have wound up somewhere else, the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe I would have contracted the virus myself. Maybe I’d havelanded in one of those wards Moira later told me about …
Because, as it turned out, the second attack had already occurred.
I woke the next morning to find a business card lying on the grey carpet, just inside the door. It had been slipped under.
Moira Clemmons
, it said. There was a website address and a woodcut image of a glockenspiel in green ink. On the flipside she had written in ballpoint pen,
My friend in Brooklyn
, and an email address. She had big, neat bubble penmanship, the kind that popular girls have in tenth grade. I ran my thumb along the edge of the paper stock, then tucked the card into my wallet.
I was at the New York Public Library when I found out about the second blonde incident. I couldn’t concentrate on my thesis, though I’d gone there with that intent. The entire time I’d been in Manhattan I’d been flipping through magazines, stopping at spreads by Gucci or Bulgari, and writing down random phrases such as
The machine of gender, Beauty as its own language, The wealth of youth, The “wet look” of women in fragrance, Nautical-scarved superwomen
, and
Androgyny in advertising in the age of HIV
. I had three dozen scraps of paper with these nonsensical snippets on them. The thesis was a year in progress and I still hadn’t written anything beyond scraps. Let me tell you, what I’d write now would be much more cohesive. Women and vanity? Ways of looking at women? After these past seven months every human left on Earth has become a women’s studies major. We women matter. We are the discourse on a twenty-four-hour news cycle because we are dangerous.
But back on that day I was browsing the newspapers instead of writing my thesis. I quickly found a more comprehensive article about the subway attack. Coworkers and associates had identified the blonde business-woman. Her name was Alexis Hoff. She was forty-eight, an advertising executive. Her assistant reported that she had torn a whiteboard off its stand and thrown it at a trash can before storming out around two-thirty that afternoon. Her face had turned haggard and her eyes bloodshot. Nothing had prompted the outburst, and those who witnessed it had assumed she was having a personal problem. Her assistant said that Ms. Hoff had breezed in “acting like her usual self” that morning, but by noon had asked for Tylenol for headaches and had begun mumbling nonsensically. She had passed on lunch, saying she had no appetite, and had “seemed a little edgy or paranoid,” but the assistant had not thought it his business to ask if anything was wrong. A fellow ad exec had expressed his grief at the—and I quote—“bizarre incident that resulted in the loss of one of our finest.” The company’s official statement was that although Ms. Hoff certainly could have a powerful presence, the company had never seen her act violently—that the acts she had been accused of, if indeed true, were highly out of character. They could only assume she had been delirious and in need of medical attention.
Ms. Hoff was a Harvard graduate, and spent her free time with her two Weimaraners, who were her pride and joy. She was close with her parents, who declined to comment. Her sister said, “We’re grieving. You need to know Alex was a goodwoman.” I remember that quote was highlighted in a big call-out font:
She was a good woman
. “She wouldn’t harm anyone,” the sister continued. “This is not her fault.”
It made me feel cheap: reading about the previous day’s incident, like a tourist of tragedy. Beneath the table I pushed my hand along my belly to quell my nausea.
News of the second attack was buried, and it was a while before I discovered it. Titled “Blonde Fury,” it was not much more than a bit wedged between local shootings, arrests, train and automobile accidents, and ads for the New York Diamond Exchange.
Because, as it turned out, the second attack had already occurred.
I woke the next morning to find a business card lying on the grey carpet, just inside the door. It had been slipped under.
Moira Clemmons
, it said. There was a website address and a woodcut image of a glockenspiel in green ink. On the flipside she had written in ballpoint pen,
My friend in Brooklyn
, and an email address. She had big, neat bubble penmanship, the kind that popular girls have in tenth grade. I ran my thumb along the edge of the paper stock, then tucked the card into my wallet.
I was at the New York Public Library when I found out about the second blonde incident. I couldn’t concentrate on my thesis, though I’d gone there with that intent. The entire time I’d been in Manhattan I’d been flipping through magazines, stopping at spreads by Gucci or Bulgari, and writing down random phrases such as
The machine of gender, Beauty as its own language, The wealth of youth, The “wet look” of women in fragrance, Nautical-scarved superwomen
, and
Androgyny in advertising in the age of HIV
. I had three dozen scraps of paper with these nonsensical snippets on them. The thesis was a year in progress and I still hadn’t written anything beyond scraps. Let me tell you, what I’d write now would be much more cohesive. Women and vanity? Ways of looking at women? After these past seven months every human left on Earth has become a women’s studies major. We women matter. We are the discourse on a twenty-four-hour news cycle because we are dangerous.
But back on that day I was browsing the newspapers instead of writing my thesis. I quickly found a more comprehensive article about the subway attack. Coworkers and associates had identified the blonde business-woman. Her name was Alexis Hoff. She was forty-eight, an advertising executive. Her assistant reported that she had torn a whiteboard off its stand and thrown it at a trash can before storming out around two-thirty that afternoon. Her face had turned haggard and her eyes bloodshot. Nothing had prompted the outburst, and those who witnessed it had assumed she was having a personal problem. Her assistant said that Ms. Hoff had breezed in “acting like her usual self” that morning, but by noon had asked for Tylenol for headaches and had begun mumbling nonsensically. She had passed on lunch, saying she had no appetite, and had “seemed a little edgy or paranoid,” but the assistant had not thought it his business to ask if anything was wrong. A fellow ad exec had expressed his grief at the—and I quote—“bizarre incident that resulted in the loss of one of our finest.” The company’s official statement was that although Ms. Hoff certainly could have a powerful presence, the company had never seen her act violently—that the acts she had been accused of, if indeed true, were highly out of character. They could only assume she had been delirious and in need of medical attention.
Ms. Hoff was a Harvard graduate, and spent her free time with her two Weimaraners, who were her pride and joy. She was close with her parents, who declined to comment. Her sister said, “We’re grieving. You need to know Alex was a goodwoman.” I remember that quote was highlighted in a big call-out font:
She was a good woman
. “She wouldn’t harm anyone,” the sister continued. “This is not her fault.”
It made me feel cheap: reading about the previous day’s incident, like a tourist of tragedy. Beneath the table I pushed my hand along my belly to quell my nausea.
News of the second attack was buried, and it was a while before I discovered it. Titled “Blonde Fury,” it was not much more than a bit wedged between local shootings, arrests, train and automobile accidents, and ads for the New York Diamond Exchange.
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