Life Expectancy

engaged the locks once more.
        Never in her life had she felt so helpless. Helplessness fed her frustration, fear, and anger.
        Eventually, she thought she heard shots being fired. She turned the ignition key, not far enough to start the engine, just to be able to power down her window a few inches.
        Another volley confirmed that she had heard the bark of an automatic weapon. Her gut clenched, not with a contraction this time but with dread, for she thought she might be a widow.
        Curiously, a third burst of gunfire reminded her that she was an indefatigable optimist. If our adversary had failed to kill me with the first two barrages, maybe he wasn't such a great shot or maybe I wasn't easy to kill.
        When she had opened the door, she had let out a lot of heat. Now the cold night insinuated itself through the gap in the window, and she shivered.
        After putting the window up, she switched off the ignition and searched for a weapon, first in the map pocket on her door. A little soft black vinyl trash container half full of used tissues. A plastic bottle of hand lotion.
        She fared no better in the glove box. A pack of chewing gum, Life Savers. A tube of lip balm. A change purse full of quarters for parking meters and newspaper dispensers.
        If you'll spare my life and my baby's, I'll give you two dollars and seventy-five cents.
        The console storage compartment contained a box of Kleenex. Two foil packets of moist towelettes.
        Although it wasn't easy in her condition, she managed to lean forward and feel under her seat, hoping to find something, anything, a screwdriver. If a screwdriver, why not a revolver? If a revolver, why not a magic wand with which to turn the rifleman into a toad?
        She found no wand, no revolver, no screwdriver, no anything, no something. Zip, zero.
        A man appeared out of the darkness in front of the Explorer, breath smoking from his open mouth. He carried an assault rifle, and he wasn't me.
        Her heart swelled painfully, and hot tears rose in her eyes, for the arrival of this gunman seemed to suggest that I must be dead or at best badly wounded.
        Superstition gripped her, and she thought that if she simply refused to grieve, then I would not be dead, after all. Only when she accepted the loss of me would that loss become true and real. Call it the Tinkerbell-resurrection strategy.
        She fought back the tears. Her vision cleared.
        As he drew closer, Lorrie saw that he wore a pair of peculiar goggles.
        She guessed, correctly as it turned out, that these were night-vision goggles.
        He stripped them off and stuffed them in a coat pocket as he approached the front passenger's door.
        When he tried the door, he found it locked. He smiled at her through the window, gave her a little wave, and rapped his knuckles on the glass.
        He had a broad, bold-featured face, like a clay model for a new Mup-pet. She didn't think she had ever seen him before, yet something about him was familiar.
        Leaning close, voice muffled by the glass but easily understood, he said with a friendly lilt, "Hello there."
        As a young girl searching for order in a world of snakes and tornadoes, Lorrie had read Emily Post's famous book on etiquette, but nothing in that thick volume had prepared her for this bizarre encounter.
        He rapped on the glass again. "Missy?"
        Intuition told her that she should not speak to him. He needed to be handled in the same way that children were taught to deal with strange men offering candy: Don't talk, turn away, run. She couldn't run, but she could refuse to be engaged in conversation.
        "Please open the door, missy."
        She faced front, looked away from him, remained silent.
        "Little lady, I've traveled a long way to see you."
        Her hands had fisted so tightly that her fingernails gouged her palms.
        "Is the baby coming?" he asked.
        At the mention of our baby, Lorrie's heart broke from a canter into a full gallop.
        "I don't want to harm you," he assured her.
        She searched the gloom in front of the Explorer, hoping that I would appear, but I did not.
        "I don't want anything from you except the baby," he said. "I want the baby."
        Trash container, hand lotion, chewing gum, Life Savers, lip balm, change purse, Kleenex, packets of moist towelettes… Even