If Only

The lift doors winked gold and silver. I’d been waiting for this day ever since we arrived. The Empire State Building was the cherry on top of the icing on my New York cake. Long queues of colourful tourists snaked between ropes and chattered in what felt like seventy six different languages. Irritable children leaned against patient parents, asking for juice, for crisps, for I Spy, for 20 Questions, for the fun to start.

Inside the lift my excitement grew. This was it. The bell pinged, the doors slid open and…it was tiny. Cramped. I had to utter ‘excuse me, pardon me’ about twenty times. How had they made it look so spacious on Sleepless in Seattle? I approached the edge, rested my hand on the viewer that may have been touched by Tom Hanks, and stared out over New York. The view, at least, was not tiny. Although cramped it was. How did people find space to move between all those buildings and cars and bus shelters and kiosks? The city was a smart grid of tarmac, an ordered circuit board of electricity and sparks. Central Park sat like a postage stamp. It had taken us ages to walk its length and width, and an entire afternoon to appreciate the zoo situated in one corner. I couldn't even see that zoo now, couldn't fathom how it fit. I felt like a child in my father’s arms, looking down on the world with a new perspective. I imagined standing on street level and seeing myself looking down from the top, my head a tiny pinprick balanced between brick, glass and sky.

The man in my ear told me to locate the driving range set over the Hudson River. This was where the Titanic had been due to dock. He told me to move round (excuse me, pardon me) to look at Ground Zero. He told me that at 9.49 am on 28^th July 1945, Lieutenant Colonel William Smith had crashed a B25 bomber into the north side of the Empire State Building on the 79^th floor, and yet here it was, still standing.

Later, I thumbed through a book of photographs taken at the time of construction. I looked at the flat-capped men stood precariously on girders, the city a flow of microscopic activity beneath them, and thought ‘If only you’d been around to build the Twin Towers.’