Life Expectancy

"Anybody want a website designed? That's what I do. I design websites. And make babies."
        "Website design is interesting, dear," Mello Melodeon assured her, "but it'll never be as interesting as what Jimmy does. You can't eat a website."
        "You can't eat a baby, either," she said, "but I'd rather have one than a chocolate apple lattice tart."
        "I don't see why you can't have both," Mello said, "although not simultaneously."
        Grimacing, clutching two handfuls of the sheet that was draped over her, she said, "I need more epidural."
        "As your doctor, I'll make that determination. It's to relieve the pain, not eliminate it entirely."
        To me, she said, "I knew we should have gotten a real doctor."
        To me, Mello said, "So do you add the vanilla to the ingredients the same time you add the cocoa?"
        "No. That's too early. Add it right before the egg yolks."
        "Before the egg yolks," he repeated, impressed by this culinary tactic.
        And so the conversation went until Lorrie's water broke. Then she was unquestionably the center of attention.
        Lorrie and I had agreed: no video camera. She thought filming the blessed event would be tacky. I thought it would be beyond my mechanical abilities.
        Nevertheless, I wanted to be present in part to share the joy and to welcome our firstborn, but also to prove to Grandma Rowena that I would not pass out, fall on my face, and break my nose, as she insisted that I would.
        No sooner had Lorrie's water broken, however, than a nurse in squeaky shoes entered the delivery room as if with a chorus of mice, to announce there was an important telephone call for me. Captain Huey Foster, of the Snow Village Police Department, urgently needed to speak with me.
        "I'll be back in a minute," I told Lorrie. "Hold everything."
        "Yeah, right."
        I took the call on the phone at the nurses' station. "What's up, Huey?"
        "He's gone."
        "Who?"
        "Who do you think? Beezo."
        "He can't be gone. You haven't found the right tree."
        "Excuse me, Jimmy, but I'd bet you my left ass cheek there's not more than one tree out there decorated with a tow cable and a torn-up coat with sheepskin lining."
        Add up all the times my heart had sunk that night, and you were at the depth of the Titanic.
        "He couldn't use his hands," I said. "They were behind him. I had him trussed up tight. What the hell did he do-chew his way out of the coat?"
        "Almost looks like it."
        The black Hummer had been parked along Hawksbill Road exactly where I had told them to look for it.
        "By the way," Huey said, "we already learned it was stolen twelve days ago in Las Vegas."
        A police search team had descended through the woods, following the Explorer's original trail. When they discovered that Beezo had escaped, they had considered calling in a bloodhound team; but the weather argued against it.
        "He won't get far in this cold without a coat," Huey predicted. "After the spring thaw, we'll find him as dead as the dinosaurs."
        "Not this one," I said shakily. "This one is… different. He's like the clown in a jack-in-the-box, he just keeps popping up."
        "He ain't supernatural."
        "I wouldn't take that side of the argument," I said.
        Huey sighed. "I'm half of the same conclusion," he admitted. "I just called up four off-duty men. They'll be coming around to the hospital just in case."
        "How long till they get here?"
        "Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen. Meanwhile, you better watch out for Lorrie. I don't think it'll come to that, but it might. She have the baby yet?"
        "It's on the way right now. Huey, listen, he camped out in Nedra Lamm's house to keep a watch on us."
        "Nedra's a pill, but she wouldn't allow that."
        "I don't think she had a choice. It's maybe not too far for him to get back to her place. If he thinks the Hummer's now too hot to drive, she has a car he might want."
        "That hideous old Plymouth Valiant."
        "It's in showroom shape, and she keeps snow chains on it."
        "We'll check it out," Huey promised. "Now you better get back to that special girl of yours and don't let anything happen to her till my men arrive."
        I hung up. My palms were slick with sweat. I blotted them on my hospital greens.
        Beezo was coming. I knew it in my