I was nodding off at my desk, high up in the airtight offices of Deutsche Bank, across the street from the World Trade Center, when the big call finally came through.

I had been temping at Deutsche Bank for about a month, on assignment through one of the employment agencies that used to keep our city's offices humming with human resources. My supervisor had been out of town for the whole month, and my sole task was to take down his telephone messages and read them back when he called in. The period concluding that sentence also punctuates the full extent of my duties.