David and Mel meet to drink, give each other comfort and reminisce about Paul--Mel's husband and David's best friend. The memories are not all good for David. Before Paul died in the north tower, the two friends fought, brutally questioning each other's lives. Fueled by anger and grief and too much alcohol, David stumbles through the city while holding onto a silent promise made to a dead friend: he will wait for Mel to fall so he can catch her.

James Frey, author of A Million Little Pieces, writes, "Beautifully raw and honest, Adam Berlin's novel follows two characters through the long darkness in New York after 9/11. This is about the running, the drinking, the standing still, and the unquantifiable missing. Berlin's book is shattering, real, first-person history, made intimate by a narrator forced to stare at himself against the hole of Ground Zero."