In The Back Streets Of France, Chapter 3: Thomas

Chapter 3: Thomas

Charcoal steps out into the world of gray mist. Guys can be so stupid! She thinks. She is still fuming and she can feel her cheeks giving off heat.

She looks to the left and right for any police. They have to be extra careful ever since Andrew accidentally ran straight into a cop and they had chased them to the big street leading to the ally door to their hide-out.

After finding no police, she heads down a winding street, and ends up in St. John-Paul Square. She stops in at the bakery and gets herself a croissant. Taking it, she goes to a small table in the back corner. It is dark and a little dank but warm, and that is just the way she likes it. She sits facing the door so that she can see who is coming in and going out. She notices that there is a little boy, who was looking in at the cinnamon swirl cakes, steaming in the window. She gets up and pops her head outside the warmth of the café.

“Would you like one of those?” she asks the little boy kindly. He turns his big, brown eyes to hers and nods silently.

Charcoal takes his little frozen hand in her medium sized warm one and they go in together.

At the counter, the clerk says, “I have often wanted to get the little one something, but I have no money…or at least not enough with the Miss and 3 children. Mon due! Enough about me though, lets get him his cake.” After Charcoal hands over the 2€, she takes the boy and they go back to her little alcove booth and she has her croissant and he has his cakes. Finally she turns to him and says, “Chéri, Honey, don’t you have some sort of older person looking after you?”

“Yes, célibataire, he is over there. That is my big brother,” he says very earnestly. Charcoal looks over curiously and her jaw drops. Standing in the window is the sexiest teenager she had ever seen. He has chaleur flowing around him like an aura. The little boy glances at her and smiles a knowing smile. When he smiles, the warmth of it doesn’t reach his cold eyes. But Charcoal has eyes only for the étudiant universitaire, the 16 year old high school boy and doesn’t happen to see the cold smile that is hesitatingly playing around his lips.

“Oh, la la! Who is he?” she asks breathlessly.

“That would be my big brother,” the little boy says again. He smiles an angelic smile that totally wins Charcoal’s heart. They go over to meet the older boy.

“H-hey,” the older one says.

“H-hey,” Charcoal says.

Something happens that has never happened before. His jaw also drops. She is the hottest looking girl he has ever seen. The younger boy looks amused, like this sort of reaction happens all the time when girls meet his older brother; only this time there is also a hard sparkle of jealousy. He has always been reminded at home about his lack of good looks, even at the tender age of seven. He can see what was happening to his brother. The long and the short of it is that his older brother has found something to give his heart to, beside his little brother. In the past, his brother Michael, had been all business: get to the girl, figure out how to twist the men in her life, get the money, leave the girl in tears or dead. The little boy, Thomas, can see plainly that this job is going to take more because Michael is not responding to this girl the way he had been instructed to.

He had been told by Mr. Becker to be impassive through out the initial conversation and get information out of the girl in a persuasive way that would make her “come crawling back for more of your TLC” as he put it. Michael, however, is standing there looking at this girl and wondering how he is possibly going to get through this operation without feeling unwanted feelings. It is snowing now and in the artificial lighting of the dim street light, he sees her cold nose and cheeks glowing brightly in on the backdrop of a dark and gray sweatshirt. Her dark hair is flying back in complicated swirls in the wind that has picked up in the few minuets that has been taken up by introductions. They mutually turn back to the café and go back to the dirty table in the back.