Ásylo

There it was in the distance. Home. A grid of windows ten high and three wide blurred into thirty elongated diamonds that blurred into one. Nico imagined this was the way a lighthouse would appear in a violent storm, a tempest, a monsoon, the kind of storm kicking up waves so high that a man would be surprised he had survived, that he’d reached the shore.

He had to get a fucking hold of himself. He had to stop crying now. Now.

“You will be okay, agoraki mou,” he whispered to himself in a voice he believed sounded like his father’s.

The last time he’d come home on leave, he had been away for months, not days, and he hadn’t been half this emotional. Last time, he’d traveled five hundred miles to come home, this time only fifteen blocks. Maybe the tears kept coming because today was Tuesday, exactly one week since the attacks. Did that mean he’d cry every Tuesday for the rest of his fucking life? Maybe his emotions were this raw because he felt a need to cough every time he drew in a breath. “You always get cranky when you’re sick,” his mom would say. No, fuck all that. He’d been coughing for days, but he hadn’t cried in all that time. At the armory, he had been instructed to show no emotion, even as civilians stood sobbing, shoving photographs in his face, begging for some type of closure. He had been a statue, a sleep-deprived, coughing statue. His training in Fayetteville had included MOUT—Military Operations in Urban Terrain. Not once, while practicing maneuvers in simulated city settings, had he envisioned himself staring into the burned-out hull of a hardware store where, days earlier, he’d picked up supplies to repair his mother’s broken towel rack. Never had he imagined himself standing in the ruins of his hometown, ordering fellow New Yorkers to step back.

At first, he was relieved to see the doorman on duty was Jeremy, someone close to his own age who wouldn’t act all fatherly like Marshall and completely undo him. Then he began to worry about the fact that Marshall wasn’t here. Jeremy greeted him with the expected, “Good to see you, bro,” and a handshake that turned into an extended grip. “Been down there, I heard.”

Nico could only nod in response.

“How is it?”

Now he could only shake his head from side to side.

“Well, we all appreciate what you’re doing down there.”

And what exactly did Jeremy think he was doing? Did the dude have any idea that Nico had also become a doorman, standing guard at the various barricades of a six-foot high chain link fence that had been installed around the perimeter of what had come to be known as Ground Zero? “Listen, Jeremy, I was wondering.” He stopped and coughed, the kind that threatened to continue indefinitely and then suddenly resolved itself. “Marshall.” Another cough came on, this time briefer. “Is he all right?”

“Yeah, man. He’s fine. He came back to work a few days ago.”

Well, there was a piece of news to keep Nico going for a little while. He walked through the lobby with his shoulders back and the neighbors cheered him as though he’d just returned from combat. There were a ton of them downstairs, watching the evening news, a few greasy pizza boxes strewn between them. Until a week ago, Nico had rarely seen more than two or three neighbors at a time. They pelted him with questions; judging from expressions they used, they’d been fed information from his mother. Yes, he was part of a joint taskforce; the U.S. Army and National Guard had joined forces last Tuesday. Yes, he’d been sleeping in makeshift barracks, which was a fancy way of saying cots had been set up in a building close to his post. He did not mention that the hundred and fifty hours he’d spent awake had been dreamlike, nightmarish, while the few hours he’d spent dreaming had been the only time that made sense.

“You just missed your mom,” Mr. Chin, from the second floor, told him. “She’s going to be so excited to see you.”

Well, Nico knew one thing for sure: His mom would not be so excited to see him in the condition he was in now. Teary-eyed. His hair oily and smelly. His uniform and boots covered in a layer of white dust. He was completely, utterly, thoroughly, and ridiculously exhausted. He would need to prepare a new, improved version of himself to present to her, preferably one who didn’t cough every few seconds.

He went up to the sixth floor and took off his boots and uniform in the foyer and carried the disgusting pile to the washer. His clothes smelled like a sewer and so did he. In the shower the tears finally came. Not tiny little tears that he could pull back into his eyes, but big motherfuckers that ran down his face and body and then swirled around the drain for a while. He closed his eyes and pressed his hands against the warm, wet tiles, but instead of darkness he saw floodlights illuminating body parts, burned or mutilated beyond recognition.

Nico understood that he’d been no more equipped to deal with the search and rescue mission than the construction workers who were down there assisting the firefighters and police officers. Four years ago, he had been a high school senior with dreams of becoming a surgeon. In recent days, he’d wondered if he had the stomach for such work. Last Friday, a severed hand with long, slender fingers and red-polished nails had nearly sent him over the edge. He had wondered who she was, whether she’d died seated inside an airplane or seated at her desk. Maybe she had jumped to her death.

“You okay?” a firefighter had asked him, as Nico reeled and grabbed the fence for support.

“They were just living their lives, minding their own business, and everything changed in a split second.”

The fireman, with dirt encrusted in his eyebrows and sideburns, had disappeared for a few minutes and returned with two cups of coffee and two sugar cookies from the aid station. He’d stood beside Nico and the men had eaten their cookies and sipped their coffee without saying a word.

Some of his grief had disappeared down the drain, at least enough to enable him to go to the restaurant and face his mother. He dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, though he’d originally intended to go to Adelpha’s in uniform. He tossed a jacket over his shoulder and headed downstairs. The lobby dwellers had cleared the pizza boxes and set themselves up with a couple of six-foot subs surrounded by pickle wedges and chips. They were sitting on a hodgepodge of furniture, balancing paper plates on their knees.

“Nico! Join us. There’s plenty,” Mr. Chin said.

“No, thanks, really. My mom’ll have dinner waiting for me at the restaurant.” The truth was she didn’t yet know he’d been granted a twenty-four-hour leave.

“Can you at least sit with us for a bit? Tell us how you’ve been?” the man from nine said.

Nico shrugged and sat beside him. He did not know everyone’s name, at least not without giving each one careful consideration and then remembering them at the most useless times. But he knew Mr. Anderson’s, and when Mr. Chin informed him that Mr. Anderson’s wife had not yet heard from him, one week after the man had headed in for what should’ve been an ordinary workday, he felt a gnawing, hollow sensation in his gut.

The summer before his father died, ten-year-old Nico had been playing a chase game with his buddy Tyler on the patio between their buildings when a poorly tied shoelace had tripped him up and sent him flying into a low brick wall bordering the steps to the building next door. Nico’s head may or may not have hit the flagstones; he felt dizzy and nauseated seconds after a searing pain traveled down his arm to his fingertips. His dizziness may have been a reaction to seeing streams of blood running along his forearm, to feeling a pain so intense he was certain that his arm was broken, and to the discovery that a good-sized piece of gravel had lodged in his elbow. He remembered hearing a lot of shouting coming from Tyler, who ran inside to get help, and as soon as the hysteria subsided, there were the doorman and Mr. Anderson at Nico’s side, calming him down, telling him he was going to be fine. Marshall left him after a minute or two, to explain to Tyler’s mom what had happened and to call an ambulance, but Mr. Anderson did not budge. He stayed beside Nico, prattled on and reassured the boy that his parents had been contacted at the restaurant and would meet him at the hospital. Then he climbed into the ambulance beside this kid he barely knew and continued to distract him with upbeat conversation.

Mr. Anderson left shortly after Nico’s parents appeared, just before the gruesome task of removing the piece of gravel from his elbow began. Nico could not now recall anything specific that Mr. Anderson had said to him to distract him. He just remembered feeling safe. But he remembered what he’d said to his parents when they thanked him. At the time, it had seemed strange and nonsensical. Mr. Anderson had said, “Yeah, well, I was a kid once too, for about five minutes.”

Nico stood up abruptly and touched the teardrop-shaped scar on his elbow. “I really should get to the restaurant,” he said.

The streets near home smelled far better than those surrounding the Financial District. Outside Adelpha’s, he breathed in the familiar fragrances of cloves and cardamom. His father used to call this place his ásylo—his sanctuary. Shortly before his dad’s death, Nico had been impatient to start middle school because then he’d be allowed to stay home alone after school, instead of being forced to come to the restaurant. Once permission had been granted, however, he’d ended up wandering over here most afternoons anyway.

As he pulled open the door, another aroma enveloped him: cinnamon. He walked in to a chorus of “Nico!” There, facing him from every corner of the wood-paneled restaurant, were the people he’d known most of his life—his Aunt Cynthia, his Uncle Percy and Demetri, a server they’d hired years ago. Finally, his mother wove her way through Adelpha’s fifteen tables—only two of which were filled.

“You’re sick,” was the first thing she said to him, bringing her hand up to his forehead. It felt so soft; he did not want her to take it away.

“I’m fine, Mom. I’m just breathing in a lot of dust down there.” He hugged her tightly. “I’m on leave for twenty-four hours. I report back tomorrow night.”

“Are you sure you’re not sick?” She stepped away.

He wished she wouldn’t act so concerned, so motherly. He did not want to come unglued. “I’m fine. But I’m starving.”

Sebastian, Adelpha’s head chef, came out from the kitchen and asked him with his wonderful, booming, Greek accent, “What’ll it be tonight, Nico? Start you out with a little kolokithia? Maybe some moussaka or bifteki after that?”

“Moussaka. I’ve been craving it for days.”

His mother grabbed his hand and pulled him over to a table. “Tell me everything.” She furrowed her brows. “You sound terrible.”

“We’re all coughing down there,” he said. “This white dust kicks up with every step you take. You can barely see through the smoke. And all around you is this putrid odor.” He stopped. He sucked in his breath. He coughed and this time he thought he would not be able to stop. Uncle Percy set a glass of water in front of him, and he downed it. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” his mom said.

Her eyes searched for more, and he wanted to say more. He wanted to say, I can’t go back down there tomorrow, Mom. I can’t watch them dig through a pile of rubble that keeps getting larger instead of smaller. I can’t watch them pull out one more piece of a human being. I can’t watch another dead firefighter being carried past his grieving brothers. I just can’t do it. He heard his father whisper to him, You will be okay, agoraki mou.

“Tell me about your week,” Nico said, straightening in his chair. He picked up his knife and fork and cut a perfect wedge of moussaka. Each layer reached his palate in turn—the perfectly seasoned beef, the slightly crisp eggplant, the creamy bechamel that had been bringing customers to Adelpha’s his entire life. He took a long sip of roditis and listened to stories about the Lobby Gang, and how they’d supported one another in the past week.

“I think the neighbors’ support has made this more bearable for Carrie,” Nico’s mother said, referring to Mr. Anderson’s wife.

“It’s been the same down where I am,” Nico said. “The guys, they pull each other up when one of them is down. I’ll never forget how comforting it was to be handed a cup of coffee and cookie by a complete stranger.”

Then his mom talked about the restaurant, about how quiet the past few days had been. “But this one regular couple that comes in here all the time, they came in Sunday night and told me that the president is telling the American people to spend money, to get the country back on its feet, and they laid out a hundred fifty dollars on dinner, plus tip.” She put her hand over her mouth.

“They’ll all come back, Mom,” he said, setting down his fork. His ribs ached from eating and coughing; he was not sure if he could finish his plate. “I saw him, last Friday. The president.”

“Really?” She uncovered her mouth. “What was he like?”

“I don’t know. It was pretty crowded. He was speaking into a megaphone, and I only caught every other word. Stuff about catching the people who knocked down those buildings.”

“Nico, if the country goes to war…” She left her sentence hanging there, as she so often did. A conditional sentence, his high school English teacher used to call it—with a hypothesis but no conclusion.

“I’ll go. If troops are deployed, I’ll go.” The very thought of acting on his words terrified Nico. He took a sip of wine. Then he looked up and saw the chef standing beside the table, holding a plate of cinnamon-encrusted biscotti.

Nico stifled a sob and managed to croak out, “Sebastian, you are a prince among men.”

“I swear I was making these today anyway.”

“Everything was delicious. Beyond delicious. But I couldn’t eat another bite.”

“I’ll pack them up for you. How ’bout if I do that?”

“Any chance you could pack up some extras? Like a lot of them?”

“Anything for you, my man.”

Until today, Sebastian’s pet name for him had been kid. Nico saluted the chef without planning to. “I know a lot of guys who would go nuts over these.”

His mother had walked over to the hostess station while he was negotiating his biscotti order with the chef. Once Sebastian returned to the kitchen, Nico sat alone, bleary from drinking too fast and from sleeping too little. Usually, Nico’s Aunt Angie seated the guests, but she’d been given the night off, probably due to business being so slow. Nico’s mother was making a family of four feel welcome, telling them about the specials of the day and offering a kids’ menu to the young boy and girl who walked slowly and reluctantly behind their parents. They didn’t want to be here, in some dimly-lit, wood-paneled restaurant with piped-in music playing on stringed instruments they did not recognize and a menu full of dishes they could not pronounce. They would have preferred burgers or pizza.

Nico knew. He had been a kid once too, for about five minutes.