‘How was your massage?’
‘All right,’ he said.
‘Was she beautiful?’
‘Who?’
‘The masseuse.’
Timothy said: ‘Yes, she was beautiful.’
Katherine nodded. She had expected as much.
He sat down on the bed beside her. His weight pressed an indentation into the mattress, and the leather diary slid down into the gravity well and bumped against his thigh. Gingerly, he pushed it away, careful not to disturb it, like a loaded weapon.
‘But I love you more, Katherine. I love you more than my beautiful Swedish masseuse. I love you more than my hot young secretary. I love you more than anyone. I love you.’
‘Timothy,’ she said. She looked at him with a strange expression. He couldn’t place it. For an instant, it seemed like sorrow. Then he realized it was something else – regret, perhaps? But no. Timothy decided: it was love. Funny, he thought, after twenty years, love is so fleeting, you can’t recognize it in your own wife’s eyes.
‘Come on,’ Timothy said. ‘Let’s get dressed for dinner.’
In addition to massages and hiking, they visited small art galleries – more his speed, he explained, since it involved less walking – where they bought a wind-chime and two abstract acrylic paintings that Timothy didn’t care for, but which Katherine thought would go well with the soon-to-be-remodeled living room. They ate in out-of-the-way roadside restaurants, where Timothy enjoyed deep-fried oysters in cornmeal (‘You can’t find that in Palo Alto,’ he said) and where she ordered greasy cheeseburgers, always bloody and rare.
On Sunday, the final day of their vacation, they decided to check out from the hotel and then visit a few more art galleries on Route 1 before continuing north back to Palo Alto. At the Crabbe Gallery, Katherine found a piece of sculpture she liked, and Timothy offered to buy it for her. It was another abstract piece, two interlocking marble U shapes. ‘Perfect for the foyer,’ she explained to Timothy, who figured that five hundred and ninety-five dollars was a small price to pay to end the trip in a haze of pleasantness.
As they stood beside the cash register and the gallery proprietor wrapped their sculpture in tissue paper for the trip home, Katherine began to search the inside of her purse.
‘Damn it,’ she said.
‘What’s wrong?’ He was signing the charge card receipt and didn’t look up at her.
‘My sunglasses. I must have left them in the room.’
Timothy tried to keep his face still, continued looking down at the credit card receipt. Now they would have to double-back and drive south another fifteen minutes before returning home. She had added thirty minutes to the trip because of her own carelessness.
‘It’s no problem,’ he said pleasantly. ‘We’ll just drive back and take a look.’
He handed the clerk his signed receipt, and the clerk handed Timothy the heavy bundle of tissue paper.
He and Katherine left the store and started toward the BMW.
She stopped, touched his elbow.
‘What?’ he said.
She smiled. ‘It’s still our anniversary weekend, right?’
‘Sure,’ he said.
‘You’ve been so kind to me this whole trip.’
He thought she was apologizing for leaving her sunglasses behind in the inn. ‘It’s no problem, Katherine,’ he said.
‘So can I ask you for one more thing?’ She pointed across the parking lot to a second art gallery. ‘Can I browse in there?’
‘But we need to go back to the hotel.’ Then he understood what she wanted. He was to drive back to the Ventana Inn by himself and locate her sunglasses, while she continued shopping at the second gallery. Then he would return and pick her up for the drive home. ‘Oh, I see,’ he said. The August sun was beating on his scalp, and the tissue-paper-wrapped sculpture was heavy in his hands. He felt the first prickles of sweat on his neck, and realized he needed to urinate. He felt like saying, ‘You must be kidding.’ Instead, he said: ‘Absolutely, no problem,’ and smiled. This was typical of her, he thought to himself, as he continued to the car. He put the sculpture in the back seat. She always wanted to push him, to test his limits, to see whether she could turn a nice weekend – which he had actually enjoyed – into a fight. But he decided not to take her bait. ‘I’ll be right back,’ he said. He circled the car and climbed into the passenger seat.
‘Timothy,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Your American Express. Can I have it? I won’t go crazy, I promise.’
He reached a sweaty hand into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. ‘Of course,’ he said. He handed her the charge card.
‘I love you, Gimpy,’ she said.
‘And I you,’ he said. He climbed into the car and drove off.
Twenty minutes later, back at the Ventana Inn, Timothy pulled into the front reception area under the veranda, where a sign said, ‘For Guests Checking In.’ The bellboy, a pleasant-looking boy with a Midwestern moon face, hopped to the car and chirped, ‘Welcome to the Ventana Inn! Checking in?’
Timothy got out of the car and shook his head wearily. What he needed to do, more than anything else, was take a piss. ‘Not exactly,’ he told the bellboy. ‘My wife and I just checked out.’
The bellboy looked in the passenger seat of the BMW to see if he should help Timothy’s wife from the car. It was empty. ‘No, she’s not …’ Timothy let his voice trail off. ‘She sent me back here because she forgot something in the room, and she’d rather keep shopping than drive with me.’ He rolled his eyes, as if to say, ‘You know how hard it can be to be married, right?’ But the Midwestern bellboy just stared at him. Marriage was remote and hypothetical to him, like some novel academic theory that he had heard of, vaguely, but never spent much time dwelling on.
‘Okay,’ Timothy said. He opened his wallet, pulled out a twenty-dollar bill and handed it to the bellboy. ‘I’m going to the bathroom, then I’ll talk to the front desk. Just leave the car here for a second, all right?’
‘Yes, sir!’ the bellboy said. He didn’t understand what Timothy was saying about driving and shopping, and the bathroom, but a twenty-spot he understood perfectly.
‘I’ll be five minutes,’ Timothy said, over his shoulder.
He felt better after urinating, and so walked to the front desk in good spirits. It did not last. The line was eight-people deep, and the two clerks on duty were harried, trying to keep up with the customers anxious to check out. One couple was arguing with a clerk about their bill, yelling about the local phone charges, proclaiming them ‘absurd’ and threatening that the hotel would regret trying to take advantage of them.
Timothy suddenly felt angry, too. He was not going to wait in line, just to look for Katherine’s silly pair of sunglasses. They were her sunglasses, after all. So why was he here, searching for them?
Besides, the sunglasses could cost no more than – what? – two hundred dollars? Four hundred dollars? It wasn’t worth the aggravation. In thirty years of traveling across North America, of staying in countless hotels, of checking in and checking out, Timothy had never once left something in a hotel room. Why did she?
‘All right,’ Timothy said, out loud. He left the hotel and climbed back into his BMW.
When he returned to the art gallery he had a story ready, about how he asked the front desk for the sunglasses, and even bribed a housekeeper to let him into the room to search, but that they were nowhere to be found.
But he did not need the story. Katherine was standing in the parking lot, waiting for him. Under her arm she held a framed painting wrapped in newspaper. On her face she wore her sunglasses.
Timothy stopped the car beside her. She leaned over and put her elbows on the open window frame.
‘You’re going to kill me,’ she said. She tapped the bridge of her sunglasses. ‘I found them in my pocket.’
Timothy shook his head.
‘Are you mad?’
‘Get in,�
�� he said. They didn’t talk for the first twenty miles, but by the time they reached Monterey, Timothy decided that he had been silent long enough, and so he asked her what she wanted to eat for dinner.
7
When Timothy returned to work on Monday morning at a quarter past nine, Tricia was not at the front reception area. Instead there was a man underneath Tricia’s desk, bent over, with his blue-jeaned ass in the air.
‘Hello,’ Timothy said, to the ass.
‘Oh.’ The man knocked his head against the desk as he stood. It was Tran, their computer consultant. He was thin and Vietnamese, and he looked like he was seventeen years old. ‘Hello, Timothy,’ Tran said.
‘What’s happening in the world of technology today?’ Timothy said, disappointed that during his triumphant return to the office after a long weekend, he was being greeted by his computer technician, and not Tricia.
‘Disaster,’ Tran said, in a heavy Vietnamese accent, staccato and guttural. ‘Contingency plan.’
‘Okay, Tran,’ Timothy said, nodding. ‘Keep up the good work. Where’s Tricia?’
‘Coffee,’ Tran said, as he went back to work beneath her desk.
Timothy walked on, toward his office. Jay appeared in the hall and swept along behind him.
‘Hi, Timothy,’ Jay said. ‘The yen’s down to seventy-two, thank God.’ And then, remembering: ‘Oh, how was your weekend?’
Timothy said: ‘Fine, fine.’ He wanted to stop talking about it before Tricia returned from her coffee run. He entered his private office and held the door open for Jay. He closed the door behind them. ‘What’s Tran doing out there? I never understand a word he says.’
‘We talked about it last week. You gave your okay. He’s installing a network backup system. In case there’s a disaster, you know? A fire, or theft? We’ll back up the computers each night, and then rotate the backup media off-site once each week. That way, worst case scenario, we’ll only lose a few days’ worth of data. It’s part of our Investor Agreement with Granite Partners. They require disaster contingency planning by all the funds they invest in.’
‘Okay, whatever,’ Timothy said. Technology was really the Kid’s specialty, after all.
Timothy removed his suit jacket and hung it behind the door. He said, ‘Tell me about the yen.’
‘I’ve heard reports that the BOJ is buying dollars. Now they’re suddenly concerned that their exports are uncompetitive because of the strong yen.’
‘Okay,’ Timothy repeated. All he cared was that the yen was moving down, and that was Good. At the current level of seventy-two, Osiris had a paper profit of – he tried to do the math …
‘We’re up three million dollars now,’ Jay said. It was as if the Kid had read his mind.
‘That’s a start,’ Timothy said.
‘The only thing is,’ Jay said, ‘that we’re fully margined. I mean fully margined. If the yen moves against us, or if any clients want to withdraw cash, then we’re screwed.’
‘Who said anything about withdrawing cash?’ Timothy asked.
‘No one,’ the Kid said. ‘I’m just saying.’
On Timothy’s desk, his phone rang. It was the internal ring tone – warm and quiet – which meant it was an intercom call from Tricia. He clicked on the speakerphone.
‘Yes?’
‘Hi, Timothy,’ Tricia said.
‘Hi,’ he called out. It was hard to be flirtatious on a speakerphone. And with the Kid standing right there …
He reached over and picked up the handset. ‘How are you?’ he said, as plainly as he could.
‘Timothy, I have Pinky Dewer on the line,’ she said into his ear, warmly. ‘He says he’s in town.’
‘Please tell him I’m in a meeting and take a message.’
‘Okay, Timothy.’ She hung up.
‘Pinky Dewer’s in town,’ Timothy explained to the Kid.
‘How long can we keep avoiding him?’
‘Depends. When’s his flight home?’
The Kid nodded and left. Timothy reached below his desk and turned on his computer. He waited for it to boot, and then called up a five-minute chart on the Japanese yen. The sharp green lines spiked downward, little phosphorescent needles. Each tick down represented a million dollars. That was the kind of technology Timothy appreciated.
Before lunch, Timothy’s phone rang softly again. The text display said: ‘Station 1. Tricia Fountain.’ Timothy picked up.
‘It’s me again,’ she said. ‘I have a Mike Kelly on the line. He’s from Union Bank Private Banking.’
‘Okay, put him on.’
There was a soft click and Tricia’s voice was replaced by a man’s, phlegmy and hoarse. ‘Mr. Van Bender?’
‘Yes, Mike. Please call me Timothy.’ Mike Kelly was Timothy’s point of contact at Union Bank. He took care of Timothy’s banking: traveler’s checks, credit cards, lines of credit, the jumbo mortgage on his home. Timothy had called him on the car phone during the ride to work. He’d told Mike to transfer two hundred thousand dollars from his general account to Katherine’s checking account, so that his wife could begin her redecorating project.
Timothy asked: ‘Did you take care of that matter for my wife?’
‘I did,’ Mike Kelly said. ‘That’s actually the reason I’m calling.’ He sounded hesitant, uncomfortable. Timothy had met him twice in the past – once a year ago, when Mike visited Osiris’ office to have Timothy complete a new signature card, and once during Christmas, when Mike personally delivered a gift basket filled with champagne, fruit cake, and caviar. Bankers were terribly appreciative at Christmas time if they earned point two-five percent of all assets.
‘I want to make sure you are aware of something,’ Mike Kelly continued. ‘I feel a bit uncomfortable calling like this, but it is a service that I feel obligated to provide, as your Union Bank representative.’
‘Okay, okay,’ Timothy said quickly. Much more banker talk and he would fall asleep right there on his desk. ‘What’s going on?’
‘We transferred the funds from your general account to sub-account 0812 as you instructed. Ten minutes later, we received further direction from your wife, to wire those same funds to another account.’
‘To whose account?’
‘That I don’t know,’ Mike Kelly said. ‘It’s a Citibank account. For further credit to, let’s see … Armistice LLC.’ He rattled off an account number.
‘Who’s Armistice LLC?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘How much did she wire?’
‘One hundred and fifty thousand dollars.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ Timothy said. So much for his instruction not to spend the money like a drunken sailor.
‘Mr. Van Bender, I want to make sure you understand something. Since you are both co-signers on the account, it’s not a violation of our privacy policy to inform you of this transaction. At Union Bank we pride ourselves on our care and discretion. Typically we have very strict rules about what we can reveal about account activity. We take those rules very seriously. I hope I haven’t overstepped any lines here.’
‘What’s that?’ Timothy’s mind was occupied by figuring out how Katherine could spend over a hundred grand in less than ten minutes.
‘I said: Since you are both co-signers on the account, it’s not a violation—’
‘Right, right,’ Timothy said quickly. ‘I understand. That’s fine.’
‘Would you like me to call our wire transfer department and see if there’s still time to stop the transfer? There’s a chance we could catch it.’
Timothy sighed. ‘No … no.’ He thought about it. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing terrible. Probably the decorator, or contractor, or who the hell knows. Either that, or she’s in hock to her London bookie again.’
Mike Kelly was silent on the line.
‘I’m just kidding, of course,’ Timothy said. ‘Her bookie is not based in London.’
Mike Kelly chuckled.
‘Mike,’ Timothy said, ‘I app
reciate your bringing this to my attention. I will be sure to thrash my wife later tonight.’
Now in the proper spirit of things, Mike chuckled again, ‘Okay, Mr. Van Bender. Okay, Timothy. You do that.’
‘Cheers,’ Timothy said.
‘Cheers, Mr. Van Ben—’
Before Mike Kelly could finish, Timothy hung up.
He dialed Katherine. The phone rang. No answer. Where could she be? Probably buying lunch at Spago for her decorator. While he sat in his office, pondering financial ruin.
There was a knock on his door.
‘Come in,’ he said.
Tricia entered the room, balancing a cardboard egg-box with two coffees. ‘I brought you some coffee,’ she said, and pushed the door closed behind her with her shoulder. With Tricia’s appearance, Timothy’s anxiety about Katherine vanished.
‘You’re the best,’ he said. She wore tight red cotton jodhpurs and a black turtleneck, with a silver choker around her neck.
‘How was your weekend?’ she asked. She removed one cup of coffee from the cardboard box and placed it on the desk in front of him. He wondered: who was the second cup of coffee for? She answered the question by opening the lid and taking a sip. It was her own. Had she really brought two cups of coffee into her boss’s office so that she could join him for a little coffee-break banter? This was daring, he thought, suddenly feeling the rush of blood to his penis, the constriction in his throat, the prickles of excitement on the back of his arms. Tricia leaned against the corner of his desk, practically sitting on it now, the soft rounded wood pushing against the back of her thighs. Those tight red pants were just feet away from him.
She sipped her coffee, and continued her line of questioning. ‘Did you rekindle the magic?’
It took him a moment to realize that she was asking about the anniversary weekend with his wife.
He said, ‘I bought her an expensive diamond necklace for our anniversary. That seemed to rekindle things pretty well.’
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