The Best Thing That Can Happen to a Croissant

by Pablo Tusset

  ‘Thank you, but I don’t think I need a cross-addicted loser to give me pharmacology lessons.’

  ‘That’s right. What you really need are lessons in how to be a little more street-smart. Lesson one: a man should be friendly and personable with the person who has just reset his fucking nose.’

  ‘Wrong: rule number one is let someone break your nose so that you can protect your moron of a younger brother. Or weren’t you wondering why they did this to my face?’

  ‘Let me think: might it have something to do with your insufferable, know-it-all, rich-boy attitude?’

  ‘No. It has something to do with you, motherfucker. I let them practically kill me because I wouldn’t give them your name. And then you, all on your little lonesome, came walking into the belly of the beast.’

  ‘Listen, shitface, the one who walked straight into the belly of the beast was you. I was happily intoxicating myself in multiple ways when you got me and the whole family into this mess.’

  ‘I told you to forget about the house on Guillamet. Did I or did I not?’

  We were actually screaming at each other, even though it was in very hushed voices. The mention of that godforsaken house did manage to distract me from the predicament.

  ‘Are we in the house on Guillamet?’

  ‘You tell me … how did you get in here?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was knocked unconscious.’

  ‘Some brave rescue …’

  ‘Listen, Mr Virtue, do you want us to do something so we can get out of here or would you rather I tie you back up to that chair and find a way out of here myself? And I should warn you, you smell a hell of a lot worse than I do, and chit-chatting with you hardly appeals to me.’

  Silence. He really did smell, an awful combination of sweat and urine. In addition to the blood, his originally white Calvins were sporting various yellowish stains. They must have had him tied up for several days by now. Anyone would have crumbled from the fear and the major humiliation he had been subjected to, but The First is very much The First – even I have to admit he’s got balls – pissed on, but balls nonetheless. He agreed to my ultimatum with a sigh of resignation. I relaxed the infuriated look on my face, and passed him the cocaine and the bill. This time he didn’t argue and did two lines, one in each nostril. I would even say he had had a bit of practice.

  ‘Help me up, I want some more water.’

  I let him lean on me and he stood up on one foot. Aside from a darkening bruise on one shin, his legs were in pretty good shape, though weakened from lack of use. The worst was the pain in his side, although he managed to take the last few steps toward the sink on his own. I told him I thought he’d be better off not washing up for the moment, that it was in his interest to keep looking the way he did and he agreed. Then I tried to stall for time by talking to him as he took little sips of water from the hose.

  ‘So you say they came around every so often to rough you up a bit?’

  He nodded.

  ‘How many of them?’

  He held up two fingers.

  ‘Armed?’

  He nodded again and made a pistol with his thumb and forefinger.

  ‘Well there’s only one guard at the exit upstairs, but he’s got about a thirty-metre advantage in the hallway to see us coming after him. We’d be better off trying to surprise the two that come into your cell.’ Your cell, I specified. ‘We hit them with a couple of left hooks, take away their guns and then we’ll be better prepared to hit the guy above. You know how to use a gun?’

  He indicated that he did. I asked myself where he would have acquired that particular skill and then I remembered that he had been a Magnificent Lieutenant in the Army’s Special Operations Unit. I could almost, but not quite, picture him in his custom-made uniform and the little six-point star sewed on to his black beret – not, of course, to be confused with the black beret of Che Guevara.

  He finished drinking.

  ‘And you? Do you have any idea how to use a gun?’

  ‘No. But I’ve seen plenty of movies.’

  ‘Right. So how did you get here without them catching you? Couldn’t we take that way out?’

  ‘I slid down a toilet shaftway for eight floors.’ The slight exaggeration couldn’t hurt, I thought. ‘To go back the same way we’d have to go up a bunch of stairs where the guard could catch us pretty easily. Plus, you’re in no condition to go shimmying up a set of drainage pipes, nor am I for that matter. I think it’d be easier for us to ambush them up here, you know, prepare a little party for our visitors. One of them might even be able to lend us a disguise, in addition to the weapons. What do you think.’

  ‘You’ve left out one thing.’

  ‘What thing?’

  ‘I’ll tell you as soon as we get control of the first two.’

  The First and his little telepathy games. I never could stand them.

  We went back into the cell, The First walking very slowly but a little better by now. Once inside, he stood there and began to make a bunch of vaguely Chinese-looking movements. It wasn’t tai-chi exactly, but it kind of looked like it.

  ‘And the guys that come in to kick you around, are they the guards? The guys in the blue coveralls and the boots?’

  ‘No, they’re dressed normally. In suits. They also work on the outside.’

  ‘Think we can take them on? I mean, are they wimps, kind of?’

  ‘They’re in good shape, tough guys who know how to fight.’

  Gorillas against hyenas, I thought to myself.

  ‘I know. One of them gave me a little demonstration,’ I said, pointing to my temple.

  ‘A shiner?’

  ‘A kick.’

  ‘Not bad …’

  ‘Right. If I get the chance, I’ll congratulate the guy.’

  ‘Well, knocking you out isn’t exactly saying much. You’re like a walrus: lots of mass, little mobility.’

  ‘Oh, really. Well you should know that this walrus has his own way of taking care of things.’

  ‘How? By getting your opponent drunk? Listen, instead of wasting time on details, why don’t we focus on putting together some kind of basic strategy?’

  ‘Fine: you hit the first guy that comes near you and I’ll run out from behind the curtain and beat the shit out of the other one.’

  ‘How do we know that he won’t be beating the shit out of you? You need some technique to be able to knock someone over before he can get to his pistol.’

  ‘You just worry about yourself. Pretend that you can barely speak and let him bend down and put his ear next to your mouth. When you’ve got him good and close, you whack him hard and I come running out from behind the curtain to nick the other one. I just hope you haven’t gotten the Stockholm Syndrome or anything …’

  ‘Cut the cracks, if you don’t mind, and just try and make sure they don’t pop you with a beginner’s punch. Cover your head and your crotch at least … like this, see? Don’t let them knock you off balance; come out sideways, legs open, shift your weight back and forth. Let’s see …’ He jabbed his index finger toward my navel. ‘Well, if they get you there, they’ll ricochet back. I don’t know what kind of offensive moves you’re capable of.’

  ‘Don’t worry. When I was little I fell into a well and made it out okay. The worst thing that can happen is if the sides are even and then the upstairs guard gets in on the action.’

  ‘He’s pretty used to hearing action from down here … Try hiding behind the curtain now, let’s see if I can see you.’

  I tried. Hidden behind the opaque grey plastic curtain was a toilet overflowing with various generations of human shit. The First, jumping around a bit now, warned me that he could see quite a bit of my feet. I corrected the position, he gave me the thumbs-up and I got out from there: I would almost say my Magnificent Brother actually smelled better than that rancid corner.

  ‘Do you have any idea how long they might take?’

  ‘Lately they’ve been coming around here two or t
hree times a day. The last time was this morning, about three or four hours ago. I’ve lost track of time, with all the sleeping.’

  ‘So how do you know they came by in the morning, then?’

  ‘In the morning they smell like coffee with milk. In the afternoon, like beer.’

  ‘Not bad for someone who just had his nose bashed in.’

  The First kept on jumping up and down.

  ‘They’ve more or less stopped hitting me. They come in, bored, ask me a few questions, let me taste a bit of food, a sip of water and then they go.’

  ‘What the hell are they waiting for you to tell them?’

  ‘Your name, among other things. They know that I hired someone to stake out the entrance to the place on Jaume Guillamet, but they don’t know who. Now they know, of course …’

  ‘Hey, speaking of which, did you call your wife to tell her to stick something in an envelope?’

  ‘In an envelope?’

  ‘Yeah. And did you write “Pablo” on a list that included the Jaume Guillamet 15 address?’

  ‘I didn’t do anything of the sort. I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Well, I think your Magnificent Wife may have taken me for a ride.’

  ‘Don’t blame her. She must have had her reasons. How long have you been inside here?’

  ‘Since last night. But wait, why did you say that they know you hired me for the Jaume Guillamet business? You haven’t told them anything, and neither have I …’

  ‘They know. For sure. And now they’re going to want to interrogate you, so if they nab us you can just imagine what will go down.’

  ‘Me? Shit, I don’t know a fucking thing …’

  ‘Maybe so. But they don’t know that.’

  ‘Would it be too much to ask who, exactly, “they” are? Or is this one of your telepathy games?’

  ‘See? All this naturally awakens people’s curiosity. That’s exactly what they’re afraid of. The truth is, the less you know the better. And now, if you don’t mind, I have to focus on regaining some of my flexibility. Too bad you’re out of that decaffeinated cocaine, another dose would come in handy about now.’

  I took out the rest of the stash, along with a rolled-up bill and left them on the seat of the chair.

  ‘We’ve got two grams left. That is, of course, if Sir Sebastian doesn’t mind doing low-rent drugs.’

  ‘I don’t “do drugs.” I medicate. There is a very basic difference between the two.’

  He served himself some, bending down to the chair and then repeating the motion as a kind of exercise for his thighs. Then he got busy resting his leg against the wall, raising it high above his head and punishing his thigh muscles once more by hugging his raised calf to his torso until he got the tip of his nose to touch his shin. As difficult to describe as to justify. Once he finished with this little choreography number, he started in with a bunch of fu-fu punches: a sequence of fast, sharp jabs, fu-fu-fu, that curled invisibly in the air and came back as if they’d been shot out by a spring. After a few minutes of these excesses, he was sufficiently warmed up and took off my shirt. It had been ages since I’d last seen The First in underwear: he looked almost exactly the same as he did when he was twenty – a clear-cut case of arrested development. All of him – legs, thorax, arms, back – were a carbon copy of those ads for virtual mayonnaise and crackers for taking easier craps. A damn shame.

  ‘Listen, uh, Bruce Lee, watch out you don’t give yourself a hernia. Then we’ll be even more fucked.’

  ‘Why don’t you worry about yourself, you look like a moose.’

  ‘And you a lobster, dear brother.’

  For the next hour, The First dedicated himself more or less exclusively to prancing about like that and I focused my energies on staring up at the ceiling from the mattress on the floor. I would have liked to have slept a bit, but no dice. That decaffeinated cocaine kept you in shape but wouldn’t let you sleep a wink, so we had no other choice but to endure one another as best we could. Despite it all, however, between insults we were able to refine our staging and arrive at some kind of agreement as to our plan of attack. Once we heard voices upstairs, we took no more than five seconds to get into position: The First, knocked out on the chair, his arms ostensibly tied behind his back, and me on tiptoes behind the curtain, trying not to breathe too loud.

  As soon as I got back there I was already psychologically prepared to crack open whoever’s skull I had to crack open, though I was not psychologically prepared to see The First’s disfigured face pop in front of mine quite so soon. Contrary to all our plans, he had abandoned his post at the chair and flung open the curtain to reprimand me for something.

  ‘The bolt!’

  ‘What bolt?’

  ‘On the door, idiot, as soon as they come down the stairs they’re going to realise that it’s open.’

  Shit. He was right.

  ‘Get out of here and shut it before they start down. Hide in another cell and as soon as you hear me scream, come running in.’

  The best-laid plans …

  I got out of there as fast as I could, closed the door behind me, bolted it shut and prayed that the slight creaking noise had gone unnoticed among the voices that were moving closer and closer. Then I raced into the facing cell and shut the door.

  I heard the footsteps descending the staircase, and then the creaking of the bolt on The First’s door. Peeking through the tiny window, I could see the backs of two guys dressed up like insurance agents, both in navy-blue suits. One of them had already entered The First’s cell and was handing him a metal tray. The other stood guard at the door. He was saying something to my Magnificent Brother, I couldn’t hear what but it sounded like some kind of banter. A couple of seconds went by in which The First was to go through his little deathbed routine, and right away the first guy bent down a bit toward him. The other guy’s back was in my way, so I couldn’t see exactly what went down, but I heard The First scream and utter a muffled cry and then I saw a metal tray go flying through the air. I couldn’t wait any more after that, so I opened the door with a shove and went running through the place yelling like Tarzan. The First’s sudden resurrection had sent the guy in the doorway into maximum-alert mode, but my cry indicated that the enemy was attacking from behind as well, and he tried to turn around, fumbling with his shoulder holster in search of something. I didn’t give him much time to find it: one hundred and twenty kilos of moose, fuelled by six metres of advance velocity, prevented him from much movement. The impact was tremendous. I rammed into him sideways, protected by the shield formed by my flexed arm. I only regretted the head-banging I got as I smashed into his chin. He, on the other hand, had not planned on suddenly finding himself in the path of a boar-hunting Obelix. For a moment he froze in an expression of pure panic and, milliseconds later, he was toast. Smashed up against the wall at the other end of the cell, about four metres away, he didn’t appear to be moving. The majority of my kinetic energy had been transmitted to the body of my unfortunate victim, but I had enough inertia to completely lose my balance, fall uncontrollably and take the seat with me (luckily The First no longer occupied it). I rolled on the floor over and over again for what seemed like an eternity, probably because my mission was to reassume my position as quickly as possible and ensure that the guy couldn’t get hold of his gun. At the second tumble, I had already lost my bearings, but I did note that my hand was touching something soft and I realised that it was the guy, who must have slid down from the wall and fallen on the floor. Without seeing very well what he was doing, I patted his jacket in search of his holster, stuck my hand inside and pulled out his gun. Only when I rose up from the floor, as dextrously as I could manage, did I ascertain that the guy was most definitely out of commission, even though he did thrash around a bit, trying to raise his head.

  That, however, was only half the job to be done. While I was duking it out with my partner, The First was dealing with the other goon and, from what I could tell, he hadn
’t found his sweet spot yet. By the time I turned to look at them they were still striking poses at each other. My Magnificent Brother was like a praying mantis in full nuptial dance – it made you want to tattoo a dragon on his back or something. But the suit-and-tied hyena must have had a few tricks of his own, because he refused to give up quite so easily. After a few jabs here and there, the goon did a quick 360° corkscrew spin around the axis of his full height. The neat part of the move, though, was his ability to thrust his leg out at precisely the right moment and ram it into whatever was in its way – specifically, the neck of my Magnificent Brother, who scarcely had time to double over painfully on his bad side so as not to expose his mouth to more abuse. I had a pistol in my hand but no idea of what to do with it. Using it as a battering ram was one idea, but I was afraid it would go off; then we would really be busted. There wasn’t much time to think – the blow that The First had just sustained had given the hyena time to take out his own weapon and, from the looks of it, he definitely knew what to do with a pistol. Luckily, though, The First regained his balance and, with a flourish, kicked the goon in the hand and sent the pistol flying. The First was still at a disadvantage, though, because his movements were laboured and his adversary already knew his weak points. The worst part about it, though, was that the dance was so complicated that I couldn’t figure out how the hell to break into the action – I got the feeling that I’d only be a nuisance, and so I decided not to intervene. That is, until the hyena landed a fist in The First’s side. He’d really hurt him – you could tell from the way he yelped – not very warlike this time around – as he sustained the blow. That was when I took the pistol into the palm of my hand, so as to protect the trigger, and launched into a second lunge attack, this one with special effects and furious growling. I wasn’t as lucky this time around: the guy saw me coming out of the corner of his eye and had time to partially move his body mass out of the way, and so we both bore the brunt of the crash against the wall: I smashed into the wall head-on, and he backed into it. My knee felt as though it had exploded upon contact with the wall and was instantly, almost automatically anaesthetised. I ricocheted onto the floor and remained there. The other guy also took his time recovering, but the rebound favoured him and he ended up tripping his way forward onto his feet. But The First was there waiting for him, with an ingenious compound manoeuvre that consisted of a double fu-fu punch in the solar plexus and, as the guest of honour doubled over onto himself, a precision kick in the back of his neck finished him off and he fell to his knees toward the floor, where he finally ended up like a frog run over by a car.