Naked, I sit on a collection of two by fours and planks that once was a sled but which is now a stoop for the narrow plywood shack that leans to one side. Sweat on my back dries as the wind blows a mile in from the Bering Sea. Mosquitoes buzz around my frame. The discordant smell of burning wood swirls around me. On the lake below me two loons float, one lifts its body and pounds its wings against the evening air.

Inside the maqi, the other men are laughing and speaking quietly, their Yup'ik phrases whispering through their lips with such little effort, not so much speaking as exhaling with sound. One of them says something to me that I don't understand but that I comprehend. I raise and lower my eyebrows, an affirmative response. He hunches and crawls into the steam. The rest of us crawl in after him.

The fifty-five gallon barrel stove crackles with burning driftwood, a reservoir of water boils, and someone pours water from a tin can ladle onto the rocks piled on the stove. The water vaporizes and in the cramped room the cloud of steam descends upon us, stinging our skin, burning us as our pores open and the sweat drains from us. It runs in pooling rivulets across the plywood floor. I breathe deliberately, careful. I can feel a throbbing, a pulsing under my skin, and it is as if my entire body is a beating heart. I stuff a towel in my mouth and bite down like a patient without anesthesia. Breathe. The heat dissipates. I can hear the ladle again. I open my eyes long enough to see the rivers of sweat working their way across the plywood, pooling together, following the tilt of the building, draining out the hole in the wall to the tundra a mere thirty feet above the level of the sea. I always viewed rivers as running from the land, from the mass. The Yup'iks see it reversed. They see the tides rise and the rivers swell and their villages reclaimed by the sea, a creature with river fingers that reaches inland, overland, around them. I close my eyes against the heat. I am reversed.

Lupa. It means she-wolf in Spanish. I remember from high school. It is also a bistro in Greenwich Village owned by one of the Food Network chefs. How did I get here? A month ago I was eating seal meat a mile from the Bering Sea. Now I'm in Manhattan. Quite conceivably there are more people inside this narrow brick restaurant than live in my village. They all have something to say. They all move around me. The room oscillates like the belly of some giant beast.

I try to focus on the woman in front of me. Pick a spot. And so I focus on the small beauty mark below her right eye. I keep my view locked on it as she asks me questions about my life in Alaska, about the "conditions," about the Natives. And I stare at the beauty mark, hoping it is close enough to her eye.

We spoon out the arugula and dandelion leaves and I try to remember why I am here. Why have I flown from one end of the country to the other? The answer is as simple as it is complex. I came to see my brother. Simple. I came to look at his face and see if I could see it. I came to see if the terror that had struck America, the terror that had struck his building had struck him. I came out of guilt. I came out of patriotism. I came out of love. I came out of fear. I came because of the night he called and told me I was to blame. That I didn't understand, that I couldn't, that I was too far away. And I came because for twenty minutes I was sure my brother was dead. In the end I left knowing nothing I didn't already know. His company was poorly managed. He deserved more money. And even though he and his girlfriend had lived through it together, it wasn't like he was going to marry her or anything. And I'm not sure if I lost my brother that day or if I lost myself.

The woman sitting across from me coos over the pasta. A giant white bowl at the center of which is a small pile of noodles tossed in olive oil and cooling quickly. "Do you like my beauty mark," she asks as one of the dozens of white clad waiters takes away our plates. I sip my wine, a long sip. "I made it at work," she says smiling, "Does it look real?" I raise my eyebrows. She stares at me. I nod into my wineglass. Someone bumps into my chair. I swallow the wine. A drop of sweat traces down the hollow of my spine. I hold onto the glass. The wine is real.

"There's the bull," my brother says pointing like a tour guide toward the bronze statue. Three young girls with transparent backpacks slung over their shoulders and sandals flopping are climbing over the beast as someone snaps their picture. Every ten feet there is a folding table with American flags and pictures for sale. A sandal slips from one of the girl's foot and slaps on the pavement. She lets out a little squeal.

The hole needs no such pointing. The gaping pit where once the twin towers stood. Towers that I visited as a school child. The towers my brother worked in. And yet there was a sort of delay as if the impact of this reality was still four hours behind, on Alaska Time. As it was nine months before: while my brother sprinted down stairs, I hit the snooze bar; while my brother raced to find an exit not blocked by falling debris, I brewed coffee; while my brother and thousands ran before a towering bloom of smoke, while the towers came down on thousands more, I dressed and stepped outside where a cold wind blew in off the sea and Venus shown like a pit of beauty in the east and the distant horizon opened to redness like a split fruit and I stared and sipped my coffee and thought, my God, what a beautiful day. I was, and am, very far away.

None of it looked real. Nothing felt real. Then or now. Beauty marks painted on with pencils. Heat waves distorting the world of asphalt. Bowls of nearly naked pasta. Buildings built wall to wall, front to back. The concrete and pavement and iron and steel and thousands of people trucked away to Fresh Kills. America bites down against the heat. And yet all of this will be filled in, covered up and made over. There will be a memorial; there will be murals; there will be an educational center; there will be a manicured lawn. And there will be a mall. And people will come and buy eye makeup and transparent backpacks and infused olive oil. They will sit on the lawn and wonder, "Does it look real?"

Inside the maqi one of the elders cast a few leaves of Labrador tea onto the rocks. The smoke blurs my vision, burns my throat. I beat like a heart. I breathe. I push between two of the others, slick bodies touching and crawl headfirst through the opening into the pink Arctic midnight. I steam. I burn. And the loon lets loose a wavering cry that chills me to the bone.