The Life of Adele: Chapter 3
Chapter 1
Adele was nervous. She was waiting in the reception area of her old school to be called for an interview. After nearly a decade of teaching primary school children she had decided to move up to teach teenagers and applied for a job as a high school teacher after completing her secondary teaching degree part-time and online over the past three years. She was proud to have gotten a distinction in her new teaching degree and she couldn't wait to begin teaching English literature. As luck would have it, a vacancy had appeared in her old gymnasium and she had decided to apply. She had to teach a lesson to a group of Grade 12 students on poetry (she got to choose the poem) and then she would have an interview with the Headmaster and the Head of English.
Her lesson had gone well she thought. She had chosen Keats' La Belle Dame Sans Merci as it was her favourite English poem. The students had responded well to her teaching style and she had made the lesson interactive as well as included a Powerpoint. The Head of English had sat at the pack of the classroom taking notes but he had smiled at her a few times so she knew she was doing well although she had slightly over-run her time and not managed to get everything she'd planned done. That worried her. She was now sitting in a chair in the reception waiting to be called in. Another candidate had gone in before her and one other candidate was waiting to go in after her. He sat on the chair next to her but they hadn't spoken to each other except to say hello. He was a French guy of North African origin, wearing a black suit with a white shirt and a tie with polka dots on it. He was not bad looking she thought. Herself, she was dressed formally in a navy blue skirt with a light blue shirt and a matching tie. Blue earings dangled from her ears and her navy Italian leather shoes still hurt her feet as they were brand new. She had her hair done up in a chignon. Blue was her lucky colour and so she had gone with it. On her finger was a turquoise ring set in a silver ring which she had brought from a summer holiday in Morocco last year.
The headmaster's office door opened and he came in, looked at his notes, looked at both of the candidates and said, 'Mr. Kechiche? Please come with me.' The young man got up and Adele said, 'good luck' as he walked behind the headteacher into his office. Adele would be waiting for at least 30 more minutes. She had accepted the offer of a cup of coffee from the kind old lady at reception – black, no sugar – and now needed to pee. She told the lady she was going to the bathroom and wandered off to find the nearest female toilets.
When she entered them many memories came flooding back. These were the same toilets where she had kissed Béatrice all those years ago, only to be rebuffed. The memory still hurt. She used the bathroom, flushed, then checked her make up and suddenly, felt like a cigarette, to calm her nerves. The toilets now had large 'no smoking' signs and so she decided to walk to the old playground and sit on the steps where she used to go for a smoke during her school days. As she sat on the black metal stairs and took out her pack of Gitanes, a senior teenage girl walked past wearing a pair of blue jeggings and carrying an iPad and her eyes were drawn to the girl's ass.. To her amazement, the girl turned around, grinned, and said, 'Checking out my ass?'
Adele blushed and didn't say anything. She quickly stubbed out her cigarette, flicked it away, and went back inside. The teenager stood there looking at her, grinning. Adele smiled weakly back, embarrassed to have been so obvious, and went back to the reception. Her mind went back to that day, many years ago when, after having dreamed about the blue-haired girl whom she had seen crossing the road—she was sitting during break on those very steps when her classmate had seen her staring at Alice's ass and commented on it. It had led to a conversation with that girl, Béatrice, and an unexpected kiss from Béatrice which had awakened some latent desire inside her. The next morning at school she had tried to kiss Béatrice again in those same school toilets only to be rebuffed – much to her shame and embarrassment. She had wept in secret out of anger and shame.
Hearing her name being called out loudly shook her out of her thoughts and she realised she was being called in for interview into the headmaster's office. She grabbed her Chanel handbag (a birthday present she had given herself on her 30th) and walked into the headmaster's office.
The interview had gone well and three days later she had received an email offering her the position subject to positive references from her previous employer. She knew she would get those and so she went to her favourite Italian restaurant for dinner to celebrate, by herself, where she ordered homemade Sicilian-style spaghetti and meatballs followed by a delicious tiramisu. The restaurant was in the same neighbourhood as her apartment, where she had lived alone ever since her breakup with Emma, and so only a short walk away. She was single – Emma was still her only serious relationship - although she had had a large number of one-night stands since then with both genders and even one threesome with an Arab girl and a French guy whom she'd met in an underground techno club. Feeling like going dancing again – it was a Friday night after all –she followed dinner with a visit to a new bar which had become quite famous in the local press and she had never been there before. Apparently it was where the 'in' crowd hung out and a recent review on Tripadvisor had described it as, 'a place to see and be seen with the local beautiful people. Yet it is surprisingly unpretentious and serves great cocktails as well as imaginative shisha flavours and, later, turns into a great dance club with a live DJ.' It was called The Blue Room. She had gotten drunk, danced all night until the club closed, and came home, alone, in the early hours of the morning.