The Dice Man Read online

  Lil and I were slowly advancing to the stage where play is replaced by passion when two, three, four thumps resounded from the hall, our bedroom door opened and sixty pounds of boy-energy exploded onto our bed in a graceless flop.

  `Time to wake up!' he shouted. Lil had instinctively turned away from me at the sound of the thumps and, although she arched her lovely behind against me and squirmed intelligently, I knew from long experience that the game was over. I had tried to convince her that in an ideal society parents would make love in front of their children as naturally as they would eat or talk, that ideally the children would caress, fondle and make love to the parent, or both parents but Lillian felt different. She liked to make love under sheets, alone with her partner, uninterrupted. I pointed out that this showed unconscious shame and she agreed and went on hiding our caresses from the kids. Our girl, a forty-five pound variety, was by this time announcing in slightly fonder tones than her older brother: `Cock-a-doodle-do! Time to get up.'

  Generally, we were up. Occasionally, when I don't have a nine o'clock patient, we encourage him to fix himself and his sister some breakfast. This he is happy to do, but the curiosity aroused by the sound of shattering glassware or the lack of sound of anything from the kitchen makes our extra minutes in bed unrewarding: it is difficult to enjoy sensual bliss while certain that the kitchen is on fire. This particular morning Lil arose right away, modestly keeping her front parts turned away-from the children, slipped on a flimsy nightgown that may have left them in ignorance, but left nothing to my imagination, and slouched sleepily off to prepare breakfast.

  Lil, I should note here, is a tall, essentially slender woman with sharp and pointed elbows, ears, nose, teeth and (metaphorically) tongue, but soft and rounded breasts, buttocks and thighs. All agree she is a beautiful woman, with natural wavy blonde hair and statuesque dignity. However, her lovely face has a peculiarly pixyish expression which I'm tempted to describe as mousy except that then you'll picture her with beady red eyes, and they're actually beady blue. Also, mouses are rarely five feet ten and willowy, and rarely attack men, as Lil does. Nevertheless, her pretty face, in some perceivers, calls up the image of a mouse, a beautiful mouse to be sure, but a mouse. When during our courtship I remarked upon this phenomenon it cost me four weeks of total sexual abstinence. Suffice it to say, my friends, that this mouse analogy is strictly between you and me.

  Although young Evie had scrambled talkatively away to follow her mother toward the kitchen, Larry still lay sprawled next to me on the large-king-sized bed. It was his philosophical position that our bed was large enough for the whole family and he deeply resented Lil's obviously hypocritical argument that Mommy and Daddy were so big that they needed the entire area. His recent strategy was to plop on the bed until every last adult was out of it; only then would he triumphantly leave.

  'Time to get up, Luke,' he announced with the quiet dignity of a doctor announcing that he's afraid the leg will have to come off.

  `It's not eight o'clock yet,' I said.

  `Un-nn,' he said, and pointed silently at the clock on the dresser.

  I squinted at the clock. `It says twenty-five before six,' I said and rolled away from him. A few seconds later I felt him nudging me in the forehead with his fist.'

  `Here are your glasses,' he said. `Now look.'

  I looked. `You changed the time when I wasn't looking,' I said, and rolled over in the opposite direction.

  Larry climbed back onto the bed and with no conscious intention, I'm sure, began bouncing and humming.

  And I, with that irrational surge of fury known to every parent, suddenly shouted `Get OUT of here!' For about thirteen seconds after Larry had raced to the kitchen I lay in my bed with relative content. I could hear Evie's unending chatter punctuated by Lil's occasional yelling, and from the Manhattan streets below, the unending chatter of automobile horns. That thirteen-second involvement in sense experience was fine; then I began to think, and my day was shot.

  I thought of my two morning patients, of lunch with Doctors Ecstein and Felloni, of the book on sadism I was supposed to be writing, of the children, of Lillian: I felt bored. For some months I had been feeling - from about ten to fifteen seconds after the cessation of polymorphous perversity until falling asleep at night - or falling into another session of polymorphous perversity - that depressed feeling of walking up a down escalator. `Whither and why, as General Eisenhower once said, `have the joys of life all flown away?'

  Or, as Burt Lancaster once asked: `Why do our fingers to the grain of wood, the cold of steel, the heat of the sun, the flesh of women, become calloused?'

  `BREAKFAST DADDY!'

  'EGGS, hon.'

  I arose, plunged my feet into my size-thirteen slippers, pulled my bathrobe around me like a Roman preparing for the Forum, and went to the breakfast table, with, I supposed, a superficial sunniness, but deeply brooding on Lancaster's eternal question.

  We have a six-room apartment on the slightly upper, slightly East, slightly expensive side, near Central Park, near the blacklands, and near the fashionable upper East Side. Its location is so ambiguous that our friends are still not certain whether to envy us or pity us.

  In the small kitchen Lil was standing at the stove aggressively mashing eggs in a frying pan; the two children were sitting in whining obedience on the far side of the table. Larry had been playing with the window shade behind him (we have a lovely view from our kitchen window of a kitchen window with a lovely view of ours), and Evie had been guilty of talking without a break in either time or irrelevance since getting up. Lil, since we don't believe in corporal punishment, had admonished them verbally. However, Lil's shrieks are such that were children (or adults) ever given a free choice, I'm sure they would prefer that rather than receive `verbal admonitions' they be whipped with straps containing metal studs.

  Obviously Lil does not enjoy the early morning hours, but we found that having a maid at this hour was `impractical.'

  When, earlier in our marriage, the first full-time live-in maid we hired turned out to be a beautiful, sex-oozing wench of a mulatto whose eyes would have stiffened a Eunuch, Lillian intelligently decided that a daytime, part-time maid would give us more privacy.

  As she brought the plates of scrambled eggs and bacon to the table she glanced up at me and asked `What time will you be back from Queensborough today?'

  `Four-thirty or so. Why?' I said as I lowered my body delicately into a small kitchen chair across from the kids.

  'Arlene wants another private chat this afternoon.'

  `Larry took my spoon!'

  `Give Evie her spoon, Larry,' I said.

  Lil gave Evie back her spoon.

  `I imagine she wants to talk more of the "I have to have a baby" dream,' she said.

  `I wish you'd talk to Jake,' Lil said as she sat down beside me.

  `What can I tell him?'

  I said. `Say Jake, your wife desperately wants a baby: anything I can do to help?"

  `Are there dinosaurs in Harlem?' Evie asked. `Yes,' Lil said. `You could say precisely that. It's his conjugal responsibility; Arlene is almost thirty-three years old and has wanted a baby for - Evie, use your spoon.'

  `Jake's going to Philadelphia today,' I said.

  `I know; that's one reason Arlene's coming up. But the poker is still on for tonight, isn't it?'

  `Mmm.'

  'Mommy, what's a virgin?' Larry asked quietly.

  `A virgin is a young girl,' she answered.

  'Very young,' I added.

  'That's funny,' he said.

  `What is?' Lil asked.

  `Barney Goldfield called me a stupid Virgin.'

  'Barney was misusing the word,' Lil said. `Why don't we postpone the poker, Luke. It's-'

  'Why?'

  `I'd rather see a play.'

  `We've seen some lemons.'

  'It's better than playing poker with them.'

  Pause.

  `With lemons?'

  `If you and Tim and
Renata were able to talk about something besides psychology and the stock market, it would help.'

  `The psychology of the stock market?'

  `And the stock market! God, I wish you'd open your ears for just once.'

  I forked my eggs into my mouth with dignity, and sipped with philosophical detachment my instant coffee. My initiation into the mysteries of Zen Buddhism had taught me many things, but the most important was not to argue with my wife. `Go with the flow,' the great sage Oboko said, and I'd been doing it for five months now. Lil had been getting madder and madder.

  After about twenty seconds of silence (relatively speaking: Larry leapt up to put in toast for himself; Evie tried a brief burst of monologue on dinosaurs which was smothered with a stare), I (theoretically the way to avoid arguments is to surrender before the attack has been fully launched) said quietly I'm sorry, Lil.'

  `You and your damn Zen. I'm trying to tell you something. I don't like the forms of entertainment we have. Why can't we ever do something new or different, or, revolution of revolutions, something I want.'

  `We do, honey, we do. The last three plays' I had to drag you. You're so-'

  `Honey, the children.'

  The children in fact looked about as affected by our argument as elephants by two squabbling mosquitoes, but the ploy always worked to silence Lil.

  After we'd all finished breakfast she led the children into their room to get dressed while I went to wash and shave.

  Holding the lathered brush stiffly in my raised right hand like an Indian saying `How!', I stared glumly into the mirror. I always hated to shave a two-day growth of beard; with the dark shadows around my mouth I looked potentially at least like Don Giovanni, Faust, Mephistopheles, Charlton Heston, or Jesus. After shaving I knew I would look like a successful, boyishly handsome public relations man. Because I was a bourgeois psychiatrist and had to wear glasses to see myself in the mirror I had resisted the impulse to grow a beard. I let my sideburns grow, though, and it made me look a little less like a successful public relations man and a little more like an unsuccessful, out-of-work actor.

  After I'd begun shaving and was concentrating particularly well on three small hairs at the tip of my chin Lil came, still wearing her modest, obscene nightgown, and leaned against the doorway.

  'I'd divorce you if it wouldn't mean I'd be stuck with the 'kids,' she said, in a tone half-ironic and half-serious.

  `Nnn.'

  If you had them, they'd all turn into clownish Buddha-blobs.'

  `Unnnn.'

  'What I don't understand is that you're a psychiatrist, a supposedly good one, and you have no more insight into me or into yourself than the elevator man.'

  `Ah, honey-'

  `You don't! You think loving me up, apologizing before and-after every argument, buying me paints, leotards, guitars, records and new book clubs must make me happy. It's driving me crazy.'

  'What can I do?'

  `I don't know. You're the analyst. You should know. I'm bored I'm Emma Bovary in everything except that I have no romantic hopes.'

  'That makes me a clod doctor, you know.'

  'I know. I'm glad you noticed, It's no fun attacking unless you catch my allusions. Usually you know about as much about literature as the elevator man.'

  `Say, just what is it between you and this elevator man?'

  'I've given up my yoga exercises-'

  'How come?'

  'They just make me tense.'

  'That's strange, they're supposed-' `I know! But they make me tense - I can't help it.'

  I'd finished shaving, taken off my glasses; and was grooming my hair with what I fear may have been greasy kid stuff; Lil moved into the bathroom and sat on the wooden laundry basket. Crouching now quite a bit in order to see the top of my hair in the mirror, I noticed that my knee muscles were already aching. Moreover, without my glasses I looked old today, and in a blurred sort of way, badly dissipated. Since I didn't smoke or drink much, I wondered vaguely if excessive early morning petting were debilitating.

  `Maybe I should become a hippie,' Lil went on absently.

  "That's what a few of our patients try. They don't seem overly pleased with the result.'

  `Or drugs.'

  `Ah Lil sweet precious-'

  `Don't touch me.'

  `Ah-'

  `No!'

  Lil was backed up against the tub and shower curtain as if threatened by a stranger in a cheap melodrama, and I, slightly appalled by her apparent fear, backed meekly away.

  `I've got a patient in half an hour, hon, I've got to go.'

  `I'll try infidelity!' Lil shouted after me, 'Emma Bovary did it.'

  I turned back again. She was standing with her arms folded over her chest, her two elbows pointing out sharply from her long slender body, and with a bleak, mousy, helpless look on her face; at the moment she seemed like a kind of female Don Quixote after having just been tossed in a blanket. I went to her, and took her in my anus.

  `Poor little rich girl. Who would you have for adultery? The elevator man? [She sobbed.] Anyone else? Sixty-threeyear old Dr. Mann, and flashy, debonair Jake Ecstein [she detested Jake and he never noticed her]. Come on, come on. We'll go out to the farmhouse soon; it'll be the break you need. Now...'

  Her head was still nestled into my chest, but her breathing was regular. She'd had just the one sob.

  `Now . . . chin up . . . bust out . . . tummy in . . .'

  I said. `Buttocks firm. . and you're ready to face life again. You can have an exciting morning: talking with Evie, discussing avant-garde art with Ma Kettle [our maid], reading Time, listening to Schubert's Unfinished Symphony: racy, thought-provoking experiences all.'

  'You [she scratched her nose against my chest] ...should mention that I could do coloring with Larry when he gets home from school.'

  `And that, and that. You've absolutely no end of home entertainments. Don't forget to call in the elevator man for a quick one when Evie is having her rest time.'

  My right arm around her, I walked us into our bedroom. While I finished dressing, she watched quietly, standing next to tile big bed with arms folded and elbows out. She saw me to the door and after we had exchanged a farewell kiss of less than great passion she said quietly with a bemused, almost interested expression on her face. I don't even have my yoga anymore.'

  Chapter Three

  I shared my office on 57th Street with Dr. Jacob Ecstein, young (thirty-three), dynamic (two books published), intelligent (he and I usually agreed), personable (everyone liked him), unattractive (no one loved him), anal (he plays the stock market compulsively), oral (he smokes heavily), non-genital (doesn't seem to notice women), and Jewish (he knows two Yiddish slang words). Our mutual secretary was a Miss Reingold, Mary Jane Reingold, old (thirty-six), undynamic (she worked for us), unintelligent (she prefers Ecstein to me), personable (everyone felt sorry for her), unattractive (tall, skinny, glasses, no one loved her), anal (obsessively neat), oral (always eating), genital (trying hard), and non-Jewish (finds use of two Yiddish slang words very intellectual). Miss Reingold greeted me efficiently.

  `Mr. Jenkins is waiting in your office, Dr. Rhinehart.'

  `Thank you, Miss Reingold. Any calls for me yesterday?'

  `Dr. Mann wanted to check about lunch this afternoon. I said yes".'

  `Good.'

  Before I moved off to my patient, Jake Ecstein came briskly out of his office, shot off a cheerful `Hi, Luke baby, how's the book?' the way most men might ask about a friend's wife, and asked Miss Reingold for a couple of case records.

  I've described Jake's character; his body was short, rotund, chubby: his visage was round, alert, cheerful with hornrimmed glasses and a piercing, I-am-able-to-see-through-you stare; his social front was used-car salesman, and he kept his shoes shined with a finish so bright that I sometimes suspected he cheated with a phosphorescent shoe polish.

  `My book's moribund,' I answered as Jake accepted a fistful of papers from a somewhat flustered Miss Reingold.
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  `Great,' he said. `Just got a review of my Analysis: End and Means from the AP Journal. They say it's great.'

  He began glancing slowly through the papers, placing one of them every now and then back onto his secretary's desk.

  `I'm glad to hear it, Jake. You seem to be hitting the jackpot with this one.'

  `People are seeing the light-'

  'Er... Dr. Ecstein,' Miss Reingold said.

  'They'll like it - I may convert a few analysts.'

  `Are you going to be able to make lunch today?' I asked. 'When are you leaving for-Philadelphia?'

  'Damn right. Want to show Mann my review. Plane leaves two. I'll miss your poker party tonight.'

  'Er . . . Dr. Ecstein.'

  'You read any more of my book?' Jake went on and gave me one of his piercing, squinting glances, which, had I been a patient, would have led me to repress for a decade all that was on my mind at that instant.

  'No. No, I haven't. I must still have a psychological block: professional jealousy and all that.' `Er . . . Dr. Ecstein?'

  'Hmmmm. Yeh. In Philly I'm gonna see that anal optometrist. I've been telling you about. Think we're about at a break through. Cured of his voyeurism, but still has visual blackouts. It's only been three months though. I'll bust him. Bust him right back to twenty-twenty.' He grinned.

  `Dr. Ecstein, sir,' said Miss Reingold, now standing.

  `Seeya Luke. Send in Mr. Klopper, Miss R.'

  As Jake, still carrying a handful of forms, exited briskly into his inner office, I asked Miss Reingold to check with Queensborough State Hospital about my afternoon appointments. 'Yes, Dr. Rhinehart,' she said.

  'And what did you wish to communicate to Dr. Ecstein?'

  'Oh, Doctor,' she smiled doubtfully. `Dr. Ecstein asked for the case notes on Miss Riffe and Mr. Klopper and I gave him by mistake the record sheets of our last year's budget.'