A Stroke of Luck by Anaïs Wilde

Author:Anaïs Wilde
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ediciones Fortuna
Published: 2019-08-20T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

Seven endless days have gone by and I haven’t even so much as glimpsed my husband. I called my friends, just like I’d promised. Listening to them, hearing about their lives and what was going on in the world I lived in up until now helped me regain a little bit of normalcy in my situation. Without that, I know I would have ended up thinking I was going crazy, that I had made up everything: the wedding with the famous actor, the palace, Cairo.

There are moments when I awake in the middle of the night. The small hours of the morning wrap me in their halo of irreality, and that’s when I most need to hear from my friends. I take advantage of the time zone difference to chat, although my giggles echo through the sleeping halls of the palace.

I haven’t told any of them the truth. Not even Betty, who had always been my confidant. I tell things halfway, just the good part, just the nice part. I take pains not to lie, but it’s inevitable when they ask about my nights with Rodolfo.

What nights? I ask myself silently. The ones I spend alone, calling the United States?

It’s been a few days since I had to take the anti-inflammatory pills. Even my foot has grown tired of swelling. Everything here seems prepared to wait endlessly.

The lack of things to do in the palace is enough to drive you crazy. Occasionally I go out to the pool, but it’s not very appealing to lay by the pool, surrounded by servants, with the only soundtrack a stream of business conversations Mario has in various languages.

All I know about Rodolfo is what little information I can milk out of Mario; the staff doesn’t breathe a word, especially not Zulema.

I spend the days between sessions in the bath, massages, walks through the palace, and books that I read at a voracious pace, even for me.

I’ve always liked to read, but since we got to Cairo and I asked for the first book, novels enter my room at a dizzying pace and I can’t put them down. Maybe it’s the only thing that distracts me from thinking, from wondering what’s happening and why Rodolfo is doing this to me.

And the truth is, although I don’t want to feel this way, I think that no matter how much he’s filming, he should at least sleep with me, or come to see me at some point. I’ve told Mario a bunch of times that I don’t care if he wakes me; it doesn’t matter what time he comes home, he can stop by my room at least to say hi. A few times I’m tempted to talk to the servants, to order them to have Rodolfo come to my room, no matter what time. But I abandon that idea; I know it’s ridiculous to have to order something like that. I don’t want anyone, even the staff to know how peculiar my marriage is. With Mario.

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