The Latte Factor CHAPTER 1 The Oculus
Boarding the L train to work Monday morning, as she did every day, Zoey took a sip of her double-shot latte and thought about the photograph.

She thought about it for the full forty minutes it took to travel west and then south, from Brooklyn to her last stop in Lower Manhattan, and she thought about it as she stood to exit the train along with a thousand other passengers.

What was it about that photograph?

The subway car doors opened and Zoey became a drop in the ocean of commuters as it poured through Fulton Center, the hub where nearly every subway line in Lower Manhattan converged. The wave carried her along through the gray-tiled passageway and out into the huge open space below the World Trade Center, where Zoey stopped, rooted in place, as people flowed around her. She glanced up at the cavernous ceiling. It looked like the ribs of an enormous bird cast in white steel, a phoenix risen from the ashes of 9/11.

She began moving again, feeling the hugeness of the place as she walked. Six hundred feet of pure white Italian marble. It was like being in a gigantic cathedral.

The Oculus. Gateway to one of the most famous memorials and tourist destinations in the world. Zoey passed through it every day—twice, in fact: once on the way to work and then again on the way home—yet she’d never really stopped to take it in.

She entered the white marble–lined West Concourse passageway, with its enormous LED wall display to her left, nearly a football field in length. Normally she ignored the constant rotation of advertisements and public service announcements, intent only on getting to the escalator. Today the image splashed across the big screen made Zoey stop in her tracks once more.

The picture showed a fishing boat, complete with crew and nets—very much like the boat in that photograph, the one she couldn’t get out of her mind. Only, rather than rocking in the water at dockside, this boat sat stranded in the middle of a desert.

Strange, thought Zoey. Strange, and strangely unsettling.

As she watched, giant letters scrolled across the image, spelling out a message:

If you don’t know where you’re going, you might not like where you end up.

Moments later the image dissolved, replaced by more ads.

Zoey walked on.

Reaching the end of the passageway, she stepped onto the escalator, which carried her two stories up and into the sunlit glass atrium. She walked outside and turned back toward West Street, the sun in her eyes, to face the building where she worked. One World Trade Center, the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere. This was her daily routine. She loved standing in this spot, tipping her head way back and looking straight up, trying to see the top of the enormous tower as it stretched toward the sky.

Today, though, her mind was elsewhere.

If you don’t know where you’re going, you might not like where you end up.

It was an ad for something—insurance company, car company, travel app, she couldn’t quite remember what. Hadn’t Jessica had something to do with that slogan? It seemed to her that this was one of Jess’s accounts, whatever it was they were advertising. Yet this morning somehow it felt like a personal message directed right at Zoey. And it gnawed at her.

Just like that photograph. The one she couldn’t get out of her mind.

She suddenly remembered the latte in her left hand and took a sip. It had gone cold.

Normally she would now cross the street, enter the building, and take the elevator up to her office on the thirty-third floor. Today she diverted from her usual path. After crossing over West Street, she took a sharp right, heading away from One World Trade, and walked toward the reflecting pools, the two enormous square fountains built on the precise footprints of the original Twin Towers, bordered by short black marble walls with an endless stretch of names carved into their top surfaces.

The 9/11 Memorial.

She stopped at the north pool and looked down at the surging water below. Felt the surface of the marble and read the first dozen names. There were so many of them. Thousands of people had died here, in those dark days of September 2001. Zoey had been in grade school then. She glanced over at the great ribbed wings of the Oculus jutting up among the skyscrapers a block away.

Why did everything look so different to her today?

If you don’t know where you’re going, you might not like where you end up.

Where exactly was it that Zoey was going? Where exactly did she expect to end up?

Had she ever really thought about that before?

A man stopped for a split second to glare at the watch on his wrist, then hurried on. Zoey stirred. She was going to be late for work.

She started to turn away to head back toward One World Trade Center—but something held her in place. Instead, she stepped over to one of the nearby concrete benches and sat down, cold latte in hand, as the stream of tourists, commuters, and locals flowed past. She spoke softly, to no one but herself:

“What am I doing with my life?”