A Stroke of Luck Page 3

  “You’re crazy. You marry someone just because of how they look at you?”

  “I’ve always believed in the red thread theory.”

  I feel like my heart does a flip. More like a triple somersault with full twist, the type of flip that gets tens from all the judges and a standing ovation.

  “It doesn’t matter how far apart the lovers are,” he adds, “the thread will always bring them together, sooner or later. Because it’s destiny.”

  “That’s how it is,” he continues. “Your eyes were all I needed to know who you were. The one at the other end of my red thread. It’s always been you. And then, you said–.” His eyes drop to my foot, which is now completely black. “What happened to you?” he exclaims, horrified.

  “I said what happened to you?”

  “No, I’m asking what happened to you? Look at your foot.” He summons the hotel doctor who, after examining me, confirms that I’ve broken my little toe. Twenty minutes pass before someone knocks on the suite door again. This time three people enter to fit me with a small plastic splint to immobilize the toe. Then they inject a local anesthetic, despite the fact that I tell them (lying) that it doesn’t hurt too much. They give me some anti-inflammatories to take every eight hours.

  “Always take these with food,” the doctor insists. “Try to keep the foot elevated and don’t walk more than necessary.”

  In the blink of an eye, they bring me some clothes from the hotel store (it seems that what I was wearing when I met Rodolfo has disappeared. I threw it out the chapel window before we got married, apparently). I get dressed and two bellhops arrive. I try to tell them that we don’t have any luggage for them to carry, but they pick me up and carry me down to the street.

  Now I find myself in a limousine, at Rodolfo’s side, on the way to the airport. I asked him where my phone was so I could call my friends, but Rodolfo assured me that when I got dressed for the wedding—in the dress I picked, according to him—I didn’t have a phone with me. I still struggle to believe I had such poor taste in a dress.

  We arrive at the airport but the limousine doesn’t stop in front of the main building. It continues on to a gate, which two guards open for us after exchanging a few words with our driver. Then we drive directly onto the tarmac, weaving between small planes and different sized jets, presumably private. We stop at last in front of the largest of the jets, the one with large gold lettering on the side reading “Vitti”.

  I lift my hand and my pointing finger hits the window.

  “Yes, it’s mine,” he says, before I can ask.

  The driver opens the door for me and offers his hand to help me out.

  “Rodolfo, ma che hai fatto? Come mai sei così in ritardo?”

  A man the same height as Rodolfo, with the same color hair and the same eyes but quite a few more pounds, is talking and waving his hands nonstop. He scolds my husband again and again for arriving so late. Then, in between the stream of words reminding Rodolfo that the Cairo shoot had been waiting for him for over six hours, those eyes identical to my husbands turn toward me. The man falls silent. He looks back at Rodolfo, then at me again.

  “Ah, yes,” Rodolfo says. “This is my wife... Uhhh...”

  “Rose Woolf,” I say, offering my hand out. “Nice to meet you.”

  Rodolfo puts on his sunglasses, slides over to me and kisses my cheek.

  “Rose Vitti, my love.” He corrects me. “As of last night: Rose Vitti.”

  He bounds up the airplane steps with effortless athleticism while I watch, trying not to let my jaw drop.

  “Mario Vitti,” says the man still squeezing my hand. “I’m your brother-in-law, I guess.”

  Chapter Four

  I haven’t mentioned that I speak Italian, or at least, understand it. I’m not very confident in my ability to speak said language since, as I mentioned, I never attended classes. Everything I know, I learned from video lessons that I found on YouTube. Then I got a second-hand book and, of course, watched all of Rodolfo’s movies in the original Italian a million times. At first I didn’t understand anything, but my ear slowly got accustomed to the sound until, maybe from exasperation, my brain started to understand all the words.

  So, I understand almost everything the brothers have said since we took off. They’ve been arguing right under my nose, confident that I can’t understand them. I try to pretend. I’m not exactly the queen of perception, but I know that it’s best not to let on—at least for now—that I understand their language.

  This is how I found out that Rodolfo chose me out of all the girls who were at the bar in the hotel casino Paris Las Vegas. He took me to one of the many express wedding chapels there are. With my consent! He said it, shouting, several times. With my consent! There, it seems, I picked out my dress from the options they sold there and Betty served as maid of honor. Well, from how Rodolfo told it, giggling, that was the plan. But the ceremony hadn’t even started before the staff had to kick Betty out because she couldn’t stop vomiting everywhere. I wonder were my other friends were at that point, and why they didn’t do more to stop this crazy wedding.

  Am I really wondering this? Do I really wish they had stopped it?

  I look down to my feet and I know that if the opportunity arose to marry Rodolfo Vitti and my friends had stopped me, I would never speak to them again. Yes, no matter how weird it might seem that a movie star decided so quickly to marry an ordinary girl like me that he’d just met.

  Rodolfo and Mario are sitting across the aisle. They left me both seats so I could put my leg up like the doctor recommended. The injected analgesic had taken effect, because my foot felt asleep.

  The argument unfolding beside me suddenly drops in volume, which piques my interest and makes me turn my head toward them. The brothers notice me watching them and lower their voices even further. Mario falls silent and Rodolfo winks at me, which makes me feel like we just hit a big patch of turbulence and my stomach did a flip. It doesn’t matter that I grew up looking at his picture; having him near me, looking at me, is something I may never get used to.

  Rodolfo whispers something in his brother’s ear, gets up and comes to sit beside me. He lifts my leg very carefully, sits and rests it on his lap. I think I’m going to die at any given moment.

  “How’s my wifey doing?”

  “Delighted,” I say, letting my brain say what I feel without any filter. At least, the first thing I feel. Then I express the second thing. “And confused. I’m delighted and confused.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s my question: why? Why did you marry me?”

  “I already told you, your eyes bewitched me.” Rodolfo realizes that I don’t believe him. I want to, in fact there’s nothing I’d like more, but there’s at least still a scrap of common sense in me. “Your eyes, everything about you. But above all, it was for the things you said to me that night, so sweet and so deep. You were at the bar with your friends. I was hanging around alone, I’d just had a big argument,” he adds, glancing pointedly at Mario to make it clear that the problem was with his brother. “I felt lost. This life I lead can be cruel sometimes. Of course any one would say I have everything, that there’s no reason for me to complain but... Then you appeared. You looked at me, like your friends did, but instead of blushing and laughing like a teenage girl, like my fans usually do, instead of hanging from my neck or getting hysterical, you got very serious and walked straight over to the table where I was sitting.

  “You were alone?” I ask. It’s somehow hard for me to believe.

  “You listened to me with no judgment, you told me all those things that...” Rodolfo runs a hand through his hair in a gesture that encompasses all the sensuality a man can possibly have. I’m dying to reach out my hand and touch that beautiful, soft mane of hair. But I contain myself; I should focus on what he’s telling me. “No one had ever talked to me like that. With such honesty, telling me clearly the things that no one else has the guts to tell me. I’m Rodolfo Vitti, you know, pe
ople tend to flatter me to my face and rip me to shreds behind my back. No one has the guts to contradict me. You on the other hand, you told me everything: the good, the bad. You gave me a new perspective on my life. Suddenly, thanks to you, I saw it all clearly.”

  “I did that?” I ask, surprise read all over my face.

  “I couldn’t let you get away. Life for someone like me can be very lonely. I’m always surrounded by people, sure. But who can I trust? Who can I talk to? Who can I be myself around, without worrying about ruining my perfect image? I have no one.” His fingers interlace with mine. “Or rather, I only have you.” With a dazzling smile he adds, “I know I don’t need anything else. With you by my side, my life will be perfect. I’ll never feel lonely again, I’ll never lack for real affection again.”

  “No,” I say faintly, shaking my head.

  Rodolfo would never lack for real affection because I’ve loved him since I was born. Many times, looking at the pictures of him hanging in my room, as I cried over my family’s problems, I told myself that he and I were born to be together. I was aware that it was crazy, believe me. I may have been thirteen or fourteen but I knew perfectly well that those thoughts were completely ridiculous. Despite that, what I felt inside was so strong, so true, that all I had to do was look at his picture and I knew that everything would be all right. Sooner or later, life would make our paths cross: a girl from a poor town in Alabama and a movie star. After all, Rodolfo knew poverty as well; he had also come from a poor neighborhood.

  He lifts my hand and places a kiss on it so gently that it feels like a cloud.

  “Tell me you’ll never leave me,” he asks me, looking into my eyes.

  “Never,” I whisper.

  Mario, Rodolfo’s brother, watches us from his seat across the aisle. The aroma of spices begins to float through the plane. Apparently it has a proper kitchen—none of those sandwiches or fast food. A few minutes later, Rodolfo asks me to get up for dinner, and he wraps his arm around my waist to help me walk without putting too much weight on the broken toe.

  To my surprise, at the back of the plane, behind a door, there’s a full dining room. It’s not too big, with space for just six people, but I’m still impressed to find something like this on a plane. We sit at the table set with porcelain dishes and real silverware. A tall man, with rosy cheeks and an affable look, enters with a soup dish and pours before me the most aromatic broth I’ve ever been witness to.

  “Giovanni,” says Rodolfo. “Our loyal Giovanni, my chef. He’s from mamma’s hometown. I couldn’t live without him.”

  Giovanni smiles and nods to me as if to welcome me to the family clan. He’s just like I would have imagined the cook from any fairy tale. After trying his soup, I know that he definitely is out of a fairy tale. The flavors make you feel like you’re floating, make you lose all sense of time. The spices open up on the palate, hitting in waves one after another. When you identify one flavor, the next one arrives.

  “What do you do, Rose?” Mario asks.

  “I’m...” I remember what Rodolfo told me back in the hotel. “I’m studying for what I want to do now. Before I worked at one of the big box stores. Walmart, household appliances.”

  “In Las Vegas?”

  I shake my head.

  “Montgomery, Alabama.”

  I suppose the question is cursory, and it doesn’t take Mario two seconds to ask it:

  “And what was a girl from Alabama doing in Las Vegas? A bit far from home.”

  “The red thread brought us together,” Rodolfo cuts in, taking my hand on the table and winking at me.

  “The red thread, right,” says Mario. A few seconds pass and he doesn’t say anything else.

  “Do you know the story?” I ask, shyly.

  “Yes, yes, I know it. Dear,” he says, without conviction.

  Rodolfo starts telling me about Cairo, and all the things I can do while he’s filming.

  “Mario will take you shopping. We’ve been to the city many times before and Mario is the best at finding the greatest shops. He’ll take you to the museum too, if you like looking at rocks and old things. Mario will take care of everything, right fratellino?”

  “Yes, of course,” says the fratellino, or little brother, unconvincingly. “To the museum and the pyramids—.” He looks at me. “If you like seeing old buildings. Very old buildings.”

  Chapter Five

  I don’t know why I had assumed we’d stay at a hotel when we arrived in Cairo. Nothing was further from the truth. It’s clear that I have no idea what it means to live in Rodolfo Vitti’s world, and I suspect I have more surprises in store for me.

  When we land, a white limousine is waiting for us on the runway. Rodolfo explains that he rents them, although he would buy them if his brother allowed it.

  “A waste,” Mario says, passing us to bark instructions at some men. Then he returns to the plane.

  Mario is the technology man: when he’s not glued to his phone, his fingers are flying over a tablet or laptop keyboard. I’m realizing that he controls not only Rodolfo’s schedule and contracts, but also his money. His life. Maybe this was what we talked about in the hotel bar. I hate that I can’t remember it. Regardless, even if I can’t remember what I told him, I know my words must have been on the strong side, on the side of not letting anyone rule his life, brother or otherwise. If there’s one thing I know, it’s how to value my rights, my space.

  “Why do you let him do that?” I ask Rodolfo in a whisper. Mario has stayed behind, talking to the pilot. Rodolfo looks at me for a few seconds as if he doesn’t know what I’m talking about, but then he realizes it and replies.

  “He’s my fratellino.”

  It’s only been a day and a half that I’m part of this family, but I think I’m already noticing some things that I should point out to my new husband... husband. I can’t believe it! Rodolfo Vitti is my husband. Anyway, back to my previous thoughts: it seems like this Mario is taking advantage of him. It’s Rodolfo who does the work, acts, interacts with fans, goes to premieres, films cologne commercials. What does Mario do? I aim to find out. Until then, I resolve not to open my mouth until I confirm my suspicions. I need to be careful, I don’t want to misstep.

  In the limousine, there are fresh dates, a delicacy I’m unfamiliar with. I always thought, I don’t know why, that dates were like the ones I’d eaten once or twice when I had the chance: brown, wrinkly, sticky. But no, before they’re dried, they are a sweet, juicy fruit. Simply delicious. Rodolfo watches with amusement as I devour all the dates in the basket, one by one. His smile tells me that he’s glad to see me happy. I think I’m going to need a while for it to sink in, truly and fully sink in, that I’ve had such a stroke of luck.

  It makes me so angry not to be able to remember what I said to Rodolfo in that hotel bar. Those magic words that managed to put me in this situation I’m in now. I search and search my brain, but there’s no way. I can’t remember anything. Damn alcohol.

  I solemnly promise myself that I’ll never drink again as long as I live. I can’t believe the best thing that ever happened to me is veiled by liters of...

  “Champagne?” Rodolfo asks, passing me a glass of beautiful golden bubbly.

  Fine, starting Monday, I tell myself. Although in reality, I don’t know what day of the week it is. But hey, Monday is always a good day to start something. A diet, exercising, quitting drinking. I accept the glass that my husband is passing me and we toast to our happiness. Mario joins the toast, although his face is unfriendly. He has a restless look, always alert. Sharing the same gorgeous color as Rodolfo, it’s hard to believe that Mario’s eyes can give such a different feeling.

  He opens the calendar on his tablet and starts telling Rodolfo all the things he should do.

  “You should go straight to the set, you know they’ve been waiting for you since yesterday and John doesn’t like it when his plans get thrown off.”

  John? Do they really call John Oxford, the director wh
o already has seven Oscars before the age of forty, by his first name? Between my musings, I’ve finished the glass of champagne without realizing, and Rodolfo refills it without pausing his conversation. Yes, it seems that the John they’re talking about, Johnny to his friends, is the famous director. One more thing I’ll have to get used to, rubbing shoulders with the crème de la crème of the film business like old friends. I imagine myself going to parties full of celebrities, hosting barbeques at Rodolfo’s house... Well, at one of his houses. One of our houses. What I feel is a mixture of excitement and fear; I don’t know if I’m up to the task but I’m going to give it my all. I’ll give it my best shot.

  I wonder what the famous people will be like in person. Who are my husband’s best friends? I also wonder where my friends are.

  “When we get to the hotel, can I call some of my friends?”

  “We’re not going to a hotel,” Rodolfo says, interspersing the information between the heated words in Italian he’s exchanging with Mario.

  I assume then that we’re heading to the set and I feel a growing curiosity, shadowed by nervousness. I’m not ready to meet other actors or John Oxford. Not yet. I should shower, change, although...

  “I don’t have any clothes,” I say in a voice that, once it comes out of my mouth, sounds like a lost little girl.

  “Mario will take you shopping today. Clothes and a new phone. Call your friends and whoever you want, amore.”

  Do you know what happens to me when I hear that amore? Basically, something inside me melts.

  We enter a residential complex with security measures straight out of a movie. The men—in djellabas, turbans, mirrored aviators and submachine guns—are so impressive that for a second I think we’re directly on the set. But no, there are no cameras around, no cranes or any of the stuff that I assume they use to film a movie. There are only houses and more houses: or rather, enormous mansions with more guards at every gate. Our limousine continues up a steep hill. We stop at the top, in front of a mansion that looks more like a palace out of One Thousand and One Nights.