The Dice Man (23 page)

`This is my fourth semester at Hunter. I'm majoring in sociology I think. Oh! - Er.'

`What's the matter?'

For a moment I thought I must have spilled her drink as I handed it to her, but it wasn't that. My fly wasn't open. But she looked frightened.

`Nothing,' she said and took a deep drink from her gin and tonic. `But. .. how did you ... I mean why did you think I went to college?'

'You seem intelligent,' I said. `You couldn't know all about the Renaissance just from high school.'

She looked away from me at the grimy, unused fireplace and didn't seem to be as cheerful as she had been.

`Doesn't it seem ... strange that a college girl should be ... here?'

'Ah. Her breach of role playing was bothering her.

`Certainly not,' I said firmly. 'According to my fried, almost all the call girls he knows are college students, many of them straight 'A' students. Tuition costs being what they are, what can a girl do?'

This line of reasoning seemed to take some time to absorb. She blushed and turned away at the phrase call girl, but finally said quietly that's true.'

`Also,' I said, `college girls learn how irrational all sexual inhibitions are. They learn how safe sexual intercourse can be and how profitable.'

`But she said. `But - of course some girls still fear that God - that sex -'

'You're right there, of course. But even many deeply religious college girls have also become call girls.'

She now looked up at me questioningly.

'They realize,' I went on, `that God always examines the reasons we do anything. If a girl gives her body to a man to give him pleasure and to earn money so that she may educate herself and thus increase her ability to serve God she is actually performing a good act.'

She looked away nervously. - `But God says adultery is a sin,' she said.

'Ah, but the Hebrew word for adultery, fornication, actually means sexual intercourse had only for pleasure. The Commandment actually should be translated: "Though shall not selfishly give yourself in adultery."

Many of the girls at LIU in Bible History 162 have been quite surprised and pleased to realize the true nature of God's command.'

She was hunched over on the couch beside me drinking her gin with absentminded abandonment. She stared into her glass as if it might hold the ultimate answers.

`But God says that...' she started. `Paul says that . . . the Church says that-'

`Only selfish pleasure. The Hebrew is absolutely explicit. In Second Corinthians, verse eight, the text reads: "She who lets a man know her for the glory of God is blessed, but woe unto her who in selfishness commits adultery. Verily the very earth will swallow her up."

Again hesitation. Then:

'The glory of God?' she asked.

`Saint Thomas Aquinas interprets this as meaning any act which is intended to further the individual's ability to glorify God. He cites the case of Bathsheba's daughter who gave herself to the Aramite that she might convert him. He also cites the prostitute Magdalen of the New Testament who, according to tradition, continued to sell herself to men that she might better know them and testify to the Divinity of Christ.'

`Really?' she said sharply, as if at last Truth were being touched.

`In Dante's Paradisio, which you may have read, the religious prostitutes are placed in the third sphere of heaven, just below the saints, but above the nuns and virgins. In the words of Beatrice, his guide, "A fugitive and cloistered virtue can never reach as close to God as an active one. If the soul is pure the body cannot be soiled."

`Oh I read that. Was that Dante?'

`Paradisio, Canto Seventeen I think. Milton paraphrased this verse in his famous essay on divorce.'

`It's funny...' she said and jiggled the remaining ice cubes in her glass before taking another swallow.

`The Church has naturally played down this tradition,' I said, taking a satisfied swallow from my own drink. `It has felt that young girls might be seduced unnecessarily in their dream of converting men, and although such an act would not be sinful, it was decided to create the impression that all sex was evil. The masses, of course, have thus lived in ignorance of God's true purpose.'

At last she looked up at me and smiled sadly.

`I'm going to take more history,' she said.

I turned to her, and with my right hand brushed away her hair from her cheek.

`I'd love to have a student like you in one of my classes. I get so lonely for someone with whom I can talk about things.'

'Do you?'

`I feel spiritually lost, alone - since losing my wife. I've needed the warmth of a woman's mind and body, but until this evening all I've ever met were dull, pedantic women that weren't able to . . . unselfishly give themselves to me.' `I like you very much,' she said tentatively.

'Ah Terry, Terry...'

I took her in my arms, spilling the last of her drink onto the floor and couch. I hugged her tenderly, my eyes, well above the level of her head, fixing idly on the manila folder on the bookcase. The radio was blaring, `Why Don't We Do It in the Road?'

`Please, my darling,' I said, `come with me now to the bed room.'

She held herself still in my arms and didn't answer. The music stopped, and the radio announcer began running off at the mouth about the incredible power of Gleem toothpaste: he followed that without pausing for breath with kind words for Robert Hall's.

`You're so big,' she finally said.

`I have a great need for you.'

She remained still. I released my embrace and looked down at her. She looked up at me nervously and said: `Kiss me first' She reached her arms up around my neck, and as we kissed I slid heavily forward on top of her. We writhed together for more than a minute.

`Am I too heavy?' I asked.

`A little bit,' she said.

`Let's go to the bedroom.'

We disentangled and stood up.

`Where to?' she asked, as if we were about to begin a long hike.

This way,' I said, and after we had negotiated the ten paces into the bedroom I added: `That's the bathroom.'

We look at each other. `You undress there. I'll undress here.'

`Thank you,' she said and walked into the bathroom, her shoulder just bumping the doorway as she entered. I undressed myself, dropping my clothes neatly in select piles between the bed and an old walnut dresser. Inside the king-size double bed, I but my hand behind my head and watched the ceiling swirl like cosmic nebulae. Five minutes later the nebulae were still providing the only active entertainment.

`Terry?' I called neutrally.

`I can't,' she said from inside the bathroom.

`What?'

I said loudly.

She came out fully dressed, her eyes red and the lipstick on her lower lip completely chewed away. Standing stiffly halfway between the bathroom door and the bed she said: `It's been a mistake. I'm not who you think I am.'

`Then who are you?' `I'm - I'm nobody.'

`Oh no, Terry, you're wonderful, whoever you are.'

`I'm - but I can't go to bed with you.'

`Ah Terry,' I said and started to get out of bed when I saw by her facial expression that she might run. Sitting up, I said: `Well then, who are you?'

'I'm - I was sent here as part of a - an experiment of the Columbia Medical School.'

`No!' I said; flabbergasted.

`Yes. I'm really just a college girl, a pretty innocent college girl, I guess. I wanted to do the experiment the best I could, but I can't.'

`My God, Terry, that's incredible, that's wonderful. So was I.'

She looked at me blankly.

`So - were - you - what?'

'I was sent here as part of an investigation into the nature of human sexuality conducted by the Columbia Medical School. I'm Father Forbes of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.'

She stared at my bulky, nude torso.

`I see,' she said.

`The quirks of fate have sent together two innocents!' I raised my eyes to the ceiling briefly; it responded with a swirl.

`I've got to go,' she answered.

`My child, you can't go. Don't you see there is the hand of God in this. Have you ever given yourself to a man?'

`No, Father, and I must go.'

`My child; you must stay. By everything that is holy you must stay.'

I rose with stately dignity from the bed and with a look of great fatherliness and agape; arms outstretched in welcome, I approached Miss T.

`No,' she said and held up one arm limply.

I never hesitated, but embraced her fully and fatherly, stroking her hair with one hand and her back with the other.

`My sweet child you are my salvation. Had I sinned with a prostitute I would be forever damned; the woman would have been acting selfishly and I would have been a cause of her sin. But sexual congress with a Catholic girl giving herself against her will, and thus unselfishly, is to liberate you from sin and me from corruption.'

She stood stiffly and unyielding in my loose embrace. Then, she began crying.

`I don't believe you're a priest, I want to go home.' She huddled and sobbed against my upper belly.

`In domine Pater incubus dolorarum; et filia spiritu grandus magnum est. Non solere sanctum raro punctilios insularum, noncuninglingus variorum delictim. Habere est cogitare.'

She looked up at me.

`But why are you here?'

`Manes Patri, manes Patri. For you, my child, that we may come together in a love spiritus delicti et corpus boner.'

`You're so strange,' she said.

`This is a sacred moment. Go, and come.'

When she came out of the bathroom a second time two minutes later she was modestly holding a towel against her belly, but exposing two cheerful, round little pink breasts.

I threw back the covers on her side and she hopped in, a ten year-old child hopping into bed with her teddy bears.

Terry Tracy fulfilled her spiritual duties, my friends, with admirable warmth, poise, obedience and skill: Too much skill. When I had difficulty penetrating her at first, I encouraged her to baptize the uncircumcised child with the sacred water of her mouth and this she proceeded to do so devotedly that it was some several minutes before I recalled my central quest. By that time I was too spiritually primed to exert any pressure without the likelihood of my achieving immediate and complete divine grace. She sympathetically consoled me with her hands and then lowered her sacred mouth over the trembling child, bathing it: she spoke in tongues. I was groaning with total incoherence and indignity as one gets during such emotional services when I felt the Holy Spirit ascending. I tried to withdraw the uncircumcised child from the holy temple and whispered `Stop!' but the angel did not cease her ministrations. The nebulae, the child and I all exploded at once in a divine fusion of feeling: I plunged away in her mouth. After ten or fifteen seconds during which I was completely out of the mere world of mortal men, I returned from my spiritual journey.

Her mouth and hands were still warmly engulfing my penis and balls as if nothing had happened. I lay still for another half-minute and then putting a hand on Terry's hand I said 'Terry.'

She raised her head from me for the first time in three or four minutes, but without even turning to me she swung her behind around much nearer me and said Touch me: Oh please touch me.'

When I put my hands between her legs and began to stroke and poke, she pressed back fiercely. This time I slid a finger inside the appropriate and proper opening. Her mouth was trying to swallow a relatively relaxed and thoroughly baptized member. She rolled over and for the first time made a groan. Of sorts: it sounded distinctly like one of disappointment.

I was feeling depressed, guilty, angry and inadequate, but being the dice man playing the professor-priest-customer I merely rolled away from her and told her that it had been delicious.

She didn't say anything. We lay in silence for ten minutes. I was determined to ram home to victory as soon as I could rally my red army back into the peninsula, but for the time being all I could do was lie there and feel inadequate. I didn't even wonder what she was thinking.

`Can you try again?' she said.

We turned toward each other and fell into a passionate half hate embrace, until she clawed at my shoulder to tell me I was squeezing too tight. After a few minutes of love play I lifted her up on to her hands and knees and invited myself to try to enter from the rear. We placed the dragon's head at the mouth of the cave and tried to encourage him to enter. It was like pushing a dog down the cellar stairs for a bath. We pressed again. A marvelous thing happened: my dragon suddenly sprung past the outside barrier and plunged in a full three-quarter inch. She screamed and fell forward. I began to apologize, but she got immediately back on her knees and was groping back between her legs: a steering committee. After a few more charges, the dragon had disappeared deep into the cave and seemed to be nuzzling contentedly at her stomach. My big hands manipulating her easily at the waist, I felt the present experience was well worth the wait. It was magnificent. The apartment doorbell rang.

For a moment both of us were so intent on the pleasure of my filling her insides that the noise didn't register. When it did, she raised her head like a deer smelling a rifle and said: `What's that?'

Stupidly: `The doorbell.'

She pulled herself down and away from me and rolled over. She was frightened.

`Who is it?'

Stupidly: `I don't know.'

Then, regaining my superman self: `It must be someone at the wrong apartment'

`No. You'd better go see.'

Standing at the door was a short, thickset young man wearing glasses. He seemed stunned to see me.

`Is this-' he glanced again at the door I was holding slightly ajar. `Is this apartment 4-G?'

Not remembering, I leaned my naked torso out and around to look at what he had just looked at. It was 4-G.

`Yes; it is,' I said helpfully. He stared at me.

`I thought - I was supposed - to meet someone here at nine o'clock.'

`Nine o'clock?'

I was beginning to understand.