Dice Man

by Luke Rhinehart

  “Nasty stomachache,” I said. “Severe abdominal cramps. May need and anesthetic.”

  “Vell, vell. Tummyache, you say?”

  “Lower tummy, abdomen, help.” I was whispering.

  “Luke, what game are you playing now?” Arlene said and looked anxiously down at me (I was folded down a full foot and a half from my normal height). “Lil’s here.”

  “You’re—you’re terrific, baby,” I gasped. “Take—off—that—dress.” I collapsed slowly sideways to the floor, the pain in my elbow being an almost blissful distraction from the other.

  I heard Fred Boyd’s voice from farther up the hall asking, “What happened?” and then heard him almost directly over me, laughing.

  “I think he’s been shot,” Dr. Krum said. “Is serious.”

  “Oh, he’ll survive,” Fred said, and I felt his hands on one of my arms and then Arlene’s on the other, and Fred lifted one arm around his shoulder and dragged me into a bedroom. They threw me on the bed.

  The pain was, in fact, subsiding, and after the three had left, I was able to move a bit, my eyes mostly, but it was progress. Then I remembered it was time for a fresh consultation of the Die and, shuddering at the possibility of a second round of uninhibited sex maniac, I painfully drew the fake watchcase out of my pocket and looked: a three: the honest dice man.

  I lay back on the bed for a while and stared at the ceiling. I heard voices passing by out in the hall and then only the blurred distant buzz from the living room. The door opened and someone came in.

  I struggled sideways to show off a stoical sort of above-it-all smile and found myself looking at Lil, immaculately dressed in a black, low-cut maxi-dress. We stared at each other in silence, I trying to look relaxed and nonchalant although spread out on the bed like a discarded quilt. Then I remembered I was supposed to be honest and I looked serious.

  She didn’t say anything and I didn’t say anything so the conversation was limited. Finally she spoke.

  “Dr. Krum said you were sick. What happened?”

  I struggled to a sitting position and dragged my legs off the bed to the floor. I felt a hollowness inside me: what a time and place for this.

  “It’s a long story, Lil.”

  “Dr. Felloni says you made a pass at Blondie.”

  “Longer than that, much longer.”

  “I’ve gone to a lawyer.”

  “Yes, it’s inevitable,” I said.

  She hadn’t moved since stopping ten feet from me in the middle of the room; again she was silent. There was no hint of tears.

  “Are you going to explain to me what happened?”

  “I’m the Dice Man.”

  “Is it Blondie? I thought Fred told me he’d only just met her himself.”

  “I’d never met her before. She was thrown into my path and the dice said take her.”

  “The dice? What’re you talking about?”

  “I am the Dice Man.” Hunched over and disheveled, I’m afraid it wasn’t too impressive a moment. We stared at each other, separated by only ten feet in the little bedroom off the hallway of Dr. Mann’s museum mausoleum. Lil shook her head as if trying to clear it.

  “What, if I may ask, is the dice man?”

  Dr. Krum and Arlene again appeared, Dr. Krum carrying a black bag similar to those carried by general practitioners in the early nineteenth century.

  “You are better?” he said.

  “Yes. Thank you. I will rise again.”

  “Good, good. I have an anesthetic. You vant?”

  “No. It won’t be necessary. Thanks.”

  “What is the dice man, Luke?” Lil repeated. She hadn’t moved since entering the room. I saw Arlene start and felt her eyes upon me as I turned back to Lil.

  “The Dice Man,” I said slowly, “is an experiment in changing the personality, in destroying the personality.”

  “Is interesting,” Dr. Krum said.

  “Go on,” Lil said.

  “To destroy the single dominant personality one must be capable of developing many personalities; one must become multiple.”

  “You’re stalling,” Lil said. “What is the dice man?”

  “The Dice Man,” I said, and I shifted my gaze to Arlene, who, wide-eyed and alert, watched me as if I were an enthralling movie, “is a creature whose actions are decided from day to day by the roll of dice, the dice choosing from among options created by the man.”

  There was a silence which lasted perhaps five seconds.

  “Is interesting,” Dr. Krum said. “But difficult with chickens.”

  Another silence followed and I turned my eyes back to Lil who, straight, dignified and beautiful, raised now a hand to her forehead and rubbed softly just below the hairline. Her expression was still neutral.

  “And you left me because of the way some dice fell?”

  “It was a long shot,” I said.

  “And forever?”

  “Yes,” I said. “It wasn’t too …” but I turned off. Now she dropped her hand listlessly to her side and turned her face slightly away from me.

  “I—I never meant a thing to you,” she said quietly.

  “But you did. I have to fight my attachment to you time and time again.”

  “Come on, Dr. Krum, let’s get out of here,” Arlene said.

  Lil turned her head and looked away out the darkened window, oblivious of Arlene and Dr. Krum.

  “You could do the things you did, to me, to Larry, to Evie,” she finally said.

  This time I didn’t reply. Dr. Krum looked perplexedly from me to Lil to me, shaking his head.

  “You could use me, lie to me, betray me, mock me, whore me and remain … happy.”

  “For something greater than either of us,” I said.

  Arlene had pulled Dr. Krum away and they disappeared out the door.

  “Everything …” She shook her head slowly, dreamily. “Everything between us for a year now, no. No. For all, for all our lives, becomes ashes.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Because … because you want to play your … games.”

  “Yes.”

  “And what, what if I told you now,” Lil went on, “that for a year I’ve been having an affair with—I know it sounds silly—but an affair with the garage attendant downstairs?”

  “Lil, that’s wonderful.”

  Pain flashed across her face.

  “What if I told you that tonight before coming here, in tucking the children in goodnight, in following a theory of mine to show detachment, I had … I had strangled Larry and Evie?”

  There we were opposite each other, an old married couple chatting about the doings of the day.

  “If it were done for a … a useful theory it would be …”

  Greater love hath no man than this: that he lay down his children’s lives for his theory.

  “You would, of course, kill them if the dice told you to,” Lil said.

  “I don’t think I’d ever give that particular option into the hands of the dice.”

  “Only adultery, theft, fraud and treason.”

  “I might give Larry and Evie into the hands of the Die, but myself too.”

  She was rocking now on her heels, her hands clenched in front of her, still immaculately beautiful.

  “I guess I should be thankful,” she said. “The mystery is over. But … but it’s not easy to have the death of the man you loved most in the world told to you by … by his corpse.”

  “Interesting point,” I said.

  Lil’s head jerked back at my reply and her eyes widened slowly until, suddenly, she threw herself on me with a convulsive shriek, pulling my hair and then beating me with her fists. I hunched over to protect myself, but I felt so hollow inside that Lil’s blows were like a gentle rain falling on an empty barrel. It occurred to me that it was long past time to consult the Die again. I wasn’t interested. I didn’t feel interested in anything. The blows stopped and Lil, crying loudly, ran toward the door. Arlene was standing there,
looking terrified, and caught Lil in her arms. They disappeared, and I was alone.

  44

  As I sit here writing of that distant night, the tragedies and comedies bloom like flowers around me still, and I continue on from day to day or year to year to play a role, and certainly, sooner or later, I’ll abandon that of dice man too. A role, a role. Star billing one day, walk-on the next. Vaudeville standup comic, Shakespearean fool. Alceste in the morning, Gary Cooper and a hippie during the day, Jesus at night. I no longer remember precisely when I stopped acting: when the fallen die began to click to life roles where there was no residual me fighting them and no dice man me feeling proud, only lives being lived. I do remember that alone in that room that night after Lil left I felt a full joyous uninhibited grief. I was in pain, I suffered, I was there.

  And you, Friend, sprawled on your bed or sitting in your chair, you giggle perhaps as I slobber as Caliban, smile at my sufferings as an honest man, or sigh when I ponderously play the fool, philosophizing my madness, lecturing you on the metaphor of life as play. But I am the honest man—with all his senseless suffering for those who will feel; I am the fool. I’ve been Raskolnikov climbing the stairs, Julien Sorel hearing the clock strike ten, Molly Bloom writhing beneath the rhythmic push of Blazes Boylan’s prick. Agonies are one of my changes of garments—fortunately not worn as often as my motley of the fool.

  And you, Reader, good friend and fellow fool my reader, you, yes you, my sweet cipher, are the Dice Man. Having read this far, you are doomed to carry with you burned forever in your soul the self I’ve here portrayed: the Dice Man. You are multiple and one of you is me. I have created in you a flea which will forever make you itch. Ah, Reader, you never should have let me be born. Other selves bite now and then no doubt. But the Dice Man flea demands to be scratched at every moment: he is insatiable. You will never know an itchless moment again—unless, of course, you become the flea.

  45

  On the edge of the bed, alone, the party outside seeming to settle into precisely the businesslike buzz it manifested before, Dr. Rhinehart sat hunched over, numbed. There was no retreat now. He was the Dice Man or he was no one. Luke Rhinehart was now an impossible existence. Having no place else to go, no one else to be, he took out the watch with the die and looked.

  Slowly he straightened himself up and, standing, bowed his head in a brief prayer. Then he smoothed down his clothing and his hair and moved toward the party. He wanted first to see his wife, to abase himself before her. He walked down the hall to the living room and from the doorway squinted through the random clusters of faces, looking for her. Those talking and drinking paid him no special attention, but Mrs. Ecstein came up behind him and said that his wife was in Dr. Mann’s office.

  He followed her down the hall and over the broken glass to the office. He found Dr. Mann and Dr. Ecstein standing awkwardly on either side of his wife, who sat, childlike, on the edge of Dr. Mann’s consulting couch.

  The sight of her, hunched over and small, her face pale but streaked with smeared eye shadow, her hair in disarray, an ugly man’s sweater draped clumsily over her shoulders, knocked Dr. Rhinehart without conscious intention to his knees, with his chest and head too lowering forward until he groveled at his wife’s feet.

  The room was so silent that they could all hear quite distinctly from the center of the house the ratatattat of Dr. Krum’s laughter.

  “Forgive me, Lil, I am mad,” Dr. Rhinehart said.

  No one spoke.

  Dr. Rhinehart raised his head and chest from the floor to look at his wife and he said:

  “For what I have done there is no forgiveness in this world; but I am repentent. I … I have been purified … by the hell that I am causing. I …” His eyes suddenly brightened with eagerness. “I feel only love for you and for all here. The world can be a blessed place if we but love one another.”

  “Luke, baby, what are you … ?” Dr. Ecstein said, and he took a step forward as if to raise Dr. Rhinehart up but stopped.

  “Beautiful, beautiful Jake, I’m talking about love.” Dr. Rhinehart shook his head slowly as if confused, and a childlike smile appeared on his face. “I’ve been all mixed up, all wrong; love, loving, loveliness is all there is.” He turned and stretched out his arms to his wife. “Lil, my darling, you must realize that Heaven is here, is now, with me and without me.”

  His wife returned his gaze for a moment and then slowly raised her eyes to Dr. Mann beside her. A look of immense relief began to appear on her face.

  “He is insane, isn’t he?” she asked.

  “Technically speaking,” Dr. Mann said. “But he keeps changing so. It may be only temporary.”

  “You fools, we’ve all been insane,” Dr. Rhinehart said. “I but look at each of you and love. God is shining forth from each of you like fluorescent lights. Open your eyes and see.”

  He was erect now on his knees, his fists clenched and his face strangely exalted.

  “Better give him a shot of Luminal sodium, Tim,” Dr. Ecstein said to Dr. Mann in a whisper.

  “I’ve only got pills here in the house,” Dr. Mann whispered back.

  “Careless,” Dr. Ecstein said.

  “But why why why,” Dr. Rhinehart began forcefully, “do you want to quiet God? I am among you spraying love and you do not hear, do not see, do not let it refresh you.” He arose. “I must beg forgiveness of that poor innocent girl and show her my new love.” And he abruptly strode from the room.

  Down the hall and over the broken glass again and into the living room. Miss Welish was with Dr. Boyd beside the bookcase in one corner. When he went to them, Dr. Boyd came protectively between Dr. Rhinehart and the girl.

  “What now, Luke?” he said.

  “I am deeply deeply sorry for the insane attack I made on you, Miss Welish. I sincerely regret it. Only now do I see the true meaning of love.”

  Miss Welish, round-eyed, peeked around her escort’s shoulder.

  “Oh come off it, Luke,” Dr. Boyd said.

  “You are beautiful; you are both beautiful, and I deeply regret having marred this wonderful evening.”

  “I hope I didn’t hurt you,” Miss Welish said.

  “My pain was the initial source of my seeing the light. I can’t thank you enough.”

  “Any time,” Dr. Boyd said. “Come on, Joya, let’s leave.”

  “But I have to …” The voice of Miss Welish was lost behind the retreating figure of Dr. Boyd.

  “You are better, true?” Dr. Krum said suddenly from below and beside Dr. Rhinehart as the two others moved away. The thin, elderly former Big Deal was with him, and so was a fiftyish Important Person puffing on a pipe: Dr. Weinburger, president of PANY. As they began talking, the chubby middle-aged women joined them.

  “I am whole at last,” Dr. Rhinehart replied.

  “What was this about the dice man, hey? Vas interesting.”

  “The Dice Man is a deeply sick concept, totally lacking in love.”

  “Seemed a bit schizophrenic the way Dr. Krum described it,” said Dr. Weinburger.

  “But the idea of destroying the personality: is interesting,” Dr. Krum went on.

  “Only if it shatters the shell which hides our love,” Dr. Rhinehart replied.

  “Love?” Dr. Weinburger inquired.

  “Our love.”

  “Vat has love to do vith anything?” asked Dr. Krum.

  “Love has something to do with everything. If I do not love I am dead.”

  “How true,” the woman said.

  “My whole recent life has been thrown away in a cold, mechanical dicelife. I see that now as clearly as your beautiful, handsome faces.”

  “Luke, I’d like you to come outdoors with me for a few minutes now,” Dr. Ecstein’s voice said at Dr. Rhinehart’s side.

  “I will, Jake, but I must explain something first to Dr. Krum.” He turned to the little man beside him with a warm, pleading expression.

  “You must stop your work with pigeons and wo
rk only with men. You can never approach what is essential to man’s health and happiness through torturing chickens and pigeons. Schizophrenia is a failure to love, a failure to see loveliness. It will never be cured by a drug.”

  “Oh, Dr. Rhinehart, you are being sentimental like poet,” Dr. Krum said.

  “A single line of Shelley tells us more of man than all your chicken pigeon droppings ever can.”

  “People haf been spouting love two thousand years. Nothing. With chemicals we change the world.”

  “Thou shalt not kill,” Dr. Rhinehart said.

  “Ve do not kill, only make psychotics.”

  “You do not love your chickens.”

  “Is impossible. No one who works with chickens can ever luf them.”

  “A spiritual man loves all with a spiritual love that is never selfish, possessive or physical.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Luke—” Dr. Ecstein said.

  “Precisely,” said Dr. Rhinehart. “Excuse me a moment.” With the eminent physicians looking on, Dr. Rhinehart consulted his watchcase. He groaned.

  “Is late?” Dr. Krum asked.

  Dr. Rhinehart’s eyes swiveled over the room like artillery radar seeking its target.

  “I didn’t know Dr. Rhinehart was an existentialist humanist,” the woman said.

  “He’s a nut,” Dr. Ecstein said, “even if he is my patient.”

  “Meetcha outside in five minutes, Jake. So long, fellas,” Dr. Rhinehart said and strode off toward the entrance hall, but after passing a cluster of people behind the couch he veered to his right and went down the same hallway again.

  As he crunched over the broken glass he saw Miss Welish and Mrs. Ecstein emerging from the room opposite the one he had been carried to. They stopped at the end of the hall and looked at him warily.

  “Lil’s been given a pill and is resting,” Mrs. Ecstein said. “I don’t think you should disturb her.”

  “My God, Arlene, your boobs make my mouth water. Let’s go into the john.”

  Mrs. Ecstein stared at him for a moment. She looked sideways at Miss Welish and then back to the doctor. Then, still staring at her mentor, she shook her tiny purse up and down three times, opened it a crack, and peeked in. Closing the purse she said: