Luke Rheinhart - The Diceman

frowned again. `Yeah, well, take it easy with my bathrobe.'

`We will,' Arlene said, wheeling around with a beaming smile, and she bounced past me back up the hall to her room.

Dr. Rhinehart returned to his own apartment approximately thirty-eight minutes after leaving it and again felt

depressed. The exhilaration he had felt a year ago upon returning from a superficially similar undertaking was absent. He cast himself into the easy chair in his living room in a tired, anxious, apathetic state such as he had not previously experienced in his dicelife. When he became aware again of his merely human anxiety, he grunted an extremely loud `Ahhggh,' and surged out of the chair to get paper, pencil and dice.

As he returned from his study to the living room, however, he was met by his wife, who had been awakened by his

loud grunt and stood in the bedroom doorway to inquire sleepily if everything was all right. `Everything is confused and unreliable,' Dr. Rhinehart said irritably. `If I could only count definitely upon either the stupidity or the intelligence of the police `Come to bed, Lukie,' his wife said and lifted her slender arms up around his neck and leaned sleepily against him. The bed warmed body that Dr. Rhinehart's hands found themselves enclosing was unconfused and reliable, and with a different sounding `Ahhhh' he lowered his head and embraced his wife.

`But I have miles to go before I sleep,' he said softly when he had broken their kiss.

`Come to bed,' Mrs. Rhinehart said. `The police will never touch you when you're in your wife's bed.'

`Had I but world enough and time-'

`There's plenty of time - come,' and she began to drag her husband into their bedroom. 'I've even dreamed of a new

option,' she said.

But Dr. Rhinehart had stopped a few feet inside the door, and, slump-shouldered and bedraggled, he said: 'But I have

miles to go before I sleep.'

Mrs. Rhinehart, still holding one of his large hands in hers, turned dreamily and smiled and yawned.

`I'll be waiting, sweetheart,' she said, and with an unintended swinging of the more desirable parts of her anatomy, she

moved to her bed and climbed in.

`Goodnight, Lil,' Dr. Rhinehart said.

`Mmmm,' she said. `Check the kids 'fore you come.'

Dr. Rhinehart, still holding in his left hand the paper, pen and two dice, walked quickly to the children's bedroom and

tiptoed in to look at Larry and Evie. They were sound asleep, Larry with his mouth open like a child drunk and Evie

with her face so buried by the sheet that he could only make out the top of her head.

`Have good dreams,' he said and silently left the room and returned to the living room.

He placed the paper, pencil and dice on the floor in front of the easy chair and then, with a sudden lunge, took four

strides toward his bedroom and stopped. Sighing, he returned to kneel on the rug beside the tools of his trade. To relax

himself and prepare for what he had to do, he performed a series of random dice exercises; four random physical

exercises, two one-minute spurts of the sinner-saint game, and one three minute period of emotional roulette - the Die

choosing self pity, an emotion he found himself expressing with enthusiasm. Then he placed the two green dice on the

easy chair in front of him and, kneeling on the rug, intoned a prayer:

Great God blob Die, I worship thee;

Awaken me this morn With thy green gaze,

Quicken my dead life With thy plastic breath,

Spill into the arid spaces of my soul Thy green vinegar.

A hundred hungry birds scatter my seed,

You roll them into cubes and plant me.

The people I fear are

Puppets poking puppets,

Playthings costumed by my mind.

When you fall,

O Die,

The strings collapse and I walk free.

I am thy grateful urn, O Die, Fill me.

Dr. Rhinehart felt a serene joy such as always came to him when he surrendered his will to the Die: the peace which

passeth understanding. He wrote upon the white, blank paper the options for his life for the next year.

If the dice total two, three or twelve: he would leave his wife and children forever. He recorded this option with dread.

He'd given it once chance in nine.

He gave one chance in five (dice total of four or five) that he would completely abandon the use of his dice for at least

three months. He desired this option as a dying man the wonder drug to end his ills and feared it as a healthy man does

a threat to his balls.

Dice total six (one chance in seven): be would begin revolutionary activity against the injustice of the established

order. He didn't know what he had in mind by the option, but it gave him pleasure to think of thwarting the police,

who were making him so uncomfortable. He began daydreaming about joining forces with Arturo or Eric until a police

siren on the street outside his apartment building so frightened him that he thought of erasing the option (the mere

writing of it might be a crime) and then decided to go quickly on to the others.

Dice total of seven (one chance in six): he would devote the entire next year to the development of dice theory and

therapy. Recording this brought such pleasant excitement that he considered giving it the totals of eight and nine as

well, but fought back such human weakness and went on.

Dice total of eight (one chance in seven): he would write an autobiographical account of this adventures.

Dice total nine, ten or eleven (one chance in four): he would leave the profession of psychiatry, including dice therapy,

for one year, letting the dice choose a new profession. He recorded this with pride; he would not be the prisoner of his

fascination for his beloved dice therapy.

Examining his six options, Dr. Rhinehart was pleased; they showed imagination and daring. Each of them represented

both threat and treat, both the danger of disaster and the possibility of new power.

He placed the paper by his side and the two green dice in front of him on the floor.

'Tuck me in, Dad,' a voice said from the other end of the room. It was his son Larry, practically asleep on his feet.

Dr. Rhinehart arose irritably, marched to the swaying boy, lifted him up into his arms and carried him back to his bed.

Larry was asleep as soon as his father had pulled the sheet up to his neck again, and Dr. Rhinehart rushed back to his

position on his knees in the living room.

The dice in position before him, he knelt silently for two minutes and prayed. He then picked up the two dice and

began shaking them gaily in the bowl of his hands.

Tremble in my hands, O Die, As I so shake in yours.

And holding the dice above his head he intoned aloud `Great bleak Blocks of God, descend, quiver, create. Into your

hands I commit my soul.'

The dice fell: a one and a two - three. He was to leave his wife and children forever.

Chapter Fifty-six

How about that?

Chapter Fifty-seven

The heavens declare the glory of Chance;

And the firmament showeth his handywork.

Day unto day uttereth accident,

And night unto night showeth whim.

There is no speech nor language

Where their voice is not heard.

Their line is gone out through all the earth,

And their deeds to the end of the world.

In them hath Chance set a tabernacle for the sun,

Whose going forth is from the end of the heaven,

And his circuit unto the ends of it:

And there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.

The law of Chance is perfect, converting the soul:

The testimony of Chance is sure, making wise the simple.

The statutes of Chance are right, rejoicing the heart:

The commandment of Chance is pure, enlightening the eyes.