“I am a dancer”, she answered to Luna’s question.
“As in, a professional dancer?” asked Paula.
“Yes.”
“Are you dancing here in London?”
“No, not now. I am on holiday now.”
Paula awaited for more.
“I have been touring. The last show was in London, but the company I dance with is based in Wales, we have finished for the season, we finished last week and I came here, but I was too tired to even get out of my bed. Today is the first day I have come out.”
Paula and Luna were amazed. All this was new to them. They invited her to their kitchen and, from then on, they had their meals regularly in the communal garden patio.

Luna took pictures of some of these meals and Paula has managed to keep one of those pictures to this day.
Tilda had worked in a restaurant where the waitresses had to dance for the guests. She gave Luna the directions for that place and tips on how to get a job there. That was where Luna worked for the rest of her stay in London.

As Tilda was recovering and Luna got used to her new job, they continued to spend time in the tv room while Paula worked in her full time data entry job. Paula did not know how the words “data entry” translated into Spanish so Luna came up with a new name for it, ‘mete-datos’, which was the name that Paula would use from then on and for good to refer to that job.

By that time Paula could finally afford a mobile phone and she had lent it to Luna to make it easier for her to find a job. On the Friday that she was going to meet Lisa, Paula kept it so that she could phone her in case she was late. And of course she had to phone her to tell her she would be half an hour late. She had got out of the office later than usual and then the trains were delayed. Paula had shunned mobile phones and so had Lisa some time in her past, but now they had to agree that it was useful to know that the person one is waiting will be half an hour late.

Lisa took Paula to a nice cheap restaurant in Soho. Paula shared with Lisa her experiences when all she could afford was a small cup of tea that she would drink with others like her, all aware that they were each drinking an hour and a half of their work. Lisa had similar stories to tell. Paula was surprised that she had hardships stories even without having been an immigrant like herself and her other Spanish friends.

From the restaurant, Lisa took Paula to Covent Garden among other places, to see the portrait painters and hear the street musicians play and sing. There was a tall and handsome long-haired man signing songs Paula had never heard. Then he sang ‘Mrs. Robinson’, which Paula had heard before, and that must have been his jewel final, because immediately after singing it he started to wrap up. As he was wrapping up, a pair of young men who had been standing in the background with big cases started to open those cases and take out instruments from them – a guitar, a flute, percussion. Lisa explained that each musician had a slot allocated for each location. Now the solo singer would leave and the group of two would start their act, at the agreed time. How the agreed time had been reached remain a mystery, as was who and how decided who would be allowed to play in the plaza and who would not.

The duo were not Spanish but they sang in Spanish well enough and could make up that they were playing flamenco. Paula was glad to hear some songs she could relate to but was not especially impressed. After hanging out for a few hours and standing up, both felt quite tired and headed off to their respective stops for public transport after a warm good-bye.
Paula must have recover most if not all of her strength while napping in the bus home because when she got home and found Tilda and Luna in front of the tv she scolded them and urged them to go out on such a beautiful Friday night. She wanted to get them back to Covent Garden but they reminded her that their economies were not buoyant enough to spend a pound on a bus trip that was not vital for their own survival. She thought that at least Luna had a weekly bus pass so two more trips were not going to make any difference, but she agreed to go somewhere where they could walk. Even if the walk would take longer than a bus ride to Soho.

They didn’t know much about local pubs either and she decided to take them to the same pub where she had taken her Polish friend to listen to live music. There was live music on that night too but that was only relevant to Paula. Luna and Tilda were entertained by men amazed by their beauty. Paula was amused and consulted from time to time for translation.

After a few weeks of rest, Tilda went back to her dancing company. Luna and Paula stayed and did a bit of tourism, of the kind that Paula now liked – she showed Luna the London that only people who lived in London could show their guests. Of course Luna went on her own to take pictures of the Big Ben, the Tower of London … and she saw the Tower Bridge opened for a ship before Paula did. Paula would only see it years later. But Paula showed Luna things that were not in the tourist guides. She took her to Stoke Newington cemetery, the swimming ponds in Hamstead and the ‘Meridian Zero’ in Greenwich.

“Are we supposed to feel something here?”, asked Luna. Paula was about to laugh but this was just Luna being Luna.
“No. This is just for you to know that meridians are counted from here, that’s all.”
“OK.”
They did not see that many things after Luna got her job as a dancer and waitress and she started to complain that now that she had a bit of money, she no longer had so much time. Paula thought that she was lucky that she lived with some one who was a friend and who had all evenings free to share, something she herself had lacked.

After those few weeks, Tilda came back for a couple of days only. Luna and Paula smuggled her into their room so that she wouldn’t need to pay for a room in another hostel or a hired mattress. On the second night there were some steps outside. Luna and Paula were pretty sure they were from some other resident. Tilda disagreed and just in case she was right, she hid herself under the sink in the kitchen, which Paula and Luna had thought it was only big enough for a small bucket, but somehow Tilda squeezed herself there before they even had the time to check who those steps belonged to, because they faded away as quickly as they had come.

Eventually Tilda went back to her dancing and Luna went back to her life in Spain. Paula continued to have Luna’s letters and Tilda’s visits from her tours.

en castellano original más abajo
this is robotic English

Paula went down the stairs of the underground as usual. He had already got used to the sickening heat that was striking her as soon as she approached the entrance from the cold of the street, to the rush of the morning, to the slowness of the night and to the occasional musicians. Today there were no musicians. The majority of the days there were not any; that’s why whenever she heard them it was a special occasion. Today there was only the murmur of one-to-one conversations [de a dos]; not many. Some work colleagues, some boss teaching his subordinate in the inevitable common trajectory. It always made Paula sad to see those subordinates in those conversations, listening only to intervene briefly occasionally, and was grateful that her boss needed to travel just in the direction opposite to which she was travelling, and that she never saw her going even to the underground. Actually she never saw her boss out of the office. The boss either left earlier than every one else, or later. In any case, Paula was also grateful that the game where subordinates want to progress was not played in the office. She was in putting data, his partners were inputting data, her boss was shouting Paula and her partners, and the boss of the boss was shouting at everybody.
It was not a pleasant place to be, and Paula had wanted already several times to get out of there, but at least she did not have to put up with a boss like that poor boy with the tie it was having to , at the other side of the platform.

Paula started looking at the advertising cartels. Always the same ones. Perhaps there would be twenty, or fifty different ads, but they were repeating themselves from one to another station.

When she read everything what was there for reading she repaired in the sticker. There were no stickers in any place of the underground system. Either there were ads, or signs directing passengers to the exit or to another line, or tiles with nothing. This was the first sticker that Paula ever saw in the underground, although it was not the first one in London. In fact, she had seen a similar one a few days back at a traffic light but she had not been brave enough to stop to read it more thoroughly. Now there was no reason not to stop to read. It was announcing something capitalist for the eighteenth of June.

It had a date, very short text and an internet address. Paula wanted to look up that address but she was not carrying with her anything to write with.

If Paula had seen fifty stickers these days, at least even from afar, she would have missed this and waited to get home to get something to write, but she had not. (Either I get this address now or I’ll never get it) She felt guilty when she ripped off the sticker to get the address – only the address – to be able to consult in some computer with connection Internet one day of that week.

The train came, with its usual roar. The conversations stopped to allow the routines to follow their course. Paula got on the train to get home, if there were no setbacks, within an hour.

————–
castellano
——————

Paula bajó las escaleras del metro como de costumbre. Se había acostumbrado ya al calor nauseabundo que la golpeaba en cuanto se acercaba a la entrada desde el frío de la calle, a la prisa de la mañana, a la parsimonia de la noche y a los ocasionales músicos. Hoy no hubo músicos. La mayoría de los días no había; por eso cada vez que los oía constituía una ocasión especial. Hoy solo había el murmullo de conversaciones de a dos; no muchas. Alguna pareja, algún jefe aleccionando a su subordinado en el inevitable trayecto común. A Paula siempre le daba pena el que escuchaba solo para intervenir brevemente de vez en cuando, y agradecía que su jefa necesitase viajar justo en la dirección contraria a la que viajaba ella, y eso que nunca la veía siquiera ir al metro. En realidad nunca la veía salir de la ofician, a su jefa. O salía antes, o salía después. En cualquier caso, también agradecía Paula que en la oficina no se jugase al juego de que los subordinados quieren progresar. Ella metía datos, sus compañeras metían datos, su jefa gritaba a Paula y a sus compañeras, y la jefa de la jefa gritaba a todo el mundo. No era un sitio agradable para estar, y Paula había deseado ya varias veces salir de allí, pero al menos no tenía que aguantar a un jefe como aquel pobre chico de la corbata estaba haciendo al otro lado del andén.

Paula se puso a mirar los carteles publicitarios. Siempre los mismos. Quizás habría veinte, o cincuenta anuncios diferentes, pero se repetían de una a otra estación.

Cuando leyó todo lo que había por leer reparó en la pegatina. No había pegatinas en ningún sitio del metro. O había anuncios, o carteles dirigiendo a la salida o a otra línea, o azulejos sin nada. Esta era la primera pegatina que veía Paula, aunque no la primera en Londres. De hecho, hacía unos días que había visto una parecida en un semáforo pero le había dado vergüenza pararse a leerla más detenidamente. Ahora no había razón para no pararse a leer. Anunciaba algo capitalista para un dieciocho de junio.

Tenía una fecha, muy poca letra y una dirección de internet. Paula quiso apuntar la dirección pero no llevaba con ella nada para escribir. Si Paula hubiese visto cincuenta pegatinas esos días, siquiera de lejos, habría dejado pasar esta y esperado a llegar a casa a coger algo para escribir, pero , Se sintió culpable al arrancar la dirección – solo la dirección – para poder consultarla en algún ordenador con conexión a internet un día de esa semana.

Llegó el tren, con su estruendo habitual. Las conversaciones se detuvieron para permitir que las rutinas siguieran su curso. La de Paula era montarse en ese tren para llegar a casa, si no había contratiempos, al cabo de una hora.