Dominique Fabre - The Waitress Was New

“At least you’re faithful.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

She sighed again, to snap herself out of it. I saw a guy squinting and waving his arms at us. He’d just come out of La Rotonde and didn’t feel like going home yet. I gestured no with one hand, and he set off for the next café, talking very loudly and waving his arms again, he was very put out.

“What do you think of the new girl?”

I looked at the boss’s wife and said what I thought, that she was very good. Yes, very good.

“She lives a bit far away, though. Don’t you think she’d be better off finding a job closer to home?”

I put on the standard face of the guy who has nothing to say, I don’t want to cause problems for anyone, in my work as a barman. She stood up, went to the cash register, and took out two bills. “Pierre, I’d like to invite you to dinner, OK?” I almost swallowed my barman’s bowtie, but it was back in my dresser drawer, so no harm done. I told her sure, if she liked, I’d be happy to, it was on me. She said no, on her. She held out the keys to her little black Audi, which I would have found very tempting in the old days, back when I lived in Paris myself, near the Gare du Nord. I always lived close to one of the big train stations when I was in Paris. I’m not sure that was deliberate. We left the café together after giving the dining room one last check. She went into the kitchen, and when she came out she was walking more like her usual self. And it wasn’t just her walk, either. Women in cafés all walk the same way, judging by my long experience of these things, it’s certainly no job for foot-draggers. We set off toward her car.

She turned back toward Le Cercle’s front window, the lights were all off. There was only a little red glow over the awning of their apartment’s front door, that was the alarm system. And then, in the café window, the ads for the different beers, Pelforth at the moment, posters for exhibitions in the community center, the schedule for La Lanterne, which is a neighborhood movie theater over by the Levallois bridge, the kind you almost never see anywhere else. The only one I could compare it to is the Jean-Vigo, in the old Cité-Jardin development in Gennevilliers, but who goes to see movies in places like that anymore?

“You OK?”

She didn’t answer.

“Don’t worry, Pierre.”

There were dead leaves on the windshield, stuck down by the rain. I picked them off one by one, and I didn’t tell the boss’s wife they were scattered all over the floor of Le Cercle in my past few nights’ dream. I opened her door, as if I were also a chauffeur in my off hours, and her a princess every now and again.

“Fall’s come for good now,” she told me in a quiet voice.

“Yes, that’s very true.”

What I really wanted to say I kept to myself, she wasn’t listening anyway. I walked around the car and wondered where she might like to eat. Could it be she’d decided to go to Sabrina’s herself? Try to patch things up with him, if that was still possible? I had no idea. We ended up on the Place Voltaire. Her little Audi was a pleasure to drive. First I drove along the quais, for the past few days it had rained more or less regularly, not that much, but still, the Seine was churning. The river always shines a little under the streetlamps on the banks, and a little more when the wind is blowing against the current.

“Where do you want to go, Pierre?”

I almost told her I wanted to go home and let them sort out their marital problems for themselves, but it was too late, I thought, I’m already fifty-six. I drove back through the little streets on the other side of the station, in the nice part of Asnières where you find the villas and the model apartments overlooking the river, set a little ways back from the street. And so we went by Le Cercle again, I went straight ahead down the Avenue de la Marne toward Les Bourguignons. There was still some traffic, she was looking out the window, sometimes she opened her mouth and murmured things I didn’t understand. I was used to that. Around here the bars were still open, they’re too far away to give us much competition, especially the ones over by Les Grésillons. People there don’t have much money to spend.

I know this neighborhood like the back of my hand. If it had been up to me I would gladly have driven around for another hour or two, going nowhere in particular, but that wouldn’t have done much to pick up her spirits, and that’s what she needed, I thought. She gave me a strange look when I parked on the Place Voltaire, I said “I was thinking of couscous, how does that sound?” “OK, Pierre, yes, now that you mention it, couscous. Why not?” We went into the brasserie, a regular haunt of mine since I became a confirmed bachelor, and I was very grateful that the waitress didn’t make any cracks. She just gave a little giggle, out of the corner of her eye. I took that as a compliment. We ordered a couscous for two, the boss’s wife didn’t know what she wanted, we settled on a complet : lamb, chicken, merguez. We had a kir on the house, courtesy of Gérard the Kabyle, whose real name is Slimane. I asked the boss’s wife what she was planning to do, in the end? She picked at her food all through the meal. She had no idea. She was going to wait, Pierrot, what else could she do? This was all starting to get me down, especially with such a nice couscous in front of me. Myself, I’m over all that love business, really. She did finally start to tell me some things, though, and while she was talking I saw two or three guys I knew, just regular decent guys in their way, more or less like me, they left us alone. They’d met, she was eighteen and him twenty, she’d dropped her nursing studies to follow him.

“We were head over heels in love, Pierrot, do you know how that is?”

“Um. I’ve been there, ma’am, yes, I think.”

But she wasn’t really expecting an answer. I didn’t want to let her down, she could spill it all out for me, and then, not too late I hoped, I could go home to bed. He was something of a maverick in those days, and he’d never gone to college. They started out doing seasonal work on the Côte d’Azur, and her parents refused to see her anymore, because of him.

“Because of him, ma’am?”

“Yes, for three years.”

She smiled at me.

It surprised me to think of them in love that way, and then I realized he must be having one hell of a mid-life crisis to walk out on a love like that. And then after their daughter Sophie they never had another kid. She would have liked at least one son, but all he could think of was work, that and the races, where he lost lots of money. “You know how he is.” He was always wanting to move on, some guys are like that, they just know life would be better or more beautiful if they could only go somewhere else.

I heard her out to the end, but on the whole I don’t think there was anything I didn’t already know. It just made me a little uncomfortable, because from now on it was going to be awkward working for them, I’m not paid to be a third wheel, if you don’t mind my saying.

“Do you think Sabrina’s pretty?”

“Yes, of course” was the only answer to that one. There was no saying the opposite, particularly because I knew she was all alone in the world, with her family she never saw anymore, back in the new North Amiens suburbs, and two children to look after. She never said a word against her ex-husband, but I’d seen enough of him in the bar to get an idea. The rest of the meal went by in silence. She got out her cigarettes, and I smoked another one. Little by little I was losing the habit, but I still liked to smoke. The waitress came to ask how everything was, and I made the classic no-complaints gesture as a way of avoiding the dessert menu, which wasn’t worth much in that place. But they do serve a real mint tea, with pine nuts.