Luke Rheinhart - The Diceman

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.'

`You 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.