An IRS official claimed that the two hundred thousand erroneous tax refunds the IRS had sent out the previous year had been the result of another nefarious dicing infiltrator. And the Virginia State Police were looking into the probability that dicepeople in Lukedom were running one of the largest car-theft rings in the east. On the other hand, as far as I could see, there was no mention of finding any underground hideout under Lukedom’s mountain.
The Post had three photographs, one of three hippie women smiling vacantly in front of a teepee; a second of two sober-looking FBI agents manhandling a cheerful-looking Jake; and a third, naturally, of Luke Rhinehart, the same old photo taken many years earlier of Luke smiling benevolently at the camera. I shook my head.
‘It blames it all on Luke,’ I said. ‘But my father wasn’t even there.’
‘Oh, well, a little fiction never hurt anyone,’ said Arlene sedately. ‘Besides, I saw several sentences that verged on accuracy.’
‘You’ve been there?’ I asked.
‘Oh, yes. I take my vacations at one or the other – it’s like going home.’
‘I’m sorry about your husband,’ I said.
‘Oh, don’t worry about Jake. He’s just happy to be back on page one again. If all of life is an act, then it’s nice to have a larger audience to play to.’
‘Have you seen this!?’ shouted Mr Battle, storming down the hall toward us brandishing a copy of the Post like a subpoena. ‘This is horrible!’
‘I don’t think my father has been to these places in years,’ I said.
‘It makes no difference! His name is associated with this lunacy! What will the Japanese think!? You’ve got to change your last name!’
‘The Japanese don’t care about anything in the Post,’ I said. ‘They never read anything that doesn’t have at least half the text in numbers.’
‘Well, the least you can do,’ persisted Mr Battle, ‘is issue a statement totally dissociating yourself from your father and this lunatic dice business.’
‘Well, I’m certainly willing to dissociate myself from my father but –’
‘Larry,’ interrupted Arlene, handing me the paper and pointing. ‘I think maybe you should read this.’ She was pointing to the last paragraph of the long article, a paragraph which, in my first browsing, I hadn’t read. With Mr Battle peering over my shoulder, I now did.
‘Agents said that Wall Street speculator Larry Rhinehart, the son of Luke Rhinehart, had recently spent a week in Lukedom, apparently preparing new financing for the community.’
‘Deny it!’ boomed Mr Battle. ‘You were in my house every day that week!’
Arlene pulled me away from my distraught boss and, again speaking as if she were just sharing light gossip, let fall another bombshell.
‘And did you know that Lukedom does all its banking through the Nagasaki Sumo Bank?’ she asked.
‘You mean … Akito …!?’
‘Just thought you’d be interested.’
‘We’ll sue the Past!’ interrupted Mr Battle, pulling me away from Arlene. ‘They have no right to mention our firm! We never finance anybody!’
I pulled myself from Mr Battle and wandered away. Chaos was making another comeback.
55
The guests began to arrive. and nothing quiets the passions of civilized people faster than the arrival of their guests. Mr Battle, who had been raving at noon, was smiling warmly and radiating welcome and goodwill by two. Larry, who was frightened and upset at noon, changed into his most conservative business suit and by two was ready to impress the Japanese with his brilliance and reliability.
It had been agreed that the subject of Luke and the dice communes should not be mentioned, and that if others brought it up, it was to be dismissed as idle gossip or old news or totally trivial. Mr Battle was prepared to say that Luke Rhinehart was actually Larry’s stepfather and that Larry had refused to have anything to do with him for fifteen years. Larry may have briefly visited Lukedom, but only in an effort to rescue his distant cousin Kim who had been lured there by false advertising. The idea that Larry had gone there on a quest to find his father to tell him off was not one that stood up to close scrutiny; Mr Battle dismissed it out of hand.
Honoria, now dressed in a lovely, flowing, figure-masking off-the-shoulder red dress, saw Larry briefly before the guests began arriving. She gave him her sympathy about the Post story and assured him that she wasn’t going to let that prevent her from marrying her baby’s father.
‘Since they still haven’t caught him,’ she added matter-of-factly, ‘my father thinks you may be able to weather this Post thing. However, we do think it’s best you deny ever being in Lukedom. Who will believe the word of one of those dicepeople against yours?’
Right. Who indeed?
‘Dicepeople are very unreliable,’ he said with bitter mischief, suddenly aware that he and the enemy were one. And then the guests began to flood in.
When Larry saw Akito he went straight to him and asked whether his bank was handling Lukedom’s affairs. Akito responded by smiling blandly and bowing his head.
‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘Good client.’
‘And do they get their financing from you?’
‘Oh, no. We’re just middleman.’
‘The funds come from a company called DI, right?’
Akito simply smiled and bowed again.
‘I can say nothing about DI,’ he said.
‘I thought I was your hotshot trader friend!’
‘Of course, but this company is very particular about its privacy.’
‘I’ll bet it is,’ said Larry, wheeling away.
The guests continued to arrive. All the leading lights of Blair, Battle and Pike were there, including Brad and Jeff and even Vic Lissome; there were all the firm’s wealthiest clients, including Mr Potter and Arlene, who had inexplicably reincarnated herself in her blonde wig and an odd sequined dress that made her look like a retired madam. There were all of Honoria’s business associates at Salomon Brothers, many of the males flocking around her like bees to honey. Dr Bickers wandered in, looking serious and morose like a good therapist. Agent Macavoy came disguised as a conservative banker and thus looked not unlike an FBI agent. Putt turned out to be working with Celeste’s Heavenly Hosts, disguised as a waiter, but being so alert and narrow-eyed he resembled an ageing pervert with his eye out for boys.
Mr and Mrs Sato and Namamuri were there, Mr Sato with a personal translator always at his side. Mr Sato was the head of the Nagasaki Sumo Bank, a slight intense man with fiery eyes who always looked as if he was about to spring at something. The Japanese mingled humbly and shrewdly with the bankers and investors and brokers, bowing and smiling and knowing that this party, like the war it celebrated, was all only the brave front of the pitiful American giant in decline.
At first this vast panorama of society mingled together with precisely that mixture of wit and wisdom that Mr Battle always hoped for. Larry spoke with deep seriousness (he was trying to keep his mind off the Post article) to Mr Sato and his translator about the necessity of always monitoring one’s technical indicators and updating the software. He assured them that the collapsing Tokyo stock market was only in a temporary bull market correction, telling them this not because it was what he thought but because it wasn’t considered good salesmanship to tell people whose money you were after that their booming nation’s economy was built on quicksand.
Jeff spoke passionately to Akito about the necessity of throwing out charts and software, ignoring technical indicators, and developing faith in the Gods. He assured Akito that the collapsing Tokyo stock market was not just a bull market correction but probably the long overdue Divine Retribution.
Honoria circulated, telling anyone who asked that she and Larry were a happy twosome again and that rumours that their engagement had been broken off or the wedding postponed were sheer fabrications.
Jeff began playing poker, letting a die determine how much he bet on each round; the other players
soon feared he was a ringer. Some of the younger crowd decided to go swimming and started a water volleyball game. The older folks, which was most of the guests, settled into some serious drinking and gossiping. Dr Bickers was not playing anything, but moved sociably around the room mumbling ‘Mmmmm’ at all the right places and thus impressing everyone with his intelligence. Mr Namamuri gravitated to the indoor pool and the water volleyball to watch the women’s breasts bounce. Macavoy infiltrated the poker game and went broke.
Arlene Ecstein was playing her dicelife, varying her personality every fifteen minutes, exactly as her mentor Luke had done twenty years earlier. Her six personalities that day were grandmotherly society matron, secret mistress of Mr Battle, thoughtful intellectual, bank president, uninhibited nymphomaniac, and retarded bag lady who had once been Mr Battle’s secret wife. When appropriate she would repair for a change of costume or wig from her huge bag stored in one of the guest bedrooms.
She carried all her roles off to perfection. She convinced Mr Sato that her bank – Eckle’s Bank and Trust of Hempstead – was something his firm should look into. As society matron she made Honoria feel that perhaps her stunning off-the-shoulder red dress was a bit de trop for this particular gathering. As nymphomaniac she had Macavoy cornered in a large closet with his pants down when the fifteen minutes was up, and she became a thoughtful intellectual commenting on the severe psychological debility often experienced by men having a small penis.
Mr Battle, being a shrewd host, had urged all the bartenders to serve the stiffest drinks, consistent with people actually being able to down them, and soon a large minority of the guests were beginning to feel that this was one of the most wonderful afternoons of their lives. Friends who were normally utterly boring now seemed the soul of wit; a woman who had always seemed sexless now stirred fires in normally cold loins; business comments which could be summarized as stating that the market might go up and it might go down now appeared of uncanny wisdom.
But then the tragedy struck.
People began to gather around one area of the main living room and became so engrossed in something that others began to feel left out. Someone had brought in two copies of the afternoon edition of the New York Post. Its headline was the same, but now there were three articles about the raid on the dice communes. The third, a short one, said evidence was being gathered that linked the prestigious old-line Wall Street firm of Blair, Battle and Pike to the financing of Lukedom. The heart of the story was little more than that Larry Rhinehart had recently spent some time in Lukedom, that he was the son of Luke Rhinehart, and that he was a Vice President at Blair, Battle and Pike. A new page three headline read simply: ‘WALL STREET FUNDS ORGIES?’.
There are two ways to respond to that question. First, one can be shocked. Second, one might comment that Wall Street has done a lot worse. In any case it was a provocative question, especially since the Wall Street firm in question was heavily represented at this party. Soon guests who had read the articles, or heard a few paragraphs from them, or who had overheard someone quote from a snippet from one, were happily circulating to commiserate with the employees of Blair, Battle and Pike and particularly, of course, with the unfortunate Larry Rhinehart.
The sizeable minority that was enjoying the liquor and the punch and the champagne found the whole subject of role-playing and random living and orgies rather amusing, but more sober guests were shocked and angry. Either angry at Larry and Blair, Battle and Pike for funding such abominations, or at the Post for having falsely accused them of doing so. The party became livelier.
Soon Larry found himself surrounded by a cluster of people asking him what Lukedom had been really like, attacking him for not practising safe sex, and commiserating with him for having been falsely accused of being at such a sick place and for having such a horrible father. He wasn’t sure which altitude he hated most. But he no longer felt like a cool reliable hotshot. He could use a drink.
Arlene, whenever her diewatch signalled she play thoughtful intellectual, expounded the philosophy of diceliving to any and all, and when she was tossed by chance into desperate nymphomaniac she sometimes used the dice to try to get her prey loosened up. She began to pass out dice, a supply of which she apparently had in her large plastic bag. Since in one of her random incarnations she had told some guests she was the mistress of Mr Battle (‘kept locked away most of the time’), and these guests, knowing a good conversational opener if they ever heard one, had repeated this information to any and all, it soon became common knowledge that the secret mistress of the host was handing out dice and advocating the dicelife.
This further polarized the party into those who were offended and those who felt that whatever a person as rich as Mr Battle thought was in must, by definition, be in. Some of the guests began to make decisions and play roles with the dice.
Larry, despite two double scotches, was still annoyed at whatever people said to him. They were all either assholes for believing the Post story or assholes for thinking he was funding the communes or assholes for thinking that Lukedom was an abomination or assholes even for attacking his father. Mr Sato was the straw that broke the back of Larry’s restraint.
As translated by his aide, who stood so close to Mr Sato’s right side that they were frequently mistaken for Siamese twins, Mr Sato said: ‘I am so sorry your father has disgraced himself. American society is very sick to permit such chaos and lack of discipline. We are sure you and your firm have nothing whatsoever to do with this man and his theories.’
‘Well, fuck you,’ said Larry, having nothing personal against Mr Sato except that he was the guest who happened to be in front of him when he could no longer hold himself back. ‘My father hasn’t disgraced himself because, for one, he wasn’t there, and for two, there was nothing happening at Lukedom to be ashamed of.’
The ‘fuck you’ opening to Larry’s speech doubled the size of the crowd listening, and the doubling attracted further people. Mr Battle himself hurried over, hoping that Larry was distracting people from Lukedom by discussing pork belly futures.
‘It so happens that my father founded Lukedom as a social experiment for freeing people from leading drab, repetitious, trapped lives,’ Larry went on. ‘Like most of the people in this room. The crazies I met in Lukedom were a lot happier than most of the crazies here.’
‘What about the orgies?’ asked a voice from the fringe.
‘The orgies were terrific,’ Larry found himself shooting back. ‘So was the master-slave game. The only problem I had at Lukedom was rampant car-borrowing and the restaurant tabs.’
‘Is it true your father has people sacrifice themselves?’ asked another voice.
Mr Battle began tugging desperately at his sleeve.
‘Absolutely,’ answered Larry. ‘That’s what my father’s dicelife is all about: sacrificing yourself. If an individual isn’t destroyed every day my father gets depressed.’
This elicited a fair amount of comment, not all of it favourable.
‘Do you follow your father’s philosophy?’ someone else
‘Of course no –’ Mr Battle tried to get in.
‘I use the dice all the time,’ interjected Larry loudly. ‘Especially in my trading for my clients.’
An awed silence greeted this remark, broken only by Mr Battle’s long low moan.
‘Why, without the dice I’d be just another investment adviser,’ Larry went on. ‘But with the Lord Chance working for me I double people’s money in two years. How do you think I’ve been so successful?’
‘Jeff, Jeff!’ screamed Mr Battle desperately. ‘Tell them Larry’s lying!’
Jeff, standing at the edge of the gathering crowd with his newly-acquired serenity, moved in next to Larry and turned to Mr Battle with a gentle smile.
‘Of course, we’ve been using dice,’ he said serenely. ‘Anything else would be blasphemous.’
A long sigh of awe rippled through the financial sections of the crowd. Akito’s alert eyes narrowed in w
onderment, and Mr Sato was listening so closely to his translating aide that his ear seemed glued to the man’s mouth.
‘No, no, no,’ interrupted Mr Battle desperately. ‘It’s absolutely not –’
‘What about the secret cadres infiltrating all of American life?’ asked a fierce-faced lady at the fringe of the crowd.
‘Absolutely.’ said Larry. ‘Why, who before now suspected me of being a secret diceperson? Or Mr Battle here? If Blair, Battle and Pike are working secretly to turn the world into Lukedom. how many others must there be?’
How many indeed? The listeners were awed by this prospect. Mr Battle a diceperson! That took some adjusting to. But then, of course, thought some, his poor mistress was one. And the man who had been his scheduled future son-in-law. And his daughter had been to Lukedom too, according to the latest rumour making the rounds. And that cousin – Kim something.
‘This is preposterous,’ tried Mr Battle. ‘Why, I –’
‘Is your father as nutty as he seems?’ asked some fellow at the fringe.
‘Of course,’ said Larry, getting into the swing of things and downing another glass of champagne someone handed him. ‘But it’s all a fake. He’s actually a deeply serious man intent on changing the world by blasting the chains of reason and consistency.’