Hard Croissant

As soon as I crossed into the restaurant, I fell to my hands and knees. Hidden from the Cowboy, I shuffled towards the buffet table. The carpet scratched under my palms like it was trying to persuade me that the plan was stupid.

But what the carpet didn’t know was that I didn’t have a plan. Not yet, anyway.

Doctor Manhattan can stop time. That’d be sweet. I could break for a muffin. I’d love a muffin. A blueberry one.

Past the legs of tables and chairs I could see the Cowboy’s boots.

I crawled under the buffet, then popped my head out from beneath the grey tablecloth, the fabric resting on my hair like a headscarf. The Cowboy was immediately to my right, past four empty tables.

I dared to glance towards the corridor. There was no sign of Jennifer.

On the buffet table was a plate of cold pastries. I’d seen them when crawling. I reached up and grabbed something flaky with icing. It was satisfyingly hard, like it had been sitting on the table for days. Without so much as a deep breath I launched it like I’d chuck a video-game grenade: up and over.

It missed the Cowboy by a good two metres, landing unseen with the faintness of a fairy’s fart.

I took a croissant. I squeezed it to manufacture a more streamlined missile. Again I lobbed it. The spirit of a dead basketball player must have temporarily possessed me. Dad would have been proud. The croissant hit the Cowboy’s newspaper with a satisfying rustle.

I ducked down, grabbing more food as I did, my heart bouncing like a toddler on Haribo. As there wasn’t an immediate reaction, I dared peek out from the tablecloth again.

The Cowboy was slowly folding the paper, unhurried and unfazed. He took his glasses off, closing their arms and placing them delicately on the table. As he looked in my direction, I ducked away.

‘It’s too early for funny business,’ he growled. ‘Who’s there?’

I could taste adrenalin and, weirdly, it tasted of Coke. I threw the next pastry. My eyes focused on the Cowboy’s snakeskin boots. I’ve no idea where this shot landed, but it had the desired effect. The boots kicked out as his chair squeaked from his table.

‘I see you, partner. What’s your game? If there’s one thing I don’t like, it’s wasted pastries.’

A crunch of furniture came from the other side of the room. Through table legs, I glimpsed the quick blur of Jennifer. I stood up. The Cowboy faced me, looking for all the world like he was about to draw a six-shooter. I grabbed a further fistful of croissants and threw hard.

The golden flakes didn’t stretch half the distance and, from beneath his walrus moustache, there came a smile. ‘I had a feeling we’d meet again.’

‘Hello,’ I replied and I didn’t say sorry, even though his ten-gallon stare was making me feel massively apologetic.

Instead I kept my focus on the Cowboy. I didn’t want to betray Jennifer’s presence by looking away. He’d stepped from the table. Here was her chance.

‘It’s lucky for you I’m in a good mood, son. Time was there’d be hell to pay if someone threw a croissant at me.’ I still didn’t apologise. ‘You don’t know what you’re caught up in.’ The Cowboy moved back to his chair. He placed a thick hand on the box. Jennifer should have grabbed it when she’d had the opportunity. Now things were complicated. ‘Big stakes, son. And I’m not even sure your new best friend knew what she was taking in the first place.’

‘It’s not yours,’ I managed.

‘Sure, it ain’t. But it’s not hers neither. The rightful owner, a woman of influence, Jennifer’s grandmother, paid me to do a job. I promised to get it done and as a man of my word that’s exactly what I’m intending to do. Straight after I finish this paper and get me a few hours of shut-eye, see.’

‘But—’ I tried.

‘We can’t all be the hero. And the girl’s already miles distant. In police custody too. You twig?’

He sat down. I heard Jennifer sigh. The Cowboy heard too, his head snapping in the sound’s direction.

I needed to distract him.

‘She only wants to see her dad.’

His attention returned its spotlight to me.

‘Is that what she told you? Hell. This is America. Every one’s got a hustle. I was sent to retrieve the package, not the girl. You might want to think on that.’

There was a doughnut, the last item on the plate of breakfast pastries. It was pregnant with jam. And it was my final shot.

I grabbed it.

‘Throwing a doughnut isn’t going to get your friend back,’ he said. ‘But it’ll surely rile me.’

I pulled my arm up and behind my head, just like a pitcher.

The Cowboy smoothed his moustache with the fingers of his left hand.

‘Let’s not get any funny ideas,’ he said with a gunpowder rumble.

Too late! The cake had already left my hand. It soared, a sugary meteorite. And he was up and out of his chair as … the doughnut passed harmlessly over his shoulder, hitting the wall with a red squelch like someone had been shot in the head.

It was now that Jennifer moved. She sprang like a jack-in-the-box and swept the package from the table one-handed. The Cowboy clutched at thin air, knocking over his juice as he did, the glass clinking as it hit the table.

‘Come on!’ called Jennifer, already halfway across the room.

Disaster! My left foot caught a table leg and I went flying. From the floor I saw two things. One: Jennifer hesitating, eyes flashing with panic. Two: behind me, the Cowboy looming. He stretched out his hands.

My legs kicked in a desperate pedal to get me up and away. Tread caught carpet and I launched forward, the Cowboy’s fingertips sweeping across my (stolen) coat but failing to grip.

I banged into another chair and sent it cartwheeling into the Cowboy’s path.

‘Goddamnit, kids!’ he roared as we disappeared into the corridor.

‘Hey, is there a bus stop nearby?’ Jennifer called to Henry as we flew through reception, the box now passed to me.

‘Out front,’ said Henry as we fell through the automatic doors into the sharp Oklahoma day. We left him calling, ‘Where’s your …?’ at the exit.

Half a football pitch away, a bus rolled to a stop. We pumped muscles to catch it. We were within touching distance, our chests bursting with hot breathing, when its engine farted into action and it started to pull away.

But …

miraculously …

after six metres …

it stopped.

The door opened. We clambered on. Jennifer suddenly had a fistful of change and she fed it, one-handed, into the ticket machine’s mouth. The bus driver, a round woman with a smile larger than her face, looked on.

‘You two leaving the zombie thing already? You’re lucky I saw you.’

‘The place is dead,’ replied Jennifer without even a hint of a smile.

Adults say travel changes you. That’s why rich kids have gap years. And if you’d told me four weeks earlier that I’d be on the run across America with a mysterious girl who may or may not be transporting drugs or money or whatever, I’d have had a panic attack at the very idea.

But heading towards Tulsa, I looked out of the window at fields spotted with lonely trees and I enjoyed the familiar Weetabix glow that came with being back on the road with Jennifer.

We swapped buses on to a Greyhound in Tulsa. Jennifer had shown me what she’d found in her stolen coat pocket: a wallet full of credit cards and ID for a Miss Gonzalez. And whoever this Miss Gonzalez was, she had a carefree attitude to security. There was also a scrap of paper with a list of PINs.

‘When were you going to tell me about this?’ I’d asked.

‘I’m telling you now. I thought you knew, anyway.’

She used one of the cards to buy Greyhound tickets. I wasn’t even nervous because I was so sure the attempt would fail. For one thing, the woman on the driving licence had a different-coloured face to Jennifer (even without the zombie make-up). And, seeing how it’d been some time since the wallet had gone missing, surely the woman would have cancelled her cards?

Apparently not. And neither did being done up like the undead affect our chances of purchasing tickets. That’s American customer service for you.

After washing off our zombie faces in the restrooms, we picked up supplies. Water, crisps, chocolate, the kind of stuff your parents would never let you buy. Using the stolen credit card was bad, okay. But, first off, Jennifer was the one who’d done it and, secondly, she swore that when we got to California, she’d tell her dad to pay back the cash.

‘So, technically we’re not stealing, we’re borrowing.’

I don’t know about you, but I was hundo P convinced by the argument.