There was a shooting at the mall this weekend. Not the old mall in the iffy section of town, the faded one filled with short-term stores selling cheesy sequinned tops and knock-off jeans. No, the shooting was at THE mall. The big mall. The one with the big movie theater and the extensive outdoor neighborhood-y hey-look-it's-just-like-an-old-fashioned-downtown-street! add-on zone with all the ritzy shops and the surrounding circle of hotels for all the weekend shoppers who make the pilgrimage to Consumer Heaven from the bayous and small towns. Packed at 9:30 on a Saturday night, the restaurants heaving with Baton Rouge's version of yuppie singles, the area suddenly erupted with gunshots as a quarrel turned toxic, a 17-year-old drew a gun, and two 15-year-old boys, who just happened to be there on the sidewalk, fell down bleediing.
Hugh was there. Right there. Some yards away. Ten seconds earlier, and he'd have been right there. On the sidewalk. Maybe bleeding on the sidewalk.
Three families got a phone call on Saturday night. We didn't. We could have, but we didn't.
I've lived long enough to know there are no reasons for any of this. The cliches hold: Life is random. No rhyme or reason. It's all pointless. What the fuck. All I can do is hug Hugh a little tighter (how he hates that) and pray for those three families and hope. Hope that Hugh will continue being ten seconds late and that that phone call will never come.
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