Maruja quotes three prices for nine centimetres of tube

—This doesn't get repaired, Teodoro. This gets replaced.

—You're saying that without even looking at it.

—I'm saying it because I'm holding it. Come closer. See that black inside, that dirty mirror running all the way to the bend in the tube? That's the metal of the electrode, which has been evaporating with the heat and sticking to the inside of the glass. Once a tube ends up like that, no gas on earth will save it.

—So clean it.

—It doesn't get cleaned. You open the tube, pump out the gas, cut off the bad stretch, bend another one the same, weld on two new electrodes, pull the vacuum again and fill it again. That isn't cleaning, Teo. That's making it again. And it would be the third time.

—Three times in nine years is hardly a scandal.

—Three times in nine years on a nine-centimetre piece, in a sign that carries four metres ten of tube. Sit down, because I'm going to explain this once and then you decide.

—You sit down. You've been on your feet since seven.

—Since half past six. Your bar's sign is six big letters and a tilde. All of it runs in series, one after another, fed by a nine-thousand-volt, thirty-milliamp transformer in the box above your door. Whatever that thing pushes through eighty centimetres of Ñ, it pushes exactly the same through nine centimetres of tilde. And for the tilde, that's too much.

—Too much what?

—Heat. The electrode on a short stretch gets far hotter than the one on a long stretch, because it has less tube in front of it to spread the load. It gets dirty sooner, goes black sooner and cuts out sooner. It's been dying at its own pace for nine years. Three times in nine years is what that piece can take, and not one more.

—That sounds like an excuse from the woman who bent it.

—Then I'm going to charge you for it even if it sounds like one. Thirty years bending tube, Teodoro. If I knew how to make a nine-centimetre tilde that lasted twenty years, I'd be in Munich and not on the Sobrado industrial estate.

—And I've been pulling pints for thirty-two years and none of them has killed me.

—You have a trade with water in it. Mine runs at seven hundred degrees.

—Tell me what it costs and we can skip the lesson.

—No, the lesson is part of what it costs. I'll give it to you in three numbers and you pick one. First: I bend you another tilde. A hundred and ninety euros with the electrodes and the gas fill, you'll have it on Thursday, and in my experience it holds until the winter of twenty-seven. Maybe the spring.

—A hundred and ninety for nine centimetres.

—For nine centimetres and two hours at the bench. The tube costs less than the coffee you had before coming here. What you're paying for is me sitting down with the torch and getting two curves right on a piece the size of a finger without overheating it, because if I overheat it, it closes up inside and we start again.

—Fine. Second number.

—Second: I give the tilde its own transformer. A small one, three thousand volts, sized for that length. It would stop suffering and it wouldn't burn out on you again, at least not for this reason. Three hundred and forty euros, plus a hole in the wall for the second cable, plus calling back the electrician who botched your awning.

—My brother-in-law is no botcher.

—The awning was your brother-in-law, Teodoro.

—True. Third number.

—Zero euros.

—Zero?

—Zero. We take the tilde off and we never put it back. I leave you the Ñ on its own, I plug the two electrode holes with black silicone and from the street it reads as an N. Up close you can see something used to be there. You save a hundred and ninety euros now and all the ones coming after.

—That is not an option, Maruja.

—It's the only one that doesn't bring you back here.

—It's my bar. It's called La Peña. My father opened it in seventy-nine and it was called La Peña then and it's called La Peña now.

—Teo.

—What.

—Nobody calls it La Peña.

—Excuse me?

—Nobody. For nine years, nobody.

—In my neighbourhood everybody calls it La Peña.

—In your neighbourhood they call it La Pena. Even your own WhatsApp group calls it La Pena, because it's called “Mus La Pena” and you set it up.

—One of the mus lot set that up.

—One of the mus lot set it up and you didn't change it for seven years, which is worse.

—It's a nickname. Bars have nicknames.

—It's the trophy. Teodoro, the trophy for the mus championship you sponsor has a screwed-on plate that reads “BAR LA PENA”, no tilde, since two thousand and eighteen. I know because I'm the one who collected the plate from the engraver, on Calle Renteros, with a photo of the sign on my phone so he wouldn't get it wrong. And he copied exactly what he saw: the burnt-out Ñ. I came back with the trophy, I put it on your counter and you said: “bloody brilliant, Maruja”. And there it still is.

—I don't read the trophies in my own bar.

—Nobody reads the trophies in their own bar.

—And you've kept that from me for eight years?

—I haven't kept it from you. I've fixed it for you twice, and both times it lasted you one summer. Fixing it is another way of keeping quiet, and you paid me for it on top.

—Then that's exactly what you're doing a third time.

—No.

—What do you mean, no? I'm giving you work.

—You're giving me a job you'll give me again in a year and a half, and both previous times I came out behind. Not on the money. On the face you make when it burns out, which is the face of it being my fault.

—Well, it is a bit your fault.

—It's physics' fault, Teo. And a bit your father's, who in seventy-nine ordered a name with a tilde from the man who ran this workshop before my father-in-law.

—My father paid what he was asked.

—Your father paid the same for nine centimetres as for the whole Ñ. Two days' wages in seventy-nine, for a hat. And nobody warned him that hat would burn out every four years. That I can't show you on any piece of paper. My father-in-law told me, standing right at this bench, and he told it laughing.

—Can you make me a coffee while I think?

—There's no coffee here, Teodoro. There's a machine with hot water and fond memories.

—Then give me a glass of tap water and let me look at the tube for a while.

—Look at it all you like. Just don't pick it up by the bend.

—...

—Teo?

—Maruja, how much would you charge me to make an N?

—A what?

—An N. A clean N, same red tube, same thickness, that fits in the gap left by the Ñ and doesn't look like an Ñ that's lost its hat.

—Sixty euros. An hour and a half at the bench and a span of tube.

—Then make me an N.

—Teodoro.

—Make me an N, Maruja.

—You've spent twenty minutes telling me your bar is called La Peña.

—I've spent twenty minutes waiting for you to tell me it isn't.

—Tell you what?

—That nobody calls it La Peña. I've known that since two thousand and eighteen, I've known it since the trophy, my daughter said it to my face at the little one's communion. But if I change it because I feel like it, I'm the man who got tired of his father's name. And if I change it because the sign maker of Sobrado told me to, who is the one who knows about signs, then it's a technical decision.

—It is a trap, yes. But you set it, when you brought out the trophy.

—I brought out the trophy so you wouldn't throw the hundred and ninety euros in my face.

—And I came with the tube in my hand so you'd tell me it can't be fixed.

—So I'll make you the N.

—You'll make me the N. And you'll fit it on Thursday, before the league, because on Thursday the engraver comes to play and I want him to see it.

—Done. And the plate on the trophy?

—The plate on the trophy has been right since eighteen. It was the sign that was wrong.

—Teo, one thing.

—Go on.

—This will be all round town in two hours. What are you going to tell them?

—That I came to fix the tilde and the sign maker explained to me, with numbers, that a nine-centimetre tilde on a four-metre circuit isn't viable. That it's an engineering problem.

—It's true that it isn't viable.

—I know it's true. That's why it works.

—Put the tube back up on the bench for me, go on, and I'll show you where I'm going to cut it.

—Put it up yourself. And charge me for the tilde anyway, Maruja, all hundred and ninety of it, because if the name comes free nobody's going to believe it.