The Diceman

studied…'

`Urine and stools,' completed Lil, and they laughed.

Why is it that I can lead my life of quiet desperation with complete poise, dignity and grace, while most women I

know insist on leading lives of quiet desperation which are noisy. I was giving the question serious thought when I noticed Lil and Arlene crawling toward me on their knees, their, hands clasped in supplication.

`Save us, O Master of the Stools, we're bored.'

`Give us the word!' It was good to be back in the quiet of home and fireside after a trying day with the mentally

disturbed.

`O Master, help us, our lives are yours.'

The effect of two crawling, begging, drunken women wiggling their way toward me was that I got an erection, not

professionally or maritally the most helpful response, but sincere. Somehow I felt that more was expected of a sage.

`Rise, my children,' I said gently and I myself now stood up before them.

`O. Master, speak!' Arlene said, on her knees.

`You wish to be saved? To be reborn?'

`Oh, yes!'

`You wish a new life?'

'Yes, yes!'

'Have you tried the new All with Borax?'

They collapsed forward in groans and giggles, but straightened quickly with a `We have, we have, but still no satori'

(from Lily, and `even Mr. Clean' (from Arlene).

`You must cease caring,' I said. `You must surrender everything. EVERYTHING.'

`Oh. Master, here, in front of your wife!' and they both giggled and fluttered like sparrows in heat.

`EVERYthing,' I boomed irritably. `Give up all hope, all illusion, all desire.'

`We've tried.'

`We've tried and still we desire.'

`We still desire not to desire and hope to be without hope and have the illusion we can be without illusions.'

`Give up, I say. Give up everything, including the desire to be saved. Become as weeds that grow and die u

the fields. Surrender to the wind.'

Lillian suddenly stood up and walked to the liquor cabinet.

`I've heard it all before,' she said, `and the wind turns out to be a lot of hot air.'

`I thought you were drunk.'

'The sight of you preaching is enough to sober-anyone.' Arlene, still on her knees, said strangely, blinking through her

thick glasses, `But I'm still not saved. I want to be saved.'

'You heard him, give up.'

'That's salvation?'

"That's all he offers. Can Jake do better?'

'No, but I can get a family discount with Jake.'

And they laughed.

`Are you two really drunk?' I asked.

'I am, but Lil says she wants all her faculties intact to stay one up on you. Jake's not home so I've giving my faculty a

vacation.'

`Luke never loses any of his faculties: they've all got tenure,' Lil said. `That's why they're all senile.'

Lil smiled a first bitter and then pleased-with-herself smile and raised a fresh martini in mock toast to my senile

faculties. With slow dignity I moved off to my study. There are moments even a pipe can't dignify.

Chapter Seven

The poker that evening was a disaster. Lillian and Arlene were exaggeratedly gay at first (their bottle of gin nearly empty) and, after a series of reckless raises, exaggeratedly broke thereafter. Lil then proceeded to raise even more recklessly (with my money), while Arlene subsided into a sensually blissful indifference. Dr. Ma

At about eleven Arlene asked to be dealt out, and, a

She returned after a few minutes uninterested in playing poker. A

We three doctors played on for another half-hour or so, discussing Dr. Ecstein's latest book, which I criticized brilliantly, and gradually losing interest in poker. Near midnight Dr. Felloni said it was time for her to leave, but instead of getting a ride cross-town with her, Dr. Ma

When we'd finished, he lifted himself out of the straight-backed chair and deposited himself in the overstuffed one near the long bookcase. I heard the toilet flush down the hall and wondered if Lil had been sick again. Dr. Ma

`How's your book coming, Luke?' he asked. He had a deep, gruff, old man's voice.

`Not coming at all,' I said from my seat at the poker table.

`Mmmmm.'

`I don't think I'm on to much of value…'

'Un … Un. Huh.'

`When I began it, I thought the transition from sadistic to masochistic might lead to something important.'

I ran my finger over the soft green velvet of the poker table.

`It leads from sadism to masochism.' I smiled.

Puffing lightly and looking up at the picture of Freud hung on the wall opposite him, he asked `How many cases have you analyzed and written up in detail?'

`Three.'

`The same three?'

'The same three. I tell you, Tim, all I'm doing is un-interpreted case histories. The libraries are retching with them.'

'N

I looked at him, he continued to look at Freud, and from the street below a police siren whined upward from Madison

Avenue.

`Why don't you finish the book anyway?' he asked mildly. `As your Zen says, go with the flow, even if the flow is

meaningless."

'I am going with the flow. My flow with that book has totally stopped. I don't feel like pumping it up again.'

`N

I became aware that I was grinding a die into the green velvet. I tried to relax.

`By the way, Tim, I had my first interview with that boy you had sent to QSH for me. I found him-'

`I don't care about your patient at QSH, Luke, unless it's going to get into print.'

He still didn't look at me, and the abruptness of the remark stu

`If you're not writing, you're not thinking,' he went on, `and if you're not thinking you're dead.'

I used to feel that way.'

`Yes you did. Then you discovered Zen.'

`Yes I did.'

`And now you find writing a bore.'

`Yes.'

`And thinking?'

`And thinking too,' I said.

`Maybe there's something wrong with Zen,' he said.

`Maybe there's something wrong with thinking.'

`It's been fashionable among thinkers lately to say so, but saying, "I strongly think that thinking is nonsense," that

stems rather absurd to me.'

`It is absurd; so is psychoanalysis.'

He looked over at me; the crinkles around his left eye twitched.

`Psychoanalysis has led to more new knowledge of the human soul than all the previous two million years of thinking