The Diceman

by Luke Rheinhart

  `She should know. She helped me draw up the instructions.'

  `Does the project encourage young people to fornicate?' asked Dr. Cobblestone.

  `And old people t- Look, I think perhaps you ought to ask to have a copy of my research report when it's finished.'

  The two stern faces had not relaxed, and Dr. Cobblestone went on `One of your subjects claims that he was raped.'

  `That's true,' replied Dr. Rhinehart. `But our investigation indicated that he either fantasized or prevaricated the rape to

  suppress his active unconscious participation in the act of which he complains.'

  `What's that?' said Dr. Cobblestone, irritably cupping an ear at Dr. Rhinehart.

  `He enjoyed being laid and is lying about the rape.'

  `Oh. Thank you.'

  `You realize, Luke,' said Dr. Mann, `that in letting you use some of our patients here at QSH for your research that we are legally and morally responsible for what occurs in that research.'

  `I understand.'

  `Certain attendants and nurses have reported that a large number of patients were volunteering for your sex research

  project and have claimed that prostitutes were being supplied to the patients.'

  `You can read my report when it's done.'

  Dr. Cobblestone banged his cane a third time.

  `A report has reached us that you yourself participated in . . . as . . . as . . . in this experiment.'

  `Naturally.'

  `Naturally?' asked Dr. Mann.

  `I participated in the experiment'

  'But our report stated that…' Dr. Cobblestone's face grew red with his exasperation at not finding the right words. `…

  that you interacted with the subjects . . sexually.'

  'Ahh,' said Dr. Rhinehart.

  `Well?' asked Dr. Mann.

  `Some neurotic young person I presume is the author of this slander?' said Dr. Rhinehart.

  `Yes, yes,' said Dr. Cobblestone quickly.

  `Projecting his latent desires onto the dreaded authority figure?' Dr. Rhinehart went on.

  `Precisely,' said Dr. Cobblestone, relaxing just a bit.

  `Tragic. Is someone trying to help him?'

  `Yes,' replied Dr. Cobblestone. `Yes. Dr. Vener has . . . How did you know it was a young man?'

  'George Lovelace Ray O'Reilly. Projection, compensation, displacement, anal-cathexis.'

  `Ah, yes.'

  `Is there anything else?' said Dr. Rhinehart, making motions of rising to leave.

  `I'm afraid there is, Luke,' said Dr. Mann.

  `I see.'

  Dr. Cobblestone gripped his cane carefully in both hands and, aiming, banged it a fourth time on the floor between his

  legs.

  `What's this about dice, young man?' he asked.

  `Dice?'

  'One of your patients has complained that you're making him play some strange game with dice.'

  `The new one, Mr. Spezio?'

  `Yes.'

  `We have patients working with clay, cloth, paper, wood, leather, beads, cardboard, lathes, wire … I saw no reason not

  to let a few select patients begin playing with dice.'

  `I see,' said Dr. Cobblestone.'

  `Why?' asked Dr. Mann blandly.

  `You can read my report when it's done.'

  No one spoke for a while.

  `Anything else?' Dr. Rhinehart asked at last.

  The two older men glanced uneasily at each other and Dr. Cobblestone cleared his throat.

  `Your general behavior lately, Luke,' said Dr. Mann.

  `Ahhh.'

  'Your impolite and … unusual behavior in our last board meeting,' said Dr. Cobblestone.

  `Yes.'

  `Your erratic, socially upsetting eccentricities,' said Dr. Mann.

  `Your interruption of Dr. Wink,' added Dr. Cobblestone.

  `We've received complaints from a few nurses here at QSH, several board members naturally, from Mr. Spezio, and…'

  `And?' suggested Dr. Rhinehart.

  `And I myself am not blind.'

  'Ahh.'

  `Batman over the telephone is not my idea of a joke.'

  There was a silence.

  `Your behavior has been undignified and unprofessional,' said Dr. Cobblestone.

  Silence.

  `You can read my report when it's done,' said Dr. Rhinehart finally.

  Silence.

  `Your report?' asked Dr. Cobblestone.

  `I'm writing an article on the variety of human response to socially eccentric behavior.'

  `Yes, yes, I see,' said Dr. Cobblestone.

  `My hypothesis is-'

  `No more, Luke,' said Dr. Mann.

  `Pardon?'

  `No more. You've just about convinced everyone, but Jake that you're splitting apart. He alone has faith'

  `My hypothesis is-'

  'No more. Your friends have protected you all they're going to. Either back into the old Luke Rhinehart or you're finished as a psychiatrist' Dr. Cobblestone arose solemnly.

  `And if you wish to bring up your idea for some sort of new center to help our patients you must have it placed on the agenda before our meeting.'

  `I understand,' said Dr. Rhinehart, also standing.

  `No, more, Luke,' said Dr. Mann.

  Dr. Rhinehart understood.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  I should have known when Lil sat me down on the armchair opposite her without even touching her champagne that there was trouble. As part of a one-in-six die decision I had been courting her anew with all the unselfish and romantic love I could imagine, and we'd been having a marvelous week. I'd climaxed four days of traditional courting (two plays, a concert, an evening of love on hashish) by suggesting that we end Love Lil Week by taking a three-day skiing holiday at a Canadian ski resort. I had bought her flowers at the airport and champagne for our first night. It had begun snowing thickly after we arrived and although the next day we both skied like untrained walruses, we soon made an art out of tumbling. The snow fell lightly and wetly in the afternoon and we removed our skis and made snowballs and wrestled and rolled and munched the snow more or less like a couple of aged dogs reliving their puppyhood, I a Saint Bernard and she a collie. She was pretty and bright-eyed and girlishly athletic, and I was handsome and affectionate and boyishly uncoordinated, and we enjoyed playing together again. We danced before a roaring fire and drank more champagne and played brilliant bridge against a couple from Boston and made sweet love under a foot-high mountain of blankets and slept the sleep of the just.

  We did the same the next day and the next, and on our last evening, a little high on champagne and marijuana, we spent half an hour holding hands in front of the fire and another ten minutes sitting on our bed with the lights off staring out our window at the moonlight lighting in pale blue the slopes of snow which stretched away from the hotel. I'd opened yet another bottle of champagne and felt warm and complete and serene. The touch of Lil's hand seemed holy. But then Lil asked me to sit opposite her in the armchair and shook her head when I tried to hand her a glass of champagne, and I knew there was trouble.

  After turning on the bedside lamp. I looked up at her and was surprised to see tears in her eyes. She reached forward and took one of my hands and drew it to her face. Her lips touched my fingers delicately and she looked into my eyes. She smiled, slightly, lovingly, but with a tear running down one side of her face.

  `Luke,' she said, and she paused for several seconds looking into my eyes. `What have you been acting so strangely for

  so long now?'

  'Ah Lil,' I began, `I'd like to tell you . . .' and I stopped.

  `I know you aren't really unbalanced,' she went on. `It's some . . theory you're working on, isn't it?'

  The warmth I'd been feeling froze, the lover solidified to stone. Sitting mute, hand being held, was a wary dice man.

  `Please tell me,' she said. She was wetting her lips and squeezing my hand.

  `Luke, we're togeth
er again. I feel so whole, so full of love for you, yet . . . I know that tomorrow, the next day, you

  may change again. Everything that has made these last few days so sweet will disappear. And I don't know why: And I

  won't know why.'

  Maybe Lil could become the Dice Woman. It sounded like the name of a villainess on the Batman show but it offered me at the moment the only rationalization I could find for betraying the secret of my life and permitting me to hold Lil's happiness and love. I wavered. The band downstairs was playing a waltz. It wasn't too modern a ski resort..

  `I…' I started. The dice man still fought.

  `Tell me,' she said.

  `I've been experimenting, Lil,' I began for a third time, `with practicing eccentric behavior, unusual roles, attitudes,

  emotions - in order to discover the variety of human nature.'

  I paused: wide-eyed she waited for what I was going to say. Narrow-eyed, so did I. I reached to my side and turned off the light again. Our faces, separated by only three feet, were still quite visible in the moonlight. `I didn't want to tell you until . . . I had learned whether the experiment had value: you might have rejected me, fought

  the experiment, ended our love.'

  `Oh no I wouldn't.'

  `I knew a moment would come when I could tell you everything. Last week I decided to end the experiment for a

  while so we could be together again.'

  Her grip on my hand was frightening.

  `I would have gone along,' she said. `I would have, sweetheart. Those asses think you're losing your mind. I would

  have laughed at them if I knew. [Pause] Why? You should have told me.'

  `I know that now. I knew that as soon as I freed myself 'from the experiment: I should have done it all with you. 'But..

  Still staring, her eyes glittering in the moonlight, she seemed nervous, uncertain, curious. `What were the kind … kinds

  of experiments?'

  I was so pale and stonelike in the moonlight I imagine I looked like an abandoned statue.

  `Oh, going to places I'd never seen before, pretending to be someone different from myself to see people's reactions.

  Experimenting with food, fasting, drugs, even getting drunk that time was a conscious experiment.'

  `Really?'

  And she smiled, tears wetting her cheeks and chin, like a child in the rain.

  `It proved that when I'm drunk I act like other people that are drunk.'

  `Oh Luke, why didn't you tell me?'

  'The mad scientist in me insisted that if I revealed to you that I was experimenting, your reaction would be

  experimentally useless and a wealth of evidence would be missing.'

  `And . . . and the experiment is . . . over?'

  'No,' I answered. `No, Lil, it isn't. But now we'll begin . . . experimenting together, and the loneliness we've both felt

  will end.'

  `But…'

  `What is it, honey?'

  'Will our life like the last few days end too?'

  A roar of laughter came from the assembled guests downstairs. `Sounds like they're having a good time,' I said.

  `Will this end?' she asked again softly.

  `Of course it will, honey,' I said, trying to dare look at her. `It would end whether I returned to experimenting or not,

  you know that. The good things we've felt these last few days have come because they follow such hell. One doesn't

  have to be a scientist to know that bliss doesn't last.'

  She came forward heavily into my arms, sobbing.

  `I want it to last. I want it to last,' she said.

  I stroked her, kissed her, mumbled sweet nothings, felt numbly that I was handling the situation horribly, felt terrible.

  A part of me imagined drawing Lit into even more radical dice deals than I could manage alone; perhaps I'd even

  change her. Another part of me felt utterly abandoned by everyone.

  She down-shifted from sobs to sniffles, then left me to trot to the bathroom. When she returned to her same spot on

  the bed with her face and hair tidied up, I was surprised to see that she was looking at me coldly.

  `Have you kept a written record of these experiments?' she asked.

  `Of some. And I've written brief essays of analysis of various hypotheses I've been testing.'

  `Have you experimented with me?'

  `Of course I have, honey. Since it's me I experiment with, and me lives with you, you've been affected by many of the

  experiments.'

  `I mean have you directly experimented. .. tried to get me to do things?'

  `I . .. no, no, I haven't' `Have you experimented with sex? With other women?'

  Bingo! I hesitated.

  My male friends, attention. There are some questions which demand any answer except hesitation. `Do you love me?' for example, is not a question; it is intended as a stimulus in the stimulus-response sequence `Do-you-love-me?-Oh #161;my precious yes.'

  `Did you sleep with her?' demands a yes-or-no answer immediately: hedging implies guilt. `Have you experimented with other women?' demanded an immediate answer of `Yes, of course, honey, and it's made me closer to you than ever.'

  This would bring tears, slaps, revilings, withdrawal and eventually, curiosity and reconciliation. Hesitation on 'the other

  hand . . .

  Hesitation brought Lil leaping to her feet.

  `You Goddamn bastard,' she said.

  `Don't touch me: `You don't even know what the experiments were.'

  `I know your mind. I know . . . oh my God . . . I know … Arlene! You and Arlene!' She was rigid and trembling.

  `Honey, honey, honey, you're blowing up about nothing. My experiments didn't include infidelity `I'll bet they didn't.

  I'm no fool. I'm no fool,' she shouted and, sobbing, crumpled on to the couch.

  `Oh. I'm such a fool,' she moaned, `such a fool.'

  I went over and tried to comfort her. She ignored me. After another minute's crying she got up and went into the

  bathroom. When I followed about two minutes later the door was hooked closed.

  Now remember, my friends, I was still supposed to be playing the lover. For seven days I had been the lover, at one

  with the role; now I was only artificially trying to go through the proper motions and emotions. The love was dead, but

  the lover was commanded to live on.

  I knocked and called and finally received a `Go away'; unoriginal but, I fear, sincere. My impulse was to do just that,

  but my mind warned me that real lovers never leave their beloved in such cases except to blow out their brains or to

  get drunk. Considering the alternatives I threw my shoulder against the door twice and broke in.

  Lil was sitting on the edge of the tub with a pair of scissors in her hand; she looked up at me dully when I stumbled in.

  A quick scrutiny indicated she had not slashed anything.

  `What are you doing?' I asked.

  `I thought I'd mend your pants, if you don't mind.'

  Beside her, prosaically enough, was, in fact, some thread and the pants I'd ripped down the backside on the slopes that

  afternoon.

  `Mend my pants?'

  `You have your experiments and I have … [she almost started crying again] my art projects. Pants and .. . I'm being

  pathetic and maudlin.'

  She placed the pants on the rim of the tub and turned on the water in the sink and began scrubbing her face. When

  she'd finished, she brushed her teeth. I stood in the doorway, trying to marshal my creative faculties to tell a talc tale.

  'Lil, an hour ago we had something which we can and will have again. But you've got to know all about my

  experiments or-'

  She looked up at me foaming at the mouth, toothbrush in hand.

  'I'll listen to it all, Luke, to every scientific word but not now. Just not now.'

  `Yo
u may not want to listen, but I must tell you. This hour is too important, our love is too-'

  'Crap!'

  `Important to let a night go by with this rock between us.'

  `I'm going to bed,' she said as she left the bathroom and began to undress.

  `Then go, but listen.'

  She threw off her clothes on to her dresser, got into a nightgown and went to bed. She pulled the covers up so that only the top of her head was showing and turned her back to me. I began lumbering back and forth at the foot of the bed. I was trying to prepare a speech. I wanted to document my series of harmless; faithful-husband experiments but was floundering in the sea of harmful, faithless-husband facts. I didn't know what to do.

  I knew door-slamming only postponed the ultimate confrontation and further soothing necessitated my saying something, an act I wished to avoid for a decade or two. Moreover, modest spiritual caresses would leave her free to continue thinking, and thinking, when you are guilty of something (and what man dare cast the first stone?), is dangerous sad must be stopped. Such soothing would also encourage her to consider herself the guiltless sad abused party, a truth best left unconsidered.

  I paced like a starving rat back and forth at the foot of the bed, staring at the food I wanted (Lil) and at the electric grid which would make the eating painful (Lil). Irritably I threw back the covers. Her nightgown was twisted tightly around her and pulled almost to the knees. My blood, seeing that delicious, plump, helpless rear, sent representatives racing with the news to the capillaries of my penis.

  I retrieved the scissors from the floor and with stealth and delicacy snipped the heavier material at the neck of her nightgown and with a swift yank tore it from top to bottom. Lil twisted upwards screaming and clawing.

  The further details, while perhaps of anthropological value, would read something like the dry documentation of some invasion of a Japanese Pacific island during the Second World War: circling movements; advance of right thigh to position `V'; repulse of fingernail attack on left flank; main artillery piece to attack position; main artillery piece forced to withdraw when caught in classic pincers movement by two enemy ranks, etc.

  Forced carnal knowledge, whatever else it may be, is good physical exercise and represents meaningful variation on normal marital relations. As pleasure, however, it has its Limitations. For myself, I was so distracted that night by scratches, bites and screams, and by wondering whether one could be arrested for violating one's wife (was pinching a felony or a misdemeanor?), that I must warn male readers that although desirable as tactic, as pleasure might better employ a quiet night alone with pornography.