“You could have called and let us know,” she answered. “Oh, I’ve had it with this place.”
She left right away, without even telling me who’d paid and who hadn’t at the bar, but she still gave me a goodbye peck on the cheek.
“Have a good evening, my beauty.”
“Not likely, I’m completely done in.”
She made a face, looking at the boss’s wife, who visibly didn’t give a damn about any of this just then. Madeleine crossed the street, the collar of her raincoat was turned up, she stopped at the newsstand to buy a magazine. She headed into the underpass. Too bad, I would have been very happy to chat with her a while longer. There was a big crowd in the café across the street. And then, not long after that, you could see tiny raindrops falling through the mist under the light by the newsstand, like little brushstrokes.
I told the boss’s wife he hadn’t been there, and he wasn’t in any of the cafés I thought likely. She pulled herself together and thanked the barman, which wasn’t really her style, as long as I’ve known her. We had a few customers, not many, it was almost like they’d all got together and decided to stay away. They must have thought something was missing without the boss around, or who knows what. But that was fine by me, at that point I wasn’t up to any more work. I went to the bathroom. Then I headed back to my post till seven o’clock. The boss’s wife was sitting at a table in back chatting with a friend of hers, Marianne Crège, who runs the hair salon on Maurice-Bokanovski. Now and then she smiled through her gloom, which goes to show, Pierrot my friend, but then I made a U-turn in my head, I just wanted to go home. I went over to see them.
“What about the orders, how are you going to handle that?”
“I’ll see to it, Pierre, Amédée wrote up the list for me.”
So I said OK, gave her back the keys to the Audi, and found myself outside. I crossed the pedestrian street and set off for the bus stop. I made myself some instant soup and didn’t touch Monsieur Primo Levi. If this is a man, I said to myself. If this is a life, Pierrot, yawning. We kept it up like that for another two days, the boss’s wife was doing better, I thought, but she wasn’t really there, still not a word from him. And then it was Sunday, an extra-beautiful Sunday in the suburbs of Paris.
III
I lazed around with Primo Levi’s book till nine in the morning, and then I saw to myself. I took a long hot shower, and I didn’t do any singing, but still it was nice. I went to buy groceries for my neighbor on the third floor, and I brought her her newspaper. For fifty years she’s read L’Humanité dimanche every week. She’s a railway-worker’s widow, beyond that I don’t know much. I rounded out the morning with some housekeeping, I was happy to be at home. I ran the vacuum cleaner and scrubbed my bathtub. I washed my windows, it was high time, what with all the rain we’d been having. After that I peeled the vegetables I’d bought at this morning’s market to make different soups, I used to eat soup every night back when I lived with my foster mother in Clichy. It was a beautiful afternoon, not a cloud in the sky, even if the temperature had fallen a little. But that didn’t stop me from going and twiddling my thumbs outside, I went for a walk along the banks of the Seine, just to make sure nothing had changed, in the end. I’m a lover of rivers, like my mother before me. No surprise there, I grew up by the Seine, in Clichy. Some evenings in springtime the two of us would go for a stroll on the banks, and she’d meet up with her friends. When did they take the benches away? And then I called Roger. He was in fine fettle, he told me. His new girlfriend had gone to Sens, she had family there, and he hadn’t gone along. Still a bit early for introductions, he thought. He’d spent the morning at work, he was stuck behind his bar at Le Voltigeur till almost two in the afternoon, a nap was the first thing on his agenda. We agreed to meet on the Place Voltaire, we showed up at the same time and spent an hour together, thirty years we’ve been seeing each other. We talk about whatever comes into our heads, we catch up on each other’s lives. Ever since he met Muriel he’s been seeing everything through rose-colored glasses, evidently she’d really got under his skin. I smiled in my head, because I’d seen Muriel and I had my doubts about her. It was nice sitting there on the Place Voltaire. I stopped myself from telling him there was always some Muriel getting under his skin ever since he began living alone, and things were picking up speed.
“And what about you, Pierrot?”
“What do you mean, what about me Pierrot? Oh, me? Me?”
Me, nothing, no love in sight. Maybe that was all over and done with now. Then I told him about my beloved boss’s disappearance. He’d already heard, news travels fast from one café to another.
“I imagine there’s a skirt involved?”
“No, that’s not how it seems to me.”
“You sure? What, does he have debts or something?”
“I don’t think so.”
No, his wife hadn’t gone to the cops. She said she wanted to wait a while longer. “Well now, that’s funny.” He looked over toward the Place Voltaire, which is one of the ugliest squares in my suburb, but I’ve spent some of the finest times of my life there, so that’s how it is.
“Maybe she doesn’t want to know,” Roger said, just making conversation.
“What have you got planned for tonight?”
“Not a thing.”
“You want to go to dinner?”
That was OK with him, but not too late, his girlfriend was getting in at ten past midnight and he wanted to meet her at the station. He didn’t have to work tomorrow. And had my friend Roger got under her skin? We went for a little walk, we had a very nice Sunday.
We went back to a bar that was once a favorite haunt of mine, ten years ago or so, and there too they asked me for news of my boss. I said “I’ve got nothing to tell you,” and inside me I missed the old-school approach, which is to serve drinks without saying a word, but I was probably imagining things. In any case, with this kind of work you have to learn as you go. I finally decided he was happy wherever he was, and Roger nodded, “If you say so, Pierrot.” We drank a beer, and then we said why not, we’d be the evening’s first customers at the Kabyle’s place. It was as good as it could be at that price, and he at least didn’t give a damn about my boss, although we were still treated to the free apéritif, with a couscous royal for both of us, and a bottle of Boulaouane, a little too cold for my tastes. It was my turn to pay. We didn’t say much as we ate, we like it that way. Afterwards we talked about my dream, and then, as the waiter was giving me back my debit card, I had a sudden illumination.
“What’s the matter with you?” Roger asked.
“Nothing, nothing.”
“It’s not the bill, I hope?”
Good old Roger, he could be a dope too, just like me. It’s not nothing to be two friends, in any case.
“I think I know where my boss must be.”
“Oh, so that’s it,” Roger shrugged. “This thing’s really shaken you up, hasn’t it? And where might he be, in your opinion?”
I finished the Boulaouane, it had finally warmed up, and as always it made me think of my first detox treatment, a year after my divorce. Then I told my pal my idea, he must have gone to see his daughter in England.
“Ah,” Roger said. “And you don’t think she would have called her mother?”