The Search for the Dice Man (15 page)

‘Exactly,’ said Ray. ‘But of course if the die falls “odd” then you have to clear the whole room of all its money.’

I absorbed this. Money
was
used here in Lukedom. I had paid for my food, my room, even the crowbar. People must be able to leave the place. Although there probably wasn’t more than a thousand dollars or so here, it did seem as if it might prove an expensive game for the owners of Lukedom.

I turned back to the stove and let the die decide the fate of my fiver. It ordered death by fire. I lifted the lid of the stove and started to place the bill into the coals, but stopped.

‘Why waste the money?’ I asked, turning to Ray with a scowl.

‘What else is there to do with it?’ asked Ray and then, with that strange seraphic smile, left the room.

I turned back to the stove, hesitated, and finally dropped the bill into the stove. When I saw it burning I felt very depressed.

By the time Ray released me from the Hazard Inn and I’d eaten and washed dishes for half an hour in ‘Joe’s’ café, I was exhausted. And lonely. After going up to my room to take a shower I shuffled down the stairs to the inn’s bar to solace myself with a drink.

When I remembered yesterday’s spat with Honoria it seemed as if it had taken place back in the Middle Ages. I realized again that Lukedom had the effect of making one’s normal life seem trivial, not an effect I enjoyed. When I was finally able to concentrate a bit on Honoria I was angry at her insistence on her own way and saw no need to apologize for my insistence on my way. I wanted her to phone and be sweet and apologetic and witty and our engagement be back on. Then I realized that if the phone system in Lukedom was run like the babysitting system, then my chances of receiving a phone call were small. That depressed me a bit too: I felt isolated. Yet when I thought of Honoria’s phoning and announcing that the engagement was back on and all was forgiven, I was surprised to find that such a scenario didn’t exhilarate me as much as it should. Was it possible that I wanted Honoria like I wanted to be making half a million dollars a year – as a symbol of having arrived? But I loved her! Didn’t I? The sex was good, we actually talked not only before, but even afterwards! How many men could say that
about their fiancées!?

No, no, no, it was dear that this little tiff must be kept a little tiff. You don’t sell a good stock just because some small part of you thinks there’s an even better stock just over the counter.

I ended up trying to make phone contact with Honoria, both at her office and at the Battle apartment, but failed. So as I nursed a vodka and tonic I was feeling close to my low for the day, morosely trying to avoid talking to any of the weirdos and pretending-not-to-be-weirdos who occasionally approached me. Then who should come bubbling into the room but Kim.

FROM LUKE’S JOURNAL

Nature’s accidents are the universe’s way of throwing chance into a system which would die of too much orderliness. Hurricanes, droughts, floods, volcanic eruptions are all Mother Nature’s way of stirring up the pot to prevent stagnation and putrefaction.

A world without them would be a world of death. Floods, fires, eruptions, earthquakes all destroy and renew, kill and create, demolish and replant.

So too riots, revolutions and wars are societies’ ways of throwing chance into their systems, which are dying of too much orderliness. And like nature’s eruptions, these too destroy and renew, kill and create, demolish and replant.

And so too with individuals. Human beings need in their lives earthquakes and floods and riots and revolutions, or we grow as rigid and unmoving as corpses.

My heart, the little bastard, did a somersault. She seemed to be floating across the room toward me, vibrating with that sexy glow that seemed aimed to drive men (and especially me) crazy. Then I noticed that she was gaily walking arm in arm with Michael Way and the somersault flattened into a belly flop. As she approached, I stepped away from the bar to meet her.

‘What are you doing here?’ I asked, nodding a silent acknowledgement to Way. The fop was wearing Bond Street slacks with an Italian leather jacket and looked as if he was ready for a night in Beverly Hills. Kim was wearing jeans and a soft aqua sweater. ‘Did Nori send you?’ I then added with sudden confusion.

Instead of answering, Kim laughed and gave me a brief hug, then guided the three of us to a small booth. After Way ordered a round of drinks, Kim explained that she’d come to Lukedom out of her own curiosity. However, she had seen that Honoria was upset and wondered if I’d talked to her since our separation.

The subject depressed me and I hemmed and hawed about bothering to try to call her again until finally, sensing that for her own reasons Kim wanted me to phone, I dragged myself away to make the call.

At first Mr Battle, who answered the phone, gave me a lecture on the necessity of avoiding too tight stop loss orders, a strategy which could lead one to be stopped out of long-term winning positions. It took me most of a two-minute lecture to realize that Mr Battle wasn’t talking about market trading, but about Honoria and I having been apparently stopped out of our engagement position, a
position that Mr Battle saw as a long term winner. He suggested that I ‘re-establish my “long” (engaged) position as soon as possible – before the market (Honoria) got away from me.’

‘Let me speak to Non,’ I asked when Mr Battle ended his extended metaphor.

‘Fine, my boy,’ said Mr Battle. ‘I shall go and get her.’

It look about a minute before Honoria’s voice came on.

‘Larry?’ was all she said.

It was a good opening gambit, forcing me to make the first offer.

‘Hi,’ I said. ‘How are you? Your trip back go all right?’

I too was stalling for time, but my innocent filler question was like stepping on a land mine.

‘My trip back was a ride with Mad Max through the Thunderdome,’ Honoria answered testily. ‘And I hope your stay in Lukedom is the same.’

‘Well, it is,’ I said. ‘I’m hating every minute of it. But I’m finding more and more suspicious things here. Did you know this place must produce its own TV programmes? Where can they possibly get the money?’

There was a silence. When two negotiators are really skilled they can talk for hours without either one of them saying anything.

‘Look, I’m sorry about yesterday,’ I said after several seconds of silence. ‘Have you forgiven me a little?’

‘A little,’ said Honoria.

But she added nothing to that ambiguous statement.

‘How do you feel about … us?’ I asked next. Like all men, I approached the subject of feelings as tentatively as possible and hoped that the woman would have all the answers.

‘I’m not sure but that we might be doing the right thing by calling it off.”

Did that mean she was still involved with me? Did that mean the engagement was back on but ought to be off? What
did
it mean?

‘I don’t blame you,’ I said.

A new ploy: plead
nolo contendere
and throw myself on the mercy of the court. When I sensed Nori pulling away from me I desperately wanted her; when I sensed her needing me I wanted to withdraw. My subconscious was working overtime to force Honoria to make the decision.

‘Im really sorry I was so selfish and cruel.’ I continued. ‘I just felt that for both our sakes I’ve got to get in touch with my father before his actions hurt us.’

‘I understand,’ said Honoria. ‘But I’m beginning to think it’s not worth it. Why don’t you forget the whole thing and just come back?’

Aha, it looked as if the engagement was back on – if I gave up my quest.

‘I want to forget my father,’ I said. ‘But Bickers and most of my life have made it clear that I can’t just do it. I’ve got to find him.’

The other end of the line was silent.

‘It’ll only take another full day at most,’ I continued. ‘Tomorrow’s election day anyway.’

More silence.

‘My father was right: you’re fine the way you are,’ said Honoria finally. ‘You’re making a mountain out of your molehill father. If you really loved me you’d return immediately.’

Good point. I thought. But still, I could see Honoria any time. This might be my only chance to find my father.

‘But what about the possibility of scandal resurfacing about Luke just before our wedding?’ I asked. ‘Doesn’t that concern you?’

‘Yes,’ said Honoria. ‘It does. On the other hand, there are scandals and there are scandals.’

‘Beg pardon?’

‘I suppose I should have told you sooner,’ she said in a quiet voice. ‘I think I’m pregnant.’

I felt that my system was now definitely on overload. Lukedom, Honoria’s anger, Jeff’s bizarreness, Kim’s
arrival, and now Honoria’s pregnancy! The data were coming too fast and furious for the technical indicators to keep up.

After a long silence in which I could hear Honoria’s quiet breathing on the other end of the line, I finally spoke.

‘You’re … pregnant?’

‘I haven’t menstruated in seven weeks,’ she said.

I had always had total confidence in Honoria’s grand ability to avoid all unpleasant situations. I knew she’d stopped using the pill because of side-effects and that we had depended mostly on her using a diaphragm. I’d assumed that she was as good at using that as she was at everything else.

‘Right,’ I said, not sure after I’d said it what I was agreeing to. ‘I, uh … Wow.’

‘Wow,’ echoed Honoria. ‘I would guess so.’

‘I … I want to have children,’ I managed.

‘Do you? How nice. Too bad you have no uterus.’

‘I uh, mean have a family be the father of my wife’s child.’

‘You don’t sound too convinced,’ she said. ‘I think we’d better be a lot more certain than that’

I sensed I wasn’t responding to Honoria in a winning way. But what could I say!? We’d both agreed we wanted to postpone having children until we became bored with our success.

‘What do you plan to do about it?’ I asked. She let another silence fall into the thousand-mile space between us. ‘I haven’t decided,’ she said. Another silence.

‘Look, I’m staying here through until tomorrow,’ I said tensely, knowing it was taking a position she was likely to bombard. ‘I should be back by Wednesday afternoon at the latest. We’ll talk then.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Honoria. And she hung up.

Well. So.

A 1990 yuppie with four-hundred-dollar shoes, a Mercedes, a big sailboat, and yet still liable to a shotgun wedding! What was the sense of health, wealth and supercomputers if women could still announce they were pregnant?

I returned with considerable sobriety to the corner table where I’d left Kim and Mr Way. They looked up at me with curiosity.

‘Everything’s fine,’ I announced, trying a grin. ‘We patched it up. I’ll probably be heading back to New York tomorrow night.’ For some reason I said this all to Mr Way, as if he were the one who’d expressed an interest.

Kim greeted my words with a big grin.

‘If everything’s fine.’ she said, ‘I’d hate to see what you look like when things are lousy.’

‘We still don’t see eye to eye on everything and I guess it hurts me to disagree with her.’

‘I’ll bet,’ said Kim. ‘And if it didn’t, she’d probably make sure it did.’ She smiled at Way. ‘Larry has an engagement made in heaven. Unfortunately, a large part of him suspects he doesn’t like choir music.’

‘Honoria’s a brilliant woman,’ said Way in his deep Oxford-accented voice as he abruptly rose from the table. ‘Brilliant and beautiful. She has everything going for her except herself. Excuse me,’ he added, leaning down to Kim, ‘Ray seems to want to speak to me about something.’ And he moved away through the tables towards the bar.

I now looked at Kim.

‘How did you meet him?’ I asked.

‘At the orientation centre early in the afternoon,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t he talk to all newcomers?’

Kim smiled, turned to follow Way’s progress for a moment and then swung back to me. ‘So Honoria hung up on you,’ she said in a serious voice.
‘In some ways you two are the perfect couple … but in others … you bring out the worst in each other.’

I looked at her morosely.

‘That’s only from my distorted value system,’ said Kim. ‘I mean if being highly competitive, financially ambitious, having expensive tastes and wanting to impress people are good traits then you bring out the best in each other.’

As I continued to examine the ice cubes in my drink I felt I wasn’t prepared to handle that one.

‘Look,’ said Kim. ‘I shouldn’t be talking. I haven’t exactly been a winner at romance myself. The men I end up attracted to usually bring out some of the worst in me too. I’m afraid Uncle William is right: I have an Instinct for failure.’

‘Is that one of his philosophical gems?’ I asked.

‘No, I’m afraid that’s mine. What he actually said was that I’m a spoiled good-for-nothing who will never be good at anything I do.’

‘He actually said that?’ I asked, surprised that Mr Battle would be that explicitly cruel.

‘I’m afraid I cause him a lot of pain,’ said Kim, with an expression that was so new on her face that it took a moment for me to realize it was sadness. ‘He so wants to like every Battle, no matter how distantly related. It can’t be easy to be so generous to me and have me turn out the way I am.’

I felt that a compliment might be appropriate here and wondered whether Kim was scheming for one. But as I was considering it, she gazed at me as if deep in thought and continued: ‘Not that I’m bad,’ she mused. ‘It’s just that I’m so different from what he … wants.’ She shook her head and smiled ruefully. ‘I like music and flowers and animals and far-out spiritual things and sex and goofing off – all the things that Uncle B. finds irrelevant or counter to the important things in life.’

‘You’re lucky.’ I said. ‘You find your enjoyments without having to pay for them.’

‘Oh, I pay for them.’

‘I mean pay big money, have to earn a lot to pay for them.’

‘Oh, of course. I think making money is absurd – unless you enjoy it for its own sake. But, my God, when you read about Boesky and Milken and Levine and all those poor guys who cheated in order to earn a few more million than they were earning without cheating, and see how miserable they were and how they never seem to have had one happy moment spending their money – well, it makes you wonder if all you guys aren’t sick.’

Again she was touching upon something I wasn’t ready to think about too closely.

‘They were neurotic’ I said. ‘Some Wall Streeters have been known to spend a dollar or two with a smile on their faces.’

‘Have you?’

‘I enjoy my sailboat,’ I said.

‘Maybe,’ she said, ‘but the only sail you’ve ever told me about was in a friend’s small catamaran. You didn’t have to pay for that one.’

Way was abruptly back standing at our table.

‘I’d like to show you around a bit,’ he said to Kim. ‘Are you interested?’

Kim looked up in response and then over at me, who was feeling more than a little irritation at the man. First he drives Honoria away and then steals Kim. What was wrong with the women in London?

‘I guess so, said Kim. ‘Want to join us?’ she asked me.

I didn’t want to join them.

‘Have a great time,’ I said. ‘But don’t believe a word he says,’ I added.

Kim rose.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’ve already informed Michael that I am seduced by everything except arguments.’

With that little bit of provocation she took Way’s arm and marched off.

‘Michael’. ‘seduced’ – Was she as loose as she pretended? I felt a wave of self-pity wash over me. I’d show them. I’d show them. Absolutely. I ordered another drink.