The Search for the Dice Man (12 page)

By the time the automatic timer signalled the end of the two minutes, Honoria felt tears glistening in her eyes. She rarely cried.

Way stopped as abruptly as he had begun, becoming neutral as quickly as he had become passionate. ‘Your turn,’ he said, pushing back his mop of curly hair. Honoria listed Mr Way and Larry and her father as the three options and the die chose Larry. The next die also chose love.

Honoria sat silently for several seconds, aware that the seconds were silently ticking away as she groped to try to express the feelings of love.

‘I love you, Larry,’ she finally said hesitantly, but in a voice that might just as well have been announcing her going to the drugstore to pick up some Extra Strength Tylenol. ‘You’re exactly the man I’ve always dreamed of marrying … handsome … successful … ambitious … I love the way you get excited about your futures trading … You, your soul, I love … except of course your father … I mean I love … I love the way … I love your … abilities.’

Honoria, confused and a little shaken, lapsed into silence. The timer finally indicated the end of the two minutes.

‘I take it you don’t actually have much feeling for this Larry fellow,’ commented Mr Way.

‘No. I … I’m finding this not at all easy.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Way. ‘You’re doing fine. My turn.’

Way then was randomly told to hate his father.

In the next two minutes he directed such an incredible
barrage of venom, hatred and rage against Honoria (his father) that she found herself pressing herself against her chair to escape, chilled to her core. His face became contorted, his fists clenched; he drooled, shouted, glared, his body rearing at her like a wild dog chained just out of the reach of its prey. When he was finished Honoria was so frightened she urinated slightly in her pants.

It took Way a little longer to recover from expressing hatred than it had love. Finally, he sighed and said again to Honoria: ‘Your turn.’

Honoria was so upset she wasn’t sure she could go on, but didn’t want to confess that she had been so moved.

This time the die chose Honoria herself to be the object of her own emotion and again chose love as the emotion to be expressed.

She relaxed just a bit. Love for herself – that should be a snap. She sat up straighter in her chair, and took two deep breaths, trying to relax further but aware of a high level of anxiety lying like lead in her stomach. Let’s see, Michael Way was supposed now to be her. She must express her love for herself at him. As she looked at him her jaw felt frozen, her whole self felt suddenly frozen.

‘Honoria, you’re wonderful,’ she began after a ten- or fifteen-second pause. ‘You’re one of the most accomplished women I’ve ever known.’ Again, even as she spoke, she realized that the voice was all wrong – it sounded like one society matron talking to another about one of their daughters. She stopped and cleared her throat, stirring uncomfortably in her chair.

‘I love you, Honoria …’ she began again, her effort at expressing love coming out stiltedly. ‘You have created for yourself exactly the life you dreamed of. You are bright, successful, beautiful, rich. You can do anything you want to, the sky’s the limit!’ Honoria was barking out the words like a marine sergeant stirring a young recruit to toughness. ‘You are a fantastic woman! A beautiful woman! Men pursue you, lust for
you! Other women envy you! You are a queen! You are –’

Honoria broke off, aware that there hadn’t been a drop of love in anything she’d felt or said. She felt only a tense numbness, then anger, at first undirected, and then suddenly and satisfyingly, directed at Mr Way. The timer at last signalled the time limit had passed.

‘What incredible crap this all is!’ said Honoria, prising herself out of the chair and standing. ‘I can’t act, and never said I could! And I make no claim to being able to conjure up emotions like a robot.’

‘Oh, no, Honoria,’ Mr Way said gently. ‘You know –’

‘I know that you’re a psychological bully!!’ she said, her voice quavering. ‘That’s what I know!’

When Way stood and reached out a comforting hand, she brushed it aside and rushed from the room.

After leaving the church, I spent an unproductive hour trying to talk to people and get a sense of Lukedom or a hint about my father, but got nowhere. The only interesting conversation I had was with the guy who had stolen my car, who turned out also to be the teenage werewolf who had accosted Honoria in the bar. He introduced himself as Rick and wanted to compliment me about the Mercedes.

‘You know I’d never hurt your car,’ Rick assured me as I decided to head over to the Hazard Inn to meet Honoria. ‘Stealing cars is just part of my trying to expand my talents.’

‘Well, expand your talents with someone else’s car,’ I said, hurrying my pace.

‘I was a pretty shy teenager when I got here four months ago,’ Rick went on earnestly. ‘Chicks scared me shitless and I could barely drive. But I keep challenging myself to expand.’

‘Good. Keep it up. But not with my car.’

‘Now I can be either a cool dude or a nerd,’ Rick continued with increasing enthusiasm. ‘I can handle cars and cycles and even the big bulldozer over at the south construction site. If you just trust the dice, it’s amazing what things you can do you never knew about!’

‘Ever let the dice choose walking?’ I asked irritably.

‘Hey, sure!’ Rick reassured him. ‘The dice had me run a six-minute mile!’ As I strode on even faster. Rick had to hurry to keep up. ‘What have the dice told you to do?’ he asked.

‘To leave this place as soon as possible,’ I announced and left Rick in the dust.

A minute later I met Honoria just outside the inn, striding down the stairs as if in the midst of a fire drill.

‘Hi.’ I said. ‘What’s happening? Aren’t we going to eat?’

‘We’re leaving,’ Honoria announced, her soprano voice higher than normal. She didn’t even slow down as she strode past me to head for the Do Dice Inn. Baffled, I hurried after her.

‘What’s the matter?’ I asked as I pulled up beside her. ‘What happened?’

‘Nothing happened!’ she returned. ‘I’ve just decided I don’t like this place. We’re leaving.’

‘But I think I’ve got a lead,’ I persisted. ‘In Jake’s office at the church –’

‘Screw your leads!’ she snapped back, careening around the corner and continuing at full throttle the last hundred feet towards the Do Dice Inn.

Stunned at her upset, I hurried after her.

Inside our hotel room, Honoria began flinging her clothing into her three expensive pieces of luggage while I numbly began to pack my one suitcase.

‘Are you saying a prayer over that sweater?’ Honoria snapped at me. I’d been holding a sweater over my case for half a minute.

I shook my head.

‘I don’t think we should go. Nori,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to stay at least until I can get into the file cab –’

‘Well I’m going!’ Honoria interrupted wildly. ‘And going now! You can continue your sick search for your father back in New York – where I’m in no danger of being browbeaten by philosophical fullbacks or propositioned by teenage car thieves.’

‘But here is where –’

‘Hire a private detective! We’re going.’ Honoria snapped closed the last of her three bags, a bra strap dangling out of it like a tail, and began to get into her raincoat inside out.

I dropped the sweater into the suitcase but then just stared down at it.

‘What are you standing there for?’ Honoria said. ‘Help me!’

Scowling, I went around the bed and helped her the rest of the way into her raincoat.

‘Look, Nori,’ I said. ‘You can go. I know you want to get back to work tomorrow morning. I’ll drive you to an airport or you can take the car, but I’ve got to stay at least another day.’

Honoria had gone to the vanity to scoop the last of her cosmetics into her shoulder bag, but paused to glare at me.

‘You can’t mean it,’ she said. ‘I’ve had one upsetting experience after another since arriving here. And I want to go home!’

‘I know. I know,’ I said, coming up to her to take her in my arms, but as I approached and saw how stiff and cold she stood I felt like a small sailboat gliding towards an iceberg. ‘And I’ll help you. but I myself –’

‘If you don’t come with me now,’ said Honoria, pulling away from my embrace, ‘our engagement is off! I won’t marry a man who loves his neurosis more than me!’

I again tried to go to her and again she retreated, backing towards the door as if I were a potential rapist.

‘If you love me, you’ll give up this silly quest and come this minute!’ she said, stamping impatiently.

I finally turned away, went to the near bed and slid her other two bags on to the floor. I left my own suitcase open on the other bed.

‘I can see I mean nothing to you,’ Honoria said quietly, her face flushed. She stared for a moment at her engagement ring and shakily pulled it off her finger. Then, with a scream, she threw it at me, sending it sailing past my shoulder against a bureau and on to the floor.

‘You can have it back,’ she hissed. ‘It’s as phoney as your love!’ she said.

‘Look, Honoria,’ I began. ‘Can’t you see –’

‘My jeweller said the diamond was flawed!’ she interrupted and, head high, swung her blonde hair to leave.

‘Just bring my bags,’ she added as she disappeared out into the hall.

Outside, the Mercedes was, as usual, missing.

‘I knew it!’ Honoria moaned, as she stood amid her bags at the edge of the street. ‘This whole place is just a vast conspiracy to drive people crazy!’

As Honoria continued to rail, for some reason I felt like giggling, but managed to control myself and go to phone a cab. However, the bartender informed me that cabs couldn’t come into Lukedom since no cabbie had ever guessed the password. Even as I again suppressed giggles, I wondered vaguely how people managed to leave when I saw out the window that my Mercedes had magically appeared from nowhere and that Honoria was getting in. When I saw that the person helping Honoria with her luggage was Rick, I hurried out.

As I came trotting down the wooden steps of the inn, Rick had finished throwing Honoria’s bags in the trunk of the car and was blithely getting into the driver’s side. Honoria was pulling the passenger door closed behind her.

I rushed up to the car to lean in to peer past Rick to Honoria.

‘What are you doing!?’ I asked. ‘Don’t you remember who this is!?’

‘Of course I do,’ said Honoria, her eyes a haze of hysteria. ‘He’s an admirer. He adores me. And he has promised to serve my every need, which is more than I can say for my last admirer.’

‘I told you she was feisty,’ said Rick, smiling up at me.

‘Where are you going?’ I asked.

‘Rick said he’ll drive me to the nearest airport,’ said Honoria. ‘And I believe him.’

‘I’ll do it.’ I said. ‘It’s my car, for Christ’s sake.’

‘Hey, man, your time is too valuable.’ said Rick.

I stared at the grinning young man in disbelief. On the other hand, my time
was
valuable.

‘Any chance you’ll bring the car back?’ I asked sardonically.

‘Sure, man,’ said Rick happily. ‘These are the best wheels we’ve had in Lukedom since I’ve been here!’

‘I’ll phone you tonight,’ I said reluctantly to Honoria, straightening and standing back from the car.

‘Don’t bother,’ said Honoria, turning her face away.

‘You can phone
me,’
Rick said to me with a grin, the engine running now and ready. ‘Although I don’t actually have a phone.’ And, in a shower of stones, he roared away.

For Honoria, the drive to the Wickstown airport was a trifle unnerving. Rick approached every curve on the windy din road as if it were the finish line of the Daytona 500 and, on the main highway, he came up behind each car as if it were parked, and roared past in similar fashion.

At the airport she was dismayed to find that all flights to anywhere that might get her back to New York were ended for the day. Sunday flights being limited. She collapsed on to a bench while Rick rushed off to see what he could do.

He came back twenty minutes later with a big grin. ‘Got you a plane,’ he announced, gathering up her three bags.

‘You’re a doll!’ Honoria said, leaping up with the first burst of happiness since meeting Way. ‘But how –’

‘It’s a special charter,’ announced Rick, bounding along ahead of Honoria despite the three bags. ‘Not sure of the cost.’

‘Oh, hang the cost!’ said Honoria. ‘That’s why rich people get rich.’

Rick led her out of the main building and in among a cluster of small planes, coming up finally to a small two-engine Cessna, its door already open.

‘Here we are,’ he announced. ‘Flight 006 for good old La Guardia.’ He tossed the three bags up into the plane and then helped Honoria to board.

‘Little cramped. I’m afraid,’ Rick said as he pulled himself up behind her.

There were in fact only four seats in the passenger area and Honoria happily sat herself down on the front one on the right.

‘This is fine.’ she said. ‘When does the plane leave?’

Rick looked at his watch.

‘About five minutes, I think.’

Honoria looked out the window towards the main building, hoping to see the pilot or the flight attendants on their way. Rick poked his head into the pilot’s area and then disappeared inside. She thought it nervy of him to do so, but based on her two encounters with him, nerve was not something he lacked.

She opened her handbag and took out a mirror and some lipstick. She’d been biting her lip steadily since her encounter with Way. She heard an engine sputter and roar off to the left and at first assumed that it was that of a nearby aeroplane. Then the right engine on her own plane – just outside her window – spun, coughed and then roared into motion.

My God, what was Rick doing!!?

Honoria started to undo her seat buckle, her mouth agape and lipstick rolling to the floor.

‘Uh, this is your pilot speaking,’ came a deep reassuring male voice, much deeper than Rick’s although somehow similar. ‘We’re cleared for take-off at sixteen hundred hours …’ Abruptly the plane lurched forward like a drunk who has suddenly decided in which direction to head. Honoria was thrown back, grabbing desperately at the arms of her seat.

‘Estimated flight time to New York,’ continued the deep voice from the speaker system, ‘is three and a half hours. We’ll be flying at about ten thousand feet … At two hundred knots.’

A ‘fasten seatbelt’ sign began flashing reassuringly on a panel in front of her and Honoria hopefully rebuckled herself in. Could someone who spoke so comfortingly and knowledgeably and deeply about altitude and knots and estimated flight time not be a pilot? Despite the clamouring of her common sense, which she was aware had deserted her totally much earlier in the afternoon.
Honoria settled back a little deeper into her seal, her eyes noticing the parked planes they were taxiing past.

Then the Cessna made an abrupt right turn and headed down another concrete path that Honoria assumed was a runway, although on the other side of the plane she might have been worried to see a line of parked cars and several people staring at the taxiing Cessna in disbelief.

‘We’re cleared for take-off, folks,’ came the pilot’s voice, still seeming to Honoria to be much too deep for Rick and yet somehow so like his. ‘So make sure your seatbelts are fastened …’ The plane now quickly swung around one hundred and eighty degrees and its engines began to roar in earnest.

‘… And your seats in an upright position … ’cause. Baby,
here we go
!!!’

There was no mistaking Rick’s voice now, nor the squealing of the wheels as the plane surged forward.

Eyes wide as saucers, fingers digging into the armrests, Honoria began mumbling for the first time in twenty years her childhood prayers.

The Cessna roared down the access road directly towards a late-model BMW which quickly showed the manoeuvrability for which German engineering is famous by making a right-angle turn out of the way of the oncoming plane and into a parking place between a pick-up and a Ford van which, unfortunately, was not wide enough, and the BMW had to wedge itself in by ploughing the two other vehicle sideways and out. The driver thus avoided the plane but was trapped inside the BMW for the next six hours.

The Cessna became airborne just in time to avoid a Cadillac which was crossing the access road at that point.

The Cessna continued to gain altitude, just managing to miss the control lower itself. Since the two air traffic controllers on duty did not normally monitor access roads for aircraft taking off, they never saw the plane coming, and when it passed across in front of their lower only ten feet away, they were both left in a state of shock.

As the Cessna continued to climb, Honoria was quite impressed with the take-off, much smoother than those of most small planes she’d flown in. Below her on the ground she could see a cluster of people wildly moving their arms. Sitting back in her seat and beginning to relax, Honoria smiled and waved back.

That evening at the Battle apartment Mr Battle was enjoying a rare moment of leisure in front of the rerun of the film
Patten
when Honoria burst into the room and, with a loud groan, collapsed on the couch. Kim and the housekeeper, both looking concerned, hastened in after her.

‘Nori!!’ Mr Battle said. ‘You’re back!?’

Honoria sprawled arms akimbo on the couch, staring vacantly out into the room. She looked drugged or shell-shocked. Kim ran over and knelt in front of her, taking one of her hands.

‘What’s the matter?’ Kim asked.

Honoria simply stared out into the room.

Mr Battle rose with great dignity and restraint and walked over to stand looking down at his daughter.

‘That will be all, Elsie,’ he said to the housekeeper. ‘I’ll call if we need you.’

‘Yes, sir.’

After Elsie had left. Mr Battle turned back to his daughter.

‘Where’s Larry?’ asked Mr Battle.

‘In hell, as far as I’m concerned,’ said Honoria.

‘What happened!?’ pressed Kim.

Honoria came out of her trance to lean towards Kim.

‘You have no idea what it’s like in Lukedom,’ she said. ‘Nothing’s reliable.’

‘But where’s Larry?’ persisted Mr Battle.

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ said Honoria, collapsing back into the couch.

‘Is he still there?’ asked Kim.

‘He deserted me,’ said Honoria. ‘He’s somehow been infected with dice measles!’

‘And he’s still there?’ persisted Mr Battle.

‘Be serious,’ said Kim, standing with a frown. ‘You left and he stayed?’ she asked.

‘I begged him to come. He refused. I want nothing more to do with him.’

‘Nonsense, my dear,’ said Mr Battle. ‘Larry may be temporarily deranged, but that’s no reason –’

‘I’ve broken our engagement and given him back his imitation ring,’ said Honoria.

‘You didn’t!?’ said Kim.

‘I did,’ said Honoria. ‘I should have done it years ago.’

‘You’ve only been engaged for two months,’ Kim reminded her.

‘I made a mistake.’

‘Nonsense, Daughter, you –’

‘I was kidnapped. I almost died.’

‘Kidnapped!?’ Kim exclaimed.

‘How did you almost die?’ asked Mr Battle with a frown.

‘I trusted a teenage rapist.’

‘What happened?!’

‘A kamikaze madman from that horrible place kidnapped me into an aeroplane and then tried to commit hari-kari by landing on the Long Island Expressway.’

That’s impossible!’ said Mr Battle. ‘What about traffic?’

Honoria settled for a scream.

FROM LUKE’S JOURNAL

Ah, the human charade. What fun it would be if the players only knew they were playing! In the theatre if an actor begins to ‘live’ his role, to ‘become’ the character he is playing, we call him insane. But in life we actors take all our roles seriously … ‘live’ each one, ‘become each one and are, accordingly, insane.

To live we must play roles. The question is only whether we let the roles play us or let us play the roles. When a role plays us we become absorbed in it, identified with it. Its loss is our loss; its triumph, our triumph. We take it seriously. We suffer.

Why did nature build into humans this destructive, anti-joy original sin element of seriousness? Without it men might float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. With seriousness we float like elephants and sting like fleas.