Luke Rheinhart - The Diceman

`Dr. Krum said you were sick. You disappear with Blondie and then turn up sick. What happened?'

I struggled to a sitting position and dragged my legs off the bed to the floor. I looked up at her.

`It's a long story, Lil.'

`You made a pass at Blondie.'

"Longer than that, much longer.'

`I hate you.'

`Yes. It's inevitable,' I said. `I'm the Dice Man:'

`Had you met her before? I thought Fred told me he'd 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

six 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 one of shock.

`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,' because the dice . . .?' she finally said.

This time I didn't reply. Dr. Krum looked perplexed 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.

Lil looked down at the wedding ring on her left hand, felt its texture between her fingers, her face soft, wistful.

`Everything. . ' she shook her head slowly, dreamily. `Every thing between us for a year, no. No. For all, for all our

lives, becomes ashes.'

`Yes,' I said.

`Because … because you want to play your maniac, your adulterer, your hippie, your dice man.'

`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.

Chapter Forty-one

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 Shakespearian-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.

Chapter Forty-two

On the edge of the bed, alone, the party outside seeming to settle into precisely the businesslike buzz it manifested before, Luke Rhinehart sat hunched over, numbed. There was no retreat He was the Dice Man or he was no one. His body knew, dough he could not yet be aware consciously, that Luke Rhinehart was now an impossible existence. Numbed, he disturbed the Die by not consulting the watch for almost ten minutes. Then, having no place else to go, no one else to be, he took out the watch with the die and looked.