The Dice Man

  They probably would have kept me locked up in Kolb Clinic forever, but Jake Ecstein was my psychiatrist and unlike most other ambitious, successful doctors, Jake listened only to Jake. Thus, when I seemed perfectly normal (it was back to Normalcy Month) he ordered them to let me out. It seemed an unreasonable thing to do, even to me.

  Chapter Fifty-one

  `Luke, you're a quack,' Fred Boyd said to me, smiling and looking out our kitchen windows toward the old barn and poison ivy fields.

  `Mmmm,' I said, as Lil moved past our table back outdoors to get the groceries.

  `A Phi Beta Kappa quack, a brilliant quack, but a quack,' he skid.

  `Thanks, Fred. You're kind.'

  `The trouble is,' he said, dunking a somewhat stale doughnut into his lukewarm coffee, `that some of it makes sense. That confuses the issue. Why can't you just be a complete fool or charlatan?'

  `Huh. Never thought of that. I'll have to let the Die consider it' Lil and Miss Welish came in from the yard with the two children clamoring after them, clawing at the bags of groceries Lil carried in her arms. When Lil took out a box of cookies and distributed three each to the two children, they wandered back outdoors, arguing halfheartedly about who had the largest.

  Miss Welish, dressed in white tennis shirts and blouse, bounced girlishly and a bit chubbily across the floor to hustle up some fresh coffee and deliver the fresh pastry we'd been promised. Fred watched her, sighed, yawned and tipped way back in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head.

  `And where's it all going to end, I wonder?' he said.

  `What?' I asked.

  `Your dice therapy business: `The Die only knows.'

  `Seriously. What do you think you'll achieve?'

  `Try it yourself,' I said.

  `I have. You know I have. And it's fun; I admit it. But my God, if I took it seriously I'd have to change completely.'

  `Precisely.'

  `But I like the way I am: `So do I, but I'm getting bored with you,' I said. `It's variety and unpredictability we like in our friends. Those capable of the unexpected we cherish; they capture us because we're intrigued by how they "work."

  After a while we learn how they work, and our boredom resumes. You've got to change, Fred.'

  'No, he hasn't,' said Lil, bringing us lemonade, a Sara Lee Coffee Cake and a bottle of vitamins and sitting at the end of the table. `I liked Luke the way he was before, and I want Fred to stay just the way he is.'

  `It's just not so, Lil. You were bored and unhappy with me before I became the Dice Man. Now you're entertained and unhappy. That's progress.'

  Lil shook her head. `If it weren't for Fred, I don't think I'd have survived, but he's made me see your behavior for what it is: the sick rebellion of an elephantine child.'

  `Fred!'

  'Now wait a minute, Lil,' he said. `That isn't quite what I think at all.'

  `All right,' Lil said'. 'The sick rebellion of an elephantine Phi Beta Kappa child quack.'

  'That's better,' he said, and we laughed.

  Miss Welish brought us coffee and sat down with her cup in the chair in front of the window. She smiled at our thankyou's and took a big bite out of a sugared bun.

  `Actually,' Lil said, `now that you've let me know what you're up to and I no longer give a damn about you, I find it interesting. You should have told me about your dicelife before.'

  `The dice didn't tell me to.'

  `Don't you ever do anything all by yourself?' Miss Welish asked.

  `Not if I can help it.'

  `Luke is the only man I've ever known,' Fred said, `who consults his God every time before going to the john.'

  `I think Dr. Rhinehart is a true scientist,' Miss Welish said. We all looked at her. She flushed.

  `He doesn't let personal considerations enter into anything he does,' she went on. She flushed again.

  `So I've noticed,' said Lil. There was a somewhat embarrassed silence. Lil had questioned me extensively on my return from the clinic about what had occurred in Dr. Mann's bathroom that night, and I had told her the truth, which was extensive. She had replied extensively, and I had begun an extensive period of sleeping alone in my study. Presumably Fred had questioned Miss Welish extensively also, but her replies didn't seem to have deflected his aim. Since the Krum party, Fred had slowly but surely, with all that scholarly discipline and thoroughness for which Harvard men are renowned, worked his way into Miss Welish's not inconsiderable pants; he seemed undisturbed about whether other scholars had worked on the subject previously or not.

  `The only problem I can see with all this,' Fred said, `is that you've got a poor sense of limits, Luke. To a degree, dice living has value, extraordinary value. I've experienced it. I've talked to Orv Boggles and that Tracy girl and a couple of other students of yours and I know. But good God, Luke, the trouble you've caused by not taking it easy, not using common sense.'

  `Understatement of the century,' said Lil.

  `I may overdo it occasionally, but in good cause: A good cause. "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom" so said Calvin Coolidge, and I believe him.'

  `But no more Krum parties, okay?' Fred asked with a smile.

  `I promise never to play six roles at a party ever again.'

  `But he's got to keep experimenting,' Miss Welish said.

  `I promise to be only a moderate quack,' I said. `All day.' `Well, is it tennis, a swim at the ocean, the club, or a sail?' Fred said and got up from the table.

  `We need two more options,' Lil added.

  `I throw,' said Miss Welish, and she got up to go to the cupboard and get out our family dice. Eventually we all gathered around the kitchen table as Miss Welish flipped the die onto the soiled tablecloth: tennis. We cast again to see whose car we would take and once more to see who played whom and we were off.

  It was the first weekend of August, and we were vacationing in our old farmhouse out in the poison ivy fields of eastern Long Island, and things were going quite well. Lil, after questioning me all month about dice theory and therapy, had become more and more interested and less antagonistic. I had brought Professor Boggles home for dinner one night and he had given a fine testimonial to the gifts of the Die.

  Our separation and divorce was in temporary abeyance. Lil was putting up with me on the condition that I behave myself with rational irrationality.

  Fred Boyd had been a frequent visitor since my release from the clinic in mid-July, and we'd enjoyed half a dozen discussions of dice theory and practice. He tended to quote Jung or Reik or R. D. Laing to show that my ideas weren't all that original, but in doing so he seemed also to be implying that they might be credible. He began experimenting with dice play himself. He even hinted that it might have helped in his scholarly penetration into Miss Welish.

  Lil had granted me my conjugal rights again near the end of July and, although she had refused bitterly at first to try any of my dice bed games, she had in the last week surrendered somewhat. We had had two interesting sessions together, Lil especially enjoying one half hour of the sinner-saint game in which the dice had twice made me a saint and she a sinner.

  When we played chess she often tossed a die to determine which of two moves she would make, and she always let a die choose which movie we would see. She even let Larry play with the dice again as long as she had veto power over the options.

  But the real breakthrough in our relations had come when we had played a game of emotional roulette together one afternoon when the children were at the beach. We had simplified the standard game by using only three emotions as options - love, hate and pity - but had complicated it by having both of us randomized at the same time. We had each cast a die to determine what would be our first individual three-minute emotion. Lil got hatred, I got love.

  I pleaded and she reviled me; I tried to embrace her and she kicked me hard in the left thigh (thank God!); I got down on my knees and she spit on me. The three-minute sand egg-timer finally ran out and we cast again. I got pity and she got h
atred again.

  `Poor Lil,' I said to her as soon as I saw my dice command, and if I hadn't ducked I think her fist would have gone through my head and come out the other side. The bitterness of months and years, which had earlier been expressed only in restrained sarcasm, came flooding out in physical action and verbal massacre. She was crying and screaming, gritting her teeth and flailing at me with her fists, and even before the timer had run out she collapsed on the edge of the bed in tears.

  `Onward,' I said when the time was up and cast a die and got hate. She lethargically cast and got love.

  `You lifeless clump of cunt,' I hissed out at the little bitch. `You scarecrow zombie, you weepy tomb. I'd rather caress Miss Reingold's left elbow than have to touch your corpse: At first I saw anger flare in her eyes and then, like a flashbulb going off in her head, her eyes lit up, and she looked tender and compassionate.

  `-boobs like bee-bees, ass so flat and bony you can use it to iron with -' `Luke, Luke, Luke,' she repeated gently.

  `LooLooLoo yourself, bitch. You have no more courage than a squashed ant. A mouse. I married a mouse.'

  Anger flared again across her face.

  `Look at her can't even follow a dice command for thirty seconds without losing control...'

  Bewilderment. I paced in intense anger in front of her.

  `To think, I might have been fucking a woman all these years: a big-booted bundle of orgasms like Arlene -'

  `Luke she said.

  `- or a honey-cunted tiger like Terry'

  `My poor, poor Luke `I get a beady-eyed red-rimmed, tail-dragging mouse.'

  She was smiling and shaking her head and her eyes, though red-rimmed, were clear and bright.

  `- me, puke to think of it.'

  I was towering over her, fists clenched, sneering and hissing and gasping for breath. It felt so good, but she was looking up at me soft-eyed and defenseless and unhurt. It made me rail harder and harder until I was shamelessly repeating myself.

  `Luke, I love you' she said when I paused.

  `Pity, stupid. You're supposed to feel pity. Can't even play a game right-'

  `My Luke -'

  'Brainless, chestless, assless clump of -'

  `My poor sweet sick hero.'

  `I'm not sweet! You bitch. I'll stick a dustmop up your-'

  `Time,' she said. `It's time.'

  `I don't give a fuck. I'd like to chop off your mousy head and peddle your cunt to lepers. I'd like-'

  `The three minutes is up, Luke,' she said quietly.

  `Oh,' I said, towering over her and slobbering.

  `Oh. Sorry about that,' I added.

  `It's enough for now,' she said. `And thanks.'

  She then proceeded to bury her face in my belly and we went on to a fine fierce diceless fuck, such as is usually associated with the highly charged emotions of the beginnings or ending of an affair. She'd been compassionate or loving ever since.

  Mostly.

  That morning when the Die chose tennis we drove afterward to a beach on the bay and swam and played keep away with Larry and Evie and sunned and swam and back at the farm house had nice stiff gin drinks and talked some more, eating soup and cheeseburgers and smoking pot and while Lil made brownies Miss Welish played her guitar and Fred and I sang a duet about Harvard and Cornell and we smoked more pot and retired to our rooms, Lil and I making a slow, languorous giggly love and she cried, and Fred wandered in naked and asked if he could join us in an orgy and after casting the Die I had to say no and he said fuck the Die and I cast again which said that he could fuck the Die but not us and Miss Welish came in, Lil not casting the Die but saying no, and we all sat around discussing poetry and promiscuity and pot and pornography and the pill and possible positions and penises and pudenda and potency and permissiveness and playing and pricks.

  Much later I made another long, languorous, giggly love to Lil who was all honeyed up from all the talk and before we fell asleep she said to me dreamily `Now the dice man has a home' and I said `mmmm' and we slept.

  Chapter Fifty-two

  `I want you to help me to escape,' Eric said quietly, holding the tuna-fish-salad sandwich in his hands lightly, as if it were delicate. We were in the Ward W cafeteria crowded in amongst other patients and their visitors. I was dressed casually in an old black suit and a black turtleneck shirt, he was in stiff gray mental-hospital fatigues.

  `Why?' I asked, leaning toward him so I could hear better over the surrounding din of voices.

  `I've got to get out; I'm not doing anything here anymore.'

  He was looking past my shoulder at the chaos of men in line behind my back.

  `But why me? You know you can't trust me,' I said.

  `I can't trust you, they can't trust you, no one can trust you.'

  `Thanks'

  `But you're the only untrustworthy one on their side who knows enough to help us.'

  `I'm honored. 'I smiled, leaning back in my chair and self-consciously taking a sip from the straw leading into my paper carton of chocolate milk. I missed the beginning of his next sentence.

  `. . . will leave. I know that. Somehow it will come to pass.'

  `What?' I said leaning forward again.

  `I want you to help me to escape.'

  `Oh, that,' I said. `When?'

  'Tonight.'

  `Ahhhh,' I said, like a doctor being given an especially interesting set of symptoms.

  `Tonight at 8 P.M.'

  `Not eight fifteen?' `You will charter a bus to take a group of patients to see Hair in Manhattan. The bus will arrive at 7.45 P.M. You will come in and lead us out.'

  `Why do you want to see Hair?'

  His dark eyes darted at me briefly, then back to chaos beyond my shoulder.

  `We're not going to see Hair. We're escaping,' he went on quietly. `You'll let us all off on the other side of the bridge.'

  `But no one can leave the hospital like that without a written order signed by Dr. Mann or one of the other directors of the hospital.'

  'You will forge the order. If a doctor gives it to the nurse in charge no one will suspect a forgery.'

  `After you're free, what happens to me?'

  He looked across at me calmly and with utter conviction said `That is not important. You are a vehicle.'

  `I am a vehicle,' I said.

  We looked at each other.

  `A bus, to be exact,' I added.

  `You are a vehicle, you will be saved.'

  'That's a relief to know.'

  We stared at each other.

  `Why should I do this?' I finally asked. The noise around us was terrific and we had unconsciously brought our heads closer and closer to each other until they were separated now by only six inches. For the first time a hint of a smile crossed his lips.

  'Because the die will tell you to,' he answered softly.

  `Ahhh,' I said, like a doctor who has finally found the symptom which makes the whole syndrome come together. 'The Die will tell me to '

  `You will consult it now,' he said.

  `I will consult it now.'

  I reached into my suit-coat pocket and pulled out two green dice.

  `As I may have already explained to you, I control the options and their probability.'

  'It makes no difference,' Eric said.

  `But I don't think much of the option to lead you in-such an escape.'

  'It makes no difference,' he said, his slight smile returning.

  `How many am I supposed to take to Hair with you?' `Thirty-seven,' he said quietly.

  I believe my mouth fell open.

  `I, Dr. Lucius M. Rhinehart, am going to lead thirty-seven patients in the largest and most sensational mental-hospital escape in American history tonight at eight?'

  'Thirty-eight,' he said.

  'Ah, thirty-eight,' I said. We probed into each other's eyes at six-inch range, and he seemed utterly without the slightest doubt about the outcome of events.'

  `Sorry,' I said, feeling angry. 'This is the, best I can do.
'

  I thought for several seconds and then went on: `I'm going to cast one die. If it's a two or a six I'll try to help you and thirty-seven others escape somehow from this hospital sometime tonight.'

  He didn't reply. `All right?'

  'Go ahead and shake a six,' he said quietly. I stared back at him for a moment and then cupped my hands, shook the die hard against my palms and flipped it onto the table between my empty milk carton and two lumps of tuna salad and the salt. It was a two.

  `Ha!' I said instinctively.

  `Bring us some money too,' he said, leaning back slightly but without expression. `About a hundred bucks should do.'

  He pushed back his chair and stood up and looked down at me with a bright smile.

  `God works in mysterious way,' he said.

  I looked back at him and for the first time realized that I too wanted not my will but the Die's will to be done.

  `Yes,' I said. `The vehicles of God come in many shapes and-'

  `See you tonight,' he said and edged his way out of the cafeteria.

  Actually I wouldn't mind seeing Hair again, I thought, and then, smiling in dazed awe at the day I had before me, I set to work planning the Great Mental Hospital Escape.

  Chapter Fifty-three

  `You're cured,' Jake said. `If I do say so myself.'

  `I'm not sure, Jake.'

  I said. We were in his office that afternoon and he was trying to tell me that this would be our last analytic session together.

  `Your interest in dice therapy has given you a rational base upon which to work with the dice. Before, you were using the dice to escape your responsibilities. Now they have become your responsibility.'

  `That's very acute, I must admit. But how do we know the Die won't flip me off in some new direction?' `Because you've got a purpose now. A goal. You control the options, right?'

  'True.'

  `You think dice therapy's hot stuff, right?'