The Diceman

Mrs. Rhinehart greeted him at two o'clock in the afternoon in a stylish new pants suit he'd never seen before and a cocktail in her hand.

`I've got a visitor now, Luke,' she said quietly. `If you want to see me come back about four.'

It was not precisely the greeting Dr. Rhinehart had expected after four months of mysterious disappearance, and while he was rallying his mental faculties for a suitable riposte he discovered the door had gently been closed in his face.

Two hours later he tried again.

`Oh, it's you,' said Mrs. Rhinehart as she might have greeted a plumber just back with a fresh tool. `Come on in.'

`Thank you,' said Dr. Rhinehart with dignity.

His wife walked ahead of him into the living room and offered him a seat, herself leaning against a new desk covered

with papers and books. Dr. Rhinehart stood dramatically in the middle of the room and looked intently at his wife.

`Where you been?' she asked, with a tone of bored interest discouragingly close to what she might have used asking

her son Larry the same question after he'd been out of the house for twenty minutes.

`The dice told me to leave you, Lil, and . . . well, I left.'

`Yes. I figured as much. What are you doing these days?'

Speechless for a few seconds, Dr. Rhinehart nevertheless managed to look intently at his wife.

`I'm doing a lot of work these days with group dice therapy.'

'How nice,' Mrs. Rhinehart said. She moved away from the desk over in front of a new painting Dr. Rhinehart had

never seen before and glanced at some mail which was lying on a table beneath the painting. Then she turned back to

him.

`Part of me has missed you, Luke.' She smiled warmly at him. `And part of me hasn't.'

`Yeah, me too.'

`Part of me was mad mad mad,' she went on, frowning. `And part of me, she smiled again, `was glad glad glad.'

`Really?'

`Yes. Fred Boyd helped me let go of the mad mad mad business and that's just left me with . . . the other.'

`How'd Fred do it?'

`After I'd cried and complained and raged for an hour or so two days after you'd left, he said to me: "You ought to

consider suicide, Lil."

'Lil paused to smile at the memory. 'That sort of caught my attention so to speak, and he went on to say: "Shake the

dice also to see whether you should try to kill Luke."

'Good friend, old Fred,' Dr. Rhinehart interjected, and began pacing nervously back and forth in front of his wife.

`Another option he suggested was that I divorce you and try to marry him.'

`One of my real pals.'

`Or also, that I not divorce you but begin sleeping with him.'

`Greater love hath no man than this: that he lay down his best friend's wife `He than gave me a sincere impassioned

lecture on how I had let my compulsive tie to you limit me in every way, let it starve all the creative and imaginative

selves that would otherwise live.'

`My own theories turned against me.'

`So I shook a Die and Fred and I have been enjoying each other ever since.'

Dr. Rhinehart stopped his pacing and stared.

`Exactly what does that mean?' he asked.

`I'm trying to state the matter delicately so you won't be upset.'

'Thanks a lot. Are you serious?'

`I consulted the Die and It told me to be serious with you.'

`You and Fred are now… lovers?'

`That's what the novels call it.'

Dr. Rhinehart looked at the floor for a while (the realization that it was a new rug registered dimly on his

consciousness), then back up at his wife.

`How about that?' he said.

`It's pretty good, as a matter of fact,' Lil replied, lust the other night 'Er no, Lil, the details really aren't necessary. I'm …

hmmm. I'm . . . well, what else is new?'

I'm enrolled this fall at Columbia Law School.'

`You're what?'

`I gave the dice a choice of several of my lifelong daydreams and they chose that I become a lawyer. Don't you want

me to broaden myself?'

`But law school!' Dr. Rhinehart said.

`Oh Luke, for all your supposed liberation you've still got an image of me as a helpless beautiful female.'

`But you know I can't stand lawyers.'

'True, but have you ever slept with one?'

Dr. Rhinehart shook his head dazedly.

`You're supposed to be heartbroken, distraught, anxiety tilled, helpless, desperate, incompet-'

`Oh stuff that shit,' Mrs. Rhinehart said.

`Did Fred teach you such language?'

`Don't be a child.'

`True,' Dr. Rhinehart said, suddenly collapsing in a heap on the couch - it, he was glad to note, remained the same as

from his old life. `I'm proud of you, Lil.'

`You can stuff that too.'

`You're showing real independence.'

`Don't bother, Luke,' Mrs. Rhinehart said. `If I needed your praise I wouldn't be independent.'

`Are you wearing a bra?'

`If you have to ask, it's not worth asking.'

'The Die told me to re-seduce you, but I can't see even where to begin.'

He looked up at her as she leaned again against her new desk. She was smoking and her elbows stuck out sharply and

she didn't look too mousy. `I'm not in the mood for a knee in the groin.'

Mrs. Rhinehart dropped a Die onto the desk beside her and after looking at it said quietly to her husband: `Out you go,

Luke.'

`Where am I going?'

`Just out.'

`But I haven't seduced you yet.'

`You've tried and failed. Now you're leaving.'

`I haven't seen my children. How is my diceboy Larry?'

`Your diceboy Larry is fine. I told him when he came home from school this afternoon that you might be dropping by,

but he had an important touch-football game and had to rush away.'

`Is he practicing the dicelife, like a good boy?'

`Not very much. He says his teachers won't recognize dice decisions as a legitimate excuse for not doing homework.

Now out, Luke, you've got to go.'

Dr. Rhinehart looked away out the window and sighed. Then he dropped a die on the couch beside him and looked at

it `I refuse to leave,' he said.

Mrs. Rhinehart walked out of the room and returned with a pistol.

`The Die told me to make you leave. Since you deserted me, legally you have no right to be in this room without my

permission.` 'ah, but my Die told me to try to stay.'

Mrs. Rhinehart consulted a Die on the desk beside her.

`I'm counting to five and if you're not out of here I'm going to fire.'

`Don't be silly, Lil,' Dr. Rhinehart replied, smiling.

`I'm not `Two, three…'

`Doing anything which merits such extreme measures. It seems to me'

BAM!! The noise from the gun shook the whole room.

Dr. Rhinehart snapped up from the couch without undue delay and began moving toward the door. `A hole in the

couch is-' he began, trying to smile, but Mrs. Rhinehart had consulted the Die again and was counting to five and,

having only a limited desire to hear her reach the end of the recitation, Dr. Rhinehart sprinted with all deliberate speed

to the door and left.

Chapter Sixty-three

It must be admitted that the thought of penetrating the hairy anus of a man or of being so penetrated held all the allure of giving or receiving an enema on the dais before the American Association of Practicing Psychiatrists. The thought of caressing, kissing and mouthing a male penis somehow dimly reminded me of being forced at the age of six or seven to eat baked macaroni.

On the other hand, the occasional fantasy of being a woman writhing beneath some dim male was exciting - until the dim male grew a beard (shaven or not), a hairy chest, hairy buttocks and an ugly vein-bulging penis. Then I lost interest. Being a female could, in an occasional fantasy, be exciting. Being a male having `intercourse' with any precisely seen male seemed disgusting.