One day she saw herself in a dream. She didn’t enjoy the experience. It seemed to involve a mad dog that might tear her to pieces. Her own image was breaking up. Her hips contracted or her legs shrunk; tiny black wrinkles were covering her face like the footprints of flies; she was wearing a low-cut top from which bulged heavy breasts that dragged down her shoulders. She was certain that the person dreaming her was male due to something she called sibilance. It wasn’t that the sibilance had anything to do with the person’s breathing, the word just fit her impression of being recreated by a man. One night that man appeared as a baker from Teruel who invited her to accompany him to a coastal town. He was wearing a white apron and a paper hat, and he had a kiln at the shore that functioned as a brick factory. He drove her to a house with no electricity or running water, and tried to pretend that it was a hotel. He’d be staying there too. She felt the man’s expectations being dashed in advance. It was impossible to say anything about her own feelings. In that dream she was simply a cold body, a few years older than her present age, with a head of curly hair. When she woke, she had a slight sense of apprehension. Whoever was dreaming her, she didn’t find him in the least attractive.

That man’s dreams became more frequent. He wasn’t always a baker, sometimes he appeared as an old man who hid her away in his home, or in others as a surgeon wearing a suit and tie, carrying a briefcase. She tried to investigate the guests from the tourist industry who regularly stayed in the hotel. Although they were in an economic crisis, the city had had a stroke of luck. A branch of a famous modern art museum was about to open and it was predicted that the number of tourists would triple in the coming years.

Her main means of spying on the clients was a peephole in the kitchen. Occasionally she’d take trays of hard melon or slices of cheese to the breakfast buffet. A great many people attended the trade fairs, there was a lot of noise and bustle; the singles who occupied tables near the door or either side of the large window were masks, focused on buttering their croissants, replying to WhatsApp messages, or leafing through the local newspaper.