The taste of dough, the sesame seeds, orange juice, blood. Dust in his nose, eyes, throat, coughing blood. Elem Zeitsev told me, when I got to his place, that Genia's call had grabbed him out of the nightmare. She called him, he called me. He knew we were related. He was worried about her. Worried sick about the boy, about Billy. Her call, he said again, awakened him from the repeating dream and now he sat on the edge of the sofa in his apartment, in Brighton Beach, holding a bottle of vodka questioningly in my direction. I shook my head. He put down the vodka and picked up his coffee cup and stared out of the window at the ocean. When he'd heard Genia's voice on the phone, he got up off the sofa where he'd been sleeping with the Sunday papers on his chest, and went into the bathroom. He had looked at himself in the mirror. He was almost fifty-one now and haggard; nothing had been the same since September 11, when he found himself on the 79th floor of Tower One. He had gone up to the Trade Center to have breakfast with his broker, who was a friend, and drop off a present for his broker's kid, who was Zeitsev's goddaughter.
