The Search for the Dice Man Page 9

  Honoria leaned across towards the guard.

  ‘We really have to get into Lukedom and speak to a few officials,’ she said with what I thought was remarkable composure. ‘It will only take an hour or two. Can’t you call someone who will let us in without our guessing a password?’

  The guard shook his head.

  ‘The only way I can let you in is if you guess the password or pass the test,’ he said.

  ‘We’ll try the test,’ said Honoria impatiently. Then under her breath she whispered, ‘This is insane.’

  ‘Certainly,’ said the guard. Straightening, he leafed through the green book and finally settled on a page.

  There are four questions,’ he said, and turned a page of his book as if checking for something. ‘First question,’ he went on. ‘What is the difference between order and chance?’

  ‘Order works and chance doesn’t,’ I shot back.

  The guard peered in at Honoria. She was thinking hard.

  ‘Order is the work of divine law,’ she finally said. ‘And chance is the work of the devil.’

  The guard checked his green book, scowling considerably and clucking to himself.

  ‘Well,’ he finally said. ‘I guess the foxy lady got that one,’ he announced, looking not too pleased, then frowned his official frown. ‘Second question: what is a human being?’

  ‘An asshole,’ I suggested.

  After a pause Honoria echoed me: ‘An asshole,’ she said.

  ‘Hey, both right!!’ said the guard. ‘You’re doing good!’ He smiled down at his book. ‘Number three then: how can you tell when a man is really and truly being himself?’

  ‘When he has an erection,’ I said.

  The guard nodded and peered in at Honoria.

  ‘When he or she is a child,’ said Honoria, looking as if she was getting into the quizzing game and even enjoying it.

  The guard shook his head disappointedly. ‘I should have warned you that the last two questions are stinkers. “You can tell when a man is really and truly being himself when his self disappears.”’ The guard looked down doubtfully at Larry and Honoria. ‘A real bitch, huh?’

  He went back to his book.

  ‘Last question, another stinker: “How many sides are there to a six-sided die?”’

  ‘Six,’ said Honoria.

  ‘Hold it!’ I shouted, suddenly remembering a riddle from high school. ‘Hold it! This baby is mine. I remember the answer from the ninth grade. A six-sided solid has two sides: an inside and an outside. Two! Two is the answer!’

  ‘Eight,’ said the guard. ‘Inside, outside and the other six sides.’

  There was a rather profound and deadly silence.

  ‘OK, then,’ the guard went on, straightening. ‘The lady passes and the man fails. Welcome to Lukedom, Miss.’

  ‘Now, hold it,’ I said, managing against overwhelming odds to maintain my dignity. ‘This nonsense has gone far enough. I have to talk to some people in there and none of this Socratic gobbledegook is going to stop me.’

  ‘The lady can enter and you can’t,’ replied the guard indifferently.

  ‘Look, I have to see my father!’ I insisted. ‘I’ve just driven eight hundred miles! My father created this damn place!’

  The guard frowned, then leaned down again to the window.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  Honoria answered him.

  ‘His father is Luke Rhinehart,’ she said. ‘The Dice Man.’

  The guard looked suddenly very nervous.

  ‘You … You’re the son of Luke Rhinehart?’

  I was distinctly annoyed that having Luke Rhinehart as my father might possibly do me some good.

  ‘Yes,’ I muttered irritably. ‘I’m the son of Luke Rhinehart.’

  The guard straightened. ‘Wait here.’ he said.

  He disappeared back into the small wooden guardhouse. While he was there, Honoria and I looked at each other and then Honoria sneered.

  ‘We’ve just driven eight hundred miles to be interviewed by an idiot, from a book written by an idiot, in order to get permission to enter a place undoubtedly populated by idiots.’ She paused. ‘I wonder what that makes us.’

  I contributed a grimace.

  The guard returned, marching towards the car with a newfound military bearing. He stopped by my driver’s side and, standing exaggeratedly erect, saluted smartly.

  ‘The son of Luke Rhinehart is welcome to Lukedom,’ he announced in a deep voice. ‘Enter.’

  He turned and marched to the gate, gave both sides a gentle push and they swung open. Scowling, I pulled the car forward. As it moved by, the guard saluted smartly. Honoria shook her head in disbelief. I think we were both in a slight state of shock.

  The road we were now on – smooth, wide and well-maintained – declined gently towards a large cluster of wooden houses nestled in a lovely valley, bursting with the yellows and reds of fall leaves. It ran alongside a mountain stream that made everything seem as sanely idyllic as the guard had seemed insanely demonic. Then we saw the first house.

  It was a house. It was a two-storey clapboard rustic house. A woman in the yard was tending a flowerbed. She looked normal. We drove slowly by. How come she didn’t have two heads?

  Further on there was a farmhouse and barns, with at least two dozen cows slopping around in some muck wailing to be fed. Further yet, a field with half a dozen big tents and teepees. Long-skirted women and long-haired men made it look like a hippie enclave from the seventies. A couple of children were flying a kite, a cluster of long-hairs seemed to be passing around a pipe, and rock music could be heard in the distance. There was everything but frisbees.

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Honoria. ‘I think we’re entering a time warp. I thought Reagan had outlawed teepees.’

  ‘That first house looked normal enough,’ I said.

  ‘Probably owned by one of the zoo-keepers.’ said Honoria, who looked as if she was assessing whom she might call on for help if needed.

  The village itself at first glance seemed normal, but only at first. It had clearly been a mining town at some time in the past, and the buildings were of the most uninspired wooden construction, square and boxy and old, but most of them renovated and well kept. There was a drugstore and deli and bank and hardware store and bar and people in the streets. Honoria, who had herself never met a ‘hippie’, was suspicious of anyone who vaguely might have had something to do with drugs now or in the past. The streets of the Big Apple were enough evidence for her that those people were not to be trusted whatever they called themselves.

  We pulled into an area designated ‘Parking’ and stopped. Except for a large unlabelled delivery truck outside a grocery store there had been no other cars on the street and were only two in the parking lot.

  For a moment we just sat in the car.

  ‘What do we do?’ Honoria said. ‘Ask for the mayor?’

  ‘You don’t suppose it’s all a joke, do you?’ I asked. ‘Maybe that guard just ushered us through a gate that led through to some small town that everyone else approaches from a main road.

  ‘Welcome!’ boomed a voice from beside us, causing Honoria to jump and let out a small scream. ‘Welcome to Lukedom!’

  ‘Oh, Jesus,’ I moaned.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Honoria. getting out of the car. ‘Isn’t there an easier way to get here?’

  ‘It’s always hard to get here,’ a large jovial man dressed in jeans and a pink T-shirt replied. ‘But you made it. Let me take you to “Orientation”’

  I got out too, slamming the car door shut.

  ‘We need some information,’ I said firmly. ‘Who here would know all about this place and … and about Luke Rhinehart?’

  ‘Got to go to “Orientation” first,’ said the man, moving off. ‘Maybe they’ll tell you.’ He ambled away, glancing back once with a smile of encouragement.

  Honoria strode off after our greeter.

  ‘Come on,’ she said without looking back. ‘Let
’s get it over with.’

  As we followed our jovial greeter we began to notice that things were not as normal as they first appeared. Many of the stores had names playing on the words ‘dice’ or ‘chance’ or ‘Luke.’ A boutique was ‘Difashions’, a bar was the ‘Snakeyes’, the bank was the ‘Lukedom Bank & Chance Co.’ A wooden, very New Englandy church across the street from us looked charmingly nineteenth-century except for the steeple: on the top was a neon green die rotating in the wind like a weather vane.

  And I began to realize that the people weren’t totally normal. They were dressed in too great a variety of styles for a simple country town. Some looked as if they’d just eaten at Luccis or Sardis while others looked as if they might be turned away from Burger King. Some women paraded down the sidewalk as if they were out on a fashion ramp in Paris while other women dressed like truck drivers or hippie retards.

  When Honoria saw a fashionably-dressed woman walking sedately along the dirt path accompanied by a man in a business suit she paused to smile at me.

  ‘Look,’ she said. ‘Either there are actually a few normal human beings living here or … tourists.’ She groaned lightly when she realized the second alternative was more likely.

  ‘Welcome Centre’ was the sign over the large wooden building that our greeter had brought us to. It looked as if it might have been a warehouse in an earlier incarnation. We followed him in.

  ‘Hi there!’ beamed a vigorous young woman with mannish blonde-streaked hair and snapping brown eyes. She didn’t quite smile but exuded a purposeful energy and control. ‘I’m Wendy. Have you done any diceliving before?’

  ‘I’m Larry Rhinehart,’ I said, halting. ‘We’re not here for any of that crap; we’re here to try to locate Luke Rhinehart.’

  ‘That’s wonderful!’ Wendy replied with barely a blink. ‘If you know it’s shit you must have tried it?’

  ‘We haven’t tried it,’ I snapped back. ‘We don’t want to try it. We just want to find someone who might help me locate my father.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ said Wendy, who seemed to find everything of a high quality. ‘That would be Rabbi Ecstein. But you really ought to try die-ing: you’d benefit.’

  I gave Wendy my best glare and then said softly: ‘Where can I find Mr Ecstein?’

  ‘The church, usually,’ Wendy said brightly. ‘Of course, like everyone else he may be someone else today.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ commented Honoria.

  When we were out of Wendy’s earshot, she whispered, ‘That is one scary female …’

  18

  When Wendy released them they went looking for Luke Rhinehart’s old friend and rival Dr Jake Ecstein. Jake had been a brilliant and eminent New York psychiatrist back in the late sixties and early seventies. Although his vibrant coarseness made him sometimes resemble a used-car salesman in a late-night TV ad, he was in fact a man who not only understood Freud considerably better than anyone, including Freud, but could brilliantly see how to convert this knowledge into fame and fortune. Jake was a successful yuppie long before a naïve world had even coined the word, much less realized that it was the wave of the (brief) future. Jake loved money and fame and saw his brilliance as a lucky talisman capable of converting knowledge into bucks.

  He liked Luke Rhinehart but thought Luke was a jerk for having no interest in or aptitude for money. When Luke suddenly began behaving weirdly and doing strange things with his patients Jake worried about it, but didn’t feel like doing anything about it until he heard Luke’s theory about the human problem and its possible solution. That some people were stuck with one narrow personality and miserable as a result seemed reasonable to Jake. On the other hand, curing their misery by making decisions with dice, expanding each person’s life so he could enjoy many different attitudes, beliefs and activities was clearly weird. But when patients began to respond to this therapy and Luke began to get a little famous, Jake decided Luke might be on to something. Far be it from him (Jake) to challenge the eternal idiocy of human beings. If they found happiness with dice then Jake would become the most brilliant dice therapist of them all. And he did.

  By the time the disgrace and disappearance of Luke caused the whole movement to crash, Jake had become too fascinated by chance and multiplicity to go back to his old life. He found that fame and fortune were strangely irrelevant, especially since he had lost both. He, like Luke, lost his psychiatric practice, his wealth, his reputation, his wife and family, and all those friends who were so drawn to him because of his fame and fortune. And for the last fifteen years he, like Luke, had essentially disappeared, although he still poured out a prodigious series of articles, case histories and books on personality theory and modes of therapy, the only difference being he had them published under a half-dozen aliases.

  Larry and Honoria found him, as predicted, in the church, which was as unconventional inside as was the die on the steeple outside. Although there were bench pews and a stage with an altar, the stained-glass windows had pictures not only of Christ and Buddha but of Moses and Mohammed and a few other dark-skinned men Larry didn’t recognize. And one, Larry suddenly realized with suppressed rage, which was clearly of Luke Rhinehart.

  In addition to crosses and six-sided stars on the walls there were also dice. And – Larry and Honoria both had to stare at it for several seconds to be sure – a huge tapestry depicting the Last Supper: thirteen bearded men arranged around a long table, but in the centre, in place of Jesus was a bearded Luke, and instead of eating, the thirteen all seemed to be playing dice.

  Honoria poked Larry and gestured towards the tapestry.

  ‘I’m glad your father isn’t a megalomaniac,’ she said.

  ‘Larry, baby, long time no see!’

  A grey-haired portly man with thick glasses came wobbling down the aisle towards them, arms outspread, a big smile on his face. Dressed completely in black, he stopped several feet from Larry and cocked his head to one side.

  ‘Hard to believe you’re the same little fella I used to totally ignore back when Luke was still acting like your papa,’ he said, still smiling. ‘You’ve gotten big, and from the looks of that car out there you’re doing all right for yourself, huh?’ He winked. ‘And this gorgeous lady here’s all right too. Luke would be proud.’

  ‘You’re Dr Ecstein?’ Larry asked.

  ‘Call me Uncle Jake,’ said Jake. ‘That’s what your father used to try to get you to call me back in the good old days.’

  ‘Where’s my father?’

  ‘He’s fine, I guess,’ said Jake, suddenly bounding forward and grabbing Larry’s lifeless hand and pumping it vigorously. ‘Lost a little hair over the years, but –‘

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Here and there, there and here; aren’t you going to introduce me? Your gal here must be embarrassed.’

  Larry pulled his hand free from Jake’s and stared down at the smaller man.

  ‘I’m not his gal,’ announced Honoria. ‘I’m Honoria Battle. We haven’t much time to waste here, Dr Ecstein, so if you could just steer us to Larry’s father we’d appreciate it.’

  ‘Hey, terrific. I’m Jake Ecstein,’ said Jake. ‘Used to be a psychiatrist and am now a healer of souls. Also Larry’s sometime Uncle. You can call me “Master” or, if you’re feeling Jewish, Rabbi.’ He laughed.

  ‘Where’s my father?’ insisted Larry.

  ‘Hey hey,’ Jake said, bouncing away from Larry and Honoria towards the altar. ‘I haven’t seen you in almost fifteen, sixteen years and you’re all business.’

  ‘I want to know where he is!’

  Jake stopped near the altar and turned. He was suddenly serious. He cleared his throat and folded his two hands over his belly in a somewhat reverential pose.

  ‘It’s not that easy, my son,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t care whether it’s hard or easy,’ said Larry. ‘Just tell me all you know.’

  Jake shook his head and looked either sad or devout.

  ‘No, no, my son,’ he c
ountered. ‘Luke has left very explicit instructions about who is to be told about him or about where he might be, and it isn’t simple, not simple at all.’

  Larry moved closer to him, Honoria following reluctantly. ‘Then you know where he is?’

  ‘Didn’t say that,’ Jake replied, looking a little sly. ‘I just said that Luke has set up definite steps before I can tell anyone anything I might know about him.’

  ‘I’m his son!”

  ‘Oh, yes, oh, yes,’ said Jake. ‘Luke said you might be along one of these decades and he said to treat you just like the rest.’

  ‘How nice of him!’ Larry blurted.

  ‘Well, maybe,’ said Jake. ‘Maybe not. Anyway, if you want to know more about him and where he might be you have to follow the rules.’

  ‘Fuck the rules!’ said Larry.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s the only way,’ said Jake.

  Larry turned to Honoria as if for help against the flood of insanity that kept rushing at him. Honoria shook her head and shrugged.

  ‘I warned you,’ she said, folding her arms.

  ‘What are these rules you’re talking about?’ Larry asked.

  Jake raised his hands off his belly and rubbed them together in front of him. Then he raised them further, palms pressed together as if about to begin a prayer, and held them just beneath his chin.

  ‘Well, there are really only two, I guess,’ he said. ‘And not hard at all – assuming you really want to find out more about Luke.’

  ‘The rules!’ muttered Larry.

  ‘Ground rules actually,’ said Jake. ‘The first one is that you must live here in Lukedom for at least a week.’ He stopped and suddenly beamed at Larry and Honoria.

  ‘A week!’ said Honoria. ‘My God, the markets could collapse in a week! I’ve got a job!’

  That’s the first ground rule,’ said Jake. ‘Just live here in our community for at least a week.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Larry.

  A slight frown appeared on Jake’s round face. He sniffed.

  ‘Well, number two number two is a little trickier,’ he said. ‘You must you must undergo training with one of our diceguides.’