Dominique Fabre: The Waitress Was New

“So I suppose you’re out of work, my poor friend?”

He really wanted to know what was up.

“Yeah, laid off, it would seem.”

“You worked long enough for a pension?”

“Don’t know. We’ll see.”

So, along with Le Parisien , I got the paper where they print job listings for my line of work, which is serving drinks to people who pass through your café for ten minutes or an hour, or as long as it takes to eat a meal. They’re your equals, and often they’ll leave you a tip on their way out, but whatever they’ve left hanging in their lives hasn’t budged a bit. Some of them will come back to see you again and again, year after year. Pierrot my friend, you would have made a great poet. A few trimesters short of your full pension, you could have thrown yourself down the stairwell, with Monsieur Primo Levi’s paperback clasped in your scrawny arms. Of course, you only live on the third floor, so you probably would have wound up with nothing more than a broken leg, or a twisted ankle, or a cracked-up coccyx, or a dislocated knee, but that’s certain death in your business, no legs, no job. There was plenty of work to be had, from what I’d seen in that paper. I wouldn’t be the youngest applicant for any of those jobs, of course. But on the other hand, I’d be the only one capable of watching over a café closed for no apparent reason, and that was where my meditations on the meaning of my life stood when the telephone rang. It made a lot of noise in the empty café. This time I knew the voice on the other end of the line. I could hear his wife in the background, I even got the feeling they weren’t alone. I didn’t have anything to say about it. I wasn’t even all that surprised, in the end. It had come over him like a sudden urge to pee, I told myself, but in fact no, ever since his daughter went away, and, I realized later, ever since the end of his fling with Sabrina, his mind was made up. He didn’t dare breathe a word of it to his wife, who’d been following after him for so long. End result: we were all out on our asses.

“For Christ’s sake, boss, did you ever stop to think about us, about Amédée, about me?”

He didn’t answer, which meant that he didn’t give a damn, more or less. Was it because I’d spent eight whole days on that trimester stuff that this was hitting me so hard? I really hadn’t seen it coming at all, to tell the truth. He’d been traveling here and there with his wife, visiting cafés that were looking for new management, they were calling from Saint-Malo.

“God damn it, we don’t live in Saint-Malo! Fifteen years I’ve been here in Les Grésillons!”

I’d have to check over the paystubs from my salad days, but actually that didn’t tempt me much. We hung up, me first, he wanted me to break the news to Amédée, and I said “No, absolutely not, out of the question, don’t waste your breath, the answer’s no. That’s for you to deal with.” He’d found a buyer.

“See you at the labor tribunal.”

Some nerve he had, and his wife too, all of a sudden I was sorry he hadn’t disappeared for real. I let out a silent howl in the empty café. After that I looked out the window. The trees weren’t completely bare. Some of the sycamores that were pruned too short had a few tiny leaves left, still green, they hadn’t figured things out yet. All the branches around them were black, the mournful majority, I thought. I’d spent thirty-three trimesters in this café, two of them on disability. Fuck. Pierrot my friend, I said to myself. And this time I did just what he wanted, because at that moment he really was my friend.

I opened the café up for business. I turned on the fluorescent lights over the bar, and even in the dining room. It was six o’clock in the evening. I took down my little sign, then hurried back behind the bar and waited. It wasn’t ten minutes before they started showing up. But they all had the usual look on their faces, they gave me their orders just like they always did. It was good hard work. I served free round after free round, it was the apéritif hour. By seven there were a good twenty-odd customers in the bar, and then Amédée came in, wearing coveralls. We shook hands, and he asked me straight off if I’d heard the news? I said yes, he’d called me earlier.

“What’ll it be, my friend?”

It was a lovely evening. At one point I saw the young man in black coming out of the underpass, I waved him over and he pointed at his chest with one finger to be sure I meant him. Finally he came in.

“I’m celebrating my last day, I’d like to buy you a drink, what do you say?”

He gave me an uncomfortable grin and said:

“Oh, I see, great, can I have a kir, please?”

“Right you are.”

Everyone was talking to everyone, nothing loosens the tongue like a free drink, if you don’t mind my saying. Amédée came behind the bar to give me a hand, I’d done a lot of hard work in my life. Then they started to leave, in dribs and drabs. With the kid, I drank to Primo Levi’s good health. “Oh, you know about him?” I said “Yes, I read his book, you were the one who put me on to him, I bought Pierrot mon ami too, I’ll read that one soon.” So then he was happy to drink another kir in our company.

Amédée was managing nicely, I thought. He got a call on his cellphone, I couldn’t hear above the din, but ten minutes later three of his pretty cousins showed up at Le Cercle. We hung around for another hour or so. The uncertain types only nodded when I told them “No, you don’t owe me a thing, it’s free.” Others said “Thanks, what a nice idea, have a good evening Pierrot, happy retirement,” they even left me a tip. We closed up at nine-thirty. The cousins were sitting in the dining room with glasses of Coke and Perrier, and when the last customer left they came and stood at the bar, quite a party we’d thrown together. I had a chat with Amédée. What was he going to do now? He shrugged. He’d wait and see what the new owners had to say, but he really didn’t know. There was plenty of work around, in any case. One of the three cousins was particularly pretty, which didn’t stop her smiling at us and throwing him longing glances and all that, so there you are. “What about you, Pierrot, you given it any thought?” I didn’t answer the cook. But he really wanted to know.

“I’m not sure, Amédée. I’ve been through a lot, but this sort of thing’s never happened to me. I’ll go around and talk to some people I know, I’ll do some filling in for special occasions, I’ll see.”

We had one last drink. His cousins were eager to be on their way. “Ready to go, Amédée?” We shook hands.

“We’ll keep in touch, right, Pierrot?”

“Yes, of course.”

“He said we’d be paid till the end of the month. You believe him?”

I nodded. I didn’t tell Amédée. I was very happy to get three pairs of pecks on the cheek. The prettiest cousin had an old blue Ford, she went off to get it from where it was parked on the Avenue de la Marne, they all climbed in, and I watched them drive away. Now I was alone.

I wiped down the counter, turned off the taps, and started the bar dishwasher, I wanted to leave everything very clean, very orderly, just like nothing had happened. This would be yet another place in my life, but I told myself that without tears. I didn’t want to let myself go. I still had a few trimesters ahead of me. And what else did I have left? I thought of the young man in black, what was he going to make of his life? Would he have the strength for it all? Or maybe he’d quietly while it away reading hundreds of books in a bunch of different bars, and he’d be happy that way. I would have liked to tell him that, but it had come to me too late, obviously. In all this time he’d been coming to waste his days at Le Cercle, I’d never once found a chance for a real conversation with him. Although. Obviously, I’m no Monsieur Primo Levi. I was just a barman, and an out-of-work one to boot, that night. Fuck. I wanted to call Roger so he could give me his thoughts on what might come next, but that could wait, we were supposed to meet a couple of days later in the pizzeria by the town hall in Clichy-Levallois. Maybe we’d go with Muriel. Too bad I haven’t had anyone for what would soon be. I tried not to count in my head. But it wasn’t like the trimesters, it was easier to figure out. Pierrot my friend, I said to myself. I put away the dishes, the cups, yes, three years, soon it will have been three years. My bar was gleaming, clean as a whistle. Then I swept up. It felt good to do that. There was almost no one coming out of the station by the time I was done. I didn’t feel like going home to Les Grésillons. I checked again to be sure everything was as it should be, I turned off the lights at the box in the kitchen. I took one last look. Everything was shipshape now, I could leave this place. I took out the trash from behind the bar and left the can on the sidewalk, by the door. Soon everything would be cleared away. I kept the key to Le Cercle in my pocket, I wasn’t going to just leave it in the mailbox, you never know. So, Pierrot my friend, what now? Um. you mean me? Yes, that’s right, you. I took the underpass and headed for track B to wait for the local to Saint-Lazare. There couldn’t have been more than ten of us in the last car, and I felt like we were all rushing together toward a big, not completely black hole, but I seemed to be the only one who knew. The trees were pretty to look at, over by the Seine. I had no idea what I was going to do next, I only knew I wanted to get home to Les Grésillons very late. I got off at Pont-Cardinet and started walking.