Dominique Fabre - The Waitress Was New

“So, Pierre, everything’s going well?”

“Yes, just fine.”

“Where did he go, he’s not here?”

“He called, he got held up.”

“Oh, I see.”

Even with her beauty-shop UVs, I could tell that came as a shock. She was already turning on the Casio, it was noon sharp. It’s always rush rush rush with people around here, when what we all really need is more time. Three tables filled up, two four-tops and a three, Madeleine went by with the menus, then back with the apéritif orders. The boss’s wife put down her purse behind the cash register, where we each have a little spot for our things under her watchful eye. I was sorry not to have had five minutes to myself like I try to find every day before the rush starts, I would have splashed some water on my cheeks, I would have drunk a little bottle of Perrier, and I would have tried to put on a proper barman’s face.

I’ve been fifty-six for three months now. My last birthday didn’t really get to me, but my fifty-fourth almost threw me into the Seine, if you’ll pardon the expression. I took a half-day off to see a prostate specialist and get my free checkup from Social Security, they couldn’t find anything wrong. That filled me with joy for two days, just long enough to pick up a nasty hangover. I thought about my dream again, then pushed it away with a shrug as I served a beer-and-Picon to a guy from the MMA insurance office on Maurice — Bokanovski, he has a pointy beard and a black suit, Sabrina calls him Landru. And after that I just kept right on going. Fortunately the new girl knew her job, because without the boss around it was hard work manning the bar. Amédée was in his unusual good mood, and Madeleine had to get after him a couple of times, nothing terribly serious, but the pass-through’s too small, the dining room was noisy that day. The boss’s wife wasn’t letting it get to her, she stayed behind the cash register the whole time, looking like she was thinking of something else, probably wondering where he could have got to, and keeping an eye on things like she always did, between chats with the regulars. Once or twice I caught her giving the ceiling a blank stare, the boss had it repainted two summers before, during the August closing. Since I hadn’t gone away on vacation that year — or the year before or the year after, for that matter — he’d asked me to keep tabs on the work, and I did. She had the dreamy look of a boss and wife whose marriage was heading steadily downhill, if you asked me.

“Pierre, two coffees for table six! Pierre, a carafe of Côtes du Rhône, two carafes of water, a small Vittel!”

All that to be served chop-chop, with all these people lined up in front of me at the bar, I don’t really know them but I’ve been serving them day after day for a good thirty years. At one point, when she didn’t have a bill to ring up or change to make, the boss’s wife left her post and hurried out to Le Cercle’s front door, to see where the hell he was, I suppose. I didn’t need to look out to know he wouldn’t be coming. No one in sight but the trainstation crowds and the office workers, and of course the bums, of which we had our share around here after noon, and sometimes till late at night. Then she shrugged, as if she was all alone, talking to him, and went to put fresh cloths on the free tables. She was quicker about it than he was, but usually that was his department. He knew how to give the place a certain ambiance, and how to keep the customers coming back, even if fidelity’s not really his strong suit, I’m just throwing that out.

My bar was full from end to end, and, as happens from time to time, depending on the month and the year, I felt a big wave of fatigue washing over me, sweat was trickling down my temples because of the heat from the kitchen. Amédée caught my eye, I brought him a beer, and there was a problem at the pass-through, yet another, Madeleine had burned herself on a hot plate.

“Can’t you be a little careful, for Pete’s sake?”

He didn’t answer. He grumbled something or other. The boss’s wife came back to the cash register with a frown on her face.

“What, she doesn’t know how to pick up a plate without burning herself?”

Jolly times among the crew, and with no boss there to help us, what’s more. I let her little remark go by without comment.

Then, just as quick as they’d come, the customers went on their way. At last I could go to the bathroom, with all the fuss today I hadn’t had time before the rush. I took care not to look at my barman mug, but it never fails, somebody opened the door while I was washing my hands, and by reflex I caught a glimpse of his face and my own in the mirror over the sink. Time to change the towel, it was starting to get grimy, and it’s little details like that that distinguish a high-class establishment like Le Cercle from an ordinary suburban café-restaurant. My eyes were looking a bit red, but the main thing was that for a few weeks now, I think, I’ve been seeing some new crow’s feet at the corners, and all of a sudden I was afraid. I might not be up to this job for much longer, but then how could I live? I had to take care of myself. Once the other guy was gone I took a moment to give myself a closer look, on top of everything else I’d left my comb in my jacket on the door by the old dumbwaiter, I was looking a little mussed, and I didn’t like that. Still, we’d done good business today. The place across the street gave us plenty of competition, but thanks to our cook, and also, I think, to my skill at listening to people talk about everything and nothing from behind my bar, and thanks to our regulars, who don’t see much of a difference between here and there, we were hanging on. It wasn’t that easy, according to the boss. Sometimes he sat down with his account book at a table in the back of the dining room. He smoked a cigarillo, sharpened a pencil, and started punching numbers into a calculator with an inspired look on his face, like a schoolkid waiting for recess. He’d sit there for an hour or two, getting more and more discouraged. His wife signed the checks, generally. I was going to have to go looking for him, she was waiting for lunch to be over to bring it up with me. He’d had some flings these last few years. She was more discreet about it. The fact is that turning forty had really got to him, and then, with their only daughter gone to England for a year, the two of them must have spent every evening sitting around looking at each other, I understood completely.

I was feeling better when I came out of the bathroom, I’d found a little time to get myself back in working order, and in half an hour or so the hardest part of the day would be over. Madeleine was leaning on the bar, smoking a cigarette and chatting with the boss’s wife, she was telling her where she’d worked before. She lived on the Rue David-d’Angers, and the boss’s wife asked why she hadn’t found work closer to home.

“Oh, I don’t know,” the waitress answered. “Why not? I like to get out, it’s no trouble.”

“Is that right?” The boss’s wife was surprised. “But doesn’t it take you a long time to get here? And what’ll you do if they pull one of their strikes?”

I shook hands with a few regulars I’d got to know over the years without really trying to. They’re here, they come in for a drink, a bite to eat, they read the bar’s newspaper. They never forget what they are, or all the things they have to do, but for a few minutes, maybe an hour or two, they put themselves between parentheses, and I bear the name of that thing in their lives. There was also Henri, my boss, and his wife Isabelle, but she tends to keep to herself. Once or twice a week she went to run errands in Paris, she always took her day off on Wednesday, hairdresser and beautician, sometimes she went to the movies, then came back at six in the evening. As for him, he was never away from his bar for too long, but just lately, after his first disappearances, he’d taken to slipping out through the back door and wandering off hither and yon, not just in Asnières but also in Colombes, Gennevilliers, Courbevoie, like he was looking for something he’d lost. But what? I had no desire to try worming it out of him. We all have our job to do. Soon I was going to have to go see what was up. It bugged me having to do that, because I’m just an employee here, in a way.