“So, let me get this straight, you put your DVDs in alphabetical order?”
“I like to be able to find them.” I said after a moment. Diana’s speech might keep him disarmed. It’s why she called me a nag. She would usually smile a make an OCD joke about the DVD’s. And I’d never said anything about the toothpaste. She was running interference. We were still a team.
What the hell could I do? I needed to signal somebody for help. But how? Stare meaningfully at people? I think he would notice first and everybody else just think I was giving them the stink eye. Besides it was dark. People wouldn’t be able to see my face. How could I send out a message and get people to hear my SOS while keeping this guy in the dark? A light bulb clicked on in my head. I could use morse code. We were still in the city with the street lights. He wouldn’t be able to see the lights flashing, especially if I leaned forward a little more and just barely pulled the switch to flash my brights.
I pulled the switch steadily until I saw the blue icon for brights appear on my dash. I glanced again in my rearview mirror and met his eyes. He glared at me, but didn’t say anything. I looked back to the road.
I pulled the lever in the sequence. Dot, dot, dot, dash, dash, dash, dot, dot, dot. SOS, even people that didn’t know morse code knew that sequence. I flashed it hoping that cars in any direction might notice it. I passed by a few. I saw one click his lights but keep going. Did they understand? Or think I was signaling a speed trap behind me? A light ahead turned red. And the car ahead of me stopped. If I kept signaling it would be visible to the gunman. I needed to signal people in my lane. Someone following me. I shifted the car to neutral.
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“What are you doing?” asked the gunman, running his words together.
“Oh sorry, just force of habit. I idle the engine at stop lights to save gas.” I tapped on the break with my foot only holding my knee steady to hide what I was doing. Dot, dot, dot, dash, dash, dash, dot, dot, dot.
“Jesus, you’re always like that,” Diane exploded. “It will only save a few pennies in gas and you’ll probably just wear out the engine more from doing it. You and…and” she spluttered, “your do this to get that fucking life hacks. Why? Why don’t you just keep it simple.”
I stared at her, shocked by her outburst. What… oh. She was covering for me. I’d never done this before, but she knew I was up to something. She was acting. Playing a fighting couple. She could hide what I was doing. Maybe even make the gunman sympathetic to me. Or just engaging his attention. If he was focused on her he wasn’t focused on me.
I kept tapping on the brake. “That’s not fair.” I replied. There is just so many small things you can do to optimize things. It all begins to add up.”
She snorted. “It’s stupid. You’re just wasting your time reading about stupid things when you could be learning something useful. Or actually doing something normal people think is fun, instead of watching stupid cartoons.”
Wow, she was great at ad libbing this. I kept tapping my brakes but the light turned green. I switched to drive and accelerated. Hopefully, the guy behind me noticed what I was doing. We moved through the next few lights without stopping. They were actually timed to be green all at the same time. Where was a red light when you needed it? Diana, kept up with tirade. “I don’t feel like listening to you describe all the different stupid swords and what they can do off of some stupid cartoon called Tide or something.”