The only ones I worried about at first were Tom and Suzanne, since their apartment building stood just south of the World Trade Center, once in the shadow of the twin towers.

They didn't tend to go out much. Tom preferred to sit around watching cable and bidding on ridiculous things on eBay – once paying a princely sum for a bathrobe that (let's see if I've got this straight) Jack Nicholson did not wear in "The Witches of Eastwick." It was some kind of back-up bathrobe they had on the film set. Tom came out modeling the thing for us one night, his round, sedentary face glowing with ironic grandeur.

Suzanne was the more likely of the two to have been out walking that morning. When she and I worked together at Court TV, her desk was where everyone gathered to chat. I have no memory of her not smiling, and I recall the fevered, starry look in her eyes – as if she were talking to Moses or George Washington or the Pope – when she met John Flansburgh from the band "They Might Be Giants."

Everyone else I knew in New York would be all right. Jim, Don, Ray and Richele all are in Brooklyn. Mark, Mary, Ansley, Roland, Kurt, Anna and Bill live at or above midtown. And Charles ... actually, Charles could be anywhere. An affable, outdoorsy, itinerant stand-up comedian and bartender, Charles has been one person or another's house guest for about two years – he was just really pleasant to have over, and he never stayed too long. The problem is that I wouldn't know where to begin looking for him.

So on Tuesday morning, I called Tom's job, and learned that they couldn't reach him either. No one was answering his phone. But then, Tom and Suzanne never answered their phone. Or returned messages.

I tried calling Tom's old writing partner Ray, but the lines were tied up. So I switched tacks and called my parents in Los Angeles, where one of the hijacked planes had been headed. It always was possible my Dad had been on a business trip in Boston. Nobody answered there either.

I called my old roommate Don in Brooklyn. But among the many entities that weren't prepared for this disaster was the phone company. Not only were all the circuits busy, there was no recorded message to fit the occasion. This is what they were able to come up with:

"Due to the tornadoes in your area, all circuits are busy."

One of the few people I heard from early on was my friend Brian – in Berkeley, Calif. "The interesting thing about today," he wrote in an e-mail, "is that it is A Day With No Airplanes ... just go outside and look."

And I did – at a quiet, unblemished blue sky, on the first of a string of quiet days. Nobody talks anymore – not just about the bombing, but about anything. There's no chatting at the supermarket check stand, no flirting or bantering – just the basics: "How are you?" "Plastic or paper?" "$16.37." "Have a nice day." We don't have the language yet for what we are, now.

The first person I reached – among those who had worried me – was my mother. She picked up the phone after I'd been calling for three hours. Dad was fine, not on a business trip. And where was she while the world seemed to be ending?

Getting her hair colored.

Ah, Los Angeles.

I reached Don and a couple of others, then finally got through on Ray's number, to a voice that wasn't Ray's.

"... Charles?!"

Apparently, Charlie had couch-surfed safely into Ray's apartment in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. He said Tom and Suzanne were fine – holed up in a hotel in Jersey, with their cat, Louise. They had been evacuated early and were hurrying down the street when the buildings started crashing down behind them. It was at that moment, Charles said, that Tom picked up his two little feet and ran. Aside from when the planes hit and the towers collapsed, Tom running may have been the most amazing sight of the day.

And that's all I've been able to do, reach a few people in my life, from among the many I think are worth fighting for. Since America's enemy won't admit who he is, I can't be sure what he believes in. But what I believe in are the rights and lives of these simple, goofy people who could have been wiped away so impersonally – the strange and maddening people we all appreciate having with us a while longer.