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butterfly blade snapping open and shut tugged his attention away.   His vision came unfocused.   He checked his hands and they were balled into fists clamped to the side of his legs.
    Angela said, “You’re Jenks.”

8
     

    She moved down the corridor with a clipped efficiency as well, like a machine doing its primary function and nothing else.   Her arms didn’t swing; her hips didn’t sway with sexuality or life.   He was struck with an overwhelming depth of sympathy for her.   Whatever had happened, it would have been kinder to have killed her.
    “He told me about you,” Angela said.
    “What did he tell you?”
    “That you would be along eventually.”
    “I wouldn’t have if he hadn’t killed himself.”
    She stopped short and he nearly ran into her.   She turned on him, the empty eyes full of something uncoiling now, trying to awaken, but Jenks had no idea what.
    “He committed suicide,” Jenks said.   “After someone tried to murder him.”
    She shook her head slightly, like she had an earache.   Jenks explained what he’d learned, and what the cops and the shrink had told him.   Angela listened but kept creeping up the hallway step by step, forcing Jenks to stagger-step along as they progressed.   Finally they were in her private office and she shut the door.
    On the desk was a small plaque with the name ANGELA PINCHOT.
    She sat in an uncomfortable-looking chair.   The office was sparsely decorated.   There were no photos anywhere. No paintings, no signs of personality.   A computer hummed, the screen active with animated pipes.   There was another chair in the small room but it had been tipped forward to lean against the far side of the desk as if it was out of commission.   Jenks squinted and reached out with his thoughts trying to feel Hale here in the air.   Hale must’ve stood here noticing all the same things, acknowledging the woman in the same way, talking to her.   He had mentioned Jenks.
    “How long was he here?” Jenks asked.
    “Three days.”
    He nodded and waited.   Angela said and did nothing.   She could outwait the ocean and the mountains.   She had more patience and permanence than the throne of God.
    “So why do you remember him?” Jenks asked.   “What happened?   Did it have to do with a young girl?”
    “There was an incident.”
    Of course there had been.   “What kind of incident?”
    “An altercation.”
    “You mean Hale got into a fight?”
    “Yes.”
    “You must have fights here practically every night.   You would’ve had a bad one last night if the bald son of a bitch who’d tried to mug me hadn’t run for it at the last second.   So why do you remember Hale?”
    The thing that had awakened and started to crawl across her features, shifting into an expression of interest or emotion, seemed to shudder in the light.   Jenks wanted to reach out and take her face in his hands and draw her to him so he could get a better look.   Angle here this way and that hoping it would catch in the light.   It was hard to see but it was recognizable.   Her gaze met his and he knew.
    “You fell in love with him.”
    Angela said and did nothing.
    Like Jenks, Hale wasn’t a handsome man.   He’d been soft most of his life, and then he’d been lean and smelled like ulcers and anxiety, and then like sweat and ocean, and then he’d gone a little too far over the edge.   But somehow it had happened.
    Why not?   You couldn’t choose who you fell in love with.   It went beyond your scope of understanding or reason. You couldn’t deny it. You had no way to force it or to stop it. You held on as best you could.
      “He was here three days and you somehow fell in love with him.”
    She shifted her gaze to the empty wall, then back to take in Jenks, trying in order to see if he was mocking her.   But a man who lived out of his car didn’t mock anybody.   She looked away again.
    “What was the fight over?” he asked.
    She took a breath.   “A