I was at a party with Magalee a few weeks back, and she told me that when she comes home to our flat from work, she feels like she's coming home to her family. That might read like a Hallmark moment in print but it was a really special moment, because I realized that she's right: we have morphed into a warm, cozy family who like to spend time together. Ruth recently came back from a business trip, so her and Pablo are now forever teasing each other mischievously and cooking up great feasts for each other, which the rest of us always get to share. And even though I had a crush on Magalee (pictured above, right) for a month or two, I'm much happier around her now that I don't feel any pressure to hit on her, because I know realize I was forcing her to keep me at a distance. She, Andrea (pictured above, left) and I have spent many an afternoon drinking coffee and telling funny stories in the eating room, especially because my and Andrea's rooms aren't worth spending much time in. Before Andrea moved in the eating room had essentially become my room alone - now it's become a social meeting place we can all feel secure in. If we've become like a family, I'm not sure who the parents are, but I'm definitely the youngest of the children. Although Pablo and I are the same age, the fact that he works full time for a living makes him seem slightly older than I, and everyone else spoils me with the kind of nurturing kindness of an older sibling. Especially now that Elena moved out - she's the crazy Italian woman who fit the mold for Evil Stepmother - I really get along perfectly well with everyone I live with to the point that I don't feel lonely if I go a week and a few days without seeing any of my American friends. Although our overall living situation in our apartment may not be perfect - we all share a bathroom and a kitchen and things have been breaking a lot lately - our overall chemistry couldn't be better right now.
It was against this backdrop of near-utopia that Pedro (our deadbeat of a "landlord" who is illegally subletting us the apartment so he can travel around the world with our over-charged rent) decided to go and fuck everything up. You see, since Elena left we've had no word on who our new roommate would be. Lo and behold that Pedro would inform us that we have *two* new roommates coming in, and that he would tell us the day before they arrived. The Chilean couple who would live with us, he said, were people of confidence, although he couldn't remember their names or how he had met them. The couple - named Alejandro and Laurena - are actually quite nice people and get along well with everyone, but they bring the number of people in our apartment to a whopping seven, and the apartment was already overcrowded. So we've somewhat collectively come to a decision: we will find another apartment from an official, legal agency and rent it out together. We've already found several listing for apartments where we would all, on average, pay 240 euros each, which is half of what many of my flatmates pay now. The best part of all, of course, would be the revenge, because if all of us move out at once without a word to Pedro, he'll be left twisting in the wind while we move on to higher ground. Naturally, if Pedro were a decent landlord, this would not work. But since he has *never* shown his face in the apartment as long as I've lived here, there's no way he'll know anything (unless he finds his way to this blog...).
