The Dice Man (30 page)

I asked.

`Presently ve teach homing pigeons to find home. Then ve move pigeon long vay avay and move the home. Pigeon gets very vorried.'

`What problems have you encountered?'

I asked.

`Ve lose pigeons.'

Jake laughed, but when I glanced at him he cut it short and squinted nervously at me. Dr. Krum stroked his beard, focused his eyes intently on my knees and went on.

'We lose pigeons. It is nothing. Ve have many pigeons, but chickens could not fly. Pigeons are smart but ve may have to remove their vings,' he frowned.
Dr. Mann joined us, glass in hand, Jake asked a question and I removed my watchcase and glanced at the single die for a second role.

The tall, gaunt Mr. Thornton arrived, dispensing tiny hors d'oeuvres, crackers with minute pearl-like deposits on them like fish eggs waiting to be fertilized. Each of my three colleagues mechanically took one, Jake downing his in a swallow, Dr. Mann briefly holding his under his nose and then chewing it for the next ten minutes and Dr. Krum taking an intense experimental bite, like a chicken pecking at seed.

`Dr. Rhinehart?'

Mr. Thornton asked, holding the silver tray and its obscene deposits up toward my chest where I could see it.

`Ununununun,' I vibrated noisily, my lower lip hanging sloppily and my eyes attempting an animal vacancy. With my huge right paw I swept up and clutched six or seven crackers, almost upsetting the tray, and stuffed them into my mouth, pieces falling in a splendid dry waterfall down my shirtfront to the floor.

A flicker of human surprise crossed for a millisecond the erased face of Mr. Thornton as he looked into my vacant gaze and watched me chew ineptly, a bit of moist semi-chewed cracker dangling briefly from my lip before falling forever to the deep brown rug below.

`Unununun,' I vibrated again.

'Thank you, sir,' said Mr. Thornton and turned to the ladies.

Dr. Krum was emphatically stabbing the air in front of Dr. Mann's stomach as if performing some magic rite before making an incision.

`Proof! Proof! They do not know the meaning of the verd. They raise money with bribes, they are bankers, barbarians, businessmen, beasts, they-'

`Shit, who cares?' interrupted Jake. `If they want to get rich and famous, let 'em. We're doing the real work.'

He squinted at me; or was it a wink? `That is true. That is true. Scientists like us and businessmen like them have nutting in common.'

'un unun,' I said, looking at Dr. Krum, my mouth half open like a fish gasping wide-eyed on the deck of a ship. Dr. Krum looked up at me seriously and respectfully and then stroked his beard three, four times.

`There are two classes of men: the creators and the - how you say - drudges. Is possible to tell immejetly creators. Immejetly, drudges.'

`Ununununun.'

`I do not know your verk, Dr. Rhinehart, but from the moment you speak to me, I know, I know.'

`Unnh.'

`Dr. Rhinehart has the brains all right,' Dr. Mann said. `But he's got a writing block. He prefers to play games. He expects every article to surpass Freud.'

`He ought, he ought. Is good to surpass Freud.'

`Luke's got a book in the works about sadism,' said Jake, `which may make Stekel and Reich read like Grandma Moses.'

It was a wink.

They all three looked up expectantly at me. I continued to stare vacant-eyed, mouth agape, at Dr. Krum. There was a silence.

`Yes, yes. Is interesting, sadism,' Dr. Krum said, and his face twitched.

`Unnnnnnnh,' I vibrated, but steadier.

Jake and Dr. Krum looked at me hopefully while Dr. Mann took a graceful sip of his wine.

`You have been verking lung on sadism?'

I stared back at him.

Dr. Mann suddenly excused himself and went to greet three more arrivals at the party, and Arlene took Jake's arm and whispered something in his ear. He turned reluctantly to talk to her. Dr. Krum was still looking at me. I was only half conscious of the conversation; I was focused on the crumb in his beard.

`Unununun,' I said. It was a little like a faulty transformer.

`Vunderful - I thought myself of experimenting with sadism in chickens, but is rare. Is rare.'

Dr. Mann returned with two other people, a man and a woman, and introduced them to us. One was Fred Boyd, a young psychologist from Harvard I knew and liked, and the other was his date, a plump, pleasant blonde with a creamsmooth complexion - a Miss Welish. She reached out her hand when she was introduced to me, and when I failed to grasp it, she blushed.

Looking at her I said: `Ununununun.'

She blushed again.

`Hi, Luke, how's it going?' asked Fred Boyd. I turned to him blankly.

`How did Herder do with his grant application to Stonewall?' Dr. Mann asked Fred.

Not so good,' Fred answered. `They wrote that their funds are tied up this year and '

`Is that the Dr. Krum?' a voice asked at my elbow.

I looked down at Miss Welish and then over at Dr. Krum. The crumb was still in his beard, although better hidden now.

'Blnnh,' I asked.

'Fred thinks so too,' Miss Welish said and she turned us aside from the other conversation. `He says one reason he admires you is that you don't stand for any nonsense.'

Impulsively I lifted one great paw and dangled it loosely over her shoulder. She was wearing a silver, high-necked dress and the shimmering scales were rough against my wrist.

`I beg your pardon,' she said, and when she backed away my paw slid down over a breast and swung briefly like a pendulum at my side.

She blushed and glanced quickly at the three men talking nearby.

`Fred says that Dr. Krum is very good at what he does, but that what he does isn't really important. What do you think? '

`Unn,' I said loudly and stamped one giant foot.

`Oh me too. I don't like animal experimenters myself. I've been doing social work in Staten Island now for two years and there's so much to be done with people.'

She looked now over at the couch where Dr. Felloni, the elderly lady and the thin old big deal were talking: Miss Welish seemed to be relaxing in my company.

`Even here, in this very room, there are people whose lives are unfulfilled, people who need help.'

I was silent, but a bit of drool escaped from my lower lip and begun its pilgrimage down my shirt front.

`Unless we can learn to relate to each other,' Miss Welish went on, `to be aware of each other, all the chicken cures in the world won't help.'

I was staring at Arlene's balloons undulating in the light of the chandelier. A small orgasm of saliva spilled again from my lower lip.

`What fascinates me about you psychiatrists is the way you hold yourselves in, remain detached. Don't you ever feel the suffering you have to deal with?'

Miss Welish turned toward me again and grimaced at the sight of my tie and shirt front.

I began groping clumsily in my pocket for my watchcase with the die.

`Don't you feel the suffering?' Miss Welish repeated.

Pulling out the watchcase I let my head twitch three times sideways and grunted a single, 'Un.'

`Oh God, you men are so hard.'

I slowly raised my lower jaw; it ached from its drooped position. Running my tongue over my dry upper lip, I used my handkerchief to wipe the saliva from my chest and turned my ryes full on Miss Welish.

`What time is it?' she asked.

`Time for us to stop playing word games and get down to business,' I said.

`I think so too. I can't stand cocktail-party chatter,' she looked pleased that we were at last going to be above it all.

`What's underneath that lovely dress?'

`You like it? Fred bought it for me at Ohrbach's. Don't you like the way it - glimmers?'

She gave the upper part of her body a little shake: her dress shimmered and her chubby arms vibrated.

`You're built, baby - Look, what's your first name?' 'Joya. It's corny, but I like it.'

`Joya. It's a beautiful name. You're beautiful. Your skin is incredibly smooth and creamy. I'd love to run my tongue over it.'

I reached my hand up and caressed her cheek and then the back of her neck. She reddened again.

`I was born with it, I guess. My mother has a lovely complexion and Dad too. In fact, Dad-'

`Are your thighs and your belly and your breasts that same creamy white color?'

`Well. .. I guess they are. Except when I get a tan.'

`I'd love to be able to run my hands over your whole body.'

`It's nice. When I put suntan lotion on, it feels so smooth.'

I lowered my lids a little and tried to look sexy.

'You've stopped drooling,' she said.

'Look, Joya, this cocktail-party chatter is giving me a headache, Can't we go someplace for a few minutes where we can be alone?'

I edged her away toward a hallway, which I knew led to Dr. Mann's office.

`Oh talk talk talk. It gets so sickening after a while.'

`Let me show you Dr. Mann's office. He has some fascinating illustrated books on primitive sexual practices.'

'No pictures of chickens?' and she laughed happily at herself, and I laughed too. Dr. Felloni nodded her head at us as we passed the couch, and Jake squinted over an Important Person's shoulder as we passed behind the Krum group and Arlene jiggled her breasts slightly and smiled and we were down the hall and into Dr. Mann's office. I heard a shrill squeak when we entered and saw then that Dr. Boggles and Miss Reingold were seated on the floor with a pair of green dice between them, and Boggles, with two-thirds of his clothes removed, was just reaching triumphantly to remove Miss Reingold's (smiling triumphantly) blouse.

As we backed out, Miss Welish said: `Oh that's disgusting. In Dr. Mann's study! That's disgusting.'

`You're right, Joya, let's go to the bathroom.'

`The bathroom?'

'It's down this way.'

`What are you talking about?'

`A place to talk privately.'

`Oh.'

She had stopped in the middle of the hall now and her hands were both clenching her drink. `No,' she said. `I want to get back to the party.'

`Joya, all I want to do is use your beautiful body. It won't take long.'

`What will we talk about?'

'What? We'll talk about Harry Stack Sullivan's theory of post-operative malaise. Come on.'

As she still remained immobile I realized I was being entirely too middle-class for the uninhibited sex maniac the Die certainly had in mind and, when Miss' Welish began talking of going back to the living room again, I strode forward, knocked her drink to the floor and tried to kiss her powerfully on the mouth.

The explosion of pain in my balls was so intense that for a moment I thought I had been shot. I was blinded with pain and staggered back against the wall with a thud. With the fierce willpower of a saint I forced my eyes open and saw the shimmering silvery back of Miss Welish returning toward the living room - Thank God! - leaving me alone - with my disaster.

I assumed I wouldn't be able to move from my folded-up position for a month and wondered vaguely if Mr. Thornton would dust me regularly. The question also came to my mind how an `uninhibited sex maniac' would react to a major kick in the balls. The answer seemed unequivocal: maniac, gentle Jesus, psychotic hippie, mute moron, Jake Ecstein, Hugh Hefner, Lao-Tzu, Norman Vincent Peale, Billy Graham all would react as I, simple, bespectacled Luke Rhinehart, was acting. Although both my hands were at the scene of the accident, they weren't touching anything; they seemed to be there to do something if anything could ever be done - say next month. Yet, I couldn't force my hands back to a different position. Dr. Krum and Arlene Ecstein were coming down the hall. I tried to straighten up and almost screamed. They stared down at the broken fragments of glass and then stopped in front of me.

`Nasty stomach-ache,' I said. `Severe abdominal cramps. May need an anesthetic.'

`Veil, vell. Tummy-ache, you say?'

`Lower tummy, abdomen, help.' I was whispering.

`Luke, what game are you playing now?' Arlene said and looked down at me (I was folded down a full foot and a half from my normal height) with a bemused smile.

`You're - you're terrific, baby,' I gasped. `Take off - that dress.'

I collapsed slowly sideways to the floor, the pain in my elbow being an almost blissful distraction from the other.

I heard Fred Boyd's voice from farther up the hall asking, `What happened?' and then heard him almost directly over me, laughing.

`I think he's been shot,' Dr. Krum said. `Is serious.'

`Oh, he'll survive,' Fred said, and I felt his hands on one of my arms and then Arlene's on the other, and Fred lifted one arm around his shoulder and dragged me into a bedroom. They threw me on to the bed.

The pain was, in fact, subsiding, and after the three had left, I was able to move a bit, my eyes mostly, but it was progress. Then I remembered it was time for a fresh consultation of the Die and, shuddering at the possibility of a second round of uninhibited sex maniac, I painfully drew the fake watch case out of my pocket and looked: a three: the honest dice man.

I lay back on the bed for a while and stared at the ceiling. I heard voices passing by out in the hall and then only the blurred distant buzz from the living room. The door opened and Lil came in.
`What happened?' she asked sharply. She was immaculately beautiful in her black, low-cut cocktail dress, but her eyes and mouth were set and cold. I looked up at her and felt a hollowness inside me: what a time and place for this.

`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?'