Waiting for Tomorrow

always the same and this never ceases to amaze Denis, the manager and owner. He recruited her on a sudden impulse, this tall girl, as muscular as a hammer thrower. Adèle was running a stall of produce from the West Indies at the street market, in high summer. She stood there with a length of madras cotton tied about her neck as a scarf, offering plates of “accra” fritters and slabs of bread spread with spicy vegetable relish. Despite her silence, her giant stature, her shaved head, there was a crowd. Denis had just been walked out on by his barman (what was it he yelled as he left? I’ve had enough of working in your shitty club for a black man’s pay or was it working in your black man’s club for shitty pay?). He had gone up to her stall and, as he chewed on his minuscule slab of bread and relish, had said: “How would you like to work for me?”

She had eyed him with a calm stare and he had felt embarrassed and sheepish. He began again in somewhat softer and more respectful tones.

“My name’s Denis Anicet. I manage the Tropical, the club on the big beach. Do you know it? I’m looking for someone to work in the bar.”

“To do what?”

“Serve the customers, make cocktails, that kind of thing.”

“I don’t know how to make cocktails.”

“No problem. We’ll teach you. It’s from Friday through Sunday. We open at nine and close at two.”

“How do you pay?”

Not how much but how. That had not escaped Denis’s attention but her dense, earthy, dark-brown gaze kept him from crowing.

“However you like. By check, by bank transfer, in cash.”

“I prefer cash.”

“No problem. Can you come and see me tomorrow?”

“Yes, at one p.m.”

“Okay, then. See you tomorrow.”

“I can make punch.”

That was what she had said, or at least what he thought he had heard.

The next day she was waiting there in the parking lot, dressed in black, the same dark-brown eyes, the same shaved head. Denis had been struck and a little intimidated by her appearance. What a woman, he had thought.

So how long has Adèle been there now? Six years, maybe seven? Never any trouble, never one word louder than the next, never one word too many, either. All he had gathered was that she came from Mauritius and had no papers. But she seemed to be uncomplaining about this and the last thing Denis wanted was to get involved. At the bar she attracted a great crowd just as she had on that stifling day in August. And, as she had said, or not said, the punch she made would knock you flat.

Adèle always dresses in black, the only ornament she wears is a fine silver wristband. She has a perfectly shaped cranium.

At closing time she leaves the bar gleaming (bar top, floor, shelves, bottles, sink) and waits patiently for Denis at the entrance. He drops her off outside the gates to the development where she lives on the outskirts of the city. During the fifteen minutes it takes to make this drive through a city now emptied of its inhabitants, sometimes it feels to them as if they were little motionless figures in a glass bowl. Silence does not disturb Adèle and as time has gone by Denis has learned to be equally appreciative of these moments when time stands still. He no longer fidgets on his seat, he no longer steals glances at her, no longer asks her questions. When they reach the second traffic circle, the one dominated by a structure in the form of an arrow, he slows down and drops her close to the bus stop. He has never dared to walk with her up to the front of her apartment building. He leaves the engine running for two or three minutes, his ear cocked, his hand on the steering wheel, the car door locked—there are lots of stories about certain districts in this suburb and at this time of night he has no desire to invite trouble. Adèle walks around the bus shelter, goes into the development, waves to him, and disappears. Denis shifts into top gear and accelerates sharply, driven by the desire to get back to his fine house, his garage with two car spaces, like in American films, the lawn, and his wife’s flowers that suddenly seem so precious to him as he makes a U-turn to get onto the bypass. He will go and kiss his children, take a shower, and later, as he is quietly finishing off a cake, his face illuminated by the light in the fridge door, he will wonder what Adèle’s apartment looks like.

Adèle’s place: a space nine feet by twelve, a futon bed, an armchair, a table, a hot plate, a sink, a few cooking utensils, a chest of drawers made of plywood, picked up one lucky day down at the bottom of the apartment building. The toilets and bathroom are out in the corridor.

In her room: bare walls, every surface white and clean.

One has to picture her, this big woman just under six feet tall. Dressed in black, as always, coming into this room twelve feet by nine. She hangs up her bag, her jacket or her coat on the hook behind the door, takes off her shoes, puts on her Chinese slippers, things made of brightly colored satin, very comfortable but not durable. She makes her way with a slow tread over to the washbasin and briskly soaps her hands and forearms before rinsing and drying them. When she comes back from the Lesparets’ it will be barely 8:00 p.m. and she settles down in the armchair, her hands resting on her knees. She lets the sounds of the apartment building come to her, banging doors, mothers raising their voices, quarrels, television, laughter, footsteps above her, next door to her, and soon the world is nothing but a jumble of noise, exploding into white bubbles beneath her closed eyelids.

The evening passes, neither