Falling Man

Lianne examines the paintings in her mother’s apartment and thinks about how they can remind people of the World Trade Center towers. Lianne, Nina, and Martin debate the principles of Islam and American foreign policy. Nina waits for Justin to finish school as he intends to paint her portrait. She smokes a cigarette while she waits, refuting Martin’s idea that she should travel the world. Martin and Nina continue their philosophical discussion, and Martin refers to the towers as “fantasies of wealth and power that would one day become fantasies of destruction” (69). He believes that the towers were a provocation, inviting an attack.

Keith watches poker on television. He explains the rules to Justin while Lianne scrutinizes the players. She watches Keith as he watches the television because it seems to her to be “a reassuring feature of familiar things” (70). The next day, she knocks on Elena’s door to complain about the loud music. Elena defends the “beautiful music” (71) as it gives her pleasure and peace. Lianne pushes Elena in the face and then leaves as Elena’s dog begins to bark.

Keith meets one of his old poker friends, an obsessive-compulsive man named Rumsey. They wander the city together, talking and playing games such as ice hockey or poker. They watch women, and Keith watches as his friend develops male pattern baldness week by week.

Keith and Lianne discuss Lianne’s altercation with Elena, who is still playing her music. Keith encourages Lianne to forget the music and the fight. Lianne complains that she is not sleeping well, so Keith suggests that she ask her mother for sleeping pill recommendations. Lianne hosts her writing therapy sessions and pities one woman named Carmen G., whose memories are beginning to fray. After spending so long listening to the group pouring their hearts out in their writing, Lianne feels obliged to give them a glimpse into her personal life. She tells them about Keith appearing at her door on the day of the attack. She tells them about Justin and her new sense of paranoia.

Worried that he is declining into a mediocre old age like his father, Keith contacts another poker friend, Tommy Cheng, but their correspondence fizzles out. Lianne remembers how her father, an architect named Jack, fell in love with her mother while designing buildings for an artists’ retreat in Greece. Lianne discusses her father’s suicide with Keith. Another day, Keith meets with Florence to help her buy a mattress from a department store. When two nearby men make a sexual comment about Florence, Keith punches one, and a fight breaks out. At home, Lianne cannot prevent herself from watching footage of the planes hitting the towers whenever it appears on the television. She talks about the footage with Keith, agreeing that the first plane crash still looks like an accident but, by the time the second plane hits the other tower, they are “all a little older and wiser” (79).

Keith continues his affair with Florence. They are not only interested in “erotic pleasure” (80), but they also take comfort from their shared traumatic experience of the attack. Lianne meets Carol to talk about an editing project. Carol is working on a book that seems to have predicted the September 11 attacks many years before, and, given Keith’s involvement in the attack, she chooses not to offer the editing project to Lianne. However, Lianne is very interested in the project. Later, she attends one of her group therapy sessions but has a rising dread at hearing what the participants might write.

As Keith prepares for his new job—king for a Brazilian real estate firm in New York—he visits a gym near his potential new workplace. He knows that he will need to exercise if he is going to return to work, as he will need to burn off his excess energy. Lianne sits with her mother. She is worried that Nina is taking too much pain medication, and she is worried about Martin. Nina explains Martin’s history: they have known each other for 20 years, stretching back to the beginnings of Martin’s career as an art dealer. Martin may not be his real name, Nina admits, and he may have sometimes dealt in stolen art in his youth. She remembers that he was a member of Kommune One, a political movement set in a student commune in 1960s Germany that protested the government. Nina believes that Martin’s time in Kommune One allows him to sympathize with the Al-Qaeda terrorists as though they are “all part of the same classical pattern” (86). Lianne is worried that Martin may be wanted by the police.

When Lianne visits the laundry room in her building, Elena waits for the dryer to finish. The two women stand in awkward, defiant silence. The following Monday, Lianne visits Isabel’s apartment, where Justin plays with the Siblings. When Isabel is distracted, Lianne asks the Siblings about Bill Lawton and their search for more planes. She suggests that maybe the time has come to “stop searching the skies, time to stop talking about the man” (89).

The more time she spends with the therapy group members, the sadder Lianne becomes. She knows that the members’ memories will eventually diminish to the point where the sessions must end. She wanders the streets, thinking about the editing project and Rosellen S, one of the members of her group. Keith leaves Florence’s apartment after trying to end their affair. He collects Justin from school and plans to surprise Lianne uptown. As Lianne walks, she sees the Falling Man performance artist again. Justin has begun speaking in monosyllables again and, while considering revealing his affair with Florence to Lianne, Keith asks his son to stop talking in this fashion. When he imagines how Lianne will react to the news about Florence, Keith believes that their briefly repaired marriage will be over again. Lianne worries that Falling Man’s harness may snap. She finds the performance overwhelming, but she cannot stop watching. Keith and Justin try to intercept Lianne, but they cannot find her. The more Lianne looks at the performance artist, the more overwhelmed she feels. She runs through the streets until she cannot run anymore. When she looks up, she sees Justin and Keith running toward her through the crowd.

Now in the United States with a Visa, a frequent-flyer account, and the use of a car, Hammad appreciates the hot weather on the Gulf Coast. He lives with Amir and other men, all of whom have pledged their lives “to kill Americans” (99). Hammad struggles with his flight training. He lost a great deal of weight at a training camp in Afghanistan, reaffirming his religious fervor. Even though Hammad has “received instruction in the highest jihad” (100), he is fascinated by American culture. Sometimes, he wonders whether a man must “kill himself in order to accomplish something in the world” (101). When he mentions these doubts to Amir, he is told to ignore them. As he receives a haircut, Hammad thinks about the day ahead when he and his friends will hijack planes and fly them into the towers at the World Trade Center.