Free Short Ride to Nowhere by Tom Piccirilli Page A

widely but Jenks could sense the same impatience brewing in the guy as had been Bobby the other day.   They just wanted to work the street, sell their bags, not waste time answering a bunch of stupid questions.   Made total sense, until you threw a nutcase like himself into the mix.   The rest had all been in his head.
    He thought, What makes you fuck up the worst?  
    What makes you jump when you should stand still?   What makes you fight when you should slide?   The answer was obvious.   It had always been obvious, really, but he’d been wasting hours and days and memories and hope.   Maybe he’d wanted to waste them.   Maybe that’s what all of this was really about.   Not about Hale, not about searching for the truth.   It was just about wasting the days before they all piled up on top of him and crushed him into the dust.
    What makes you fuck up the worst?
    Love.

13
     

    So it came back to love.   It came back to mad love.   Maybe it always started and ended there.   Maybe that’s all that mattered.
    Jenks got to the shelter and stepped inside.   He didn’t see Angela anywhere up front so he proceeded back to her office.   The door was shut.   He knocked.   He tried the doorknob.   It was locked.  
    Behind the front counter Mike was inputting information and having a hard time of it.   He kept fouling something up and then was forced to delete it, which caused him to mutter a string of single syllable invectives.   He sounded like a child trying out adult language for the first time.   “Shit.   Fuck.   Piss.   Shit.   Damn.   God.   Christ.”
    Jenks stood in front of Mike and tried to make his presence known without saying a word.   It wasn’t working.   Mike couldn’t see anything except the computer screen.   The litany of curses continued, moving into double syllables.   “Fuckall.   Mother.   Fucker.   Shitface.   Ballsack.” He pressed another wrong key and the computer blooped at him angrily.   Mike hammered the desk with his fist and said, “Goddamn Angela.”
    “Where is she?” Jenks asked.
    Mike looked up, frowned and huffed air, but said, “Can I help you?”
    “I’d like to see Angela.”
    It miffed Mike.   He stuck to his guns.   He asked in the most unpleasant, unhelpful way he could muster, “Can I help you?”  
    “No.   I’d like to speak with Angela Pinchot, please.   When will she be back?”
    Now Mike gave a grand sigh.   He really put a lot of energy and emotion into it.   “If you don’t want to deal with me, you can just leave.”
    “I really can’t.”
    “What’s your name?”
    “Where’s Angela?”
    There were others back there, working in the shelter, on the phones, filling out paperwork, who kept their heads ducked even though they knew, they had to know, that Mike was the wrong guy to put up front in charge of dealing with folks.   Jenks scanned the other faces hoping to find someone who might take a step forward, but they doggedly kept their heads down.   That didn’t bother him, didn’t even tug at his guts where the rage lay coiled waiting to unfurl and strike.   Instead, it made him smile.   He turned his gaze back to Mike, thinking, the guy doesn’t deserve what he’s going to get, but since when does deserving have anything to do with it?   Never.
    Jenks was vaguely aware that he had vaulted the counter and landed on top of Mike, who sucked down a huge breath as if to scream.   It ended there, stuck in his throat as Jenks brought the blade up to the guy’s Adam’s apple.   He wondered whether he had any control left at all or if he was following Hale right into Sojourner State, right into death.   He’d threatened and fought with more people in the last few days than cumulatively during the rest of his life.   He didn’t feel like he was enjoying himself either, but he heard a strange laugh peeling away from the back of his throat.   Maybe this was his way to get back at the bank, to scratch this