After much mental to-ing and fro-ing, I decided I'd better go about making it real for myself. "Making it real" is the phrase New Yorkers -- and tourists as well -- are using these melancholy weeks to describe traveling to lower Manhattan for a view of the World Trade Center remains.

People who'd been and returned had maintained that television cameras don't begin to capture the actual the site and the sight. I'd taken everyone at his or her word and, having worked in the buildings off and on for seven years, wasn't sure I wanted to gulp down the full reality dose. At the same time, I knew that eventually I would have to.

So on another of those stunning New York City days that have been commonplace these past few weeks, I made up my mind to see for myself. I'd been told there were a couple of vantage points one along the east side of Broadway. That famous boulevard cuts a gradual diagonal along the length of Manhattan and near its origin runs parallel to the WTC grounds. I determined I'd walk down Broadway from a point about a mile north of the cordoned off area in an attempt to ease myself into the brunt of it.

As I strolled, I searched the skyline, trying to figure out where and when the twin towers would have glided into view. I wasn't quite certain, but the farther south I got, the more I knew I would have spotted them had they still been there. When I didn't, I began muttering under my breath, "They're not there. They're just not there." Over and over, as if somehow I had believed they would be. As if I would suddenly realize that their violation and collapse was a nightmare now ended.

When I reached City Hall, situated a hop, skip and a jump from the late WTC, I began to smell the burnt rubber odor I'd smelled a few weeks earlier when the ill winds blew no good up the island. It was fainter these three weeks on -- and bearable. When I reached St Paul's Church, which had miraculously sustained no significant damage even though it's only 30 or 40 yards from the former landmarks, I began to look west along the narrow cross streets.

As pedestrian traffic thickened and movement became slower, I saw what I did and didn't want to see a heap of rubble over which cranes stretched and dipped their awkward arms. I looked across Vesey Street and the ironically named Liberty Street and, journeying even farther south, saw more of what was left of the 110-storey buildings and the charred but standing 4 World Trade Center. Parts of the Towers' facades, looking like robots' fingers, clutched at the air as if trying vainly to hang on to former dignity. Police barriers manned by National Guardsmen in camouflage separated me and hundreds of others from the dishonored acreage, but I didn't feel in any way protected, safe.

Curiously, however, it wasn't the ruins to the right that moved me most although they did move me to tears. It was when I looked left and unexpectedly peered into the open door of a store called Broadway Jeans. Inside, where a monitor sat wearing a gas mask, were long shelves of blue work shirts, all of them thickly coated with grey dust. It was as if I'd suddenly wandered into a town deserted 100 years before without explanation. It was as if I'd happened on a city as devastated and lost as Pompeii. And, I thought, perhaps I had in some way that we'll never get over no matter how gallantly we carry on.

Also by David Finkle:
COFFEE-HOUSE BLUES
THE ZEN OF JAY-WALKING
CHANGING PLACES
DARKNESS AT NOON
UNION SQUARE