`Well, if it isn't old coitus-interruptus himself.'
The voice, sharp and feminine, was followed by the fact, soft and feminine, and the recognition, hard and masculine, of the half-smiling face of Linda Reichman.
'Er, hello, Linda,' I said, not to suavely. I found myself instinctively trying to remember what role I was supposed to be playing.
`What brings you here?' she asked.
`Oh. I .. don't know. I sort of drifted here.'
She edged between my neighbor and me and placed her drink on the bar. Her eyes were heavily made up, her hair a more deeply bleached blonde than I remembered it, her body no need to speculate about her measurements; her breasts swayed bralessly against a tight-fitting multicolored T-shirt. She looked very sexy in a debauched sort of way and she eyed me with curiosity.
`Drifted? The Great Psychiatrist drifted? I had the impression that you never even picked your nose without writing a treatise proving its value.'
'That was the old days. I've changed, Linda.'
`Ever managed an orgasm?' I laughed and she smiled.
`How about yourself?'
I asked. 'What've you been doing?'
`Disintegrating,' she said and gracefully swallowed the last of her drink. `You ought to try it, it's fun.'
`I think I'd like to.'
A man appeared next to her, a small frail man with glasses who looked like a graduate student in organic chemistry, and after glancing once at me, he said to Linda: `Come on, let's go.'
Linda slowly turned her eyes to the man and, with a look that made all previous looks I'd seen on her face seem like idolatrous administration, announced: `I'm staying awhile.'
Organic chemistry blinked at her, looked at my impressive bulk nervously and took her by the elbow.
`Come on,' he said. She lifted the dregs of her drink carefully off the bar past my face and poured it slowly down organic chemistry's back inside his shirt, ice cubes and all.
`Go change your shirt first,' she said.
He never batted an eye. With a barely perceptible shrug of the shoulders he merged back into the surrounding mob.
`You think you'd like to disintegrate, huh?' she said to me and then signaled to a bartender for another drink.
`Yes, but it seems an awfully hard thing to do. I've been trying it for over a year now and it takes tremendous effort.'
`A year! You don't look it. You look like a middle-class insurance salesman who comes once every four months to the Village for a fresh lay.'
`You're wrong. I've been trying to disintegrate myself. But tell me, how do you go about it?'
'Me? Same as always. I haven't changed since you last saw me. Get my kicks the same ways. I spent three months in Venezuela even lived with a man for almost a month, twenty four days to be precise - but nothing's new.'
`Then you're failing,' I said.
`What d'you mean?'
'I mean if you're really trying to disintegrate you're not succeeding. You're not changing. You're staying the same.'
She wrinkled her clear, still youthful brow and took a big gulp from her fresh drink.
`It was just a word. Disintegration doesn't mean anything. I'm just living my life.'
`Would you like a new kick, one you've never had before and really disintegrate the old self?'
She laughed abruptly. `I've had enough of your brand of kicks.'
`I've developed new brands.'
`Sex bores me. I've made love with every possible number and configuration of men, women and children, had penises and other appropriately shaped objects up every orifice in every possible combination and sex is a bore.'
`I'm not necessarily talking about sex.'
`Then maybe I'm interested.'
`It will mean a partnership with me for a while.'
`What kind of partnership?'
`It will mean giving up your freedom entirely into my hands for - well - a month, let's say.'
She looked at me intently, thinking.
`I become your slave for one month?' she asked.
`Yes.' A middle-aged woman with dyed black hair, sharp dark eyes and no makeup knifed out of the moiling sea behind us, glided up beside Linda and whispered in her ear. Linda, watching me, listened.
`No, Tony,' she said. `No. I've changed my plans. I may not be able to make it.'
Another whisper.
`No. Definitely no. Goodbye.'
The raven-haired shark fell back into the sea.
`I do whatever you want for one month?'
`Yes and no. You follow a special way of life which I've developed. It gives you a new kind of freedom, but if you're going to get the kicks, you must follow the system unconditionally.'
She smiled a little bitterly: `I'm not sure I really need any more kicks.'
`You'll learn more about yourself and life in one month than you have in all your previous twenty-five years.'
`Twenty-eight,' she said indifferently. She placed her half-empty drink on the bar and started to move away restlessly but returned. She stared at the ring of sweat her glass had made on the counter and .then looked up at me coldly.
`Where does old coitus-interruptus suddenly get all the time?' she asked. `The famous half-lay method not getting good results?'
`I've retired,' I said.
`You've retired!'
`I've left my wife, my job and my friends and I am on vacation for life.'
She eyed me with new respect: as one citizen of hell to another.
`Jesus, you don't do things in fractions;' she said. But then a cold sneer returned: `But I become your slave for a month? Huh. I know a lot of people who would pay plenty for that privilege. What do I get in return?'
`In return?'
I said, momentarily impressed with the logic of recompense. `I will do whatever you want for one month following your service to me.'
`After I've been your slave, big deal. What guarantee do I have?'
`None. Except that when you experience your new life with me and my madness, you'll realize that my form of slavery is desirable.'
`Why don't you be my slave first?'
`Because you wouldn't be an intelligent and imaginative master. I've been practicing this game on myself for years. I'll teach you first and then submit' `Maybe,' Linda said to me. `But first I bat. For the next twenty-four hours you be my slave. You obey all I say except what might physically harm you or unnecessarily destroy your professional image. The same will be true when I obey you. How's that?'
'All right,' I said.
We looked at each other speculatively.
`How do we seal this agreement?' she asked.
`Total slavery is a new path and we both want to travel new paths - that's what disintegration is all about. I'm satisfied you have the desire and will live up to the agreement.'
`Okay. Have we begun?'
I glanced at my watch. `We have begun. I obey you until tomorrow evening at nine forty-five. For the sake of anonymity my name is Charlie, Herbie (Flames).'
`Your name is what I choose.'
`Yes, all right.'
`Follow me.'
Leaving the bar, we hailed a taxi and she took me to an apartment - hers I supposed - on the West Side in the twenties. There, after she had had me fix her a drink, she pulled her knees up under her on the couch and stared up at me with a look of cold analysis.
`Stand on your head.'
With an effort I awkwardly tried to balance myself on my head. Despite my recent efforts at yoga and yoga meditation I collapsed, tried and collapsed. About the fifth time down she said: `All right, stand up.' She lit a cigarette, her hand trembling - perhaps from all she had drunk.
`Take off your clothes,' she said.
I took them off.
`Masturbate,' she said quietly.
`It seems like a waste,' I said.
When I want you to say something I'll say so.'
The command was easier said than done. Like most other red-blooded healthy American youth I had mastur
bated my way through high school and part of college and after graduating to more frequent social and sexual intercourse with women, had more or less abandoned the habit. I had been pleased to learn when I studied psychology that my mind was not deteriorating after all, but a residual layer of guilt somewhere remained. After all, can we picture Jesus beating his meat? Or Albert Schweitzer? Undoubtedly Linda believed in the intrinsic indignity of masturbation or she wouldn't have assigned it to me. For some reason I didn't find it easy to create images of fantasies of pleasure which would raise the old cannon into firing position. I stood there immobile, trying to think sexy thoughts.
`I said play with yourself.'
Linda must have been under the impression that masturbation was primarily a case of self-caresses. In the immortal words of General MacArthur: `Nothing could be further from the truth.'
Nevertheless, I began fondling myself. It was difficult to maintain a sense of dignity and therefore stared hard at the floor at Linda's feet.
'Look at me while you're doing it,' she said.
I looked at her. Her cold, tense, bitter face immediately stirred me: I imagined myself sexually revenging myself on her in the month ahead. My cannon bobbed upward, my mind concentrated hard for several minutes on my imaginary encounter, and with careful manual manipulation of the firing mechanism, I blasted off onto the floor. I tried hard to maintain a neutral, dignified expression throughout.
`Lick it up,' she said.
A great weariness flowed through me; I'm sure my face sagged. But I slowly got down on my knees and began licking at the tiny pools of semen.
`Look at me,' she said.
Somewhat awkwardly I tried to look at her and accomplish her command at the same time. I noted that the floor between the rugs was shiny and that someone had abandoned a male slipper under an easy chair. I didn't feel too superman-ish.
`All right, get up: I stood up, still looking at her neutrally, or so I hoped.
`You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Doctor,' she said with a smile.
I became ashamed of myself and my head and shoulders sagged.
`Are these the sort of things you plan to do with me?' she asked.
`No.' I hesitated. `I imagine men have treated you sadistically before.'
`So I'm not doing too well, huh?'
`Oh no, I think you are. I think you've chosen well, beyond what I'd expected. You've given me a new experience, one I won't forget' She stared at me, puffing sporadically on a cigarette; she'd finished her drink.
`What if I were to phone a friend of mine, a queer, and order you to perform sexually with him. Could you do it?'
`Your command is my wish,' I said.
`Does the thought interest or frighten you?'
I introspected obediently.
`It bores and depresses me.'
`Good.'
She had me fix her another drink and went to a telephone and dialed two numbers, asking at both for Jed and hanging up each time disappointed.
`Lie down on the floor, on your face, while I think.'
As I presented myself I began to look back with pleasure at being just old Luke. After a while she said: `All right, let's go to bed.'
I followed her into a bedroom, neutrally removed her clothes piece by piece at her command and followed her into a narrow double bed. We both lay quietly not touching for a few minutes. I was conscientiously trying not to do a thing unless she commanded me. I felt her hand run down my chest across my belly and come to rest a few inches from my pubic hair. She turned to me and nibbled at my ear, licked my neck, kissed me slowly, wetly, languorously on the mouth and throat. And neck. And chest. And belly. And et cetera. Her maneuvers had a predictable effect despite my recent shameful behavior. She noted the effect, rolled over to the other side of the bed and said nothing else. She tossed and turned a long time and then I guess I must have fallen asleep.
Sometime later I was dreaming that I was going to take a bath and as I sank into the tub I paused to feel the delicious warmth on my balls and penis and awoke to realize that Linda had ward and stiffened my cock with her mouth. When I touched her hair and groped for her body, she gave one last farewell lick and nibble and came up over me and spread herself and placed me inside her and put her lips to mine and began to churn.
The state of semi-sleep is sometimes like that of being lightly stoned and I let Linda do all the work, which consisted mainly of making waves of wanton wiggles with her hips and her insides, and streams of wanton licks and nibbles on my chest, shoulders and neck, and when she said, `Pump,' I pumped, clasping in my hands her perfect buttocks like two hot firm grapefruit, and she groaned and became tense and grinding, tense and grinding, grinding and then relaxed.
She lay on me and I dozed off and then was awakened to feel her moving again, I stiff within her, her mouth on my throat and her insides caressing me like waves of hot eels wrapped around me and she moved but I dozed off again to awaken to her hard mouth enclosing my prick in her hands caressing and pinching and generally 'laying waste the lower erogenous zones and when I touched her hair she groaned and rolled over and took me on top of her and ground away at me and told me to move but not to come so I pumped and swirled and tried to think about Willy May's batting average statistics for the 1950s and after a while her body went limp and she nudged me to roll off her and I did and I dozed off and slept and awakened again already inside her, and she again on top of me moving easily and gently and it must have been near dawn because now I was more awake and began to move too but she said no and tongued and bit my ears, and neck and moved three directions at once down below and when she said okay I dug my fingers into her crack around her buttocks and tried to ram her right over my head and she made a lot of nice noises and I emptied a lake inside her lake and we both moved on a while and then fell apart into another sleep.
I awoke on my stomach with a knee touching her body someplace; it was well into the morning and I felt hungry. Linda was staring wide-awake at the ceiling.
`I command you,' she said slowly, `to give me any commands you wish, I will obey them until I cease to feel like it and order you to do something.'
`I'm to be your temporary master?'
`That's right. And I want you to give me orders that you really want me to do.'
'Look at me,' I said. .
She looked over at me.
`What we're doing is very important. The commands . . '
'I don't want lectures.'
'I command you to listen to me.'
`You can order me to do a lot of other things, but no lectures. Not in these twenty-four hours.' `I see,' I said. I paused. `Return my kiss tenderly, with affection but without lust.'
She sat up beside me, looked coldly into my eyes for a moment and then, softening, brought her lips gently to mine.
I lay back onto the pillow and said: `Kiss my face with the tenderness you'd feel ... if my face were the white rose.'
A brief tautness crossed her face before, eyes closed, she framed my face with her hands and lowered her lips to begin gently kissing it.
'Thank you, Linda, that was beautiful. You are beautiful.'
She didn't open her eyes or interrupt her delicate kissing but after a while I said: `Lie back now on the bed and close your eyes.'
She obeyed. Her face looked more relaxed than I had ever seen it.
`Pretend that I am a prince who loves you with a spiritual devotion beyond anything known outside of the most overdone fairy tale. You are worshipped by him. Your beauty exceeds that of any creature that God has ever created. And you are a perfect perfect person, without spiritual or physical flaw. And the prince, your husband, comes to you now on your wedding night to express at last the pure, religious, sacred, holy passion he has for you. Receive his love with joy: I had spoken slowly and hypnotically and began with what I hoped was appropriate delicacy and religiosity to caress her body and touch it with the most spiritual kisses. Spiritual kisses, for the average reader's information, are relatively dry,
'gentle and poorly aimed: that is, they approach central target zones but always manage to just miss. I was proceeding with increasing devotion and pleasure when her body suddenly disappeared: she had leapt out of bed.
`Stop touching me,' she yelled.
I felt as embarrassed and undignified as I had the night before. `Are you taking away my power already?'
I said.
`Yes, yes!' She was trembling.
I remained on my hands and knees looking up at her.
`Get dressed,' she said. `Get out' `But Linda The deal is over. Off. Get out.'
`Our deal was-'
`Out!' she shouted.
`Okay,' I said, getting down off the bed. `I'll leave. But at nine forty-five tonight I'll be back. The deal is on.'
`No. No no no. It's off. You're insane. I don't know what you want, but no, never, it's off.'
I slowly dressed and, receiving no new command from a sitting, face-averted Linda, I left.
I remained outside the apartment building, trailed her downtown when she left about an hour later, remained outside an apartment in the Village until five thirty in the afternoon and then followed her to a restaurant, where she ate. She didn't seem to be aware that I was following her or even that I might be following. Organic chemistry picked her up after supper and starting with him, she wandered from bar to bar, picking up friends, losing them, gaining others, drinking heavily and generally doing nothing interesting. At nine forty-five on the dot I moved in. Linda was seated at a table with three men I'd sever seen before; she looked drowsy and drunk. One of the men had his hand way up under her skirt. I came to the table, looked hypnotically into her eyes and said: `it's a quarter of ten now, Linda. Come with me.'
Her blurred eyes cleared briefly, she coughed sad wobbled to her feet.
`Hey, where you going, baby?' one of the men asked. Another took hold of her arm.
`Linda is following me,' I said and took a step nearer the guy who had taken her arm and loomed over him and stared down with what I tried to make seem suppressed fury. He released her.
The Dice Man Page 32