Glamorama

m having a Coke with someone named Ben Affleck while Jamiroquai plays over the sound system in the cavernous club we’re all lost in and Gabé Doppelt just has to introduce me to Bjork and I have to pose with Giorgio Armani and he’s hugging me as if we go a long way back and he’s wearing a navy-blue crew-neck T-shirt, a navy cashmere sweater, navy corduroy jeans and a giant Jaeger-Le Coultre Reverso wristwatch.

The plane ignites and a huge wave of people die by inhaling flames, their mouths and throats and lungs charred black.
For some, a minute of falling while still conscious.
Onto a forest situated just seventy miles outside Paris.
The soft sounds of bodies imploding, torn apart on impact.
A massive section of the fuselage lands and because of an emergency backup system, all the lights in the plane continue flickering as a hail of glowing ash rains down.
A long pause.

but he just goes into shock and doesn’t die until the plane smashes haphazardly into the forest below and the dying comes in waves.
In the business section everyone is soaked with blood, someone’s head is completely encased with intestines that flew out of what’s left of the woman sitting two rows in front of him and people are screaming and crying uncontrollably, wailing with grief.
The dying are lashed with jet fuel as it starts spraying into the cabin.
One row is sprayed with the blood and viscera of the passengers in the row before them, who have been sliced in two.
Another row is decapitated by a huge sheet of flying aluminum, and blood keeps whirling throughout the cabin everywhere, mixing in with the jet fuel.
The fuel unleashes something, forces the passengers to comprehend a simple fact: that they have to let people go—mothers and sons, parents and children, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives—and that dying is inevitable in what could be a matter of seconds. They realize there is no hope. But understanding this horrible death just stretches the seconds out longer as they try to prepare for it—people still alive being flung around the aircraft falling to earth, screaming and vomiting and crying involuntarily, bodies contorted while they brace themselves, heads bowed down.
“Why me?” someone wonders uselessly.
A leg is caught in a tangle of metal and wires and it waves wildly in the air as the plane continues to drop.
Of the three Camden graduates aboard the 747—Amanda Taylor (’86), Stephanie Meyers (’87) and Susan Goldman (’86)—Amanda is killed first when she’s struck by a beam that crashes through the ceiling of the plane, her son reaching out to her as he’s lifted out of his seat into the air, his arms outstretched as his head mercifully smashes against an overhead bin in the craft, killing him instantly.
Susan Goldman, who has cervical cancer, is partly thankful as she braces herself but changes her mind as she’s sprayed with burning jet fuel.

The front end of the 747—including the cockpit and part of the first-class cabin—breaks away, plunging toward earth as the rest of the plane hurtles forward, propelled by the still intact engines. A complete row near the explosion—the people strapped in those seats screaming—is sucked out of the aircraft.
This goes on for thirty seconds, until the plane starts breaking apart, a huge section of ceiling ripping away to reveal a wide vista of black sky.
And with its engines still running, the plane keeps flying but then drops three thousand feet.
The noise the air makes is like a siren.
Bottles of liquor, utensils, food from the kitchen—all fly backward into the business-class and coach cabins.
And the dying comes in waves.
People are rammed backward, bent in half, pulled up out of their seats, teeth are knocked out of heads, people are blinded, their bodies thrown through the air into the ceiling and then hurled into the back of the plane, smashing into other screaming passengers, as shards of aluminum keep breaking off the fuselage, spinning into the packed plane and shearing off limbs, and blood’s whirling everywhere, people getting soaked with it, spitting it out of their mouths, trying to blink it out of their eyes, and then a huge chunk of metal flies into the cabin and scalps an entire row of passengers, shearing off the tops of their skulls, as another shard flies into the face of a young woman, halving her head but not killing her yet.
The problem is that so many people are not ready to die, and they start vomiting with panic and fear as the plane drops another thousand feet.
Something else within the plane breaks.
In the next moment, another roar as the plane starts breaking up more rapidly and the dying comes in waves.
Someone is spun around frantically before being sucked out of the hull of the craft, twirling into the air, his body hitting the frame and tearing in two, but he’s still able to reach out his hands for help as he’s sucked screaming from the plane. Another young man keeps shouting “Mom Mom Mom” until part of the fuselage flies backward, pinning him to his seat and ripping him in half,

Night over France, and a giant shadow, a monstrous backdrop, is forming itself in the sky as the 747 approaches 17,000 feet, climbing to cruising altitude. The camera moves in on an airmail parcel bearing a Georgetown address, in which a Toshiba cassette player has been packed. The device will be activated as the opening piano notes to the song “1985” by Paul McCartney and Wings (Band on the Run; Apple Records; 1973) start playing. The bomb will detonate on the final crashing cymbal of the song—five minutes and eleven seconds after it began. A relatively simple microchip timer and strips of Remform equaling twenty ounces are in the Toshiba cassette player, and the parcel has been placed near the skin of the plane, where it will break through the fuselage, weakening the frame, causing the plane to break apart with greater ease. The plane is traveling at 350 miles an hour and is now at an altitude of 14,500 feet.
A giant crunching sound interrupts the pilot’s conversation over the cockpit recording.
A violent noise, a distinct crashing sound, is followed by massive creaking, which rapidly starts repeating itself.
Smoke immediately starts pouring into the main cabin.