THE STORY SHE WAS READING was about a forty-three-year-old unarmed civilian shot to death in a Tampa Bay movie theater by a seventy-two-year-old retired police captain who’d become ‘agitated’ by the man during previews. Eyewitnesses said the victim had been ‘texting loudly.’ Popcorn had been thrown.

She looked down from the screen at the bead of blood on her thumb. She watched it form a rivulet that ran down her palm and onto the white down comforter her friend had laid out on the bed for a Ukrainian folksinger arriving that night to teach a workshop in bilij holos at a nearby club. The blood formed a spot, brighter than the bead itself.

‘He was a good, genuine person,’ it was said of the deceased.
“He was just a funny guy. He brought life into every room.’
‘Fate brought these two people together–it was ridiculous.’

None of the witnesses tried to stop the altercation. The movie was about Navy SEALS on a mission in Afghanistan. Its title was Lone Survivor.