Switchback (28 page)

‘With who?'

‘Would you believe an angry investor?'

‘Do you want some ice?'

‘No.' Timothy waved him off. ‘No, I'm fine. I'm going to clean myself up. Tell Frank I'm going to have to postpone the meeting. We'll do it tomorrow.'

‘Okay.'

Timothy went to the men's bathroom. He looked in the mirror. His chin wasn't as bad as he had feared. Just a scrape. He wouldn't need stitches. The long-haired man was only trying to scare him.

Timothy splashed cold water on his face, then dabbed his chin with paper towels. Yes, the man was just trying to scare him.

37

That evening, at home, Tricia forgot about the morning's argument as soon as she saw the dried blood on Timothy's face. She led him upstairs to the bedroom and told him to lie down on the bed. She sat beside him. He recounted the events that had happened in the parking garage.

‘He knew you,' Timothy said. ‘You must know him.'

‘But I don't.'

‘Well Tricia did. He must have been that boyfriend. She mentioned him a couple times.' He tried to remember. There had been some vague talk of a boyfriend, and he recalled Tricia saying that she drove with a boy from Los Angeles when she moved north.

But the boyfriend she described sharing a car with was an unambitious, unthreatening, pot-smoking slacker – a bit different from the man in the parking garage. And except for that casual mention, she never spoke of him again. It certainly didn't seem like Tricia was involved with someone.

And yet … he recalled that drunken evening when he had followed her from the BBC back to her apartment, and they entered the door with the upside-down letter D. Hadn't she behaved oddly then? Didn't she seem afraid, as if someone else might be in the apartment, and might find them? Could Tricia have been living with such a dangerous man even back then, and not told Timothy? It seemed hard to believe.

‘Apparently Tricia, my innocent secretary, had a few secrets,' he said.

She stroked the caked blood on his chin. ‘I don't think we should criticize people for having secrets.'

They had sex then, which surprised him. Katherine had always
been a sex-before-bed kind of woman. The sex was much better now, with Tricia's body, but the timing and activities themselves had not changed: before sleep, and please-face-and-kiss-me-while-you-do-it.

So it was a pleasant surprise that she initiated. He lay back, his abdomen sore from the punch, and she caressed him, and kissed him, and removed his tie and shirt, and then his pants. She kissed his chest, and then his stomach, softly. ‘Does this hurt?' she asked.

‘No.'

She lowered her head and kissed his thighs gently. She put her fingers beneath the elastic band of his briefs, and pulled them down to his knees. Then she bent over and began to perform fellatio – and that was something strange, something that Katherine hardly ever did. The first time Katherine did it they were in her parents' house, visiting Cambridge a few months after their wedding. They were staying in the old room that Katherine used to sleep in as a girl, and it must have done something to her – made her excited, to do something forbidden with her new husband, in the bed where she grew up, under the same roof as her parents.

Now Tricia was using her lips and mouth, licking him, rubbing her dark silky hair against his skin, and – despite the ache in his belly – it felt good, and he couldn't control himself. It was over in a minute, and then she lay down in the bed beside him, and kissed him, and he tasted himself on her lips.

‘Do you remember,' he said, ‘the first time you did that?'

Tricia smiled.

He said, ‘It seems like yesterday.'

She touched a finger to his nose. It was a gesture that could have meant anything: agreement, happiness, playful naughtiness. It was not, it occurred to him, what Katherine would have done. Katherine would have been matter-of-fact about it, would have recounted the details of that first experience, would have enjoyed dissecting it, explaining exactly how she felt at each moment. Katherine was a diarist, a woman who noted her two pieces of wheat toast and jam, who was aware of every detail in her life.

He tried sitting up in bed, pushing off his elbows, but his stomach ached, so he flopped back down and merely lifted his
neck to look at her. ‘Do you remember?' he asked. His tone had changed, and it was clear he was challenging her now, quizzing her. ‘It seems like something you would remember. Where were we the first time you did that to me?'

Tricia kept her face blank. She did not look nervous or upset. She shook her head and said, simply, ‘I don't remember.'

‘We were in your parents' house. Do you remember where?'

She smiled. It was either the smile of a loving wife, or the smile of a poker player ready to bluff. ‘Of course. We were in my bedroom. The bed where I slept as a little girl. The bed where I grew up.'

Which was true, Timothy thought, suddenly relieved.

She leaned over him, and kissed him softly on the lips. ‘Are you going crazy on me?'

‘No,' he said, ‘sorry.'

‘Do you know who I am?'

‘Yes,' he said.

‘Who am I?' She kissed him again. ‘Tell me.'

‘You're Katherine.'

‘Yes,' she agreed, and kissed his lips again, softly. ‘I'm your wife. I'm the woman you were married to, and the woman who wants to marry you again. Do you understand that?'

‘Yes,' he said.

That night, he dreamed.

He dreamed of Katherine climbing the switchback at Big Sur, her fingers sliding along the thick chain on the edge of the path. He dreamed of her body, splayed face down on the rocks below, her long blonde hair fanned and floating in an inch of water, her legs broken and akimbo. He dreamed of Dr. Ho, and his tiny spectacles, and the red line they left in his brow, and he dreamed of the man from the parking garage, with the stringy hair and the gleaming knife and the steel-toed boots. He dreamed of Katherine in her parents' house, of lying with her on her childhood bed, of Katherine leaning over him, performing oral sex, of his fingers stroking her hair, brushing wisps from her face so he could look into her eyes.

He woke to the sound of footsteps.

The bedroom was dark. His first thought was of the man with the long hair and switchblade, of his threats to kill Timothy if he continued to fuck Tricia. Timothy whispered, ‘Tricia?'

He reached his arm to her side of the bed, to reassure himself that she was all right. But the bed was empty. Timothy looked at his nightstand. The digital clock, with comforting amber numbers, said 2.33 a.m. He flipped on the bedside light. Tricia was gone.

He tried to sit up. He was surprised by the pain in his abdomen, and then he remembered the punch he had received that afternoon. He touched his face and felt the scab on his chin.

He tried again to get up, more carefully now, sliding his feet to the floor, and then slowly pushing himself to a sitting position using his hands. He rose from the bed.

He thought about Tricia, and wondered where she was, and if she was all right. He wanted to call out her name. But perhaps that was unwise. Perhaps the long-haired man was there, in the house. Could he have broken in, somehow, through the patio door, or the den window? Did he know where Timothy lived?

Timothy walked out of the bedroom and peered into the hall. It was dark. He could see nothing. But he did not turn on the light. He knew the hallway better than any intruder could, and the darkness would be his advantage. He stepped into the hall. The floorboard creaked. He stopped, remained motionless, and listened for noise. Was there someone else in the house?

He saw a dim glow at the end of the hallway, a line of light under a doorframe. It was the door to the attic. He began to walk carefully toward it, through the dark, toe-first, the way he was taught as a child that the Indians walked through the forest, sliding their moccasin feet under branches and leaves to surprise their enemies. He slid his finger against the wall as he walked, to maintain a straight path through the blackness, and he felt the bumps and bubbles of the cool plaster beneath his skin.

He approached the attic. Even in the dark he knew where the doorknob would be, and he grasped it and turned it quietly. He
pulled open the door and was surprised that it did not squeak.

There was a light shining in the attic.

He climbed the attic stairs slowly. He expected to see the steel-toed boots first, as he ascended, and then the dirty jeans, and finally the switchblade at the ready, near the man's waist.

On the third step, the floorboard creaked again, and Timothy stopped. He listened. There was a sound of paper rustling. He climbed to the fourth step, faster now, and then the fifth, and he no longer cared about remaining silent; he simply wanted to confront whoever was in the attic, and to end his feeling of dread.

He reached the top of the stairs. At the far end of the attic, Tricia sat on the floor, her back to him, with a pile of Katherine's journals beside her. She was flipping the pages, reading intently, and then flipping more. It was as if she was looking for some passage in particular.

‘What are you doing?' he asked.

If she was surprised by his presence, she did not show it. She continued flipping the pages with her back turned to him. ‘Writing my journal,' she said calmly.

‘Writing?' he asked. ‘Or reading?' He climbed the final step now, and began to walk toward her. ‘Trying to brush up on all the details?'

She turned to him. He was surprised that she had tears in her eyes and streaking her cheeks.

‘I came up here to write. But now I'm just reading. Looking at old entries. From years ago.' She laughed, a quiet, self-pitying laugh.

‘Who are you?' he asked. ‘Are you Katherine? Or are you Tricia?'

‘Oh God,' she said, shaking her head, sniffling. ‘Not again.'

‘What are you doing here, reading her diaries at two o'clock in the morning?'

‘I told you. I was writing. In
my
diaries. They're mine, Timothy.
Mine
. Don't you understand? Don't you believe me? Why did you put them up here, anyway? Did you think I wouldn't find them? Are you trying to take everything from me?'

Her emotion surprised him. This was the sort of hysterical overreaction that was typical of Katherine: turning the tables on him, using verbal jujitsu to direct his own anger back at him.

‘I put them away,' he said, ‘after Katherine … after you died. I forgot about them.'

‘Did you read them?'

‘No,' he lied.

She sniffled again, wiped the tears from her eyes. ‘I just wanted to write about today. About how you got hurt. And I started thinking, and reading, you know, old entries. I almost never do that. I've been writing these damn journals for twenty years, and I hardly ever read a word of what I've written. But tonight, I guess with everything that's been going on, I just wanted to read some of the old pages. I wanted to reassure myself that I am … me. God, Timothy, you don't understand what it's like. Sometimes I feel like I'm going crazy. Imagine waking up in someone else's body. And if that isn't bad enough, imagine that your own husband doesn't believe it's you.'

‘I believe it's you,' he said. And at that moment, staring at the tears on Tricia's cheeks, he did.

‘Then why do you constantly question me? Who do you think I am?'

He didn't answer.

‘Do you think this whole thing is – what? – an elaborate con? That I'm a twenty-three-year-old secretary trying to fool you? In order to do what? Fuck you, Timothy? Do you think I need to go through all that just to fuck you? Looking like this?'

‘I said I believe you,' he said.

‘Then stop already. Stop questioning me.'

‘Come to bed,' he said. He reached his hand down and offered it to her. She took it, and he helped her from the floor. His stomach ached when he pulled her up, but he didn't want her to know and so kept his face still.

She stepped toward him and fell into his arms, and she hugged him tightly and rubbed her tears into his shoulder.

‘I love you,' she said. ‘I do.'

‘Then come back to bed,' he said, and led her back downstairs.

38

The next day, he met Frank Arnheim for breakfast at Buck's, a coffee shop in Woodside.

‘Here's the situation,' Frank explained to Timothy. ‘You might go to jail.'

Timothy was eating an egg-white omelet with cheddar cheese. He put down his fork. This was not what he expected to hear. He was meeting Frank to review the testimony he would give to the CFTC about Osiris' collapse. He was scheduled to fly to Chicago in less than two weeks.

‘For two hundred and fifty dollars an hour, that's the best you can do?'

‘A lot of important people lost a lot of money on Osiris. From the CFTC's perspective, someone's got to pay.'

‘I don't mind someone paying,' Timothy said. ‘I just mind the someone being me.' The thought of jail had never occurred to him.

‘Well, that's my point. Yesterday, while you were being beaten up in the parking garage, I spent some time with your assistant, Jay Strauss.'

‘Good kid, Jay,' Timothy said.

‘No,' Frank said. ‘I don't think so.'

‘Really?' Timothy was surprised.

‘Oh, yeah,' Frank said. ‘Absolutely. When he testifies in Chicago, he's going to destroy you.'

‘The Kid? I mean Jay? Are you sure?'

‘You must have done something to really piss him off. Let me ask you something. How much does he know? Did you ever ask him to lie? Did you ever ask him to tell investors something that was untrue?'

‘No.' Timothy thought about it. He did tell the Kid to lie to Pinky. ‘Yes.' Then: ‘Maybe. I don't know.'

‘Put yourself in Jay's shoes. He's a scared twenty-four-year-old kid. He's worried about the rest of his life. Meanwhile, the government doesn't care about him. He's a nothing. They want you. They can make an example of you. They can teach everyone a nice little lesson about how powerful and all-knowing the CFTC is. See where I'm going with this?'