The worst over, I made a harrowing run across Houston, filled with EMT vehicles doing 90, to the ATM, where I heard about the Pentagon, and then back to my corner deli, where I bought 3 pints of blueberries. And cookies, lots of cookies. Once home, I didn't leave until Thursday, when, on a quest to find surgical masks, the air, the air, I joined two women with a grocery cart full of bottled water who were headed to the West Side Highway to hand it out to the rescue workers on their way to Ground Zero. At first there were maybe a dozen of us, but by the end of the day, there were hundreds of people on either side of the highway cheering; I saw myself on the national news that evening. On my way home, as I passed a firehouse that lost 13 members, I came across the first of the street shrines that were everywhere by the end of the week.