Steve Kistulentz - Panorama

His thinking was interrupted by the quiet arrival of two men and two women in matching poly-blend blazers, the ubiquitous uniform of the airline customer-service rep. The particular shade of blue identified them as employees of Panorama Airlines—Bob could not see the blazers without thinking of the airline’s commercials, the flight attendant who stopped to pick up a dropped teddy bear for a five-year-old, the slogan We Fly the World intoned by one of those film noir actors. Bob wandered over to the newsstand in the main concourse, where a second small crowd had formed beneath a television monitor. Bob heard the narration before he saw the screen: “You are watching continuous live coverage of Panorama Airlines Flight 503, which crashed on approach to Dallas–Fort Worth International Airport just over one hour ago. Initial reports say everyone on board the flight, which originated in Salt Lake City—that’s seventy-seven passengers and six crew—has perished.”

And then the video began.

The crowd watched the monitor as it replayed amateur footage, an FBN News exclusive, you are getting our first look at the final moments of Panorama Airlines Flight 503, followed by the appearance of the gleaming jet lurching through the sky as it moved right to left across the screen.

The image they all would remember: contrails of black smoke, the fuselage moving at its catastrophic speed. They remembered the image because television took the intangible and gave it authority, eliminated any doubt; the network brought in an aerospace engineer to telestrate the destruction of the airframe, his drawings explaining the pieces missing from the aircraft as it loomed into view. The engineer talked about stresses and shearing forces of the compound elements of the airliner, and already they were trying to answer the peculiarly human question: Why? The thirty-two-second clip became the Zapruder film of personal loss. Everyone had seen it. Everyone knew how it ended.

To the question of why? there was no answer. It did not depend on an overlooked checklist or a faulty indicator light or a pilot distracted by the holiday or any singular factor. It was a confluence of events, a series of contingencies for which there was no preparation.

The television went to commercial, broadcasting an appeal for one of those emergency-alert services for the elderly, and a voice behind Bob’s shoulder said, “I have no snapshots.” Bob thought the voice was talking back to the television. Most of the assembled dozen kept watching the monitor, but Bob turned as he heard, “I don’t think I have a single picture of her,” and whether it was the tenor of the voice or how each word came between the heaving breath of his sobs, Bob made eye contact with this great, bearlike man, saw in the light of the televised glow a highway of tears marking his face. The man rifled through his wallet as if he’d misplaced a driver’s license or a credit card. Bob stepped close and took the man into his arms, the benevolent touch of consolation.

Before Bob could respond, a man in a suit stepped in front of the assembled crowd, reached up to turn down the television, and said, “You’re about to hear a series of announcements. But if you believe that you knew someone on Flight 503, I’d like you to follow me. We’re going to escort you to conference room C upstairs, where you’ll be briefed by representatives from the airline and from the National Transportation Safety Board.”

Bob expected a barrage of questions to follow, but the group stepped in one direction and began to toddle slowly down the hallway. Only then did the large man step out of Bob’s embrace, the entirety of his story on his face, the look that betrayed all the persistent tortures of hindsight, its sadness and regret, a look that Bob knew well. He knew it from his own mirror, a look halfway to the madness of shame and grief.

THE AIREDALE’S name was Maestro. When the time came for his afternoon feeding, the kennel handlers found him running up and down the fence at the far end of the property, a few hundred yards to the left, a few hundred to the right, chasing imaginary rodents and romping through the grass in a path that his paws had trampled over the past four days. A guy from the local organic-foods market had delivered some marrow bones, as he did each Monday. Maestro took his out to the far end of the property and alternately chewed on it and used a whip of his neck to toss it as far as he could, another toss to throw it back toward where he started.

When the handler on duty, Tommy Campbell, called his name, Maestro ran back toward the pen and took a seat at his feet. Tommy hand-fed him pieces of lamb kibble and corners of cheddar cheese and tried to explain what he’d heard on the news. Maestro’s master had been working that doomed flight. Tommy just said it to the dog, already suspecting that Maestro, and maybe all dogs, knew far more than we give them credit for. Who knows what it was that Maestro responded to, the tenor of Tommy Campbell’s voice or even the disappearance of what had moments before promised to be a never-ending supply of cheese. This was a story Tommy would tell his wife; he’d read that wolves use different vocalizations to announce their location to other members of the pack when they are separated, and that must have been what Maestro was doing, sending up an effervescent wail, a howl, rising in timber and volume until most of the dogs at the kennel joined in and filled the yard with their mournful tune.

THESE WERE Richard’s preoccupations on his way home: his self-congratulations at walking off the two drinks he’d had with Don, adhering to one of his lesser resolutions, to walk more through a city that had been built for the traveler on foot or horseback; his loneliness; and the gathering of clouds that had thickened into the heavy blanket he had come to know as a harbinger of snow. The unpredictability of the weather itched like a bite. He felt a trickle of sweat loosen itself along his spine, pass down through his waistband and into the crack of his ass. He wished that he could turn toward the river and feel the drop of the barometer in his knees or his arthritic pinkies. The ache of a twenty-year-old boxer’s fracture in his hand predicted the weather almost as well as the guy on channel 4. Richard wanted muffler-and-topcoat weather, the silence of heavily swaddled commuters padding through the Metro. He longed for a cold snap brutal enough to feel in the framework of his bones. Instead, as he rounded the corner toward home, he saw the blinking bank clock at the circle of Connecticut and Massachusetts Avenues, a block from Cadence’s old place. Time and temperature: 5:05 p.m., forty-eight degrees, the wind picking up and the temperature beginning a precipitous drop.

A few years back, Richard would have walked up the avenue to wait at a neighborhood bar for a familiar face, someone interested in watching the tail end of the Rose Bowl while pretending to celebrate his new job. But when you were forty-two and not twenty-two, holiday obligations meant that friends were out of the city, the bars in the afternoon filled only with the odd tourist and bored waitstaff.

He took the steps to the fourth floor two at a time. He thought he’d put his feet up and settle into his couch. The room’s only window let in a dim gray light, the few recognizable parts of Washington’s skyline occluded by an oncoming bank of clouds. By evening, they’d collapse into a low ceiling, insulating the city, a sure sign of the end of three days of springlike weather. He expected the forecast on the Eyewitness News at 6 to hedge its bets, use nonspecific language, “a wintry mix.” Richard liked the idea of a catastrophic storm, schools and stores closed, the government on liberal leave, the radio broadcasting calls for volunteers with four-wheel-drive vehicles to escort doctors and nurses to and from work.