Kim in Spain, with Elif Batuman's voice.

Dear Phoebe,

I am really sorry; this is much longer than it was supposed to be. Once I started writing I got all excited, and then I wanted to end it so it would be shorter, but I didn't want the ending to be all abrupt-like. So it's very long. If you want just read the first half, the point is just to look @ my voice anyways. Sorry!!

Sincerely,

Kim

:-)


When I first arrived in Nerja, a tiny town on the southern coast of Spain, it was the end of September and almost 100 degrees. I had been to Europe before, but never alone, and at that time my Spanish was less than spectacular. I was nervous. I tried to make myself look as presentable as possible for my arrival at the Hotel Plaza Cavana, where I was to spend the next three months working as a waitress. But two flights, a lack of sleep, and an hour-long bus ride made that difficult. When I finally got off the bus I lugged my giant suitcase around for an hour, searching for the hotel. I finally arrived in reception, proud of myself, but dripping with sweat.
It took me a long time to get used to the people and customs of Nerja. Down on the Costa del Sol, it is a tourist town that thrives with obnoxious, vacationing Brits during the summer. But during the off-season, when I was there, it is empty. The locals have little to do but drink. And, as I learned, they did plenty of that.
They called me a “practicanda,” which I suppose is best translated into “intern,” though there is no actual English equivalent. I lived for free, ate for free, and worked five days a week. In addition, I was given two hundred euros per month. The setup was legally questionable—I was there on a tourist visa—but no one seemed to care or notice. At first I was the only “practicanda,” but a month later Vera, a girl from Germany, came, and soon after Tom from the UK arrived. Together we made up the hotel’s cheap foreign labor, and together we learned the ins and outs of that place.
The hotel owner was Paco, a middle-aged man with brown hair, beady eyes, and an enormous belly. His parents owned the hotel before him and his mother, a frigid old lady, would still stalk around and critique everyone. Paco’s brother was Jose Maria, a man who literally never smiled, who was suspected of being gay, and who was the same size as Paco—enormous. He was apparently trying to be an actor, and had once starred in an olive oil commercial (the commercial was shown to me by more than one giggling employee). Their little sister, Anna, was one of the receptionists; she was apparently extremely dim-witted (she may have had some mental disability), but the language barrier made it hard for me to tell the difference. The family, as a whole, functioned like a Telenovela—you know those overdramatic Latin America soap operas? Tom, Vera and I witnessed countless fights. Some were between Paco and Anna (those often bordered on physically abusive, which worried us since Anna, unlike her brothers, was very small), but many of the arguments were between Paco and Susanna, the other receptionist who was, Paco said, his “mujer,” or his woman. At some point we learned that they had never actually been married, but had been together for years. Now, they lived separately but still managed to maintain the façade of being trapped in an unhappy marriage by getting into screaming matches—usually in front of poor Vera, who was the “practicanda” of reception.
My job was easier. I was a waitress in the hotel restaurant, which included a dining room that was usually filled with old, pasty British couples, and a bar that attracted all the locals. The locals were an interesting group of characters. For some reason, they were all middle-aged men—after some observation, we concluded that the women must all be forced to stay home with their children, who were more often than not born out of wedlock. The men, meanwhile, indulged in copious amounts of booze and cocaine. I soon learned that this diet was not uncommon in Nerja; indeed, the night before I left the place for good I discovered my own boss’s cocaine stash. By then I had been there for three months, and wasn’t at all surprised. By then, I had first-hand experience on just how easy it is to get sucked into that lifestyle.