The Diceman

by Luke Rheinhart

  Dr. Rhinehart walked away alone to the door.

  `A genuine fool,' he said. `A few genuine fools. A few a generation, a few per nation. Until the discovery of the Die it was too much to ask.'

  With a final smile at Dr. Ecstein, he left the room.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  [Being a Special Die-Dictated Dramatization of the Judicial Deliberations of the Executive Committee of PANY as Recreated from the Tape Recording and Testimony of Dr. Jacob Ecstein.]

  For several moments the five members of the committee sat in silence, broken only by the harsh, uneven 'breathing of the sleeping Dr. Moon. Doctors Weinburger, Cobblestone and Mann, were all staring at the door which had closed behind Dr. Rhinehart. Dr. Peerman broke the silence `I believe we should conclude our business: 'Ah. Ah. Ah, yes,' said Dr. Weinburger. `The vote. We must have the vote.'

  But he remained staring at the door. Thank God, he's insane,' he added.

  `The vote,' repeated Dr. Peerman in his shrill voice.

  `Yes, of course. We are now voting on Dr. Peerman's motion that our committee expel Dr. Rhinehart for the reasons

  listed and request that the AMA consider taking action against him as well. Dr. Peerman?'

  `I cast my vote in favor of my motion,' he said solemnly to the chairman.

  `Dr. Cobblestone?'

  The old doctor was fingering nervously the cane held erect between his legs and staring blankly at the empty chair of

  Dr. Rhinehart.

  `I vote aye,' he said neutrally.

  `Two votes to condemn,' announced Dr. Weinburger. `Dr. Mann?'

  Dr. Mann shrugged his right shoulder violently and jarred Dr. Moon into a more or less vertical position, Moon's eyes

  flaming open briefly and erratically.

  `I still think we ought to have asked Dr. Rhinehart quietly to resign,' said Dr. Mann. `I make a pro forma vote of no.'

  `I understand, Tim,' said Dr. Weinburger sympathetically. `And you, Dr. Moon?'

  Dr. Moon's body was balanced erect, and his eyelids slowly rose, revealing the red coals of his dying eyes. His face

  looked as if it had suffered all the miseries of every human that had ever lived.

  `Dr. Moon; do you vote yes to the motion to expel this man we've been listening to, or do you vote no in order to

  permit him to continue?'

  Dr. Moon's fierce red eyes seemed the only things alive in his wrinkled, ravaged face, but they were staring at nothing,

  or at the past or at everything. His mouth was open; he drooled.

  `Dr. Moon?' repeated Dr. Weinburger a third time.

  Slowly, so slowly that it must have taken thirty or forty seconds for him to complete the motion, Dr. Moon raised his

  two arms up over his head, feebly closed the palms of his hands into a half-fist, and then, mouth still open, dropped

  them with a crash onto the table in front of him.

  'NO!' he thundered.

  There was a shocked silence, broken only by the explosive gasps of Dr. Moon's now totally sporadic breathing.

  `Would you care to explain your vote?'

  Dr. Weinburger asked gently after a while.

  Dr. Moon's body was beginning to slump and slide toward Dr. Mann's shoulder again and his fierce, all-seeing eyes

  were now only half open.

  `My vote's obvious,' he said weakly. `Get on with it'

  Dr Weinburger stood up with a dignified smile on his face.

  `The vote on the motion to expel Dr. Rhinehart being tied at two to two, the chairman is obliged to cast his vote to

  break the tie.'

  He paused briefly and poked formally at the crumpled papers in front of him. `I vote yes. Consequently, by a vote of

  three to two, Dr. Rhinehart is expelled from PANY. A letter will be sent to -'

  `Point of order,' came Dr. Moon's weak voice, his eyes now open just a slit, as if permitting people only the tiniest of

  glances into his red inferno.

  `Beg pardon?' said the surprised chairman.

  "Cording to our, bylaws . . . man presenting charges 'gainst colleague can't . . . vote . .. on motion to accept . . .

  charges.'

  `I'm afraid I don't understan-' `Created bylaw m'self in thirty-one,' continued Dr. Moon with a gasp. He seemed to be

  trying to push himself away from Dr. Mann's shoulder but lacked the strength. `Peerman brought charges. Peerman

  can't vote.'

  No one spoke. There was only the hoarse explosive rattle of Dr. Moon's occasional breath.

  Dr. Mann finally said in a very quiet voice `1n that case the vote is two to two.'

  'Vote's two to one for acquittal,' said Dr. Moon and, after a desperate, hollow, rattling intake of air, he finished

  `Chairman of committee can't vote except to break ties.'

  `Dr. Moon, sir,' said Dr. Weinburger weakly, bracing himself against the table to keep himself from fainting: `Could

  you please consider changing your vote or at least explaining it?'

  The red coals of Dr. Moon's dying eyes blazed forth one last time from the face which looked as if it had suffered all

  the miseries of every human that had ever lived.

  `M'vote's obvious,' he said.

  Dr. Weinburger began re-crumpling the papers which he had finished neatening in front of him.

  `Dr. Moon, sir,' he said again weakly. 'Would you consider changing your vote in order to … simplify … to simplify …

  Dr. Moon! Dr. Moon!' But the silence in the room was total.

  Was total.

  Chapter Fifty

  Dr. Moon's death in the line of duty was greeted with mixed reviews in the psychiatric world of New York as was my

  momentary escape from the fate I so obviously deserved. I quietly resigned from PANY, but Dr. Weinburger wrote a personal letter to the president of the AMA; my removal from the elite sections of civilization continued its slow, rational, bureaucratic course.

  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 thank #161;you'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" #161;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 hatred 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 h
er, 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.