You lower your head a fraction, letting the cap shadow your face.
Then, with a small impatient gesture, she waves you over.
Your stomach tightens so hard it hurts.
This is the part you had imagined and not imagined all week. The moment she would open the back door and enter your car without recognizing you. The moment your wife, who has slept beside you for years and knows the shape of your breathing in the dark, would become just another passenger in your back seat.
She slides in, carrying rain and expensive perfume with her.
“To Avenida Monteverde, please,” she says.
Your throat closes for half a second.
Even her voice sounds different when she doesn’t know it belongs to your wife. Softer somehow. Less arranged. The voice she uses with strangers and clerks and drivers and women in fitting rooms. You clear your throat, keep your own answer low and rougher than usual.
“Sure.”
The meter clicks on.
