Frédéric Beigbeder - Windows on the World

In two hours I’ll be dead; in a way, I am dead already.

We know very little of what happened in Windows on the World that morning. The New York Times reports that at 8.46 AM, the time at which American Airlines flight 11 flew into floors 94 to 98, there were 171 people in the top-floor restaurant, seventy-two of whom were employees. We know that the Risk Water Group had organized a working breakfast in a private dining room on 106, but also that, as they did every morning, a variety of customers were having breakfast on 107. We know that the North Tower (the taller of the two, crowned with the antenna which made it look like a hypodermic syringe) was the first to be hit and the last to fall, at 10:28 AM precisely. There is therefore a time lag of exactly an hour and three-quarters. Hell lasts an hour and three-quarters. As does this book.

I am in Le Ciel de Paris as I write these words. That’s the name of the restaurant on the fifty-sixth floor of the Tour Montparnasse, 33 Avenue du Maine, 75015 Paris. Telephone: +33 1 40 64 77 64. Fax: +33 1 43 22 58 43. Métro station: Montparnasse-Bienvenue. They serve breakfast from 8:30 AM. For weeks now I’ve been having my morning coffee here every day. From here you can look at the Eiffel Tower eye to eye. The view is magnificent since it’s the only place in Paris from which you can’t see the Tour Montparnasse. Around me, businessmen shout into their cellphones so their neighbors can eavesdrop on their brainless conversations:

“Listen, I can’t babysit this anymore, it was actioned at the last meeting.”

“No, no, I’m telling you Jean-Philippe was crystal clear, it’s not negotiable.”

“Look, the stock’s printing on the ‘O.’”

“Look, take it from me, sometimes you melt and you don’t even cover your nut.”

“Well, you know what they say: Rockefeller made his fortune always buying too late and selling too early.”

“Okay, we don’t want to get whacked on this. I’ll get my secretary to snail you a hard copy and we’ll nail it down.”

“Like a shot, the value split.”

“I’ll tell you something, if those assholes don’t shore this fucker up, the stock is going to tank.”

“I was tracking the CAC 40 but everything started crunching through the price level and I got jigged out.”

They also misuse the adverb “absolutely.” As I jot down the musings of these apprentice Masters of the Universe, a waitress brings me croissants, a café-crème, some individual pots of Bonne Maman jam and a couple of boiled eggs. I don’t remember how the waitresses in Windows on the World were dressed: it was dark the first—and last—time I set foot in it. They probably employed blacks, students, out-of-work actresses or maybe pretty little New Jersey girls with starched aprons. NOTE: Windows on the World wasn’t Mickey D’s, it was a first-class joint with prices to match (brunch $35, service not included). Tel: 212-938 1111 or 212-524 7000. Reservations recommended some time in advance. Jacket required. I’ve tried calling the number; nowadays it goes to an answering machine for some company specializing in event management. The waitresses must have been pretty, I suppose, the uniform sophisticated: a beige outfit embroidered with the initials “WW”? Or maybe they were dressed like old-fashioned chambermaids, with those little black dresses you just want to lift up? A pantsuit? A Gucci tux designed by Tom Ford? It’s impossible to go back and check now. Writing this hyperrealist novel is made more difficult by reality itself. Since September 11, 2001, reality has not only outstripped fiction, it’s destroying it. It’s impossible to write about this subject, and yet impossible to write about anything else. Nothing else touches us.

Beyond the windows, my eyes are drawn to every passing plane. For me to be able to describe what took place on the far side of the Atlantic, a plane would have to crash into the black tower beneath my feet. I’d feel the building rock; it must be a strange sensation. Something as solid as a skyscraper rocking like a drunken boat. So much glass and steel transformed in an instant into a wisp of straw. Wilted stone. This is one of the lessons of the World Trade Center: that the immovable is movable. What we thought was fixed is shifting. What we thought solid is liquid. Towers are mobile and skyscrapers first and foremost scrape the ground. How could something so colossal be so quickly destroyed? That is the subject of this book: the collapse of a house of credit cards. If a Boeing were to crash below my feet, I would finally know what it is that has tortured me for a year now: the black smoke seeping from the floor, the heat melting the walls, the exploded windows, the asphyxiation, the panic, the suicides, the headlong stampede to stairwells already in flames, the tears and the screams, the desperate phone calls. This does not mean that I do not breathe a sigh of relief as I watch each plane fly off into the white sky. But it happened. This thing happened, and it is impossible to relate.

Windows on the World. My first impression is that the name is slightly pretentious. A little self-indulgent, especially for a skyscraper which houses stockbrokers, banks and financial markets. It’s possible to see the words as one more proof of American condescension: “This building overlooks the nerve center of world capitalism and cordially suggests you go fuck yourselves.” In fact, it was a pun on the name of the World Trade Center. Windows on the “World.” As usual, with my traditional French sullenness I see arrogance where there was nothing but a lucid irony. What would I have called a restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center? “Roof of the World”? “Top of the World”? Both are worse. They stink. Why not “King of the World,” like Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic, while we’re at it? (“The World Trade Center is our Titanic,” declared the mayor of New York, Rudi Giuliani, on the morning after the attack.) Of course, in hindsight, the ex-ad exec in me hardly misses a beat: there would have been a great name for the place, the perfect brand, unassuming yet poetic. “END OF THE WORLD.” End meaning not only the culmination, but also the farthest point. Since the restaurant was on the roof, “End of the World” could simply mean “at the top of the North Tower.” But Americans don’t like that kind of humor; they’re very superstitious. That’s why their buildings never have a thirteenth floor. All things considered, Windows on the World was a very appropriate name. And a very effective slogan. Why otherwise would Bill Gates have chosen to dub his famous software “Windows” some years later? As a name, Windows on the World was “all that,” as the kids say. It certainly wasn’t the highest view in the world: the summit of the World Trade Center was 1,353 feet, whereas the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur rise to 1,482 feet and the Sears Tower in Chicago to 1,450. The Chinese are currently building what will be the world’s tallest building in Shanghai: the Shanghai World Financial Center (1,510 feet). I hope the name won’t bring them bad luck. I’m very fond of the Chinese: they are the only people on earth capable of being both extremely capitalist and supremely communist.

From here, the taxis look like yellow ants lost in a gridiron maze. Under the watchful eyes of the Rockefeller family and the supervision of the New York Port Authority, the Twin Towers were imagined by architect Minoru Yamasaki (1912-1982) and Associates with Emery Roth and Sons. Two concrete-and-steel towers 110 stories high. Almost 10,000,000 square feet of office space. Each tower boasts 21,800 windows and 104 elevators. Forty thousand square feet of office space per floor. I know all this because it’s my job in some sense. Inverted catenary of triangular cross-section measuring fifty-four feet at the base and seventeen feet at the apex; footing, 630 feet; steel lattice columns on thirty-nine-inch centers, weight 320,000 tons (of which 13,357 tons is concrete). Cost: $400 million. Winner of the Technological Innovation Prize from the National Building Museum. I would have liked to be an architect; in reality, I’m a realtor. Two hundred and fifty thousand tins of paint a year to maintain. Sixty thousand tons of cooling capacity. Every year, more than two million tourists visit the WTC. Building work on the complex began in 1966 and lasted ten years. Critics quickly dubbed the towers “the Lego blocks” or “David and Nelson.” I don’t dislike them; I like seeing the clouds reflected in them. But there are no clouds today. The kids stuff themselves with pancakes and maple syrup. They fight over the butter. It would have been nice to have had a girl, just to know what it’s like to have a tranquil child, one not permanently in competition with the rest of the universe. The air conditioning is freezing. I’d never get used to it. Here, in the capital of the world, in Windows on the World, a high-class clientele can contemplate the acme of all Western achievement, but they have to freeze their balls off to do it. The air conditioning makes a constant droning noise, a blanket of sound humming like a jet engine with the volume turned down; I find the lack of silence exhausting. In Texas, where I come from, we’re happy to die of heatstroke. We’re used to it. My family is descended from John Adams, the second President of the United States. Great-granddaddy Yorston, a man named William Harben, was the great-grandson of the man who drafted the Declaration of Independence. That’s why I’m a member of the “Sons of the American Revolution” (acronym SAR, as in Son Altesse Royale ). Oh yes, we’ve got aristocrats in America. I’m one of them. A lot of Americans boast of being descended from the signatories of the Declaration of Independence. It doesn’t mean anything, but we feel better. Contrary to William Faulkner, the South isn’t just some bunch of violent, alcoholic mental defectives. In New York, I like to ham up my Texas drawl, to say “yup,” instead of “yeah.” I’m every bit as much a snob as the remaining survivors of the European aristocracy. We call them “Eurotrash”: the playboys down at the Au Bar, the lotharios who take pride of place in Marc de Gontaut-Biron’s catalog and the photo section of Paper Magazine. We laugh at them. We yank their chain, but we have our very own, what? American Trash? I’m a redneck, a member of the American Trashcan. But my name isn’t up there with Getty and Guggenheim and Carnegie because instead of buying museums my ancestors pissed everything up the wall.