‘What about you?’ I shot back. ‘You fit in even better than I ever did. Is it something you really want?’
‘Yes! It is! I had enough of genteel poverty with my mother and that creep she remarried after Da – after you! The Battles may be silly and snobbish, but life’s a lot easier with them than without them.’
‘I don’t get it,’ I said, no longer sure whether I was talking to the dice student Kim or the normal Kim. ‘How can you condemn your father – I mean condemn me – for doing what you say you’re doing?’
She was standing with her hands on her hips glaring at me when she suddenly broke out into gay laughter.
‘Damned if I know,’ she said. ‘I actually think I’m madder at him for dying than anything else.’
‘You’ve forgotten our assignment.’
‘Oh, piss on our assignment,’ she said. ‘I’m tired of this stuff. Let’s climb the mountain.’ Without further ado that’s precisely what she started doing, heading off at an angle to pick up what looked to be the beginning of a trail off to our left. I happily followed.
We began following the slightest of indentations in the earth that marked a path through the low shrubs and large fir trees that grew on the mountainside. The climb was relatively easy, angling up for a way and then cutting back, sometimes with long runs, sometimes with rapid switchbacks. Kim led at first and I was content to follow, happy to be rid of the pressures of Lukedom, although wondering what exactly this climb had to do with finding my father. Kim’s athletic body was having no trouble with the climb and I was surprised to note that her behind swinging back and forth in front of me lost its usual sexual aura, as we both threw ourselves into the simple pleasure of the climb.
When the path came to a fork, one faint trail angling upwards and the main trail turning on the level to the left, we stopped to catch our breaths and look upward to see where we were headed and then off to the left, wondering why the main trail went that way. When I looked along the main trail I saw someone disappear into a cave in the hillside. It was a glimpse so brief I wasn’t certain I’d seen what I’d seen, the glimpse being questionable because the man was dressed in a suit. A suit entering a cave?
‘Did you see that?’ I asked Kim.
‘The man going in the cave?’ Kim responded, turning to me and wiping her brow on her sleeve with childlike unselfconsciousness.
‘Let’s take a look.’ I led the way along the level main trail towards where we thought we’d seen someone disappear. We soon came up to an old mine entrance with a huge, battered wooden door, padlocked firmly to an ancient beam. A larger weather-beaten sign warned: ‘Danger. Keep Out.’ The cave entrance was blocked off by the door and the thick-looking wooden walls on either side of it. Although the man had seemed to disappear precisely here, it looked as if the padlocked door hadn’t been disturbed in years. But weren’t there signs of foot scufflings near the wall to the left of the door?
‘Is this where you saw the guy disappear?’ I asked Kim, who was running her hands over the vertical slabs of
‘Yes, it was, damn it,’ she said, continuing her examination.
Had it been an optical illusion? Did the man simply continue on the trail around a bend that made it appear that he’d entered a cave? No. No, Kim saw it the same way I did!
‘Anything phoney about the wall?’ I asked her when she finally turned away from her examination, her usually bright face furrowed with concentration. The wall consisted of thick vertical planks with irregular spaces between them, and cross-beam backings could sometimes be seen between the cracks.
‘It’s possible there’s a hinged section someplace along here,’ Kim said, glancing back at the wall. ‘One that could be swung open from the inside so somebody could get in. But if there is I can’t find it.’
I banged some of the vertical planks in a few places and the thuds indicated a solidity that would have prevented anyone walking through them. Then I turned to look down at the little village of Lukedom in the valley below.
‘Think we’re hallucinating?’
‘Maybe,’ said Kim, joining me looking down at Lukedom. ‘But nothing here would really surprise me.’
Since we were already two-thirds of the way up the mountain, we decided to follow the infrequently-used branch of the trail and hike to the top.
As we climbed, the trail became thinner and less worn. Had the peak not been so close and Kim with me I might have turned back, but my natural competitive juices were flowing, especially when every time I turned back to check Kim’s progress she was there just behind me, sweating, occasionally cursing when a foot slipped on the loose stones, but not stopping to rest except when I did.
The last hundred yards were up a narrow scree in an almost vertical rock wall that I knew we shouldn’t be climbing but couldn’t resist. The knees of my trousers and Kim’s jeans were getting torn, as were the palms and fingers of our hands, but looking up we could see that the rock wall appeared to begin to level out towards the peak
In one tight chimney formation it was only my six-foot height and long reach that permitted me to get a high handhold and pull myself, and then Kim, up. It was our first physical contact in the long climb, and I was surprised at how hot her small hand was and how fierce her grip. When I pulled her scrambling up on to the small shelf, she collapsed with a groan beside me, our thighs pressed together as we sat momentarily with our legs dangling over the ledge.
‘Thanks’, she said, smiling at me with sparkling eyes.
‘We shouldn’t be doing this, you know,’ I said.
‘I know,’ she said, glowing.
Returning her grin, I struggled up to begin climbing the last of the narrow scree. The worst was over. Though we were both gasping for breath as we walked the final fifty feet up the bare rounded top of this part of the mountain, I was feeling better than I had in months – since a wonderful spring sail in a friend’s catamaran when we’d almost capsized and given up on ever getting the boat back before dark. Mindless physical exertion with a touch of danger was a tonic. I felt like shouting, but settled for impulsively grabbing Kim’s hand and squeezing it.
‘Goddamn it, beats washing dishes at Joe’s, doesn’t it?’ I said.
‘Or listening to another lecture about self,’ Kim agreed, as we continued hand in hand to the top shelf of rock.
From there we could look back down at Lukedom, some of which was now hidden by tall trees halfway down the mountain. The village looked tiny and insignificant. When we turned and looked down the opposite hillside, there didn’t seem to be a town or house In sight, only a ranger’s tower on the mountain across the valley, and in the valley a meandering stream and trees.
When I turned to Kim she was in the act of turning to me. We looked at each other and then were in each other’s arms and kissing.
We were kissing. I had the tiniest memory of the hunger and desire in her eyes just before we embraced, but that memory was buried in the avalanche of passion and fulfilment I felt in crushing her against me and in our kissing. My whole being seemed to be saying ‘It’s about time!’
The roar was incredible; the whole universe seemed to be vibrating and screaming in unison, the air rushing around us as if we were hurtling through space. I had an image of being plunged into a Hemingway novel, but then began to be almost frightened at the power of what was happening – when Kim broke our kiss.
The roaring and rushing continued for a moment and then receded. As I looked at her in surprised adoration I became dimly aware that she was looking off to the left, and that the roaring was an aeroplane I now saw soaring just over the last of the south end of the mountain, the aeroplane that must have roared over us in the middle of our kiss.
Still holding each other, we briefly watched the plane recede into the sky. It was a strange moment: I felt like a man who in the midst of receiving the Nobel Prize finds the ceremony visited by a UFO; I was interested in getting on with the ceremony, but felt a UFO probably had to be commented on.
An awfully nice kiss,’ answered Kim, turning to smile up at me.
‘I know, but where did that plane come from?’
We broke our embrace to move across the flat peak to the edge of the cliff on the west side of the mountain from which the plane had come. When we got as close to the edge as we dared, we looked directly down.
At first what I was seeing didn’t register. There were no buildings, no cars, no people – just a long flat terrace cut into the side of the mountain, cut by man into this side of the mountain. Fifty yards in width, not a tree or boulder broke the neat flat terrace that ran for at least a half mile. I stared at it and stared at it and finally saw it. A small airstrip.
‘Things get interestinger by the minute.’ said Kim from
‘But where’s the airport?’ I asked, still trying to absorb what I was seeing.
‘In the mountain,’ said Kim.
A small airfield. On a mountainside miles from any town or, as far as we could see, from any road. An airfield on which small planes could land and take off, leaving off passengers to do nothing in nowheresville.
Looking down on this strange strip of modern technology in the middle of wilderness, I knew that the people landing there weren’t doing nothing in nowheresville.
‘I bet if we hiked down there,’ I said as we gazed down at the airstrip, ‘we’d find another abandoned mine entrance with a rusty padlock and a sign saying “Danger. Keep Out.”’
Kim nodded.
‘And I doubt that people enter one mineshaft just to hike through the mountain to exit on the other side,’ she said.
She was right. Under where we were standing, between the mine entrance on the Lukedom side and the airstrip on the other, were people. People doing something that they didn’t want other people to know about.
Kim took my hand and we turned away back towards Lukedom.
‘It figures,’ she said. ‘Lukedom is far too sophisticated a place to be run by those few people in administration and orientation.’
‘But why hide things in a mountain?’
‘Beats me,’ said Kim.
It was almost six in the afternoon and getting dark. Though we agreed it was possible we could hike down to the airstrip and look around and then climb back over the mountain to Lukedom before dark, we decided not to. Our climbing the mountain was explainable, but not our nosing around the airstrip. Although I don’t think either of us was afraid, we figured that the people who were keeping secrets might not take kindly to strangers wandering about on their airstrip.
So, in a subdued mood, we headed back down the mountain towards the village. I felt I was closer to finding my father than I’d ever been before. One of Lukedom’s mottos was ‘This truth above all: fake it’. In Lukedom a door that wasn’t a door and a wall that wasn’t a wall and a wilderness that wasn’t a wilderness seemed just about par for the course.
33
An hour and a half later I sat in a comer of the Do Die Inn bar and waited for Kim. We had separated soon after getting back to the village to go to our respective rooms to bathe and change clothes. Being alone with a drink had reminded me that reality was getting a little complex and contradictory – just the way the prophets here in Lukedom said it was. I was in an outrageous community that apparently had something even more outrageous to hide. I was engaged to a woman I wanted to marry, and mightily tempted by a woman to whom I wasn’t engaged and didn’t want to marry. I thought my father was here in Lukedom, but hadn’t yet a shred of clear evidence that this was so.
I knew that I would continue my investigations tomorrow and not return to New York until I had some answers to the questions that had arisen. Although I dreaded it, I realized I had to phone Honoria. In all this chaos a part of me knew where the solid land of my life lay and it wasn’t in any of the people here in Lukedom.
As I sat in the safety of my little booth, I thought of the prospect of talking to Honoria with the wariness of an amateur exploring the subtleties of an electric switch-breaker box – live wires everywhere. It took me twenty minutes and two more drinks before I was befuddled enough to dare try it.
Unfortunately – I’d somehow imagined it would be otherwise – Honoria was at home; she even answered the phone. After the usual preliminary verbal sparring, I blurted out the awful truth.
‘I’m on to something here, sweetheart,’ I said. ‘Something big. Got to stay. Least another day. Maybe Thursday.’
‘Fine,’ said Honoria. ‘I’ll see you when I see you.’
‘You know how much I’d like to be back –’
But with her usual brisk efficiency Honoria had hung up. Indecisiveness was not one of her flaws.
I remained in the stuffy phone booth for another half minute listening to the dial tone.
Well. So. I was still in the doghouse.
As I walked back through the restaurant towards the bar I suddenly became aware that I was grinning!
How sick! A hundred thousand dollars a year had just hung up on me! A woman who stood to inherit most or all of twenty or thirty million dollars! The woman my boss was willing to let me marry if I could only manage to keep my father squelched! The boss responsible for determining my annual Christmas bonus, a bonus due in little more than six weeks!
I felt a wave of fear: I was stepping into no man’s land. My future, that grand reliable railroad line across the country to riches, had suddenly gotten sidetracked, and where this new line went was anybody’s guess, but it certainly wasn’t aimed at the same glittering city on a hill.
Seeing Kim had arrived and was sitting enticingly in my booth awaiting me, I became, the healthy male on the make and wondered how I should play it. Cool? Angry? Hurt? Hurt, I remembered vaguely, always played best with women. But Kim was wearing a lovely tight-fitting dress and had her hair looking almost under control. She was dazzling. But I must look hurt, hurt.
I walked slowly back to the booth and slid into the bench opposite her. For a moment I stared at the melting ice cubes in the dregs of my drink and tried to look melancholy.
‘What are you looking so happy about?’ asked Kim.
‘Uh, what?’
‘You came back looking like you just won the lottery. What happened?’
Somehow this conversation wasn’t going quite the way I’d figured. I looked up at her trying to maintain what I had thought was my tragic expression.
Kim returned my gaze for a moment and then burst out laughing.
I thought I ought to try to look offended but then realized that I’d probably be no more successful with offended than I’d been with melancholy.
‘I guess I’m not as upset as I thought that Honoria just hung up on me,’ I said.
‘Not upset! I knew you and Honoria had your little troubles, but I never guessed you were suffering.’
‘We aren’t suffering,’ I protested. ‘I don’t know why I don’t feel worse.’
Kim shook her head, still smiling.
‘Worse,’ she echoed sceptically. ‘When you came back here I thought you were having an orgasm.’
I tried for a moment to look offended but finally gave up and laughed.
‘I think you’re being a little hard on me,’ I said.
‘I’m not being hard. I’m just trying to figure you out. And besides,’ she went on, ‘maybe I’m laughing because I’m feeling pretty good about things too, ever think of that?’
Hey, that’s right!
‘You don’t want Honoria to marry me?’ I asked.
‘Of course not. You two’d just make life miserable for each other.’
‘I see,’ I said, stalling, as usual, for time.
‘Your heart knows it, your body knows it, but your mind doesn’t know itself from a hole in the ground.’
‘Thanks.’
‘If you were truly in love with Nori,’ Kim went gaily on, ‘you wouldn’t be so attracted to me. But since messing around with your fiancée’s cousin is again
st the rules, you’ve been sitting on it.’ She paused. ‘Not literally, I hope,’ she added with a smile.
‘I don’t believe I’m having this conversation,’ I said.
‘You’re not,’ said Kim, I’m having it and you’re trying to figure out what you’re supposed to do about it.’
‘I see,’ I said, but was fairly sure I was, as usual, seeing very little.
Later, we ate dinner together and discussed what we’d found out about Lukedom. Like most men, I was more comfortable with subjects I was the expert on, so steered clear of talking about the possibilities of something happening between me and Kim. As I kept up what I hope was a witty (if superficial) conversation I had the feeling my life was reeling just a trifle out of control. My engagement was in danger, and primarily from a girl who represented precisety the chaos and spontaneity I’d structured my life to avoid.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ Kim announced much later, when we were the last two customers in the restaurant. She was toying with the last of some rather awful cake she’d ordered for dessert and looking at me with less mischievousness than usual.
‘I think we’re in Rome,’ she went on.
I was wise enough not to challenge this statement, despite its seeming to have a certain inaccuracy to it.
‘And thus should do as the Romans do.’ she conducted.
I pulled my eyes away from her breasts, where they had inadvertently wandered, and tried to return her gaze with equal intellectual seriousness.
‘This community.’ she continued, ‘is populated by people who play roles and games and use dice. Dr Ecstein insists you get into diceliving before he’ll give you the information you came for. I think you should do it.’
‘No,’ I said.
To begin with,’ Kim went on, ‘I must admit I find the idea of using dice to make decisions rather irrelevant.’
‘Exactly.’
‘But fun,’ she added. ‘… Serious fun.’
‘No, I’m not going to let the dice decide anything of any importance.’
The Search for the Dice Man Page 19