The lights at New York City Hall stayed on all night.
Flowers still lay piled in the square outside. Victims' families waited beyond the police cordon for news, and reporters' broadcast vans blocked half the street.
Camera lights swept in through gaps in the windows, only to be blocked by the heavy curtains.
The office was quiet.
The central air conditioning kept the temperature just right, the coffee machine steamed in the corner, and the secretary had replaced the cups for the third time.
The television on the wall silently replayed the memorial service in Times Square.
On the big screen, photographs of the dead scrolled past one after another.
Seven people sat around the conference table.
The mayor's chief of staff, a financial adviser, the public safety commissioner, a representative from the disaster compensation committee, two council members' aides, and a deputy chief of staff responsible for media relations.
They were all impeccably dressed.
Their ties were clean, their cuffs smooth, their leather shoes free of dust.
Compared with the scorched ground in Brooklyn's warehouse district, this place seemed like another country, and these polished, glamorous people were a different species from the rabble beneath them.
Smithson, the financial adviser, pushed a folder into the middle of the table.
"Preliminary compensation applications already exceed sixteen hundred, and more will follow. Death compensation, medical assistance for the severely injured, temporary aid for families of the missing, relocation for damaged homes, business interruption losses, and psychological trauma compensation for rescue workers. The numbers look ugly."
The chief of staff opened the file and glanced through it.
"Get to the point."
Smithson said, "If we pay the full amounts for this disaster classification, the city's finances won't hold up. Federal aid hasn't arrived, and the state is waiting for us to submit