A Stroke of Luck Read online

  A Stroke of Luck

  Anaïs Wilde

  Translated by Elizabeth Watson

  “A Stroke of Luck”

  Written By Anaïs Wilde

  Copyright © 2019 Anaïs Wilde

  All rights reserved

  Distributed by Babelcube, Inc.

  www.babelcube.com

  Translated by Elizabeth Watson

  “Babelcube Books” and “Babelcube” are trademarks of Babelcube Inc.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  A STROKE OF LUCK | Book one of the Luck and Love trilogy

  Anaïs Wilde

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  A STROKE OF LUCK

  Book one of the Luck and Love trilogy

  Anaïs Wilde

  Chapter One

  My first thought when I roll over in bed is whisky, or maybe gin... Rum, yes, it must have been rum, or maybe tequila. All I know for sure is that it feels like there’s an entire road crew at work in my head: jackhammers, steamrollers, shouting, a thousand workers busting my eardrums from inside my own brain. My tongue feels thick; I can still taste the different types of alcohol.

  I move my hand, which turns out to be a monumental task, and lift it slowly up to my eyes, shielding them enough to brave opening them at last.

  I don’t know what I drank, maybe a little of everything. Or rather, a lot of everything.

  Through the bright light that streams through the window, I make out a silver ice bucket, the kind you use to chill bottles. There’s a long-necked bottle inside said bucket, just the bottom peeking out, but I have the feeling it’s champagne. My suspicions are confirmed when my eyes focus on another empty champagne bottle on the table, and two more on the floor. My eyes hurt as they try to focus to read “Moët&Chandon”. It’s then that I really start to worry and I prop myself up on my elbows, preparing to sit up despite how my head is pounding. Despite the fact that I have the worst hangover in the history of hangovers. Moët&Chandon, me? With my salesclerk salary? I haven’t used the credit card I got just for emergencies, have I? I shiver just to think what I might have done. It’s already hard enough to get to the end of the month without credit card debt. I try to think: how much does a bottle of that champagne, which I’ve only heard of in movies, really cost?

  There’s another empty bottle on the sofa. A gorgeous sofa, as a matter of fact. Gorgeous and expensive looking. It’s a Chester with bone white velvet upholstery.

  I have to get up, although my body doesn’t want to cooperate.

  “But what on earth?”

  I try to rest my hand on thin air beside the bed, and I can’t save myself from hitting the floor. I drop like a dead weight.

  It’s from this perspective that I discover some panties I recognize as my own, and also my bra. The panties are on the floor, the bra hanging from a doorknob. On one of the armchairs, there’s a pair of men’s boxers; I can distinguish the fabric and elastic perfectly. Beyond that, by the many windows, there’s an enormous accumulation of white cloth that’s surely tulle. It’s as if a bride fell headfirst and now you can only see the bottom part of her dress. Or rather, it’s as if the bride were an ostrich and had buried her head in the sand to avoid something embarrassing.

  Yes, this simile seems more appropriate. In fact, the more I look around, the more I think that what I see in the distance is indeed a wedding dress.

  “Good morning beautiful.”

  I jump and shoot back to bed like a lightning bolt to cover myself with the sheets. I would like to be an ostrich too right about now, like the bride that’s abandoned her dress in my bedroom. Which now that I think of it: is this my bedroom? I don’t remember how I got here, or even where I am. All I know is that my heart is pounding so fast I’m afraid I may have a heart attack at any moment.

  A heart attack. Sad, huh? How sad to die of a heart attack in a place where you don’t even know how you got there. I’m completely naked!

  I imagine the medics that come to revive me, the jokes they’d make after seeing me naked.

  “Amore...”

  I’m still under the covers, making a fort like when I was little. I still haven’t seen the person who said those words, but I swear on my life I recognize that voice. Yes, I could have a heart attack, the ambulance could come for me. They could laugh at me, try to revive me without success and cart my body off to the morgue for unidentified bodies. And still, I would recognize the voice that’s talking to me from the other side of these sheets.

  It’s Rodolfo, my most precious, my beloved Rodolfo. Rodolfo Vitti, the love of my life. Right, the rest of the world doesn’t know him as the love of my life but as the great actor... Fine, I’ll admit that he’s not that good of an actor (or rather, he’s a terrible actor if we’re going to be nitpicky) but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s the love of my life. Mine and that of millions of women all around the world.

  Rodolfo Vitti is so hot that everything he does is automatically forgiven, even the bad acting. And he’s on the other side of these sheets, in this place that I have apparently teleported to or something.

  I think of his full lips. Just seeing them appear on the screen, the entire female population of the West (and a good part of the East) starts drooling. Add in his turquoise green eyes, his permanently tanned skin, that dark mane we’d all like to run our hands through and, ay, ay, those pectorals...

  Those pectorals!

  I cough, lower the sheet a little but immediately cover my head again. I know I’m being ridiculous. I think about the opportunity I could be missing at that very moment and I force myself to react. I lower the sheet slowly as I hear, very close to me, the gentle laugh of the man of my dreams.

  “Am I really that hideous after last night? I realize I’m not at my best, but a few hours ago... well, you thought quite differently of me. Come on, let me see you, amore,” he says, with the most seductive tone of voice in the known universe.

  Yes, I can say that like an astronaut who has traveled through space listening to every masculine voice that exists. None compare to Rodolfo Vitti. My mind is screaming, kicking, punching me (or maybe it’s just the hangover). The issue is that my head is telling me to jump into his arms. But my hands are rebelling. They grip the sheet like there’s no tomorrow. Like it’s the only scrap of wood and I’m just shipwrecked in the middle of the ocean. The ocean of Rodolfo’s eyes.

  Only my eyes are uncovered. A pair of eyes that, surely, are about to pop out of my head from pure disbelief. Yes, it’s him. THE MAN. And yes, he’s here with me. Naked. Well, he’s wearing a hotel robe, but as far as I can tell from how it falls open, he’s not wearing anything under it.

  Oh God. He has everything under it. EVERYTHING that any woman could want and so much more. I start to sweat. My mouth is dry.

  “Should I order more champagne to deal with this shyness? Yes, champagne per la mia piccola.

  I shake my head to tell him that’s not necessary, but I immediately regret the movement: however slight it scrambles my brain like a cocktail shaker.

  Why, my God? Why? Why did this have to happen to me? The moment I find myself alone with the hottest guy of all time it’s with the worst hangover (also of all time).

  “Maybe, my dear,” the voice in my head replies, “it’s be
cause you’ve been drinking with him.”

  The idea excites me as much as it worries me. If we’ve been drinking together, it means something must have happened before for us to get to that point of acquaintance. I look around a little. We’re definitely acquainted, or else we would not be sharing this hotel room.

  Correction: this INCREDIBLE hotel room. What a suite. I think I’ve died and gone to heaven.

  But I’m worried. I’m afraid if we’ve been drinking together, I probably started laughing like a crazy person, like I tend to do when the alcohol takes over. In which case, I haven’t made the best impression.

  I bite my lip and regret, from the bottom of my soul, having gotten so drunk with this natural wonder that I don’t remember anything.

  “Come on, beautiful,” he insists.

  His marvelous Italian accent distracts me to the point that, for an instant, I stop asking the obvious question: How did I get here and what happened?

  Rodolfo sits on the edge of the bed. A wave of cologne sweeps over me, making me lose what little sense I had left. I feel like all my muscles go slack. The back of his hand strokes my cheeks. It’s as gentle as I always imagined when, watching his movies (two or three million times at least), I imagined myself as the love interest and sighed, wishing I were really there with him: in Madagascar, in India, in the lavender fields of the French countryside, in Hawaii. All of Rodolfo Vitti’s movies take place in paradisiacal places, which to his fans, seems very appropriate for a man like him.

  THE MAN (I repeat).

  Rodolfo cracks a playful smile, his eyes spark. His fingers grasp the edge of the sheet that covers me and, all at once, I find myself uncovered and completely naked, bathed in the turquoise light of his eyes. Unable to move. One of his fingers rests under my chin and begins to move down, very slowly, tracing a line down my throat, passing between my breasts and continuing down to my navel. I can’t help it, when Rodolfo Vitti’s fingertip passes over my stomach, I’m moaning like a woman in labor. I know, not very sexy, but you have to understand me.

  You have to understand me!

  He hasn’t for an instant stopped looking into my eyes. His finger pauses in my belly button and, like a switch but for pleasure, starts to send electrical pulses through my entire body. That gaze like crystalline water passes over my body, which reddens in the act. I never thought my breasts, my stomach itself could blush. But that’s what happens. I feel a fire that burns me from inside. My cheeks are bright red; they feel like two lit coals.

  “Ma che bella che sei,” he says, and I understand each and every word.

  Years ago, from the very moment I saw the first movie starring the then-unknown Rodolfo Vitti, I left the theater determined to learn Italian. I was a teenager then. I had no money and my parents never would have given me any. Besides, I would have died of embarrassment before admitting to them that I wanted to study that melodious language because I had a crush on an actor.

  I confess that in my wildest dreams, as I searched Italian lessons on YouTube, I thought that one day destiny would take pity on me and understand that no other man could lay hand on this body that was custom made for Rodolfo Vitti. Yes, I was convinced that he and I were linked by that famous red thread of Japanese legend, the one that binds soul mates together and assures that they will find each other no matter how far apart. Hundreds of nights I fell asleep kissing my pillow, pretending I kissed the lips of my idol, my big screen love. I grew up and my body passed through a few men, not many; enough to know that none would be as perfect or as sweet as my Rodolfo.

  While I’m thinking of these things, Rodolfo has leaned into my neck. He breathes my scent like a dog searching for the trail of a missing person.

  “What are you doing?” I ask, finally recuperating my voice. Finding myself with him had left me simply speechless. Rodolfo doesn’t respond. I feel the tip of his tongue run down my neck. “Che fai?” I ask him, in his language.

  I regret it instantly, since Rodolfo stops what he’s doing and looks at me, surprised.

  “Mmmmm, my wifey speaks my language!”

  I shake my head like one of those little bobble head dolls on a dashboard.

  No, under no circumstances do I want Rodolfo Vitti thinking that I speak Italian. I understand it, but I don’t speak it. I could die if he asks me to speak his language. How terrible would my pronunciation be? No one had ever corrected me. A small alarm is going off in the back of my head, as if calling for order in the court. I should stop worrying about pronunciation, and whether or not Rodolfo thinks I speak Italian. The alarm is telling me there’s something more important.

  I startle. His wifey? I assume he means it playfully. My eyes fly to my hand, where I find something that wasn’t there before. A ring with an enormous, I repeat, ENORMOUS diamond.

  “Is it real?” The hand, ring included, serves to hit my own forehead in immediate reproach for the question. I started with the crassest question possible, I know, but it was already out.

  “Of course, who do you take me for? I’m not going to give the woman of my dreams a piece of junk.”

  I bring my hands to my chest in case my heart, literally, escapes from my chest. Those words have given me a feeling in my stomach similar to falling from a great height.

  No, I’ve never actually fallen from great height, I only say that imagining what it must feel like. But I think I’ve made it clear how my stomach clenched hearing this man call me the ‘woman of his dreams’.

  I don’t understand any of it. I cover my eyes with both hands and press inward a little bit. I need to clear my head to be able to contain my curiosity. I weigh my options.

  Yes, containing my curiosity is the most convenient. Rodolfo has started to caress me again. His fingers run gently over my cheeks and trace my lips. This is not the best time to ask questions. Enjoy first, ask questions later, Rose. Don’t fuck this up like you always do. Rose, concentrate. Enjoy first, ask questions later.

  I repeat it again and again, until the concept seems to sink in. Then I grab Rodolfo by the lapels of the robe and pull hard. In a second, he’s on top of me. The robe opens and our bodies meet without any filter. There’s nothing between the man of my dreams and my skin. I breathe in his scent. He must have showered just before appearing in the room. I’m sure that when I opened my eyes and saw him, he was coming from the bathroom.

  Rose, stop thinking this instant!

  I join my mouth to that of my beloved Rodolfo and I enjoy his taste without thinking. Our tongues seek out each other and in just a few seconds, I’m overcome with dismay.

  It’s nothing at all like how I dreamed it would be.

  There’s no perfect rhythmic dance of tongues.

  There’s no harmony. The taste of his mouth doesn’t send me to the stars.

  Rodolfo doesn’t have a fraction of the passion that he should.

  I hit myself. Yes, literally. He stops kissing me and looks at me, furrowing his brow. Clearly he doesn’t understand why I just hit myself. I’m afraid he’s about to run out of the room (I would), so I say something before he thinks I’m crazy.

  “Nothing, nothing’s wrong,” I say.

  I resume the kiss, knowing perfectly well that hitting myself was a self-inflicted correction for comparing the real Rodolfo Vitti to the Rodolfo of my dreams. How cruel for destiny to prolong our meeting so much! I’ve had too much time to imagine how it would be and of course, now things weren’t lining up. I spent too many years imagining his lips, his body, our combined passion and now...

  It doesn’t fit.

  It doesn’t fit.

  “It doesn’t fit!” Oops! When I realize I said that out loud, it’s already too late.

  Rodolfo and I both move. Our hips had been seeking each other out to initiate a more intimate contact–or so I thought–but it was like trying to fit the star-shaped piece in the triangle hole. I smack myself again, this time hard enough that Rodolfo sits up and looks at me like, ‘you’re totally crazy’. This time, I de
served the punishment for two reasons: talking out loud when I shouldn’t have, and thinking of that stupid plastic preschool game when I shouldn’t have. Why am I thinking about that little puzzle box with different shapes and colors?

  He must have thought I was complaining because he wasn’t entering me. I mean, the whole thing was making me a little nervous, but in reality I said it because nothing about this situation fits with my mental plan.

  I couldn’t feel any worse than I do right now. I get up, wishing the ground would swallow me. I run to the bathroom, stubbing my toe on a coffee table as I go. I fight back tears, get to the bathroom and slam the door.

  The end.

  The end of my life.

  I don’t deserve to live any more.

  I don’t want to go on after having found, and promptly lost, Rodolfo Vitti.

  Chapter Two

  I look at myself in the mirror while Rodolfo won’t stop calling to me. I hear his hand knocking insistently, quick taps interspersed with sweet words in Italian.

  My face is a map of the disaster. The different colors of makeup that I wore last night are mixed and smeared like a Picasso painting, surely from the party I must have had last night and now from the tears that stream down my face. The worst part is, all I can remember is going out to party with my friends. At least I think so. I should be with them, but I have no idea where they are.

  The glitter from my eye shadow slides slowly down my cheeks.

  I notice that my right pinky toe is throbbing, the one that I stubbed in my haste to reach the bathroom. It hurts something terrible, although not as much as my pride, and definitely much less than my heart. Yes, broken dreams give you a tremendous heartache.

  Broken.

  Because imagining Rodolfo Vitti kissing me, falling in love with me for fifteen years is a long time. Too long. I was able to add too many details to my mental image. Now it’s impossible for reality to fit with the ideal scenario that I constructed, and it’s nobody’s fault but my own. I cry for my own tragedy: I’m with the man I always wanted to be with, and he turns out to not be who I wanted him to be.