Dominique Fabre - The Waitress Was New

Outside I saw a pretty woman walking along with a big red umbrella under some not very threatening gray clouds, the usual early-November drizzle. Her hair hung down to her shoulders, ruffling in the wind. There were already more than a few dead leaves, the city workers had neatly pruned the sycamores on the square but they still make dead leaves. She looked in my direction, but of course it wasn’t me she was looking at, and came into the café. I couldn’t have been happier to see her.

“Hello, and what may I do for you?”

I like saying stupid little phrases like that, just to put people in the mood.

“A coffee, please.”

She had a very gentle voice, I thought, and I wondered if maybe she worked in the schoolhouse next door. While she was waiting she reached into her purse, took out a magazine, and started reading the horoscopes. I’d never seen a teacher reading horoscopes in the café, I must have been mistaken. She was just a beautiful young woman for no apparent reason, what was she doing around here? I served her her coffee with a little square of chocolate on the side, and since she seemed to be lost in her beauty and in this bar I went on to ask her, like an idiot, “Will that be all?” She nodded, after a little pause, as if she really had to think about it. I felt like a complete fool, but anyway. I’ve been so crazy about women in my life. I’ve known a certain number of them, it’s only natural when you’re fifty-six years old, in the end I’ve turned into a fairly well-behaved barman, and when I go home to my place at Quatre-Routes all I have are old memories of the women I’ve known, and dreams that scare me, most of the time. Time for a breather at last.

“Getting along OK?” I asked Madeleine, beside me.

“Oh yes, just great, no problem.”

She gave me a smile like she’d just passed the driver’s license exam. No getting around it, though, the boss’s wife was going to have to call Sabrina and find out how long before she’d be back. Seeing that she’d turned away to deal with one of the last lunchtime debit cards, Madeleine took the opportunity to ask me very quietly what her problem was, looking so gloomy all the time? I made my dimwit face, like I didn’t have the faintest idea, and then, looking at the beautiful woman, I told her it would probably all blow over in the end, just like it always has before. I usually don’t deal with clearing the tables. I’m the barman, my business is the bar. Madeleine took care of that, and meantime the boss’s wife went back out onto the front step, a gust of wind blew into the dining room, bringing one single dead chestnut leaf with it. It came gliding along and landed about two meters from the bar, some of the customers turned around to watch it. I don’t know why that made me feel so sad. Pierrot, you’re going soft, brother. There was only one table still full, four gentlemen talking loudly, I recognized the deputy mayor, a dentist, and then I remembered my appointment the day after next in the Social Security medical center in La Garenne. I’d told the boss, but if he was really was discombobulated as he seemed, I was going to have to kiss my extraction goodbye. It didn’t hurt anymore with the antibiotics.

I drew myself a beer, strongly discouraged in my condition of course, the young woman was turning her pages, and outside it was getting windier and windier. She didn’t seem in any hurry. Pierrot my friend, I told myself. I didn’t really tell myself anything at all, as a matter of fact. Really now, don’t look at her too much. Pierrot mon ami was the name of one of the books that young guy was reading with his cup of coffee and glass of water, last week I think. She was too beautiful for Pierrot, my friend or not. Too young. Too this and too that. Or too not enough.

“How much do I owe you?”

“One euro.”

I picked up her ten-euro bill, and she left us a twenty-centime tip, all the same. Le Cercle hasn’t raised its price for a cup of coffee, unlike La Rotonde, where they charge one ten. Now there were fewer people heading in and out of the station through the underpass. Before she left, the beautiful woman took a pack of cigarettes from her purse, and since it was a typical woman’s purse I had the great pleasure of offering her a light, I always keep a Bic in the pocket of my black vest, along with my matches. There was a touch of green in her eyes, I got a nice look. “Thanks.” “Have a good day.” “You too.” I must have seemed like the classic kindly old barman, as much a part of the scenery as the pretty ladies who come in for a quick cup of coffee while they read their silly magazines, then go on their way, leaving a delicate whiff of jasmine briefly drifting over the bar, which I then began to wipe down. How long would I go on remembering this customer if she didn’t come back? I carefully erased my daily slate. Whatever wasn’t right. There were probably a few spots left, though. I was doing my best, but you know. One day I’d be able to hang up my mop rag, and then there’d be no place for me here or in any other café of the Hauts-de-Seine area, where I will have spent the greater part of my life, working.

Amédée came out of the kitchen with a cigarette between his lips, he went toward the Casio and sat staring into the distance, smoking a Marlboro, he got them tax-free from his cousins in Brazzaville. He had beautiful little cousins in every country in black Africa. He’d done a lot of traveling before he ended up here in our twelve-square-meter kitchen. He asked for a glass of milk, very white. I’d heard him crack that joke a hundred times before, but it still made me laugh. Nobody but him had the right to make it without getting a good cold stare in return. My pal Amédée.

The boss’s wife came over to me. It was after three, and still no word from him. The two of us sat down, Madeleine was getting ready to leave, after her raincoat she put on a fresh coat of lipstick. She said goodbye and headed across the pedestrian street. The boss’s wife seemed to have forgotten her already, or maybe not, but she had other things on her mind. The last of the lunch crowd paid with meal tickets. There weren’t many customers left. At this point I usually take some time for a break, after the bar work is done I plant myself on a stool and read the news in Le Parisien or the local paper. There are the horse races, too, but I never bet anymore. Other people do the same thing, especially in the morning with their coffee, then they usually make a call on their cellphone and go off to deal with their little tasks. I was feeling pretty well worn out, the boss’s wife sighed as she looked at me. We sat down facing each other, her on the banquette, me on a chair.

“So, Pierre, how’s everything going?”

I didn’t know how to answer right off.

“The new girl’s getting along well. Any idea when Sabrina’ll be back?”

“Sabrina?”

The boss’s wife had pretty blue-framed glasses with rhinestones at the corners, they sort of made you think of a Caribbean moth, I’d seen them in the window of the optician’s on Maurice-Bokanovski. Oh no, not Sabrina. She came a little closer, and then I was really paying attention, because for more than a few days I’d been wondering if that hadn’t occurred to her too. She looked toward the door again, as if he was finally going to come back like the last times he’d ditched us, waiting for five o’clock to come around, when the bar crowds have picked up again. I get off around seven but I’m never a stickler about leaving on time, what have I got to do at home? I’m just a barman, and the longer I stay on the more life goes by in the best possible way. So there we are.

“Pierre, I’m not a child anymore, you know.”

I felt like the idiot I was, and I didn’t know how to answer. In my business you’ve always got plenty to do behind the bar, so naturally you don’t listen too closely to the words coming at you over the countertop. Most of the time people don’t even want you to answer, they only want you to listen, and sometimes it’s enough just to be there, without really paying attention. Most of all, I take care never to keep them waiting, to let them pay their bill when they’re ready to go, or else leave them in peace the whole time they’re here.