The Dice Man (53 page)

'You mixed the drinks and you left with him,' Gina said again shrilly.

'Not according to my story, Miss Potrelli. According to my story I left first and he left later.'

'Oh,' she said. 'You're a liar.'

'Let's just say we have different stories. This confuses the inspector and makes him uneasy.'

'There are already four other witnesses who claim that they saw you leave with Osterflood, Rhinehart" said the detective.

'Ahh, four! That shows initiative, Gina. It would be a shame to waste those witnesses.'

Dr. Rhinehart retrieved his die from the desk and dropped it onto the couch beside his thigh.

'I left with Osterflood, Inspector.'

'Where did you go?'

'Where did we go, Gina?'

`You took a tax-' `Shuttup! Get her out of here.'

Gina was removed from the room by the detective.

`We got in a taxi, I believe. I got off at the Lexington Avenue subway stop at 125th Street. I needed to relieve myself. Osterflood went on. He was quite drunk and I felt slightly guilty about leaving him with a suspiciously cheerful cabby, but I was drunk too. I found a urinal near-'

'Why did you lie to us the first time?'

`Who says I lied to you the first time?'

`You've just changed your story.'

'Details.'

'Gina's witnesses exposed your lie.'

`Come now, Inspector, you know full well that her four witnesses are even less reliable than the dice, and that's going some.'

`Shuttup!'

'And besides, the Die told me to change the story.'

The inspector was glaring at Dr. Rhinehart.

`You'd better consult your dice again,' he said. 'No cabby in the city remembers picking up two big white men in Harlem that evening, or for that matter any evening in the last five years. You, as a doctor, would have recognized the symptoms of strychnine poisoning as different from simple drunkenness. We know Gina and her four witnesses are lying. We know you're lying. We know Osterflood was murdered at Gina's and never left there alive.

Inspector Putt and Dr. Rhinehart stared at each other.

`Wow!' Dr. Rhinehart said after awhile. He leaned forward on the couch, wide-eyed, attentive, interested, and asked intently: `Who killed him?'

Dear Doc, The Die told me to write you. Can't think of much to say.

Die bless you, Fred Weedmuller, Porksnout, Texas.

A week after my interview with him, Inspector Putt announced to anyone who was interested that new evidence (undisclosed) indicated conclusively that Osterflood must have committed suicide probably. Privately, he informed friends and informers that it was clear he couldn't possibly get a conviction against either Gina or me. Gina wouldn't have murdered Osterflood so premeditatedly in her own apartment with another white man present, and strychnine, he noted, is not the usual mode of murder of `abused Harlem whores' Moreover, her four witnesses, while obviously they were lying, nevertheless would raise a shadow of doubt in the minds of a few radlib jurors.

Dr. Rhinehart would be impossible to convict because no jury, radlib or one hundred and ten percent American, could be expected to understand Rhinehart's motivation. The inspector admitted he himself wasn't certain he understood it. 'He did it because the dice told him to,' the D.A. would proclaim and the defense attorneys would lead the general laughter which would follow. The world was changing too rapidly for the typical juror, no matter, how American, to keep up. Moreover, even inspector Putt was beginning to doubt that Rhinehart had done it, for, though he was certainly capable of murder, Rhinehart, if the Die had told him to do it, would clearly not have done such a debauched, confused, messy, unaesthetic, incompetent job of it.

Nevertheless, Inspector Putt had called me for one last confrontation and had concluded a long lecture with the ringing words 'Someday Rhinehart, the law is going to catch up with you. Someday the furies are going to come home to roost. Someday the sins you are committing in the name of your dice games are going to be taken out of the bank. Someday, you will learn, crime, even in the United States; does not pay.'

'I'm sure you're right,' I said, shaking his hand as I left. 'But is there any hurry ?'

So my dicelife went on. I gave the Die one chance in six that I do everything in my power to bring Osterflood back to life again, but the option lost out to another one-in-six shot: that I spend three days in mourning for Frank, and that I compose a few prayers and parables for the occasion.

On January 1, 1971, I. had my third annual Fate Day to determined my long-range role for the year. The Die was given the options that (1) sometime that year I marry Linda Reichman, Terry Tracy, Miss Reingold, or a woman chosen at random (I felt that if I couldn't make a go of a dice-marriage with someone, then the nuclear family might be in danger); (2) I give up the dice for the year and begin an entirely new career of some sort (this no longer frightening option was inspired by Fuigi Arishi's article I had read that day on `The Withering Away of the Die'); (3) I begin revolutionary activity against the established clods of the world, my purpose being to expose hypocrisy and injustice, shame the unjust, awaken and arouse the oppressed and, in general, to wage an unending war against crime: namely, to smash society as radically as I am trying to smash society in me' (I'd read a month or two before that Eric Cannon and Arturo Jones had formed an underground revolutionary group and the memory that day made me feel heroic: I wasn't sure what my words meant that I do; but the ring of them made me sit proud on the living room rug where I was preparing to cast the dice); (4) I work during the year on books and articles and novels and stories about whatever the Die dictated, completing at least the equivalent of two books (I resented the bum job of publicity work that was being done for our Dice Centers and the DICELIFE Foundation and vaguely pictured myself coming to the rescue); (5) I continue my multiple activities in promoting diceliving throughout the world, the nature of my contribution to be determined by the Die (it's what I most felt like doing: Linda and Jake and Fred and Lil were all sporadically part of our diceteam, and the dicelife without other dicepeople is often lonely); and (6) I spend the whole year limiting my options to the duration of one day only, so that, indeed (to quote the inspired rhetoric of my '71 Fate Day), 'each day's dawning bring a new birth, while others ignore it and grow old.'

(This last option fascinated me since I always find long-range options something of a drag: they tend to make me too patterned, even if it is the pattern of the Die.) But the Die, testing me, tumbled down a 'four' : that 'I work during the year on various writing projects.'

Two subsequent dice decisions soon determined that I was to complete sometime during the year 'an autobiography of exactly 200,000 words' (so I've had this stupid thing barging in on my days most of the year) and that I worked on other Die-selected work when appropriate (namely when the Die and I felt like it).

Of course writing is hardly a full-time job and I continued randomly seeing my friends, working sporadically with Dice Centers and dicegroups, occasionally lecturing, whimsically playing, occasional new roles, occasionally practicing my dice exercises, and generally leading a very enjoyable, repetitious, consistently inconsistent random sporadic unpredictable dicelife.

Then, naturally, Chance intervened.

RELIGION FOR OUR TIME presents [The camera pans from one figure to the next of the five people seated on the slightly raised stage in front of the fifty or so people in the audience.] Father John Wolfe, assistant professor of theology at Fordham University; Rabbi Eli Fishman', chairman of the Ecumenical Center for a More United Society; Dr. Eliot Dart, professor of psychology at Princeton University and noted atheist; and Dr. Lucius M. Rhinehart, psychiatrist and controversial founder of the Religion of the Die.

`Welcome to another live, free, open, spontaneous and completely unrehearsed discussion in our series about Religion for Our Time. Our Subject today IS THE RELIGION OF THE DIE A COP-OUT? [Image of Mrs. Wippleton.] `Our moderator for today's program: Mrs. Sloan Wippleton, former screen and television actress, wife of noted financier and socialite Gregg Wippleton and mother of four lovely children. Mrs. Wippleton is also chairman of the First Presbyterian Church's Committee for Religious Tolerance. Mrs. Wippleton.'

She bursts into a smile and speaks with enthusiasm.

`Thank you. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. We are fortunate today to have a very interesting subject for discussion and one I'm sure you've all wanted to learn more about: the Religion of the Die. We also have a very distinguished panel to discuss it. Dr. Rhinehart [image shifts briefly to Dr. Rhinehart, who, dressed totally in black with a heavy black turtleneck sweater and suit, looks vaguely ministerial. He chews on but does not smoke a large pipe throughout] is one of the most controversial figures of the last year. His papers and books on dice theory and therapy have scandalized the psychiatric world, and his readings from The Book of the Die have scandalized the religious world. He has earned from the American Association of Practicing Psychiatrists a Special Condemnation. Nevertheless, many individuals have rallied round Dr. Rhinehart and his religion, some of them not in mental hospitals. Last year Dr. Rhinehart and his followers began opening Dice Centers called Centers for Experiments in Totally Random Environments and thousands of people have gone through these centers, some reporting deeply religious experiences, but others suffering severe breakdowns. No matter how opinions differ, all agree that Dr. Rhinehart is a very controversial man.

`Dr. Rhinehart, I'd like to open our discussion by asking you our central question for today, and then asking each of our other guests to comment on the same thing: "Is your religion of the Die a Cop-out?"

`Sure,' says Dr. Rhinehart, chewing contentedly on his pipe, then he remains silent. Mrs. W. looks first expectant and then nervous.

`How is it a cop-out?'

`In three ways.'

Again R. chews wordlessly on his pipe, serene and satisfied.

`In what three ways?'

R. lowers his head and the camera pans down to see him rubbing something between his hands and then drop onto the small table in front of him a die; it is a six. When the camera pans back up to his face the viewer sees R. looking directly out 'from the screen. With a benevolent glow, he holds his pipe steady and smokeless, looking at the viewer. Five seconds, ten seconds pass. Fifteen.

`Dr. Rhinehart?' says a feminine voice off-screen. Image shifts to a serious Mrs. W. Then back to R. Then to Mrs. W., frowning, then to R., exhaling smokeless air from an open mouth. Then, uncertainly, appears the image of Father Wolfe, who looks as if he's concentrating on what he's going to say.

`Rabbi Fishman. Perhaps you'd like to lead off today,' says the off-screen feminine voice.

Rabbi Fishman, short, dark and fortyish, directs his words intently first toward Mrs. W. and then to R. `Thank you, Mrs. Wippleton. I find everything Dr. Rhinehart has said this afternoon extremely interesting, but he seems to be missing the chief point: the religion of the Die is a resignation from the status of man: it is a worship of chance, and as such, a worship of that which has always been man's adversary. Man is above all else the great organizer, the great integrator, while a dicelife as I understand it, is a destroyer of integration and unity. It is a cop-out from human life, but not into the life of random nature as some of Dr. Rhinehart's critics have maintained. No. Nature, too, is an organizer and an integrator. But the religion of the Die represents in a way the worship of disintegration, dissolution and death. It is anti- I find it another sign of the sickness of our times.'

[Camera pans smoothly back to Mrs. W.] `That's very interesting, Rabbi Fishman. You've certainly given us much food for thought. Dr. Rhinehart, would you like to comment?'

'Sure.'

R. stares again serenely out at the television audience, benignly chewing on his pipe. Five seconds, ten, twelve.

`Father Wolfe.' says Mrs. W. in a high-pitched voice.

`My turn?'

[Image of round, red-faced blond-haired Father Wolfe, looking at first uncertainly off toward Mrs. W., then staring into the camera like a prosecuting attorney.]

`Thank you. The religion of the Die is, no matter how Dr. Rhinehart may try to weasel out of it this afternoon, the worship of the Antichrist. There is a moral law, er, a moral order to the universe which God created, and the surrender of one's freewill to the decisions of dice is the most outrageous and complete crime against ah God that I can imagine. It is to surrender to sin without raising a fist. It is the act of a ah coward.

`Cop-out is too mild a word. The religion of the Die is a crime, against ah God and against the dignity and grandeur of man created in ah God's image. Free will distinguishes man from ur God's other creatures. To surrender that gift may well be that sin against the Holy Spirit which is unforgivable. Dr. Rhinehart may be well educated, he may well be a medical doctor, but his so-called er religion of the Die is the most unh poisonous, unh obnoxious and satanic thing I have ever heard of ah.'

`May I comment on that?' says R.'s voice from off-screen, and his image appears, wordless and relaxed, staring out, obviously not intending to speak a single further word. It is as if the channel had been switched every time his face appears on the screen.

Five, seven, eight, ten seconds pass.

`Dr: Dart,' says a subdued female voice.

Dr. Dart appears, young, dynamic, handsome, cigarette smoking, nervous, intense, brilliant.

'I find Dr. Rhinehart's performance today rather amusing, and perfectly consistent with the clinical picture I have formed of him through a reading of his work and through discussions with people who have known him. We can't understand the religion of the Die and the peculiar way it is a cop-out unless we can understand the pathology of its creator and of its followers. Basically, as Dr. Rhinehart himself has acknowledged, he is a schizoid. [The image on the screen becomes that of Dr. Rhinehart, benignly looking at the viewer, and remains through the next part of Dr. Dart's analysis.]