landing at LAX sometime around 11:00 AM Los Angeles time and should be home around 1:30 PM, but the thought that they might have been on one of those two aircraft that had slammed into the twin towers did not even begin to occur to her. Boston had nothing to do with New York. The two cities were hundreds of miles apart.

She soon found out that a plane had also crashed into the Pentagon in Washington DC. There were shots of smoke pouring out of that building as well. As of yet, the media did not know where any of these planes had come from or if there were more of them. She was told that American airspace had been shut down and all planes in flight had been ordered to land immediately at the closest airport that could accommodate them. That was when Jake, Laura, Pauline, and Celia came to mind. They were not going to make it home today. They were going to be stranded in Chicago or Detroit or someplace like that. And there were still a few flights that were unaccounted for or were not responding to air traffic control. Some were on the west coast and it was feared they might be heading for the skyscrapers of Los Angeles or San Francisco. Others were over the Midwest and it was feared they might be heading for Chicago or one of the other Great Lakes cities.

At 6:55 AM she rinsed out her bowl, put it in the dishwasher, and then made the walk to the main house. After letting herself in through the kitchen door, she went immediately to the thirty-six inch television that was installed on the south wall and turned it on. They were showing a live shot of the burning twin towers. She wondered how long it would take them to put those fires out. The rest of the day? Probably.

A pot of Jamaican Blue Mountain was already brewing, having been started by a timer five minutes before. Elsa opened up the refrigerator and pulled out a carton of eggs, some cheese, and some mixed vegetables she had cut up the night before. Her plan was to make vegetable omelets for Meghan and Caydee.

Meghan came in just as she was beating the eggs. She was still wearing the long t-shirt she had slept in but had put on a pair of tattered gray sweatpants and pink socks.

“Good morning, Elsa,” she said, heading directly for the coffee pot.

“It really isn’t a good morning,” Elsa told her solemnly.

“What do you mean?”

“There’s been a terrorist attack on the United States.”

“A terrorist attack?” Meghan asked. “What are you talking about?”

“Look at the television,” Elsa directed.

Meghan did so. She saw the twin towers burning away and her eyes widened. “Oh my God!” she exclaimed. “Is that real? That’s not a movie or something?”

“It’s not a movie,” Elsa assured her. “Apparently two airliners were flown into the towers of the World Trade Center. Another was flown into the Pentagon. There are several others that are unaccounted for and it is feared they may be headed for Los Angeles or San Francisco or Chicago.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” she said, using a Jake-ism.

“My thoughts exactly,” Elsa agreed. “They have also shut down all of American airspace and ordered all planes in flight to land immediately. Jake and Laura were due to take off around 8:00 AM Eastern time. They are likely stranded somewhere between Boston and Los Angeles.”

“Bummer for them,” Meghan said, staring transfixed at the television screen.

And then, just as Elsa was about to pour her well-beaten eggs into the pan to begin her first omelet, they watched in horror as the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsed into rubble right before their eyes.

Meghan and Elsa watched the continuing coverage of one of the most significant and horrifying events in American history as it unfolded before them. Caydee expressed brief interest in the coverage, but quickly lost that interest and asked if she could go outside and play. She was granted that permission by Meghan.

At 7:28 AM, they watched as the north tower of the World Trade Center collapsed as well.

“My God,” Elsa said breathlessly. “Both of them ... just ... just gone. All of those people.”

“This is unbelievable,” Meghan agreed, taking the last bite of her omelet.

Elsa gathered the plates and began to wash them prior to putting them in the dishwasher. Meghan went into the entertainment room and turned on the television so she could continue to watch the coverage. They were now reporting that another passenger aircraft had crashed in rural Pennsylvania. It was unknown if that plane crash was related to the other three, but suspicions were pretty high as it would be an amazing coincidence that a plane had just crashed for other reasons after three previous ones had been presumably hijacked and slammed into buildings.

At 8:46, the phone began to ring. Meghan tore her eyes away from the television set and walked over to the nearest extension. “Kingsley residence,” she said into it.

“Meghan!” barked a female voice. She recognized it as Sharon Archer. “Are you watching the television?”

“Yes,” Meghan said. “Isn’t it awful? Elsa and I watched the towers collapse live, as it happened!”

“This is insane,” Sharon said. “Have you heard from Jake or Laura or Celia? Are they still in Providence?”

“They’re flying home this morning,” Meghan said. “We think it likely they’ve been ordered to land somewhere between Boston and LA.”

“Wouldn’t you think they would have called by now if that was the case?” Sharon asked. “The news says pretty much all planes are on the ground now.”

As Meghan pondered this thought—something that simply had not occurred to her until now—she heard the background beeping that indicated someone else was trying to call at the same time. She did not activate the call waiting feature, however. This was too important of a conversation to switch away from. It was likely just someone else in the Kingsley circle of acquaintances trying to get through to make sure that the television was on and they were aware of what was happening on this Tuesday morning in September.

Meghan and Sharon continued to talk about what they had seen on the television, what the meaning of it was, who might have done it, and just where Jake, Laura, Celia, and Pauline were right now. In the midst of that conversation, the beeping in the background finally stopped. In Meghan’s room, unheard by her, her cellular phone, which was still plugged into the wall outlet, was ringing as well. Her voicemail system fielded the call and a message was left. Unfortunately, Meghan would not even think about her phone for many more hours on this particular Tuesday.

“Bill tried to call Jake, Celia, Laura, and Pauline,” Sharon said. “All of their phones went directly to voicemail without ringing.”

“Like they’re in flight mode or just turned off?” Meghan asked.

“Exactly,” Sharon said.

“That is kind of odd. They should definitely be on the ground by now.”

“Call me if you hear anything,” Sharon told her.

“Will do,” Meghan said. “And you do the same.”

She hung up the phone and turned her attention back to the television. Over the next thirty minutes, four more people called—Coop the drummer, Meghan’s mother, Meghan’s sister Danielle, and Obie—all opening the conversation by asking if she was watching the television. Obie and Coop both asked where Jake and the others were. Meghan told them both that the group was flying today and were likely stranded somewhere but admitted that they had not called to let them know they were safe.

After Elsa finished cleaning the house and got the laundry started, she joined Meghan on the couch to watch the ongoing coverage. Most of the attention was focused on the collapsed WTC towers and the efforts to find survivors. New news trickled in slowly but steadily. Just before nine o’clock LA time, a particularly alarming piece of information was released to the public.

“We now have information on the flights that were involved in this attack,” the newscaster told them. “Two of the flights—the two that were flown into the World Trade Center—were out of Logan International in Boston. The aircraft that crashed into the Pentagon was out of Dulles in Washington DC, and the aircraft that crashed in Pennsylvania near Shanksville, which has yet to be confirmed as part of this attack on the United States, left from Newark International in New Jersey. The flight numbers for these aircraft have yet to be released by aviation authorities.”

“Boston?” Elsa said, her eyes wide. “The planes that crashed into the World Trade Center came out of Boston?”

“Oh, my God,” Meghan whispered.

“Do you have the information on their flight?” Elsa asked. Meghan had been the one to take the phone call the day before when Jake had provided that information.

“Yeah,” she said. “It’s in the office.”

“Go get it,” Elsa directed.

Meghan trotted quickly to the office. She returned with a scrap of note paper in her hand. “Here it is,” she said. “United Airlines, Flight 175, leaving Boston at eight o’clock, arrival at LAX at ten forty-five.”

“This is very concerning information,” Elsa said slowly. “The two flights that crashed into the towers came out of Boston. Logic would dictate that they took off somewhere around eight in the morning.”

“Oh, my God,” Meghan said again.

At that moment, Caydee came in through the sliding glass door, a happy smile on her face. “Me see pel-kins!” she shouted gleefully. “Pel-kins, May-kin! Pel-kins, Essa! And big-ass boat out on ocean!”

Both women looked over at her, a little girl who might very well have just lost both her parents, her second mother, and her aunt. “That’s really cool, Caydee girl,” Meghan told her, fighting to keep her voice even.

“Me have snack now?” she asked.

“Sure,” Elsa said, also fighting to keep her voice level. “How does waffle bites with peanut butter and syrup sound?”

“Me love waffa-bites!” she proclaimed.

“Then let’s make some for you,” Elsa said. “Do you want to help?”

“Me help Essa!” Caydee said.

“Let’s do it then,” Elsa said, leading her to the kitchen.

The day rolled on and the news coverage continued. Meghan and Elsa stayed glued to the television, desperately waiting for more information. Mary Kingsley called the house just before 10:00 AM to discuss what was happening in the world. She did not know that Jake and Laura and Pauline had been in Providence this past week and had planned to fly from Boston to Los Angeles that morning. Meghan did not tell Mary this—she simply said that Jake and Laura were out of the house currently—because they still did not really know anything other than that two of the planes involved in the attack had taken off from Boston. Flight numbers had not been announced yet, nor had destinations of those planes that had crashed into the towers. How many planes took off from Logan around eight o’clock on a Tuesday morning? Dozens probably. The odds were still in the quartet’s favor, although it was very concerning (and unexplainable) that no one in the group had called them.

Nerdly and/or Sharon called several times, reporting that all four of their missing friends’ cellphones were consistently going direct to voicemail. Meghan knew this. She had tried calling all four of them several times herself. She began to grow more and more convinced that they had been on one of the crashed flights. There really was no other explanation that she could think of. Elsa was having similar thoughts herself and she began to wonder who was going to assume care of Cadence since both of her parents, her second mother, and her aunt were all possibly deceased. Jake’s parents? That was the most likely choice. But were they up to raising a child at their ages? Maybe William and Sharon?

Just before 11:00 AM Pacific Time, their worst fears came to pass. The news announced the flight numbers and destinations of the hijacked planes. Though it was not known for sure which tower the aircraft had crashed into, one of the planes that struck the World Trade Center was United Airlines Flight 175, which had taken off from Logan International Airport at 8:14 AM, Boston time. That was the flight that Jake, Laura, Celia, and Pauline had been booked on.

“My God,” Meghan whispered, tears running down her face.

“I can’t believe it,” answered Elsa, who was crying too.

“Should we call Jake’s parents?” asked Meghan, who was not looking forward to that conversation but knew it was her responsibility to give it.

Elsa thought this over for a moment. “Not just yet,” she said. “There is still a little bit of hope. Maybe they missed the flight. Maybe they decided to stay another day.”

“Then why haven’t they called to tell us that?”

“As I said, it’s a little bit of hope. Not much, but enough that we hold off until we get some kind of official word on their deaths.”

“When will that be?” Meghan asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “This is something of a new situation to me.”

And so, they continued to wait and hope for some encouraging news but none came. As the day went on, they continued to not hear from any of the four and the news just continued to get increasingly grim. There were shots of New York City firefighters desperately moving rubble to look for survivors. There were shots of the smoke rising into the air. There were now shots of the crashed plane in Pennsylvania. And there was endless talk from experts that it was simply not possible that anyone on any of the planes involved could have survived their respective flights. The shots of the plane hitting the south tower—it was soon established that that had been United Airlines 175 that had struck that particular blow—were shown over and over and over, from different angles, in slow motion, in frame by frame. Each time such a shot was shown, Meghan and Elsa winced and felt their hearts being squeezed in mourning, quite sure that they were watching very dear friends die over and over.

And then, finally, at 2:05 PM, while a brilliant afternoon sun was shining on the west coast of California, while Meghan was starting to realize that she really needed to call Jake’s oblivious parents and let them know what was going on, the house phone started to ring yet again.

Meghan had no hope as she walked over to pick up the phone. She figured it was just another call from one of Jake and Laura’s friends or acquaintances. Or maybe it was the fatal call they had been expecting, the one from the FAA or the FBI that was informing them that Jake, Laura, Celia, and Pauline had all perished in the attacks. But when she saw the number on the caller ID screen of the phone, her heart sang. It was Jake’s number. She snatched up the handset and brought it to her ear.

“Hello?” she barked.

“Meghan,” a male voice responded. It was unmistakably Jake’s.

“Jake! Oh my God! You’re alive!”

“Yeah,” he said calmly, cooly. “That seems to be the case.”

“You didn’t die!” she squealed. “Where are you? Where are Laura and Celia and Pauline?”

“We didn’t die,” Jake told her. “They’re right here with me. All three of them. We’re in a hotel room in Cleveland, Ohio.”

“Cleveland? No shit?”

“No shit,” he told her. “It’s been a hell of day for us.”

“Do you know what happened this morning?” she asked.

“We’ve been made aware of the circumstances of today,” Jake said. “Some gnarly shit has gone down.”

“You were booked on one of the planes that flew into the World Trade Center!” Meghan said. “How is it you’re not dead?”

“Yeah, funny story there,” Jake said, though he sounded far from amused. “It’s a good thing we’re all so hoity-toity.”

The day before, in Providence, after telling the hotel concierge to book the latest of the three morning flights from BOS to LAX, Jake went into the bedroom to lay down for a nap with his two women. After taking said nap, they would find a nice place to have a casual dinner, maybe have some drinks, and then retire early as they would have to get up quite early in order to arrive at Logan and go through security in time to catch their flight.

When he entered the room he saw that Celia’s shirt, bra, and pants had been removed and that Laura was sucking on and tonguing her erect nipples while running her hands over the inside of Celia’s bare inner thigh—and quite high on the thigh at that. Celia had a look of passionate anticipation on her face as her hand stroked Laura’s hair.

“I thought we were taking a nap,” Jake said with a smile, already feeling his manhood starting to stiffen.

“We will be,” Celia sighed. “But first we need to burn off some energy.”

“I see,” Jake said, nodding approvingly.

Laura raised her lips off Celia’s left nipple and looked at her husband. “I got her all wet and juicy for you, sweetie,” she said. “I can smell how turned on she is. Be a dear and come over here and fuck her so I can eat her pussy out after.”

Jake gave a faux sigh. “If I must,” he said.

“You must,” Celia panted.

While Laura went back to work on Celia’s nipples and put her hand down the front of Celia’s lacy black panties, Jake kicked off his shoes and pulled off his shirt. He did not bother with the socks. He pushed his pants and underwear down and stepped out of them. By now, Little Jake was standing proudly, ready to do the job he did best. Big Jake stepped toward the bed, ready to put Little Jake to work. Just as his knees touched the mattress, however, the phone began to ring.

“Goddammit!” he exclaimed.

“Ignore it!” Celia barked at him. “I really need to feel you inside of me.”

“I need to get it,” he said.

“It’s just the fucking concierge confirming the tickets!” Celia said while Laura, apparently oblivious, kept sucking and tonguing her nipples while her fingers probed into her wet folds beneath her panties.

“I’m sure it is,” Jake said, “but I need to make sure. Sometimes they need confirmation of something. It’ll just take a minute.”

Celia grunted in frustration. For whatever reason, she was particularly horny today. It had been she who had initiated the action by stripping off her shirt, bra, and pants and forcibly pulling Laura’s mouth to her breasts.

Jake walked over to the bedroom extension, wearing nothing but a pair of gray and black socks, his erect member sticking out before him like a divining rod. He picked it up. “Glenn Sutter’s room,” he said.

“Uh ... yes, Mr. Sutter,” a male voice said. Jake recognized it as that of the concierge he had just been speaking to. “This is in reference to the airline tickets we were just talking about.”