- A young garage mechanic (Bobby) and fast food hostess (Rose) meet and quickly fall in love. While out on a date one night, Bobby fakes holding up a convenience store. The prank goes horribly wrong, resulting in the death of a young shop keeper. The couple are now on the run from the law and themselves.—Michael Delorme <mdelorme75@hotmail.com>
- At a pool hall in Los Angeles, California, Bobby Eckert (Paul Le Mat) loses money in a billiards game. Unable to pay his thuggish opponent, Bobby offers the title to his car as collateral and promises to return the following night with the money. Bobby leaves with his friend and co-worker, Moxey (Robert Carradine), and the two cruise around until dawn.
The next day, as Bobby reports to his job at an auto repair shop, his boss, Benny (Mario Gallo), reprimands him for his incessant tardiness. Moxey says that he has made it into transmission school, meaning he will soon earn a higher wage. Learning that Moxey must wake up at 6:00 a.m. to attend the school, Bobby says he would prefer to make less money and sleep late.
Later that afternoon, Bobby delivers a car to Rose Miller (Dianne Hull), a waitress at a fast food restaurant. He asks for a ride home, but Rose refuses, saying that someone from the shop drove her to work in a dirty tow truck and she got a ketchup stain on her pants as a result. Bobby goes to a bus stop across the street, but Rose takes pity on him when it starts to rain and offers him a ride.
They stop at Rose's house, where Bobby meets Rose's young son, Eric, and her mother. Rose invites Bobby to come ice-skating with her, and he becomes smitten while watching her skate. They go to Pink's hot dog stand for dinner, and after cruising around, they park and look at photographs in Rose's wallet. Bobby asks where Rose's father is, and she explains that he never returned from the Korean War. When Bobby sees a picture of Rose dressed like a pizza, she tells him about the time she went on the television game show, Let's Make a Deal, and won a trip to Hawaii. However, she decided to trade the trip for a mystery prize behind a curtain, which turned out to be a tricycle. They kiss, and Bobby suggests sex in the back of the car. Saddened, Rose says she is not interested in having a one-night stand. Bobby, apologizing that he does not take himself seriously, confesses that he owes someone money at the pool hall. Rose agrees to accompany him to the pool hall, then whimsically begs him to take her to Hawaii.
Stopping by a liquor store on the way to the pool hall, Bobby entertains Rose by pretending to rob a young cashier with a piece of beef jerky. The cashier's elderly father emerges from a back room wielding a rifle and orders Bobby to freeze, believing that Bobby is the same man who robbed him the previous week. The man cocks his gun, but Rose knocks him over the head with a bottle. Falling to the ground, the man accidentally shoots his son. Terrified, Rose screams and Bobby ushers her outside, past the boy's dead body.
Fleeing in her car, Rose pleads with Bobby to turn around and explain the situation to the police, but he refuses. Taking a corner too quickly, the car rolls onto its side, causing Rose and Bobby to hit their heads on the windshield. Dazed, Bobby helps Rose out of the upturned vehicle and they run, narrowly avoiding police.
They retrieve Bobby's car and stop at a fast food restaurant, where one of the customers notices Bobby's bloody forehead and alerts a police officer. The officer and his partner approach Bobby in the parking lot, but he convinces them that the blood is from a motorcycle mishap earlier that evening.
Later, the couple stops at a secluded spot and Rose notices Bobby's wound is bleeding more. Bobby apologizes for not knowing what to do, and Rose says that she cannot leave her child, no matter what.
The next morning, Bobby takes Rose to a bus station by the beach and apologizes that he cannot return to Los Angeles with her, saying he may go to San Diego or even further south to Mexico. Rose cries as she boards the bus back into town, and Bobby remarks that they might see each other in Hawaii someday. Although Rose takes a seat by the window, she cannot bear to part ways and rushes out before the bus leaves.
Later, at a parking lot near San Diego, Bobby fights with a man who sits on his car. The man's friends team up against Bobby, but a stranger named Buford Wizell (Tim McIntire) threatens them with a gun, then offers to buy Bobby and Rose a drink, insisting they join him and his girlfriend, Donna Sue (Leigh French). Although Rose resists the idea, she agrees when Buford also offers to buy dinner.
In Buford's car, the two couples ride to Tijuana, Mexico, where Buford says that he once played for the Dallas Cowboys football team but was fired after a disagreement with the coach. Later, at a local restaurant, Rose is bored by Buford's ramblings. She cries while fixing her makeup in a bathroom, and Donna Sue comforts her, guessing that Rose and Bobby are having a fight. As they leave a bar, Buford urinates into someone's car and drunkenly admits to Bobby that he was fired from the Cowboys on his first day.
Returning back across the border and to the town where they met, Buford offers Bobby his hotel room for the night, saying that he and Donna Sue are going to head back to Texas. Once they are alone, Rose cries and tells Bobby she misses her son.
The following day, Bobby calls Buford from a payphone, and Buford promises him a business opportunity in Fort Worth, Texas.
At a Los Angeles playground, Rose meets her mother, and says that she must go away with her son, Eric.
In Studio City, Bobby stops to buy Eric an ice cream cone, and Rose follows him, leaving the boy alone in the car. A police officer discovers the abandoned child and coaxes him out. More police arrive, and as Bobby and Rose leave the ice cream shop, they spot the police with Eric and hurry away in the other direction. Bobby instructs Rose to call her mother from a payphone and arranges to reunite with her at a hotel that evening. When her mother does not answer the phone, Rose calls police and provides information about the liquor store shooting that she and Bobby witnessed.
That night, after arranging with a friend to meet him at the hotel, Bobby sees the friend arrive and walks outside. However, police have surrounded the building, and, believing that he has a gun, shoot Bobby down before he has a chance to surrender. Having witnessed the shooting, Rose cries over Bobby's dead body.
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