Odds On: A Novel Read online

  “My address,” she said. “I’m away from Brighton a good deal of the time—for my health—but I have excellent forwarding arrangements, and letters never fail to reach me. Will I hear from you?”

  “You will,” Jencks said, pocketing the card.

  “Delightful,” she said. “And now I’d like one more glass before lunch.”

  As the crème caramel arrived, Peter said, “I’m serious. This is absolutely your last chance.”

  Jenny finished her wine and looked at him steadily. “I know that.”

  “And you have nothing more to say?”

  “No.”

  “May I ask,” Peter said, “how you intend to get around for the rest of the summer, when my car and I are gone?”

  “I’ll think of something.”

  “It’s that man, isn’t it?” he said accusingly. “That boxer. You’re going off with him.”

  “Yes,” Jenny said, taking a bite of the crème and thinking of St. Peter’s. It would be hot in Rome, but she wouldn’t mind. They’d find an air-conditioned hotel.

  “Well, I have news for you,” Peter said. “When he leaves here, he’ll go alone. He won’t give you the time of day.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “I know his type, that’s all.”

  “Peter, you’re so astute. It constantly amazes me.”

  “Go on, laugh. Just wait and see if I’m right. You’ll find it isn’t so funny.” He stood up from the table, not touching his dessert. “But if you ever want to look me up. I’ll be in St. Tropez. It’s a small town, and—”

  “I’ve been in St. Tropez before, Peter.”

  He looked at her, puzzled and annoyed. “You really think he’s going to take you with him, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” she said, “I really do.” She reached over, and took his dessert. Very slowly, she began to eat it. In her mind, she clearly saw the high skeleton of an oil rig, and she heard the clatter and shouts of the drilling team.

  “How do you feel?” Jencks asked.

  “Like I’ve fallen down an elevator shaft. But I’ll live.” Bryan shifted in his bed and winced. There was a large bruise on his forehead, and one eye was a puffed, purple-red.

  “Steak’s good for it,” Jencks said.

  “I asked, and they brought me a little thing so thin you could almost see through it. I’m afraid I’ll just have to make do.”

  “Are you going back to London?”

  “Not immediately.”

  Jencks’ eyebrows went up.

  “It’s a pleasant place,” Bryan said. “I think I may stay on for a while.” He paused. “Well, what’s the odd look for?”

  “Nothing, nothing.”

  “I have a friend,” Bryan said slowly, “in Lyons. He’s been after me for years to join his export firm. He does most of his business in southern France, and I spent a lot of time there, during the war.”

  “You’re not going back to London?”

  “I don’t know. It depends.”

  Jencks did not ask on what it depended. He held out his hand. “She’s a nice girl.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “Nothing, nothing.” They shook hands. “Let me know how it turns out.”

  “I will. Cheers, Steve.”

  “Good luck, Bryan.”

  As Jencks went out, the receptionist came up and knocked on Bryan’s door.

  She came very quietly inside. “Well, you look a sight.”

  “I fell down the stairs,” Bryan said.

  “Right on your eye, I suppose.”

  “Point of honor, you see.”

  “Whose honor?”

  Bryan shrugged. “Mine. Yours.”

  “You ought to stay on a few extra days until you look more presentable.”

  “I intend to.” He smiled.

  “Very long?” She smiled back.

  He shrugged. He did not know what he felt about this girl; as he looked at her he thought again of Jane, but she was a faded image, like a movie he had seen in his youth. He was tired of his old life; there was no more kick in the suspense, only nagging fear. Somehow, Jane belonged to an existence he was shedding—she was a part of it, integral to it, cold and hard in her own way, part of the total pattern.

  “Tell me,” he said. “Have you spent much time in southern France?”

  “Oh, you poor thing,” Cynthia said, painting Jean-Paul’s cheeks with Merthiolate. She smiled to herself. It made him look like a clown, those two pink circles. Jean-Paul winced. “Does it hurt very much?”

  “No,” he said, “only when I—”

  “Never mind,” she said smoothly. “You’ll feel better in a day or two. Would you like a cold compress for your head?”

  He nodded weakly. She brought one to him and placed it over his forehead. He really did look terrible; he had ugly marks and scrapes all over his body and a nasty gash on his chin. Too bad, she thought, but then Miguel was better in bed anyway. Miguel had that little extra something.

  “Aunt Elizabeth will be here to see you soon,” she said.

  He watched her go to the door. “Leaving?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I have to—pack.”

  “A bientôt.”

  “A bientôt, Jean-Paul.”

  She walked quickly down the hall to her own room.

  “Baby,” Miguel said, as she entered. “Where have you been?” What a body, he thought, what a body this chick had. It was like a rock-and-roll song, whenever she took a step. It pounded in your head, each little movement, every tiny twitch.

  “Nursing,” Cynthia said. She stretched. The kef had worn off days ago, it seemed. She was down, way down, and she wanted to get high again.

  “I’ll bet you’re a good nurse.”

  “It’s not really my line.”

  “What’s your line?”

  “Pleasure, pure pleasure.” She looked around the room for her cigarettes. “Let’s get blocked.”

  “You got the stuff?”

  “More than enough.” She passed him a cigarette, which looked ordinary enough except that the end had been twisted shut. “I want to get very, very high. And then I want to make obscene love.”

  “I’m with you,” he said, lighting the cigarettes. He drew the smoke into his lungs and held it as long as he could. He disliked the smell of kef, and always had. But after all, the smell wasn’t the important thing.

  “We should start some kind of regular arrangement together,” he suggested, grinning broadly.

  “Maybe. You’ll have to prove yourself first.”

  “Give me half a chance.”

  “I’ll give you half a dozen chances,” she said, inhaling deeply.

  Later, when they had each smoked two cigarettes, and time jerked and flowed in strange patterns, she began to undress.

  “Chance number one?” he asked.

  “Coming up,” she said.

  After leaving Bryan, Jencks looked for Miguel, but didn’t find him. It wasn’t difficult to figure out why, and so he had gone down to the bar for another banana liqueur. He was developing quite a taste for them. He ordered this one on the rocks, just to see how it would go down. The bartender looked at him as if he were crazy. Well, Jencks thought, lighting a cigarette, perhaps he was.

  “Steve,” Jenny said. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  She was wearing her navy-blue jumper, which softened the outlines of her body, making her appear younger, more girlish.

  “Drink?” he asked, indicating his own.

  “What is it?”

  “Banana liqueur on the rocks. An experiment, in its own little way.”

  “Better get me a bourbon and water.”

  He did, and they moved from the bar to a table.

  “I wanted to talk to you,” she said, “about Rome.”

  “I wanted to talk to you, too,” he said, slowly. He wondered how to put it. She was obviously counting on the trip, if only to escape from the pimple-faced kid. But she was looking at
him with an expression of such open innocence that words didn’t come. Finally, he said, “I’m not going to Rome.”

  “I expected that.”

  He was surprised. “You did? Why?”

  “Because it all fell through.”

  “What? What are you talking about?” Her voice had been calm, but it sent shivers down his spine.

  “All your plans.”

  “Jenny,” he said, “say what you mean.”

  “Out of curiosity, where are you going now?”

  “I haven’t decided,” he said.

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Well actually,” he admitted, “I was thinking of the Canary Islands. Las Palmas, maybe.”

  “Just a vacation?” Her voice had a slight, insinuating edge which he caught. Again, shivers.

  “Yes, of course. I need a rest.”

  “I know you do.”

  “Jenny, stop talking in riddles.”

  “I don’t know exactly how to explain it,” she said. “Did I ever tell you what business my father was in?”

  “Yes. Oil, if I remember.”

  “That’s right. Ever since I was a kid,” she ignored his smile, “I’ve been hanging around rigs and drilling operations. I’ve seen all phases of it and seen all the tools of the trade.”

  “What you mean,” he said dryly, “is that you know a blasting cap when you see it.”

  “Nice job on the bridge,” Jenny said. “It was very professional. How did you detonate it? Radio?”

  “As a matter of fact, I considered that, but rejected it in favor of—” He stopped himself. What was he saying?

  She smiled. “Take me with you, please.”

  “It’s blackmail!”

  “That’s the wrong way to look at it. I’d be a perfect companion, attractive, pleasant, undemanding—except in certain areas—and agreeable. And I would never tell.”

  “Tell what?”

  “It was wonderful of you to give it all back, Steve. I don’t know why you did it in the first place, but I’m glad you have a conscience.”

  He put his head in his hands and groaned.

  “Take me with you.”

  “And where would it all end?” he asked. “I think you’re being foolish not to consider that.”

  “I have, and I don’t care where it ends. Just so it doesn’t end now.”

  He looked into her soft blue eyes, saw the long lashes, the blond hair, the dimples, and the full lips. Her face was innocent, but she hadn’t lost an exciting touch of fire. She was the girl for him; she knew it. They both knew it. For the time being, it was perfect. And she was right—it didn’t matter where it ended. That was one thing he had learned during the past week—you could never be sure of the finish. Despite the best of preparations, the conclusion always remained in doubt.

  “All right,” he said. “Las Palmas it is. We leave tomorrow at nine o’clock.”

  She smiled—a happy, radiant smile. “I’ve already packed.”

  A Biography of Michael Crichton

  Michael Crichton (1942–2008) was a writer and filmmaker, best known as the author of Jurassic Park and the creator of ER. He was born in Chicago, Illinois, and raised in Roslyn, New York, along with his three siblings.

  Crichton graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College and received his MD from Harvard Medical School. As an undergraduate, he taught courses in anthropology at Cambridge University. He also taught writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

  While at Harvard Medical School, Crichton wrote book reviews for the Harvard Crimson and novels under the pseudonyms John Lange and Jeffery Hudson, among them A Case of Need, which won the Edgar Award for Best Mystery in 1969. In contrast to the carefully researched techno-thrillers that ultimately brought him to fame, the Lange and Hudson books are high-octane novels of suspense and action. Written with remarkable speed and gusto, these novels provided Crichton with both the means to study at Harvard Medical School and the freedom to remain anonymous in case his writing career ended before he obtained his medical degree.

  The Andromeda Strain (1969), his first bestseller, was published under his own name. The movie rights for The Andromeda Strain were bought in February of his senior year at Harvard Medical School.

  Crichton also pursued an early interest in computer modeling, and his multiple-discriminant analysis of Egyptian crania, carried out on an IBM 7090, was published by the Peabody Museum in 1966.

  After graduation, Crichton was a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, where he researched public policy with Dr. Jacob Bronowski. He continued to write and published three books in 1970: his first nonfiction book, Five Patients, and two more John Lange titles, Grave Descend and Drug of Choice. He also wrote Dealing or The Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues with his brother Douglas, and it was later published under the pseudonym Michael Douglas.

  After deciding to quit medicine and pursue writing full-time, he moved to Los Angeles in 1970, at the age of twenty-eight. In addition to books, he wrote screenplays and pursued directing as well. His directorial feature film Westworld (1973), involving an innovative twist on theme parks, was the first to employ computer-generated special effects.

  Crichton continued his technical publications, writing an essay on medical obfuscation published by the New England Journal of Medicine in 1975 and a study of host factors in pituitary chromophobe adenoma published in Metabolism in 1980.

  He maintained a lifelong interest in computers and his pioneering use of computer programs for film production earned him an Academy Award for Technical Achievement in 1995. Crichton also won an Emmy, a Peabody, and a Writers Guild of America Award for ER. In 2002, a newly discovered dinosaur of the ankylosaur group was named for him: Crichtonsaurus bohlini.

  His groundbreaking, fast-paced narrative combined with meticulous scientific research made him one of the most popular writers in the world. His novels have been translated into thirty-eight languages, and thirteen have been made into films. Known for his techno-thrillers, he has sold more than 200 million books. He also published four nonfiction books, including an illustrated study of artist Jasper Johns, and two screenplays, Twister and Westworld.

  Crichton remains the only person to have a number one book, film, and television series in the same year.

  He is survived by his wife, Sherri; his daughter, Taylor; and his son, John Michael.

  Crichton and his younger brother, Douglas, co-authors of Dealing or The Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues, which was published under the pseudonym Michael Douglas.

  Telegram from Harvard College announcing Crichton’s acceptance, May 4, 1960. (Courtesy of the Office of the General Counsel of Harvard University.)

  Lowell House Harvard yearbook photo, 1961. (Courtesy of Harvard Yearbook Publications and Harvard University Archives.)

  Crichton as an anthropology major at Harvard College.

  “Peabody Papers.” (Reprinted from “A Multiple Discriminant Analysis of Egyptian and African Negro Crania” in Craniometry and Multivirate Analysis, Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Vol. 57, No. 1, 1966, courtesy of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University.)

  Harvard Crimson article featuring Crichton, March 1969. (Courtesy of the Harvard Crimson.)

  Crichton as a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute, 1969.

  A photo of Crichton for his memoir Travels.

  Crichton hiking while doing research for his novel Micro.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the expr
ess written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1966 by John Lange

  Cover design by Andrea C. Uva

  Cover illustration by Omar F. Olivera and Theresa Burke

  978-1-4532-9923-4

  This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media

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