false alarm

Last night, I sat on the roof of my apartment building on 16th Street in our nation's capital, about a dozen blocks north of the White House. Nice, warm evening, the Washington Monument all lit up, the Capitol building just to the left, also lighted. I could see planes landing at Reagan airport across the river, and was remembering what it was like in the days after 9/11, when there were no airplanes (except military jets) in the sky for nearly a week.

And as I watched, I saw an airplane wheeling in the sky, and suddenly it seemed to me the lights were heading straight at the Washington Monument. Just a trick of the eyes and the distance I told myself. Nonetheless, I put down my gin & tonic and stared at the lights in the air inching imperceptibly closer to the great white spike on the mall, and felt a tiny clutch of fear before the plane changed course and headed (or so I thought) toward the Reagan runways.

Then -- another course change. The lights were now coming directly toward me, as if 16th Street were a runway. And getting lower. Five seconds later, I realized that the lights were lined up and headed directly at the White House.

I was so transfixed by the sight I didn't notice that someone else was on the roof standing next to me."Is that plane aimed at the White House?" he said.

"It kind of looks like it, doesn't it," I said. We watched for another few seconds in silence. Then the lights dipped out of view. Both of us backed away from the rail, and waited for the explosion. "Shit," he said. "If there's a nuke in that plane, we're toast."

I just nodded, thinking, if there's a nuke in that plane, we're all toast -- America, the west, civilization. We waited a while more but the expected fireball of thousands of pounds of jet fuel igniting and turning the place that was first occupied in 1800 by America's second President, John Adams, into a cinder never materialized.

After a while, the lights reappeared, hovering somewhere near the mall.

"I guess it's just a helicopter," he said finally. "Scared the piss out of me. For a moment."

"Me too," I said.

"Weird times," he said, and wandered back inside.

I stood there for a few more minutes, thinking how strange it was to live in a city with a target on its back at a time when you can see some lights in the sky and almost instantly assume -- not without reason -- that the nation is once again under attack... not by disguntled prostitutes or gamblers, but by people who hate us from the bottoms of their tortured little hearts.