As ever, fate spared some, drew others into its vortex

When fate whispers, lives change. Future lovers meet by accident. Soldiers vacate a position moments before it is destroyed by artillery. The last number of a winning lottery ticket pops into place. And in situations that glow with innocence, people die.

Fate is capricious, unpredictable and unexpected. It works its sometimes terrible magic under skies as blue as heaven or as dark as sin. We call it predetermination, destiny, accident or luck. Poets see fate as shadows that lurk on the edges of our lives, or as cats that creep through an eternal night, amber eyes following our every move.

Last Wednesday, under skies that shifted from pale blue to dark and rainy, fate made its presence known in Santa Monica in minutes of terror that altered the nature of the day and the location of its visit. By the time it left, nine people lay dead and at least 50 others terribly injured.

The news was stunning: An 86-year-old man had driven his car through the crowded Arizona Avenue farmers market, plowing through vendors’ stands and shoppers, leaving the street strewn with fruits and flowers and human bodies. Why it happened has yet to be officially determined, but the likelihood is that the man made a mistake, as old men do, and fate sent his car hurtling into the crowds.

One would not expect such horror at such a place. Arizona intersects the Third Street Promenade, an area of restaurants, shops and theaters where jugglers perform, street dancers whirl and vendors sell peace stickers and henna tattoos.

There is rarely a time that the Promenade isn’t crowded. Hundreds surge across the street traversed by the car that turned into a killing machine. And on this Wednesday, hundreds more were at the farmers market, which once a week becomes a part of the light and playful mood of the place.

I heard of the tragedy as I sat on our backyard deck working on my laptop computer. A gentle rain had begun a few moments earlier, accompanied by a single thunderclap, a drumbeat from heaven that made me decide to move inside. Fate hurls lightning bolts too, and I wanted no part of them.

I had a radio playing, as I often do while I work. I think better with sound in the background. As I reached for it, the urgency in a newscaster’s voice told me something was going on. And then I heard. A chill went through me. My wife had been working as a volunteer at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and had telephoned a short time before to say that she was on her way home. She loves the farmers market and had been talking about doing some food shopping for a Friday birthday gathering. Could she have been there ... then?

For those unfamiliar with the market, it consists of rows of gleaming fruit and produce and colorful flowers of every sort. Summer brightens the hues of nature, and because of Wednesday’s soft rain, blossoms gleamed with a special iridescence. But it wasn’t beauty that was on my mind as I tried unsuccessfully to reach Cinelli by cell phone. It was fate I was confronting, and I was worried. When she finally walked through the door, the whole house seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.

The notion to visit the market had entered her mind, but she had decided not to. Other matters were pending, and time was short. So she came home instead. Luck or fate? One rarely questions good fortune. It happens, and we’re grateful for it. But tragedy wears a different mask, and the death of a loved one is questioned a hundred times. The word “why” is edged with sorrow and washed in tears.

Grief is too new to be fully confronted by those who lost someone last Wednesday. Weeks remain of emerging from a state of stunned disbelief to face the emptiness that sudden death leaves. Pain and dying weren’t supposed to be a part of that day at the farmers market, where crowds usually walked in safety on a street blocked by barriers. But who could anticipate the wild plunge of motorized steel through their midst?

Who but fate, the whisperer in the shadows, the cat with the amber eyes.

I am more than glad that my wife wasn’t at that market. It’s the relief one feels when one has missed a plane that has subsequently crashed or has left a bunker that moments later is destroyed by a rocket. But there is a deep recognition, too, that as we rejoice, others mourn, because there is eccentricity to fate’s selection, which, like a tornado, misses some but designates others to be thrust about in its violent winds.

I wish I could offer words to comfort those who are victims of an outing that should have been joyous, but instead dissolved in darkness.

I wish I could turn back the clock to the moment the rain began and the drums of heaven beat and that old man’s car started down Arizona Avenue.

But fate rides time, and time is irreversible. The deed is done. Bow your head.

Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He’s at al.martinez@latimes.com.