In 2001, Scott Westerfeld flew from New York City to Sydney to see Justine Larbalestier. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, they navigated the crisis as best they could, together.
A Meeting of Science Fiction Minds
Westerfeld first noticed Larbalestier at a literary award ceremony, where she wore a dress upcycled from a black Velvet Elvis painting and talked to a man three times her age. A mutual friend introduced them, but Larbalestier dismissed him: "Not my period." She was researching science fiction's golden age, a time before either was born.
A week later, they met again at a reading and discovered shared tastes: Samuel R Delany, Octavia Butler, Ursula K Le Guin, eggs with hot sauce, bushwalking, and exploring new cities. Both were seeing other people then, but kept crossing paths at science fiction gatherings.
Romantic Jet Lag
At a farewell dinner before Larbalestier returned to Australia, they made eye contact across the table. "I just broke up with my girlfriend," Westerfeld told her. "Me too," she said. They spent her last weekend in New York together.
Back in Sydney, they stayed in touch through phone calls and emails, 10 time zones apart. In early September 2001, Westerfeld flew to Sydney to see her city, her family, and her friends. Spring was in bloom, the harbour was sparkling, and flying foxes had invaded the Royal Botanic Gardens.
The News From New York
At Tetsuya's, one of Sydney's finest restaurants, they enjoyed an extraordinary degustation. Leaving at midnight, the staff seemed oddly sombre. The next morning, Larbalestier's flatmate said the Statue of Liberty had exploded. They turned on the radio and lay in bed holding hands, listening to what had happened to the city they both loved, reaching only overloaded circuits when trying to call friends.
They had a flight booked to Melbourne the next day. Boarding an aircraft on 13 September 2001 felt like tempting fate. Halfway to Melbourne, they hit turbulence, and Westerfeld thought: passenger jets were now weapons of war, international travel as he knew it might be over, and he might not see Larbalestier again for years. Instead of saying all that, he said: "I love you." She replied: "Me too."
An Elopement and a Fruit Basket
In Australia, normal life continued, except when people asked where Westerfeld was from, and he became the focus of a sweet, unnerving kindness—given free drinks, and once an actual fruit basket. The basket became a running joke. They talked about the coming war one moment, and about sulphur-crested cockatoos the next.
They asked themselves a deeper question many New Yorkers faced: Who do you want to spend the apocalypse with? They had found each other just in time. Justine returned to New York in November to meet Westerfeld's parents. By then, they were already married, having eloped upstate without telling their friends, and have been together ever since.
