I looked up from the couch, where I was currently sprawled out, scribbling in one of my business textbooks when Elaine came in. “Uh oh, what's wrong?” I asked, catching sight of her grim expression.
Elaine held up another of the familiar envelopes. “Another one of these taped to our door,” she said. She opened the letter and read it out to me: “If you haven't paid the outstanding balance of your rent, some 1700 euros by the end of this month. We will have no choice but to evict you from your flat, keeping your security deposit and all other monies paid to us thus far.”
I grimaced. “They make it sound like coming up with €1700 in a matter of weeks is easy,” I muttered.
“Well, we were never supposed to get this far behind on our rent,” Elaine pointed out. “And besides, I'm sure that most study abroad students would just call up their parents or whatever and ask them for the money.”
“Yeah, but most study abroad students are, like, 20,” I pointed out. “Not 26 and 27.” I rubbed a hand over my face. “You'd think that by this point, we might have it figured out.”
Elaine laughed. “Yeah, when you suggested studying abroad for grad school, it seemed a lot easier. Remind me why we're here again?” She kicked at part of the chipped tile. “This isn't the glamorous trip to Spain that you sold me on.”
I shrugged. “Be happy that we got into grad school,” I reminded her. We'd both applied to programs back home but had been rejected from all our top choices—competition was apparently stiffer than we'd expected. By the time we'd found out that we had nowhere to go come fall, most places in the US weren't accepting applications anymore.
Not that I minded. I was happy to be here in Spain for the year. But all the same…
“If we just weren't on student visas,” I sighed. “That makes it hard to get work. Or well-paying work, anyway.” Our tuition wasn't very expensive, and nor was our rent, but when you combined the two things, plus all of our daily living expenses like food and utilities, my job at the bar and Elaine's job at the local café weren't giving us nearly enough.
It wasn't like places had to pay very well when they were paying you illegally, under the table.
“Did I tell you I almost got myself fired the other night?” I asked Elaine as she made her way into the tiny kitchen area and put the kettle on.
“No!” she said. “What did you do?”
“I was doing inventory with one of the Russian dudes, this guy Andrei. I think he's like, a cousin or something. I don't know. Anyway, he's family with the owners of the bar, and so there we were, doing inventory together, and I was stupid enough to tell him to quit dropping all the boxes 'cause I was afraid he was actually going to break something in one of them. And he went off on how I was just another employee and had no right to tell him what to do, and then he threatened to fire me.”
“Yikes,” Elaine said, shaking her head. “I still don't get why there are so many Russians involved in that business. Isn't this Spain?”
I laughed. “And aren't we Americans?” I asked.
“Right, but if we couldn't get our working visas, how do you think those guys did?” Elaine mused. “What's it like working for them anyway?”
I shrugged. “Regarding their visas, I don't ask questions,” I said. “Might find out something that I really don't want to know.”
Elaine laughed. “What, you think they're like, part of the mafia?”
“Wouldn't surprise me,” I said, shrugging. “But then again, I probably just think that because of their accents. They're not bad to work for, really. They've got obscene amounts of money, though. I know they don't pay full price for their drinks, but they're drinking pretty much constantly. They always come and go in really nice cars, and their suits, oh man. Really nice tailored suits.”
“One too many Hollywood movies,” Elaine agreed, nodding her head. “They're kind of hot though, don't you think? Not like those big, fat mafia dudes in the movies. They don't even have the gaudy chains or anything.”
I snorted. “Andrei's got an earring. Diamond, no doubt.”
Unbidden, an image of Andrei from the other night came into my mind. As he'd moved around those boxes, his muscles had been obvious, bulging beneath the thin cotton of his shirt. I'd almost wished it was a little warmer in there, that he'd taken the shirt off so that I could get a really good look at his no-doubt chiseled abs and strong arms. I had already seen the tattoos that he had scattered around his arms, and I wondered how far they went, if they were all over his chest and back as well?
I shook my head: that was dangerous territory. “I really don't want to lose this job,” I sighed. I couldn't start fantasizing about Andrei; I knew he was a player, and I doubted he'd want me around Ritmo if we had fucked. He'd expect me to get jealous and to interrupt his conquests or something.
Not that I really wanted to sleep with him anyway. He was an ass. Just, an attractive ass. If he was part of the Russian mob though, he could probably have me killed when he got sick of me. The thought made me shudder.
“We're going to have to become prostitutes or something,” Elaine sighed, tapping her fingers on the counter as she stared down at the notebook that she kept her budget in. “There's no way we're going to be able to make up all that money this month otherwise.” She cracked a smile. “There's good money in prostitution, right? And I bet it fits around a class schedule pretty well, although maybe not your work schedule.”
I shook my head. “I can't even imagine being desperate enough to become a prostitute. Especially not for a place like this.” When we'd first moved into our place, I'd been so excited about it that I hadn't cared about how shabby the place was. But in the past months, as rent had spiraled further and further out of our control, I'd started to resent the chipped paint and the rough tiles. The fact that the faucet in the kitchen leaked incessantly, the fact that Elaine and I only had curtains to separate our “rooms” from the main living area.
“Well, maybe not prostitution,” Elaine said. “But like, one of those massage parlors would probably hire us, right? You know, the kind where they give a happy ending. I bet dudes tip pretty well for that kind of thing too. And it would work better with your bar schedule, give you something to do during the day.”
I snorted. “You mean, other than going to the classes, which are the whole reason that I'm over here anyway?” I asked. “I'm not whacking someone off for cash. Even if it does tip well.” I couldn't even imagine it. Elaine had always been more...sexual than I was. Sure, I appreciated attractive dudes like Andrei. But I could count on one hand the number of guys that I had actually gone home with. I just wasn't that type of girl.
“Come on, I bet it doesn't take much,” Elaine said. “That's the whole point of a happy-ending massage, right? They're already so keyed up from the massage that you just give them, a couple quick strokes and they're already coming. Boom, just like that.”
I felt a blush creep across my face and was glad that she was making her tea and not focusing on me. “If you want to do that, be my guest,” I told her. “But you'd better start looking for a new roommate—or make a lot in tips—because I am going to spend the month focusing on finding a new place to live.”
Elaine sighed. “You're no fun,” she said. But she was smiling fondly as she said it. “But seriously, what are we going to do? It's not like we're living in a palace at the moment. The whole reason we chose this place was that it was cheap as shit. If we can't even afford this, we're never going to be able to afford somewhere else. And as much as you might like the idea of being like one of those Greek philosophers and living in a box on the street, devoting your life to acquiring knowledge, that's not me.”
I rubbed at my temples and closed my textbook, knowing I wasn't going to be able to focus on it now. I wished that she hadn't brought this up, but I also knew that she was right, we did need to start brainstorming ways to solve this. We'd been putting it off for long enough—long enough that we had accumulated 1700 euros worth of debt to our landlord.
“I don't want to live in a box either,” I said, as though that were really a question. “I guess I can try to ask for a raise at work, but even if they give me that, we're going to probably have to negotiate with the landlord,” I said slowly. “I'm not going to make 1700 euros over the course of a few weeks unless I get paid a huge raise.”
“I could ask for a raise too,” Elaine said. “But it's not like the café really makes that much money to begin with. And I'm kind of scared that if I ask for the raise, they're going to replace me with someone willing to work for even less. It's not like I have any particular skills for my job.”
“Yeah, at least Ritmo's starting to take off,” I said. “I was getting kind of worried when I first started working there. But they're busy most nights now.” I frowned. “It's actually pretty cool, being there and watching the place grow.”
“Yeah, I bet,” Elaine said. “But you're not going to be there much longer if we can't find some way to pay rent!”
“I would say we could stop being students, but that's the whole reason we were able to come over here for a year to begin with,” I sighed. “Plus, can you even imagine trying to tell people back home?”
“There has to be some way to do this, though,” Elaine said. “People do it, right?”
I shrugged. “I think everyone else got scholarships,” I reminded her. “But by the time we knew we were coming here, it was too late to get scholarships.”
“Should've deferred for a year and saved up some cash,” Elaine sighed.
“Too late for that now.”
“Too late for that now,” Elaine echoed in agreement. She grinned at me over the rim of her mug of tea. “So I guess the only thing to do is happy-ending massages!”
I laughed and shook my head. “For the last time, no.” I frowned. “We'll figure something out.” We had to, after all. I wasn't going home because of this.