Doubled or Nothing Read online

  Chapter 11

  I have to take a break from this narrative right now. The woman they told me must be my wife, and who I am living together with as man and wife, just came in and told me she wants to go water skiing, and I always do what she wants. She’s worth pleasing for so many reasons. We’ve had a tropical depression here over the last several days with constant rain and we’ve been stuck inside which is why I began writing these memoirs. She’s been stuck inside going crazy and now that it’s sunny out, she wants to have some fun and I don’t blame her. She wants me to drive the little speedboat we use for this purpose. It’s a twenty foot deep-V center console model outboard with a one hundred fifty horsepower four stroke Yamaha. It has one of those cages over the outboard motor to attach the ski tow rope so it won’t get tangled in the motor’s propeller. She trusts me more than anyone to tow her because I know just how fast to go and how difficult the turns must be to excite her and she does like to be excited. I could get someone else to do it, but I can’t be sure they’ll make her put on her sunscreen like I do. She has fair skin and the sun is very strong in the Cayman Islands. She burns very easily unless she’s kept constantly lathered up with a good high SPF sunscreen.

  When we first arrived on the Caymans she wasn’t careful about going out in the sun without sunscreen and got very badly sunburned. You might think I want to prevent this from happening again because I love her so much, which I guess I do. But it’s really because I’m a little selfish. When she is sunburned, she can’t stand me touching her anywhere she’s burned. Of course the most interesting places I like to touch are usually covered up when she’s in the sun and they don’t get sunburned. But once I start touching her in those un-sunburned places and we get carried away, invariably we stop being careful and I end up touching her on a sunburned area and she screams and that ends the fun. So an ounce, or sometimes an eight ounce container, of prevention is worth a pound of cure and a gallon of calamine lotion as the saying goes. I don’t go water skiing myself. I’m not that into water sports like water skiing and surfboarding. I worry about sharks all the time. I like to snow ski and snow board having been brought up in New England. But they don’t have too many snow covered slopes down here to ski on. Come to think about it, they don’t in New England either. I usually had to ski on a mixture of ice, dirt, grass and rocks that they somehow seem to coat all their ski runs with. People in New England know that if they really want to snow ski or snow board they have to go out west to someplace like Colorado. But I can’t go there just yet. Maybe someday.

  Okay. I’m ready to resume this narrative. It’s raining again today. We had a great time out on the water three days ago and later on that same day, since she didn’t get sunburned, I got to touch and otherwise enjoy the unburned areas that I like so much. We played a little golf yesterday and tennis the day before, and she seems content to read a book and relax now that it’s raining again, and I am at my computer in the same room. We have a large house on the beach, but unlike a lot of really married couples, we still like each other and enjoy being with each other without necessarily having to talk to each other all the time. Now back to work.

  Chapter 12

  I drove all night and arrived in San Diego in the very early morning, just before dawn. The decision to drive all night turned out to be a good decision. I learned later by talking to Olga shortly before she tried to kill me that she and Vladimir and Igor lost track of me then. The homing device she had placed on my car apparently had come loose with all that swaying and rattling on the back of the truck as we drove through the desert to go shooting and had fallen off near the prairie dog town. She said they thought I was parked out in the desert for many days, but they couldn’t get in because there was a big warning sign and a locked gate on the road leading to the place where the homing device was transmitting from. Igor wanted to break down the gate and try and find me, but Vladimir said he didn’t want anyone to notice anything was wrong. Since they weren’t sure I hadn’t discovered the homing device and left it in the desert to throw them off, they decided to take turns watching that locked gate while the others parked at the nearest rest stop on the interstate in case I left the area. They never watched the interstate after dark since they couldn’t see cars going by out there anyway in the dark. They watched for three days before they gave up and headed west to Los Angeles to see if they could find me and so Olga could see the Pacific Ocean and Hollywood. That homing device kept transmitting until it was finally taken out by a drone strike.

  As soon as I got into San Diego, I pulled off the interstate in a populated area and looked for the nearest Starbucks since I needed a Wi Fi to use my lap top to get directions to the Salk Institute. I also wanted to find somewhere to sleep since I had driven all night and needed a place to clean up before going to the Salk Institute and checking in. I thought a likely place to sleep would be the beach and looked for a place near where the Salk Institute was located. It looked like a place called Torrey Pines State Beach was not too far away and had facilities. I hoped that meant showers, or at least an outside shower since many state beaches had them to wash off the sand after a day at the beach. I wondered how it got its name since I didn’t know that there had ever been Torreys this far west or, for that matter, had been any Torreys left in the U.S. after the Revolutionary War. I thought they had all gone to Canada. Maybe one of them decided to go out west instead and ended up in San Diego and had a beach named after his political persuasion. See. I did learn some history in addition to science.

  Well, I found a McDonalds for breakfast since I couldn’t afford the price of a piece of pastry at Starbucks by then because I had very little money left. I had hoped to be able to survive until my first paycheck on the money my parents had given me, but I had to spend a lot of it in Flagstaff just keeping the Corolla moving west. And I was beginning to worry a little because my brakes were starting to squeak pretty badly when I stopped no matter how much steering wheel kissing I did. I ended up finding the beach without too much trouble. It did have a building in the parking lot just before the path to the beach that had restrooms and showers. I was in luck. I did have to pay a parking fee, so I knew I wouldn’t be able to use it as a permanent free home, but at least I could get a few hours of sleep on the beach, take a shower and look for somewhere cheap to stay since I didn’t have anyone to mooch off of. I laid my sleeping bag on the beach, outside up and torn lining in the sand and laid down on the beach in sunny southern California, although it wasn’t sunny at all. Apparently there is an event in San Diego called June Gloom where they bring in these clouds called a marine layer that just hangs over the beach most of the day or at least until the afternoon. There would be no danger of my being sunburned even if I had been wearing a bathing suit since the sun wouldn’t shine until then. I didn’t know this. I only knew that it was cool and cloudy and I rolled over on my stomach and went to sleep. I didn’t wake up until noon.

  I couldn’t check in to the Salk Institute because it was Sunday, and I saw by all these rules they had posted that I wasn’t supposed to stay on the beach at night, and I was going to have to pay again for parking. So I took a shower and shaved, changed into my last set of clean clothes and decided to travel up the coast highway to look around, find a free beach to sleep on, if one existed, and a laundromat. The coast road north of Torrey Pines Beach led through a lot of small towns and had lots of little businesses and restaurants along it, including a laundromat. I stopped and washed and dried my clothes and talked to the locals in the laundromat who were mainly Mexicans. They were really friendly and told me all the cheap Mexican restaurants to eat at, which were good and which not so good, and filled me in on what was what in that whole area of the coast north of the ritzy area of La Jolla where the Salk Institute was located and where no one could afford to live unless they were very wealthy. Since I was poor, I realized I had better stick to the areas north of there. In all my travels up and down that coast road, I didn’t see any black Buick Regals.


  That evening I tried one of the Mexican restaurants near the laundromat that had been recommended to me. It was cheap and good as promised. I drove back down south and found a place to park on a side street and wandered up and down the main street of the little town of Del Mar. Everyone there seemed to be well dressed and prosperous. The cars on the streets were all pretty high priced. I was glad I had parked on the side street even if the owner of the house I parked in front of came running out to make sure I did intend to come back and pick up the Corolla and was not planning to just abandon it there. I noticed a lot of people were going up onto a balcony above the main street and I thought maybe it was a block party or something with free food so I went up the stairs. It turned out that there were several fancy restaurants up there with well-dressed people standing around in front of them. I went and looked at the menus in several of the restaurants and immediately wished I was back in Santa Fe which now seemed cheap by comparison. I knew then that Del Mar was another place where I would never be able to live or afford to go to a restaurant. I would have to live further north in the land of the laundromats and Mexican restaurants. I sat on one of the chairs that was on that deck with the restaurants and watched the sun go down over the Pacific. No one came and asked me for money to rent one like I expected. An hour or so after dark, I went and got into my car and started driving north and noticed a beach on my left that was just there. There was a parking space on the street and no parking meter or anything saying I couldn’t park there so I did. I took my sleeping bag and went down to the beach. It didn’t smell that good and it wasn’t a sea smell or seaweed smell that you get on some beaches, but I was so tired I didn’t mind. It had been a long time since I had slept for more than four hours at a stretch. I immediately fell asleep and didn’t wake up until dawn, and I didn’t have any dreams that I could remember when I woke up.

  I woke up at dawn and rolled up the remnants of my sleeping bag and walked off the beach towards my car. As I was leaving I noticed the sign that said Dog Beach. So that explained the funny smell. I checked my self over before getting into my car to make sure I didn’t have any beach remnants on me. No, I don’t mean seaweed. I drove south and stopped at Torrey Pines State Beach to take a shower and shave and change my clothes. I then went a little east and onto I-5 heading north since all the traffic seemed to be heading south bumper to bumper. I never saw so much traffic, and I thought Boston and New York was bad. I-5 coming south looked like a five lane wide parking lot. In Boston they don’t allow parking lots wider than three lanes. I wanted to head north on the interstate and look for a fast food restaurant that could be seen from the highway. I knew I couldn’t afford any of the restaurants on the coast highway, and I didn’t know if the Mexican restaurants served breakfast and didn’t want another spicy burrito this early in the morning. I wanted a good old fashioned McDonalds’ breakfast if I could find one, which I eventually did.

  After I ate breakfast, I realized I had a problem. I had to go back down the interstate to get to the Salk Institute and the traffic was not much better even though it was approaching the end of rush hour. Also, I knew from driving north that there were a lot of big hills and the road went up and down steep inclines. I didn’t think the road back down would be too much better. I was worried about the old Corolla and its bad brakes. Then I realized that the heavy traffic had its advantages. First, I wouldn’t be able to go too fast. Maybe five or ten miles an hour tops, so I wouldn’t have to worry about killing myself. Second, since I couldn’t kill myself by crashing into something at five or ten miles per hour, I wouldn’t have to kiss the steering wheel. I didn’t know if the air bag would even deploy at that low of a speed anyhow. And third, if my brakes didn’t hold too well on a steep incline, I could just coast into the car in front of me and use its bumper to stop myself. And people didn’t seem to mind too much if I did that. On the few occasions when I bumped the car in front of me a little hard, they started to get out and complain, but for some reason when they saw that it was me and took a good look at the car that had just bumped into them, they got back into their car real quick and tried to change lanes as soon as they could. And the people driving the most expensive cars were the nicest. They always got out of my way after I bumped them. They didn’t have to be bumped twice, if you know what I mean. And they didn’t wave at me or anything. They just looked the other way as I passed and avoided eye contact even though all I was trying to do was to wave a thank you at them.

  Chapter 13

  I arrived in due course at the site of the Salk Institute on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. I noticed that the view was magnificent from that cliff, but only for a select few to enjoy. The main area of the Institute consisted of two long parallel buildings with only the ends of the two buildings facing the Pacific. And those ends of the buildings, as I would find out, were reserved for the offices of the leaders of the various research laboratories. Everyone else either had to look across the courtyard at the other building filled with lesser lights such as themselves or out onto the sides that didn’t face anything particularly interesting to see. The people in the main buildings’ jobs were to do research and work hard for the benefit of science. The people in the end offices’ jobs were to sit and gaze out at the Pacific and think important thoughts like what a great view they had and wasn’t it great that they had finally made it. Of course, one of them wasn’t Jonas Salk who had passed away from a surfeit of important thoughts. I also noted as I drove up and parked that there were a lot of people jumping off the side of the cliff right next to the Institute. In fact people were lining up to jump off that cliff. No, it wasn’t because they were despondent about how bad their office was or were just so overcome with the view that they wanted to get closer to it, it was because they were engaged in an activity that I’m sure is destined to be an Olympic sport in the future. No, not cliff jumping, but hang gliding. They all were flying kites and were hanging on instead of letting go, as we were told to do when we were kids when the kite started to lift us off the ground. Away they went towards the Pacific and they seemed to be happy doing it. The kites were bigger than the standard ones you get at WalMart. I didn’t know where they got them and I never asked. Since I had to go inside the Institute, I never did find out how they got down either. Maybe they just hung on until their arms got tired and then they let go and dropped into the Pacific Ocean and a boat picked them up, although I didn’t see any boats out there. Maybe there was a Jeep at the bottom to pick them up after they swam to shore. And what happened to them if it was low tide and they didn’t hang on long enough? I had intended to ask someone in the laboratory about it, but I never did. It was not that important to me to find out.

  I went inside the Salk Institute to meet the leader of the laboratory I was to work in. I never got to see the view from his office since his secretary asked me to wait the requisite forty-five minutes in her waiting area before he came out. He welcomed me and took me down to his laboratory to meet all the other lesser lights. I was first introduced to his head lesser light who was to show me around the laboratory, introduce me to the even lesser lesser lights and then take me over to the personnel office to sign the necessary documents. The leader then went back to his office to continue watching the Pacific, I presumed, and I never saw him in the laboratory again during the time I was there, although I did see him a time or two at one of the afternoon teas and the time he introduced me to one of the local entrepreneurs who he was working with, but that was after I had been there for a month.

  The laboratory was very nice, actually. Much better than the dingy one I had been in at MIT and also nicer than the one I had started in at Brandeis. And all the people were very nice as well. In fact most of the people I met in San Diego were nice, much nicer than the people in Boston, probably because it’s such a nice place to live that people think they have to be nice too. The radio stations often say things like, “It’s another beautiful day in paradise.” That’s how they refer to San Diego, as paradise. Maybe t
hat’s why everyone thinks they have to be nice because people living in paradise are supposed to be nice. But it isn’t really paradise because it’s so expensive to live in San Diego. Whoever heard of paradise being expensive? Besides, I think that in many ways the Cayman Islands are more of a paradise than San Diego. For one thing there are fewer people. For another I’m now rich. Maybe everyplace is paradise if you’re rich.

  There were three other postdoctoral fellows who I was introduced to in the laboratory, two men and one woman, in addition to the head research associate who I had first been introduced to by the leader and who would be my de facto boss. There were also three technicians, two females and one male. The technician’s job was to help the more senior researchers by doing real work while the more senior researchers either enjoyed their office with a view of the Pacific Ocean or spent their time dreaming of having their own office with a view of the Pacific Ocean. One of the females was doing research exclusively for the leader and no one was allowed to ask her to do anything for them. That was the job of the other two. Being low man on the totem pole, so to speak, I knew that meant I would have to do everything for myself which was okay since that was what I was used to doing. After the introductions and the tour of the laboratory facilities, the head associate showed me where all the animals were kept and I noticed they had a lot of white rats. I hoped they were the nice ones but I knew I would find out soon enough. He then took me to the personnel office to sign in. When I returned he showed me the desk along the wall of desks that would be my home. It was next to the lesser of the two female technicians. Her name was Astrid.

  I took a liking to Astrid immediately. She was very sweet, cheerful and helpful. She was also very pretty. She had straight light blonde hair and blue eyes and a decent sized chest for a relatively slender woman. She was obviously of Swedish descent since her last name was Jorgenson. The main problem with her looks was that she looked like two different women, as if she were put together using the wrong parts. I just described the way the upper half looked. It was very attractive. The lower half was very attractive as well. She had a nice, round, firm attractive butt, which I have already said was a feature I’m attracted to, and generous thighs and well-shaped legs. The problem was that her lower half belonged on a woman twice as big as her top half or her top half belonged on a woman half the size of her bottom half, whichever way you want to look at it. As I got to know her better I kept thinking of her as Astrid and her big sister because the two halves were so different. The reason I thought of her as Astrid and her big sister rather than Astrid and her little sister was because I did most of my interactions with her top half. That’s the half I talked to on a regular basis, and she had a good personality and a good sense of humor, so I thought of that half as Astrid. On the other hand, the bottom half had its own special attraction. That was where the action was, so to speak. I ended up having a good time with Astrid’s big sister as well but it was definitely a different kind of a good time. If I was in the mood for conversation or wanted someone to go out and do something with, I would definitely seek out Astrid. On the other hand, if I was horny, I only wanted to interact with her big sister and I often ignored Astrid, but she didn’t seem to mind. She wasn’t a selfish person. The other thing about Astrid’s big sister was that, like Julie, she was a real blonde, just a little bit thicker and curlier, but a real blonde none the less. She was the second real blonde I had been with that month. Third, if you include Muffy. She was also the most fun to sleep with of all three.