Fatale Abstraction

This is awful, and I kind of don't know where to start, and if you're someone of a fragile constitution, I advise you to switch over to cuteoverload.com and skip this post.

This was a rough week, but despite all the hardships, I feel so blessed and so lucky, so don't think I'm complaining if I tell you about something awful. I'm just kind of trying to wrap my brain around it all.

I had occasion to drive down a particular street in Dallas today where there are typically lots of homeless people, drug-peddling hang-arounders, and hookers. I drove through at about 4:45, which on Friday is a time when the pedestrian traffic intensifies as the day laborers are dropped back off by the bunk house, etc. As nearly always happens, I saw a hand-off of drugs. This pair caught my attention because they were so mutt-and-jeff. He was a large, pudgy Rerun (What's Happening?) type, and she is a skinny crack-whore type I've been seeing in that neighborhood recently. This was doubtless just another of countless scores of hand-offs that happened on that street today. What's one more?

I finished my business at an office at about 7:00, got in my car and drove up the road. I noticed homeless people standing in clusters, all looking up the street when I see the body in the road. Walking away from the body is someone who works for my company. I pulled up and a police officer had just arrived and was calling in for support. The man I know told me the guy had walked up to a silver Caprice Classic in the street and asked for a cigarette, and the driver shot him 7 times. His face was planted squarely down in the pavement, a pool of dark red spreading like a corona.

It was a terrible thing to see. The co-worker said the skinny crack whore woman told him what happened, he'd heard the gunshots and saw the car speeding away. He said he'd just run over and the guy was dead, had no pulse. I'll bet it was a transaction gone wrong, or whatver. Actually, now I feel badly that I didn't stop to see if the co-worker guy was going to be alright - I think he was pretty rattled. However, I could be of no material use to investigators, and frankly, I wanted to get out of the 'hood.

I went to dinner as I'd planned, went back to my other office and wrapped up some paperwork, and went home. I don't know quite what I think. I think I'm kind of dazed. We all know life is very cheap to some people, but other than their lack of self-respect, it's not often we see such an extreme example.

Hours later, I'm wondering if the dead guy in the road was the one I saw do the hand-off with crack-whore. Not that it matters.

I don't quite know what to think. I wish I hadn't seen that.