Free The Revisionists by Thomas Mullen

the glass was silenced, and unhelpful announcements droned in the static as lines formed everywhere, as if people still believed that order would be restored if they were patient and found the right person to complain to.
    When the second tower fell, he stood motionless, surrounded by an equally frozen group in front of the TV. And then this one man at a nearby bar who had been sitting the whole time, like a sort of sacrilege, like some apostate churchgoer who refused to kneel at the appropriate moments, this man started laughing . Again there were gasps. Was the guy crazy? He wore a suit, had short hair, an athletic build. He was ethnically interesting, darker skin without actually being dark-skinned, and he was fucking laughing . Finally an equally imposing, Irish-looking guy—a construction worker or off-duty fireman—yelled at the laugher. The laugher took that as his cue to leave; he stood and dropped some bills on the table beside his empty martini glass (who drank martinis at that hour?). The fireman said something. Words were exchanged. Then the fireman punched the guy in the face. There were more gasps and a few claps of applause. Then the laugher, who wasn’t laughing anymore and wasn’t even smiling but still somehow seemed to be smiling, like with his eyes maybe, shook off the blow and walked away. Only later did Leo think to himself, Jesus, that could have been one of the terrorists, he could have been left behind for some reason. He wasn’t really drinking, the martini glass was just a cover. And we let him escape.
    In a weird way, in a way that Leo knew didn’t make sense and was due to the shock, he felt that his own proximity to the mysterious laughing man implicated him in the day’s horrors. He should have punched the man himself—he’d thought about doing it, he’d wanted to do it, but he’d stayed motionless and impotent until this burly fireman or longshoreman or cop had stepped in to play the hero. Leo never did anything; despite all his academic laurels and achievements, when he was honest with himself, he knew he had done nothing. People who did things were guys like that cop or fireman (his brethren who minutes earlier had perished by the dozens in Manhattan) and the young soldiers from rural and ghetto America who would be sent to pay those bastards back. Leo was a lucky representative of the creative class, except he didn’t really create anything, and over the following weeks he began to feel like a complete, utter asshole. God or good fortune or luck or the Constitution of the United States or his white skin and Y chromosome had given him so much, and what had he ever given back?
    One month later he defended a dissertation that suddenly seemed less relevant to the world. His own words sounded stale—he almost wanted to revise the whole text, but it was too late. Afterward, one of his advisers took him out for celebratory drinks that Leo didn’t feel he deserved. Like a confused foreign correspondent, Leo tried to describe the conflict roiling in his mind, tried to analyze the two warring camps and explain their historical grievances to his audience. Is this what I’m supposed to be doing with my life? The professor said he understood, that he felt the same way sometimes. And then he told Leo that it was interesting he’d brought this up, as the professor knew of a certain job opportunity. What did Leo think about working for the government? There were people who would like to talk to Leo, who were impressed by the arguments elucidated in his papers, a few of which had landed in policy journals and on the desks of important think tanks. His recent experience living in the world’s most populous Muslim nation and his fluency in Bahasa certainly didn’t hurt. Leo’s adviser gave him a name and a number, which Leo saved into his phone but was afraid to call.
    The number stayed unused in his phone for two months.
    In December he rode Amtrak to Manhattan to attend the American