Life Expectancy

that Lorrie would be shot, and I wondered if this might be the place where the trigger would be pulled.
        My mouth was dry. My hands were clammy. I wanted a good eclair.
        Lorrie gripped my right hand, held it tight. Her elegant fingers were icy.
        At one of the windows that flanked the pair of tall entry doors, Punchinello extinguished his flashlight, parted the brocade drapery, and scanned the night. "No lights anywhere around the square."
        The detonators in the subcellar of the mansion were ticking toward zero. I wondered how long until everything under us erupted in a blast wave and fire.
        As if reading my mind, Punchinello turned from the window and said, "We could use more than seven minutes, but that's all we have."
        He switched on his light, put it on the floor, fished a handcuff key from a coat pocket, and approached me. "I'd like you to roll the handcart down the front steps and across the sidewalk to the back of a yellow van parked at the curb."
        "Sure, no problem," I said, and cringed at the submissive note in my voice. But I certainly wasn't going to say, Do it yourself, clown boy.
        As he keyed open my cuff, I considered trying to wrench the pistol out of his hand. Something about his body language told me that he expected such a move and would counter it brutally and effectively.
        If Lorrie was shot, an ill-considered action on my part might be the thing that precipitated her death. Prudence seemed wise, and I didn't go for the gun.
        I expected him to release her, as well, but in a magician-quick maneuver, he cuffed himself to her and switched the pistol from his right hand to his left. He held the weapon with such assurance that he appeared to be ambidextrous.
        He had cuffed himself to Lorrie. I saw it happen, yet I needed a moment to accept the reality. I didn't want to believe that our hopes for survival had so abruptly and so drastically diminished.
        Cuffed together, Lorrie and I might have tried to break for freedom once we were in the open air. Now she was his hostage not only for the purpose of holding the police at bay if they should stumble upon us but also to keep me docile.
        And as for me… Punchinello had decided that if his situation soured in any way, I would be expendable.
        To question why he cuffed himself to Lorrie would be to question the sincerity of his promise to spare us. Then things might get ugly sooner rather than later.
        Consequently, neither Lorrie nor I indicated that his behavior struck us as odd. This required us to appear as naive as newborns.
        We were grinning as if we were, gosh, just having the best time.
        Her smile was fixed like the smiles on Miss America contestants during the personality competition when the host asked a particularly tricky question: Miss Ohio, if you saw a puppy and a kitten playing on railroad tracks, and a train was coming, and you had only time enough to save one or the other, which would you let die a horrible death-the puppy or the kitten?
        My face seemed to have been starched, and my lips felt as if they had been stretched on a clothesline and pinned at both ends: another Miss Ohio smile.
        I opened one of the two front doors and pushed the handcart onto the porch.
        Cool evergreen-scented air chilled the sweat on the back of my neck.
        The moon had not yet risen. A skim of clouds let through only prickles of starlight.
        No lights glowed in the park, and the streetlamps had failed. Around the square, the buildings stood dark and silent.
        The enormous larches between the sidewalk and the curb screened much of the town from view. Nevertheless, between their branches I could see flashing yellow lights and power-company repair trucks on Alpine Avenue, half a block north of the square.
        No traffic in the street at the moment. No pedestrians on the sidewalk as far as the overhanging trees would allow me to see.
        Punchinello and Lorrie followed me onto the porch.
        He had left his flashlight inside. In these layered shadows, I could not clearly see his face.
        That was probably for the good. If I had been able to see him better, I'd have read one crazy intention or another in his face-and wouldn't have known what to do about it.
        I wished I could more clearly see Lorrie. I could tell that her smile had faded. So had mine.
        The