This is a 117-page novella that you can read in one sitting.
It is the story of Pierre, a bartender who works in this cafe-bar called Le Cercle in the suburbs of Paris. Pierre has been at Le Cercle for eight years and has been a professional bartender for nearly four decades. He is 56 and lives alone, after several failed relationships. His job at Le Cercle is his anchor and he takes pride in his work, in serving people, in keeping his bar spotless. He knows that the people who come in, “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”.
On this particular day though, things are not going smoothly. Sabrina, the regular waitress hasn’t come in for a few days, the new waitress Madeleine is here and trying to fill in, and Pierre’s bosses Henri and Isabelle, who live above the cafe, seem to be having a marital crisis. Henri slips out from the cafe in the middle of the day and no one knows where he is and when (and if) he plans to come back. At this small cafe they need all hands on deck to deal with the lunch crowd but with the husband gone, the wife distracted, the new waitress wondering what on earth is going on, and the Senegalese cook Amedee stepping up his litany of complaints from the kitchen, it falls on Pierre to hold the fort. As he manages this day and begins the next, things with Henri and Isabelle become even fuzzier.
We follow Pierre’s thoughts and observations over three days as the crisis at the cafe builds.
After a nearly 40 year career as a bartender, Pierre is still at the mercy of his unreliable employers, whose personal troubles he is reluctantly dragged into; the long hours of standing and serving are starting to take a toll on him but he cannot afford to quit just yet. And perhaps he doesn't want to retire just yet, as his work affords him some semblance of a social life. This is a quiet and introspective story about work and what it means to us, the realities of aging, and loneliness.
Translated from the French by Jordan Stump.