Switchback by Matthew Klein Read Free Book Online Page A

was put away, never to be spoken of, just one more item in that cluttered attic that held their marriage’s disappointments.
    â€˜It is beautiful,’ Timothy agreed, as they stared at the ocean below, crashing against the rocks. ‘And I love you.’ Which was the only thing he could say when confronted with her sadness.
    That evening, back in the hotel room, they had a few unscripted hours before their dinner reservation. Katherine suggested that Timothy have a massage in the Ventana’s spa – to ‘work on those soldier’s knees’ she said. Timothy said that they should go together, but she insisted on staying behind, alone, in the room.
    â€˜I could use some quiet time,’ she said.
    He didn’t complain. A couple hours of separateness were welcome. As he strolled across the Ventana grounds, following the signs for the spa, he tried to conjure a picture of his masseuse. He decided she should be a young Swedish girl – tall, with strong hands. A firm grasp of English was of secondary importance.
    So he was disappointed when the matron at the spa’s front desk informed him that only one masseuse was available on such short notice, and that he was a ‘gentleman’ named Tony.
    He may indeed have been a gentleman, Timothy decided as he lay naked under Tony’s pounding fists – but only if the Crips of Compton made a habit of opening car doors for their ladies. Tony was a large black man, handsome and muscular. Although he was clean cut, he had a raised scar carved along his jaw line, like a long lyrical paragraph written in Braille. Timothy decided it was probably not a massage-related injury.
    But, after some initial discomfort at being naked and rubbed by another man – and one who had possibly been at the receiving end of a filet knife – Timothy soon relaxed, and was surprised to be awakened from sleep fifty minutes later at the end of the session.
    â€˜I hope you enjoyed that, Mr. Van Bender,’ Tony said.
    â€˜I certainly did,’ Timothy said. ‘Those are some powerful hands.’ He realized that last remark could be construed as homosexual, so he added: ‘Much better than my wife.’
    Tony smiled. His look said: Don’t flatter yourself. ‘Take your time getting dressed.’ He left the room.
    Timothy put on his clothes, returned to the front desk and put the bill on his room tab. He left Tony a fifty-dollar bill in a small envelope.
    Then he headed back to his room.
    He started back across the Ventana grounds, whistling a Puccini aria and windmilling his arms, savoring the feeling of relaxed muscles and loose joints. He came to his room. He turned the key in the lock and pushed open his door. Katherine sat cross-legged on the bed, with her back to him. She was leaning over, writing in her diary, a thick, leather-bound journal with gold leaf pages. She continued writing, and studiously ignored him.
    Katherine was a prodigious diarist. For as long as he had known her, she had carried out her strange daily ritual: scrupulously recording each day’s events, her feelings, her longings, in a tightly wound script that practically required a magnifying glass to read. Sometimes, after fighting with Timothy, she would retreat to her bedroom like a sullen teenage girl, and write. Once, two years into their marriage, when Katherine had left the house, Timothy skulked into her closet and stared at the neat stack of journals, the identical leather-bound volumes piled in obsessive rows, between old sweaters and purses – and he couldn’t resist. He carefully removed the top volume, flipped to a random page, and read.
    It was a strange experience: first, the sheer tediousness of it, the obsessive detail – what she ate (‘for breakfast: muesli and skim milk; one half grapefruit; one piece wheat toast; jam’), what she wore (‘blue floral Ralph Lauren sun dress; straw hat’), where she went, whom she