During the first week she dreamed of pieces of talking food. Frozen artichokes, peas the size of closets, and pallid chicken breasts floated up to her room in the sky. The foods introduced themselves one by one and a multitude of voices spoke through them. Everything was ambiguous, except for the voices, which were deafening. They remained burned into her memory for a long time, and in the mornings, as she chopped garlic for the liver tapas, the prospect of going back to spend another night in that hidey-hole disturbed her. She didn’t know why she called it a hidey-hole because it wasn’t hidden or a hole. The windows overlooked a wide avenue, and it got so much light that she fantasized she was living in a hot air balloon. No one else ever went up there. Would anyone come to her aid if she had a stroke?

Hidey-hole also made her think of a kidnapping. Had she kidnapped herself? Was she being kidnapped by the food, by those gigantic kernels of sweet corn swollen with water and sorbic acid? She had the feeling that she was. That was why she had those dreams of crab sticks, broad beans, and chorizo in white wine. The chorizo made the floor slippery. Her slippers skated over it; sometimes she went flying, and then she had to throw out the clothes she’d been wearing because the hotel’s washing machines were incapable of getting out the reddish, greasy stain. In her dreams, she had no clothes left, and there were many days when she believed she’d lost the ones she’d dreamed about until she found them in a drawer.

The intensity of those dreams was in complete contrast to the innocuousness of her working day. She was an invisible cog in the machinery of the hotel. In addition, she was a bit plain, so the waitresses weren’t jealous of her and the male receptionists never came on to her. Her features were so average, so unremarkable, that, on the rare occasions when she left the kitchen, the guests never noticed that a living being was crossing the dining room.