The Search for the Dice Man (23 page)

As if the Gods hadn’t been able to figure enough ways to make me a loser, they came up with a new one. On the workday before the Thanksgiving holiday in late November Honoria, perhaps making up for not inviting me to her father’s Hudson River estate for the long weekend, agreed to have lunch with me in a little restaurant in the Village. I had vague hopes of perhaps receiving a little feminine sympathy, when Honoria, as the dessert was served, made a quiet little announcement.

‘Oh, by the way,’ she said with the matter-of-factness of a woman reporting on the condition of her laundry, ‘I’m not pregnant.’

I’d been trying to be lively and positive so as to show I wasn’t the loser everyone thought I was, and was caught with a bright fake smile and, slow on the uptake, held it as I stared at her.

‘You’re not … pregnant …?’ I finally managed, still with my frozen grin.

‘No,’ Honoria said smiling politely as the waiter brought her mousse and two coffees. ‘Apparently I was mistaken earlier.’

‘You were mistaken

‘Yes. In fact, I’m having my period right now.’

‘You’re having your period.’

‘Yes … Ummm, this mousse is delicious.’

‘After three months you’re having another period.’

‘Yes. Quite amazing. Probably stress-related.’

‘You have a three-month-long stress-related false pregnancy but now you’re having a period

‘Yes …’

‘What did your gynaecologist say?’

‘I never saw him … You want a taste of this mousse?’

‘You, who normally have a regular physical check-up every other week, didn’t bother to see your gynaecologist even though you thought you were pregnant.’

‘Things have been quite busy lately.’

During this exchange my smile had quite definitely been erased. My coffee cup had been lowered. My hands were in my lap mashing my napkin into a tiny ball and, unconsciously. I was leaning increasingly forward towards Honoria, who, equally unconsciously, was easing her chair backwards and now protecting her face by holding her coffee cup to her lips.

‘You had an abortion,’ I finally whispered.

‘I was never pregnant,’ she countered coldly.

We stared at each other. There would be no feminine comfort for me on this day, and no pretending I wasn’t a loser.

I wandered back to my office that afternoon feeling lower than I could ever remember. I felt as if I, with my failures, rather than Honoria, had killed our child. In my office I could barely function. Even if my eyes were on the monitor all I saw were a bunch of noodles swimming rapidly across the ocean of blue screen. I wondered if there was ever a finish line.

My gloom was interrupted late in the day by a nervous Miss Claybell announcing that some woman, who refused to give her name, actually wanted to open an account with me – my first new client for weeks.

‘She says she wants to invest some money with Blair, Battle and Pike,’ said Miss Claybell with her usual nervous efficiency. ‘And she won’t do it unless she can do it with you.’

‘Well, she obviously must be in love with my recent track record,’ I said sarcastically. ‘Show her in.’

I was halfway out of my chair to meet my new client
when Miss Claybell ushered in a woman who looked utterly unlike any woman I’d ever seen and yet was vaguely familiar. She had on an extravagant blonde wig and was dressed as if for some artsy cocktail party, her black leather skirt so short that fully half her body seemed to fall below the hemline. But her face, despite all the garish make-up, was that of a woman at least in her forties.

‘You like it?’ the woman asked, placing a hand on one hip and posing in a cliché position of sexual enticement. ‘It was a six-to-one shot that I usually only wear when I want to frighten or entice sixty-year-old bankers.’

‘Mrs Ecstein! I said, suddenly recognizing her despite the fact that her hair colour and style, clothing and personal manner were all fifteen years younger than when I’d last met her. I moved around the chair to greet her. ‘I didn’t recognize you at first.’

‘I left Grandma Ecstein at home today,’ she said with a smile. ‘Say, you’ve got quite a place here,’ she went on, looking around at my impressive high-tech office. ‘You must be making a lot of money.’

‘Not lately,’ I said. ‘Or rather, all for my clients, all for my clients.’

‘I’ll bet.’ Without being asked, Arlene pulled up a chair and threw herself back into it with an exaggerated sigh of comfort. When she crossed her legs, her black-stockinged knees stared up at me like a pair of black Siamese twins.

‘Jake tells me you took a little holiday down in the mountains of Virginia,’ she went on, as I went back to my seat behind the desk. ‘Have a good time?’

‘That wasn’t exactly why I went.’

‘I know, but did you enjoy yourself?’ she persisted.

‘It was a business trip,’ I countered coldly. ‘I accomplished my business and now I’m back.’

‘Find Luke?’

‘My father is apparently dead.’

‘Says who?’

‘Says your husband.’

‘Oh. come on, you must have been in Lukedom long enough to know you can’t trust anything anyone says there, least of all Jake.’

Arlene was looking at me with friendly interest, like a bawdy aunt discussing my dating life.

‘He seemed intensely serious when he conveyed the information,’ I said. ‘Unless I get evidence to the contrary I must assume my father is dead.’

‘What did Jake say?’

Reluctantly I told her what Jake had said and given to me, including the contents of Luke’s letter. Arlene listened intently and then, when I was done, burst into a deep gravelly guffaw, shaking her head as if in disbelief.

‘Oh. not that old “sacred die” gimmick,’ she said, still shaking her head. ‘I thought they’d given up on that ten years ago.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘People have been given the sacred die of a dearly departed Luke for decades,’ she explained smiling. ‘Sometimes it’s supposed to contain the holy remains of the great man himself and at others it’s supposed to be his personal die, used only for his most momentous dice decisions. There must be dozens of men and women rolling through life convinced they’re the designated heir of Lord Luke. Or rather were. I’m sure most of them long ago gave up on the effort. You have to be awfully big to fill Luke’s shoes.’

‘I see’

‘Of course, far as I know none of them were given personal letters signed by Luke himself, passing on the mantle. That must be a new wrinkle Jake added just for you.’

‘And is my father still alive?’ I asked.

‘Far as I know, he is,’ said Arlene indifferently. ‘I talked to him on the phone just four months ago.’

That, I quickly calculated, wasn’t long before I’d gone and met Arlene in Hempstead.

‘That isn’t what you told me at the time,’ I said coldly.

‘Of course it wasn’t,’ she replied happily. ‘If I’d told you the truth then you’d never have found your father.’

‘I haven’t found him!’

‘Maybe not quite,’ she responded. ‘But you’ve got a chance now. Then you were totally out of it.’

I sat behind my desk and stared at this ridiculous woman who was quite merrily admitting that she and her ex-husband were playing lying games with me and showing not remorse but pleasure.

‘I understand you wish to invest some money with Blair, Battle and Pike,’ I said with quiet distaste. ‘How –’

‘With you, Larry.’ Arlene insisted. ‘I want to invest money with you. Or rather, not invest so much, speculate – that’s the term I think – I want you to speculate with my money. Gamble. Play with it. Have fun with it.’

‘I’m afraid I can’t do that,’ I replied. ‘We at Blair, Battle and Pike have a fiduciary responsibility –’

‘To bullshit your clients and pretend you’re investing – I understand that,’ interrupted Arlene gaily. ‘But you also have a fiduciary responsibility to do with my money what I ask you to do with it, and I’m asking you to gamble with it. I expect you to try to win with your gambling, look for the best odds, but then put it on the line and let the wheel spin or the dice roll. I wouldn’t be giving this money to you if I couldn’t afford to lose it.’

I couldn’t help smiling. How many times had I had to sit through long hypocritical interviews with clients in which they tried to reassure themselves that I, Larry, could somehow guarantee a 20 per cent return per annum with no risk, and I, without promising anything, equally tried to create the very impression they so desperately wanted to recieve.

‘How much money do you have to invest – gamble with, I mean?’

Arlene pulled a large purse up from behind her chair and set it on her lap. She opened it and peered in.

‘Two hundred dollars,’ she said with sudden seriousness.

‘Two hundred dollars,’ I echoed, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. That might just cover the cost of opening an account.

‘To start with,’ added Arlene, now pawing around inside the huge purse and then suddenly thrusting two one-hundred-dollar bills towards me and dropping them on the desk. Then she again dove into her purse.

‘Then, when this cheque clears,’ she went on, finally pulling out a cheque, ‘you can gamble with this two hundred thousand.’

Two hundred thousand. When Arlene also reached forward and dropped the cheque on my desk I couldn’t resist sliding my chair forward and reaching across and picking it up. It was a Hempstead National Bank cheque signed by Arlene Ecstein and made out to Larry Rhinehart. It was correctly dated. The cheque had Arlene’s name and address engraved across the top. For two hundred thousand dollars.

‘Uh, you should have made it out to Blair, Battle and Pike,’ I said quietly.

‘I want it to be quite clear that it’s with you that I’m gambling my money,’ Arlene said. ‘You’ll have to work it out with your company if you want to put it into one of their accounts that you manage.’

‘Why?’

‘Why what?’ asked Arlene innocently.

‘Why me? Why this much money? Why now? Why all this emphasis on gambling and not investing? Why tell me my father is still alive? Why even bother to come and see me?’

‘Oh, dear, you are an old busybody, aren’t you?’ she said with another of her deep guffaws.

When I silently waited for an answer, Arlene stood up.

‘Your father once said something very wise,’ she announced, ‘something in general he did very rarely. He said that there’s only one honest answer to the question “why”?’

‘And what’s that?’

‘Accidents will happen,’ Arlene answered serenely. ‘Everything beyond that is all bullshit.’

She turned to leave but swung her head back for one last comment.

That last bit about bullshit is my contribution,’ she explained. ‘Luke only uses profanity when he’s in a bad mood.’

And she walked to the door and was gone.

Alone in my apartment that evening was perhaps the low point of the life I’d been leading for twenty-eight years and been expecting to lead for another fifty if my indicators hadn’t begun to fail and Jeff hadn’t discovered the joys of cheating and Kim hadn’t blazed into my life and the FBI hadn’t begun making appearances and my father hadn’t resurfaced and died and then been resurrected and my engagement didn’t blink on and off like a light with a loose connection, and my baby get conceived and unconceived with such sudden unreliability. I knew I couldn’t go on with this old life.

But where was the alternative? And who cared? Not Blair, Battle and Pike, that was for sure. I’d be lucky if they let me stay on as a second-string account executive.

Not Honoria. One bad day at the office and our baby disappeared so fast she must have had it pulled out even before Mr Potter had had time to phone me and complain about the fund’s losses.

And not my friends. What friends? The only one voluntarily talking to me in the last month was Jeff, and he talked to me just so we could exercise our tongues.

And not Kim. Just because I got a trifle irritated when she let the dice send her to Way, she had disappeared, not even giving me a chance to apologize, not that I would, she being the slut she was.

And not family. What family? My sister was a stranger and my father, he – he – he – he, hmmmm, he didn’t care one fig. Or did he? Was that letter genuine? And if it was, did it mean he cared? Was he really alive, or was Arlene just playing a new variation on some game?

The ashes. Were there really ashes in the bronze die? If there were, did that prove anything? If there weren’t, did that prove anything?

I slogged out of my kitchen where I’d been morosely brooding over some straight bourbon and went to my study. I pulled a chair over and climbed up to retrieve the mahogany box from the top of the bookcase. It was the first time I’d touched it since putting it there a month earlier.

I carried the box over to the desk and, leaning over, opened it. There they were: the large bronze die, the two little green plastic dice, supposedly my father’s first pair, and the folded note.

How does one open a six-sided cube made of bronze? It seemed seamless. I could crush it with a sledgehammer, but that seemed a little sacrilegious if my father’s ashes were inside. Not that the man didn’t deserve a bashing. Could I melt bronze? My metallurgical knowledge was. limited, but lacking a blowtorch, my ignorance was probably academic. How about a hacksaw? Could it cut through bronze? Again my knowledge failed me, but in this case I actually owned a hacksaw, one left behind a year earlier by an absent-minded plumber, or rather by a plumber so rich after collecting the bill he sent me that bothering to travel to my apartment to retrieve a hacksaw would have represented a major waste of time and money.

It took me five minutes to locate this valuable tool, stored neatly with a pair of rubber boots and two rusty screwdrivers. Then I immediately jammed the cube against the side of the desk and began to saw.

Bronze is cuttable. I decided to concentrate on a corner, to cut off a corner. I could then see if there was anything inside. Ten minutes later, with still no sign of my father dribbling out through the long crack the saw was making, I successfully cut off one small corner of the cube.

I turned the cube in my hand and tried to pour Daddy
out on to the desk. But if Luke’s remains were in there, they must be clinging to the sides like frightened fleas. I then held the cube up to the desk lamp and peaked inside.

Aha.

There was a slip of paper in there.

Now I had to locate a pair of tweezers and try to pull the paper out through the small hole. I was so totally engaged in the physical challenge of solving my little puzzle that it wasn’t until I’d located some small tweezers and managed to pull a small scrap of paper from the die that I realized that maybe I was about to learn something momentous. I read the note.

‘Good boy. You’re getting closer. Time to begin chancing it. As ever, Dad.’

Talkative son-of-a-bitch. Demonstrative too. ‘As ever’ – boy, did that take nerve! And ‘Dad’! After fifteen years it’s suddenly ‘Dad’ again!

‘Time to begin chancing it’! Over my dead body!!

Then, even as my mind was running out scatalogical insults, and my hands were balling up the note and flinging it across the room, my stupid chest began heaving out huge sobs, and my eyes pouring out a tide of salt water. I collapsed back into my desk-chair.

My father was alive. Not only was he alive but in some obscure and undoubtedly sick way actually seemed interested in me. How many daddies cared enough to write? I sat in the desk-chair and let my eyes water, feeling like a little boy who at long last has been recognized and praised by his father after years of neglect. There were tears of happiness intermingled with the general deluge of less clearly motivated tears. My father might be crazy, might have been heartless, might still be showing a certain restraint in his apparent interest and affection, but the fact was that in my world of late 1990, Luke was just about the only one who seemed to give a damn.

Not that much of this emotional interpretation made it
past the heaving chest and flowing tears to enter my consciousness. I was still muttering ‘The dirty bastard’ and ‘Shit, shit, shit’ and other totally uncreative obscenities even while my heart was feeling that it had had a hit of parental warmth missing for at least a decade. I never had been too good at knowing what was going on with myself.

Of course, crying, enjoyable as it is, especially for men, who don’t get to do it as often as women, finally, like all good things, has to come to an end. Sniffles. Snorts. Big sighs. Drying of eyes followed by minor tearing. There’s a whole rigmarole that we humans go through when we come down off the high of a good cry, and I went through it. The process finally ended with my marching off back to the kitchen to check the level of my bottle of bourbon.

So. Dice Daddy lives. He may even want to see me. He is findable, maybe. He wants me to use his green dice. Fuck it. Fuck it. He’s alive. He may even want to see me. He may even have sent Arlene! He may even have been at Lukedom! The bastard! The dirty betraying bastard!! … Daddy … Daddy!!!

My thought processes over the next hour or so would win no Nobel Prize for rationality or coherence but they did the job. I felt that my seemingly eternal effort to deny my father had reached a dead end; I couldn’t go on. I could shoot myself, but that would be too permanent a solution. I’d have to kill myself the other way, the way Luke had, and see what grew to replace the hollow shell that was all that was left of controlled, rational me.

At midnight I left the kitchen, walked back to my study and picked up the two green plastic dice. What did I have to lose by using the dice?

I soon found out.

FROM LUKE’S JOURNAL

The tendency of every living creature is homeostatic – it attempts to stabilize its relation to its environment at the simplest level possible. It wants security, stability and simplicity.

The tendency of chance, on the other hand, is to create insecurity, instability and complexity. Yet, living forms evolve through chance, not homeostasis. Life evolves through mutations – scientific terminology for the play of chance. Mutations are sudden, ‘unexplained’ altered forms of any given species. They are accidents. All living creatures evolve through accident.

Cultural changes occur in the same way as do biological changes: sudden accidental developments which either survive and alter the culture, fail and die out, or succeed, alter the culture, but perhaps so burden it for survival that the culture dies out (extinction of the species). The invention of electricity is a mutation which succeeded and altered the cultures which adapted to it. The invention of rockets capable of going to the moon or transporting warheads to distant societies may – fifty years from now – be seen as a mutation which was tried for a while and then abandoned, proving to be ultimately useless for the culture. (It could also prove to be as profoundly significant as the invention of electricity.)

And personal evolution also occurs through chance. Human beings change significantly not so much through normal ‘growth’ but rather through sudden dramatic ‘abnormal,’ ‘unhealthy,’ ‘irregular,’ accidents. In biology, without accident we have a universe of amoebae. In culture, without accident we have a universe of primitive societies. In man, without accident we have a universe of normal clods.