This morning, during his predeparture, pre-school cigarette on the back "porch" (really, a glorified fire escape), Sam called me outside. "Larry, hurry up; come out here. Isn't that plane flying really low?" "Hmmm. It doesn't look like a passenger plane. It's probably a surveillance plane." "You think so?" "Maybe." What do I know about surveillance?

Four-and-a-half years later and we're still spooked by low-flying planes in Brooklyn. We're right below a flight path from--what--LaGuardia Airport. What do I know about flight paths? Later this morning (about 20 minutes ago), during my boy-am-I-melancholy cigarette on the back porch, a commercial passenger jet flew really low over our neighborhood. It's probably because of the dense grayness that covers the area. Clouds that tell me we're going to have snow. Maybe the planes are staying low until they reach a certain speed or clearing or something.

While red, white and blue ornaments continue to join the red and green of Christmas in windows and front yards and Christmas poems from Iraq come from my actor friend who needed to make more of his life than just getting regular work so he joined the Army, I'm at home resigning myself to the fact that, in the event of another attack (don't let the Society of Fear overcome you, Larry) I have no escape plan.

I have no escape plan. Certainly not driving. Some drivers went nuts during our little transit strike a couple weeks ago. Driving up on sidewalks to pass cars, running red lights: in Manhattan during a ridiculously high tourist blitz! (Tourists who in a daze crossed busy intersections without heed to the color of the light or honking traffic.) I know how to get to every bridge and tunnel out of Brooklyn. But then, what? Where to? And how? Heck, I don't even know what airport is sending planes over my apartment, much less the most direct and least-travelled route to safety.

My friend, Anita Hollander, with whom I did a summerstock production of "Ragtime" some summers ago wrote a one-woman show about escaping NYC via the Hudson. She had a leg amputated as a young woman. I used to watch her swimming laps before rehearsal in the pool between my room and the kitchen house. Although she would use a prosthetic leg in most performances she preferred crutches to the prosthesis. She had extraordinary upper-body strength. In her show, she theorized that she could, in the event of another attack, hop into the Hudson and swim upstate to safety. Or walk. OK for her. She lives on West 41st Street. She's already halfway there.

Boy, is it gray out there.