The Diceman

`Understatement of the century,' said Lil.

`I may overdo it occasionally, but in good cause: A good cause. "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom" #161;so said Calvin Coolidge, and I believe him.'

`But no more Krum parties, okay?' Fred asked with a smile.

`I promise never to play six roles at a party ever again.'

`But he's got to keep experimenting,' Miss Welish said.

`I promise to be only a moderate quack,' I said. `All day.'

`Well, is it te

`We need two more options,' Lil added.

`I throw,' said Miss Welish, and she got up to go to the cupboard and get out our family dice. Eventually we all gathered around the kitchen table as Miss Welish flipped the die onto the soiled tablecloth: te

It was the first weekend of August, and we were vacationing in our old farmhouse out in the poison ivy fields of eastern Long Island, and things were going quite well. Lil, after questioning me all month about dice theory and therapy, had become more and more interested and less antagonistic. I had brought Professor Boggles home for di

Our separation and divorce was in temporary abeyance. Lil was putting up with me on the condition that I behave myself with rational irrationality.

Fred Boyd had been a frequent visitor since my release from the clinic in mid-July, and we'd enjoyed half a dozen discussions of dice theory and practice. He tended to quote Jung or Reik or R. D. Laing to show that my ideas weren't all that original, but in doing so he seemed also to be implying that they might be credible. He began experimenting with dice play himself. He even hinted that it might have helped in his scholarly penetration into Miss Welish.

Lil had granted me my conjugal rights again near the end of July and, although she had refused bitterly at first to try any of my dice bed games, she had in the last week surrendered somewhat. We had had two interesting sessions together, Lil especially enjoying one half hour of the si

When we played chess she often tossed a die to determine which of two moves she would make, and she always let a die choose which movie we would see. She even let Larry play with the dice again as long as she had veto power over the options.

But the real breakthrough in our relations had come when we had played a game of emotional roulette together one afternoon when the children were at the beach. We had simplified the standard game by using only three emotions as options - love, hate and pity - but had complicated it by having both of us randomized at the same time. We had each cast a die to determine what would be our first individual three-minute emotion. Lil got hatred, I got love.

I pleaded and she reviled me; I tried to embrace her and she kicked me hard in the left thigh (thank God!); I got down on my knees and she spit on me. The three-minute sand egg-timer finally ran out and we cast again. I got pity and she got hatred again.

`Poor Lil,' I said to her as soon as I saw my dice command, and if I hadn't ducked I think her fist would have gone through my head and come out the other side. The bitterness of months and years, which had earlier been expressed only in restrained sarcasm, came flooding out in physical action and verbal massacre. She was crying and screaming, gritting her teeth and flailing at me with her fists, and even before the timer had run out she collapsed on the edge of the bed in tears.

`Onward,' I said when the time was up and cast a die and got hate. She lethargically cast and got love.

`You lifeless clump of cunt,' I hissed out at the little bitch. `You scarecrow zombie, you weepy tomb. I'd rather caress Miss Reingold's left elbow than have to touch your corpse: At first I saw anger flare in her eyes and then, like a flashbulb going off in her head, her eyes lit up, and she looked tender and compassionate.

`-boobs like bee-bees, ass so flat and bony you can use it to iron with -'

`Luke, Luke, Luke,' she repeated gently.

`LooLooLoo yourself, bitch. You have no more courage than a squashed ant. A mouse. I married a mouse.'

Anger flared again across her face.

`Look at her can't even follow a dice command for thirty seconds without losing control…'

Bewilderment. I paced in intense anger in front of her.

`To think, I might have been fucking a woman all these years: a big-booted bundle of orgasms like Arlene -'

`Luke she said.

`- or a honey-cunted tiger like Terry'

`My poor, poor Luke `I get a beady-eyed red-rimmed, tail-dragging mouse.'

She was smiling and shaking her head and her eyes, though red-rimmed, were clear and bright.

`- me, puke to think of it.'

I was towering over her, fists clenched, sneering and hissing and gasping for breath. It felt so good, but she was

looking up at me soft-eyed and defenseless and unhurt. It made me rail harder and harder until I was shamelessly

repeating myself.

`Luke, I love you' she said when I paused.

`Pity, stupid. You're supposed to feel pity. Can't even play a game right-'

`My Luke -'

'Brainless, chestless, assless clump of -'

`My poor sweet sick hero.'

`I'm not sweet! You bitch. I'll stick a dustmop up your-'

`Time,' she said. `It's time.'

`I don't give a fuck. I'd like to chop off your mousy head and peddle your cunt to lepers. I'd like-'

`The three minutes is up, Luke,' she said quietly.

`Oh,' I said, towering over her and slobbering.

`Oh. Sorry about that,' I added.

`It's enough for now,' she said. `And thanks.'

She then proceeded to bury her face in my belly and we went on to a fine fierce diceless fuck, such as is usually

associated with the highly charged emotions of the begi

loving ever since.

Mostly. That morning when the Die chose te

promiscuity and pot and pornography and the pill and possible positions and penises and pudenda and potency and

permissiveness and playing and pricks.

Much later I made another long, languorous, giggly love to Lil who was all honeyed up from all the talk and before we

fell asleep she said to me dreamily `Now the dice man has a home' and I said `mmmm' and we slept.

Chapter Fifty-two

`I want you to help me to escape,' Eric said quietly, holding the tuna-fish-salad sandwich in his hands lightly, as if it

were delicate. We were in the Ward W cafeteria crowded in amongst other patients and their visitors. I was dressed

casually in an old black suit and a black turtleneck shirt, he was in stiff gray mental-hospital fatigues.

`Why?' I asked, leaning toward him so I could hear better over the surrounding din of voices.