You'd Think There Would Be A Little More General Hysteria

Somebody apparently got shot while we were hanging on the embankment last Friday – it was about two a.m, in a sparsely populated café, and a group of basketball players went over to have words with some bikers who were squealing their tires and making a lot of noise and smoke, and it turned into a fight – naturally our bets were on the big fucking basketball players. They started rumbling, and the basketball players (about four of them) chased the (two or three) bikers around the side of the café, and then we heard, “Pop, pop. Pop. Pop pop.”

“Was that a gun?” I asked.

“No, it wasn’t loud enough. Probably firecrackers.”

“No, no way, guns are a lot louder than that.”

”Well, shit, I fired my dad’s .22 at Christmas, it sounded pretty much like that.”

“Anyway, people would be screaming and stuff if somebody got shot.”

Then the basketball players came running back around the side of the café, and one of them was bleeding heavily from arm; one of the bikers had a chair and was screaming and chasing the other basketball players away with it.

“Those basketball players have suddenly become oddly conciliatory,” I pointed out.

“He must have a knife – I guess he stabbed that guy. Or maybe the metal leg of the chair cut him.”

“Or maybe he shot them! What the fuck was that popping, isn’t it logical to assume that was a gun, in this situation?” I insisted

“No, no,” said the English and Austrailans. “Don’t be silly. This isn’t America.”

“Man, plenty of my students have guns,” somebody pointed out.

The bikers finally retreated, leaving their bikes behind, which the basketball players knocked over and started jumping on.

We later walked back behind the café, and sure enough, there was a guy laying there in a puddle of blood, a woman crouched down cuddling his body.

“You’d think there’d be a little more general hysteria, though,” said somebody.

“Yeah, you would.”

Two ambulances and a police car finally came; we watched from a cafe nearby as the ambulance took the guy on the ground and the guy bleeding from the arm away. The ambulance didn’t have any lights on and wasn’t going particularly fast as it left.