The Dice Man (42 page)

`But, Luke,' interrupted Dr. Mann. `You must have realized the incred -'

'Steady, Dr. Mann,' said Inspector Putt. `I'll handle this.'

He came and stood directly in front of Dr. Rhinehart, his tall, slender body leaning forward, his sharp gray eyes falling coldly on his suspect. `After you decided to help Cannon and others to leave the hospital, what did you do?'

`I forged Dr. Mann's signature on letters to me and to several others and proceeded to effect the temporary release of the patients.'

`You admit this?'

`Of course I admit this. The patients wanted to see Hair.'

`But,' but said Dr. Mann.

`Steady, sir,' interrupted the inspector. `If I understand your position now correctly, Dr. Rhinehart, you are now confessing that you did, in fact, forge Dr. Mann's signature, and on your own initiative obtain the release to go to Manhattan of thirty seven mental patients.'

`Thirty-eight. Absolutely. To see Hair.'

`Why did you lie to us before?'

'The Die told me to.'

'The...'

The inspector stopped and stared at Dr. Rhinehart. 'The die . . . .yes. Please describe your motivation in taking the patients to Hair.'

'The Die told me to.'

`And why did you cover up your trail by forging Dr. Mann's signature and pretending to try to see Dr. Mann?'

'The Die told me to.'

`Your subsequent lying was 'The Die told me to.'

`And now you say-'

'The Die told me to.'

There was a very long silence, during which the inspector stared neutrally at the wall above Dr. Rhinehart's head.

`Dr. Mann, sir, perhaps you could explain to me precisely what Dr. Rhinehart means: `He means,' said Dr. Mann in a small, tired voice, `that the dice told him to.'

`A cast of the dice?'

'The dice.'

`Told him to?'

`Told him to.'

`And thus,' said Dr. Rhinehart, `I had no intention of permitting any patients to escape. I plead guilty to forging Dr. Mann's signature on trivial letters which, as I understand it, is of misdemeanor, and to showing poor judgment in the handling of mental patients, which, since it is universally practiced by everyone else associated with mental hospitals, is nowhere considered a crime of any sort.'

Inspector Putt looked down on Dr. Rhinehart with a cold smile. `How do we know that you did not agree to help Cannon and Jones and their followers escape?'

'I will give my statements and, when you get close enough to talk to him again, you will have Mr. Cannon's statements, which, however, will be inadmissible as evidence no matter what he says.'

`Thanks a lot,' the inspector said ironically.

`Does it not occur to you, Inspector, that in telling you that I forged Dr. Mann's signature, I may be lying because the Die has told me to?'

'What-'

`That in fact my original statements of innocence may be the true ones?'

`What? What are you suggesting?'

`Simply that yesterday when I heard that you wished to question me again, I created three options for the Die to choose from: that I tell you I had nothing to do with the order to go to Hair; that I tell you that I initiated the excursion and forged the orders; and thirdly, that I tell you I conspired with Eric Cannon to help him escape. The Die chose the second. But which is the truth seems to me to be still an open question.'

`But, but.'

`Steady, Inspector,' said Dr. Mann.

`But - What are you saying?'

'The Die told me to tell you that the Die told me to take the patients on an excursion to Hair.'

`But is that story the truth?' asked Inspector Putt, his face somewhat flushed.

Dr. Rhinehart shook a die onto the little coffee table in front of him. He examined the result.

`Yes,' he announced.

The inspector's face became redder.

`But how do I know that what you have just said `Precisely,' said Dr. Rhinehart.

The inspector moved in a daze back behind his desk and sat down.

`Luke, you're relieved of all your duties at QSH as of today,' said Dr. Mann.

`Thank you, Tim.'

`I suppose you're still on our board of management for the simple reason that I don't have the authority to fire you from that, but in our October meeting -'

'You could forge Dr. Cobblestone's signature, Tim.'

There was a silence.

`Are there any more questions, Inspector?' Dr. Rhinehart asked. `Do you wish to initiate criminal proceedings against Dr. Rhinehart for forgery, sir?' the Inspector asked Dr. Mann.

Dr. Mann turned and looked a long time into the black, sincere eyes of Dr. Rhinehart, who returned his gaze steadily.

`No, Inspector, I'm afraid I can't. For the good of the hospital, for the good of everyone, I wish you'd keep this whole conversation confidential. The public thinks the escape was a conspiracy of hippies and blacks. For all we know; as Dr. Rhinehart so kindly points out, it still may be a conspiracy of hippies and blacks. They also wouldn't understand why all Dr. Rhinehart has done only constitutes a misdemeanor.'

`It confuses me, sir.'

`Precisely. There are some things we must protect the common man from knowing as long as we can.'

`I think you're right.'

`May I go now, fellows?' asked Dr. Rhinehart

The Die is our refuge and strength,
A very present help in trouble.
Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed,
And though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;
Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled,
Though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof.
I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my Die
Than to dwell in the tents of consistency.
For the Lord Chance is a sun and a shield
Chance will give grace and glory and folly and shame:
Nothing will be withheld from them that walk randomly.
Q Lord of Chance, My Die, blessed is the man that trusteth in thee...

from The Book of the Die

`Your free will has made a mess of things,' I told Linda after explaining at length my dice theory. `Give the Die a try.'

`You sound like a TV commercial,' she said.

Nevertheless, Linda and I began living a dicelife together, the first full dice-couple in history. She knew she'd reached a dead end with her `real' self and enjoyed trying to express a variety of others. Her sexual and social promiscuity was a good preparation for the dicelife; it dis-inhibited her in an area which often blocks the whole life system. On the other-hand, she had repressed the whole spiritual side of herself: she was as ashamed of having to pray in front of me as would be most other people of having to perform soixante-neuf at the communion rail. But she could do it (and probably the other too). She prayed.

I was tender and warm with her and - when the Die so chose - I treated her like a cheap slut, using her body to satisfy the most perverse desires whim could create and Whim choose. I insisted that her reactions to my tenderness and to my sadism be determined by the Die - whether she responded to my tender love with a bitchy self or with a sweet, giving self, or whether she was a bitter, cynical whore, half-enjoying being abased by me sexually, or a flower deeply crushed by cruelty.
She followed the Die's commands with the intense fanaticism of the new convert to any religion. Together we prayed, wrote poems and prayers, discussed dice therapy and practiced our randoming lives. Although she wanted to give up her sexual promiscuity, I insisted that it was a part of her and must be given a chance to be expressed. One night the Die commanded her to go out and pick up a man and bring him back to the apartment and she did and the Die ordered me to join them and the two of us worked with her diligently for two hours. I shook the Die next morning to see how I was to treat her and it said `in a surly fashion,' but the Die told her `not to worry about last night' and to `love me' no matter how I acted, and she did.

In the fall the Die set us the assignment of infiltrating the numerous encounter groups in New York City. We were trying to introduce some of their group members into diceliving.

We varied who we were from one encounter or sensitivity group to the next, sometimes acting as a couple, sometimes acting as a couple, sometimes as strangers.

I remember one time in particular: a weekend marathon we attended at the Fire Island Sensitivity Training Headquarters of Encounter Resources Society in late October, 1969.

As with most psychotherapies, FISTH provided mental first aid by the prospective rich (the therapists) for the already rich (the patients), and the dozen people at this marathon were representative Americans: a magazine editor, a fashion designer, two corporation executives, a tax lawyer, three well-to-do housewives, one stockbroker, a freelance. writer, a minor TV personality and a mad psychiatrist - seven men and five women, plus I should add, two young hippies present tuition free, as an extra added attraction for the two-hundred-dollar weekend paying clients. I was one of the two corporation executives and Lil a well-to-do housewife (divorced). The leaders were Scott (small, compact, athletic) and Marya (tall, lithe, ethereal), both of whom were fully qualified psychotherapists. Our main meeting place was the huge living room of a huge Victorian house on the ocean outside Quoquam, Fire Island.

Friday evening and all day Saturday we did a few loosening up exercises to get to know each other better: we played pitch and catch for a while with the hippie girl; we had a tug of war; we stared into each other's eyes like used-car salesmen; we symbolically gang banged the woman who had the first crying jag; shouted shitheads and cocksuckers at each other for an invigorating half hour; played musical chairs with half the group being sitters and the other half being chairs; played `get the guest' with the minor TV personality, by taking turns seeing who could be the most obnoxious to her; played blind man's buff with everybody blind - except for Marya, who stood by whispering hoarsely, `Really FEEL him, Joan, put your HANDS on him.'

By Saturday evening we were exhausted, but felt very close to one another and very liberated for doing publicly with strangers what previously we had only done privately with friends: namely, feeling each other up and calling each other shitheads and cocksuckers. The more bizarre games reminded me pleasantly of life on a dull day in a Dice Center, but every time I'd begin to relax and enjoy some pattern-breaking event, one Of our leaders would start getting us to talk honestly about and it would begin to rain cliches.

So by close to midnight we were all lying in various informal states of decomposition against the walls of the bare living room watching the spontaneous light-show the firelight was making on our faces from the blazing logs, while Marya tried to get the other corporation executive, a balding little man named Henry Hopper, to open up about his true feelings. I'd just called him a `liberal fink,' Linda had called him a `virile looking hunk of man,' and the hippie girl had called him a `capitalist pig.'

For some reason Hopper was maintaining that he was confused in his feelings. Two or three of the group were trying to help Marya, assuming that we were beginning another round of `get the guest,' but many of the others looked tired and a bit bored. Nonetheless, Marya, a slender, bright-eyed fanatic on the subject of honesty, pressed onward in a soft husky voice that reminded me of a bad actress doing a bedroom scene.

`Just tell us, Hank,' she said. `Let it come out.'

`Frankly, I don't feel like saying anything right now.' He was nervously breaking open peanut shells and eating peanuts.

`You're chicken, Hank,' a big, beefy tax lawyer contributed.

`I'm not chicken,' Mr. Hopper said in a quiet voice. `I'm just scared shitless.'

Linda and I and Mr. Hopper were the only ones who laughed.

`Humor is a defense mechanism, Hank,' leader Marya said. `Why are you scared?' she asked, her blue eyes blazing sincerely.

`I guess I'm afraid the group won't like me as much if I tell them I think we're wasting our time.'

`Right,' said Marya, smiling with encouragement.

Mr. Hopper just looked at the floor and arranged the peanut shells on the rug in front of him.

`You're not sharing with us, Hank,' Marya said after a while. She smiled. `You don't trust us.'

Mr. Hopper just stared at the floor, the firelight reflecting brightly off his balding head.

After another few minutes of unsuccessful sniping, co-leader Scott suggested we try some trust exercises with Hank namely, play pitch and catch with him to help him come to trust us. So we formed a circle and tossed him around among ourselves until he had a blissful smile on his face, and then Marya had him towered to the floor, where she knelt by him and, smiling with half closed eyes, suggested in a soft voice that he tell us the truth about everything. Before he could begin, though, Linda interrupted.

`Lie,' she said..

Beg pardon,' he said, still smiling dreamily from the flowing caresses of being manipulated by a roomful of people: 'Tell lies,' Linda said. `It's much easier.'

She was seated against the wall opposite the fire with her feet tucked under her.

`Why, Linda, what are you saying?' Marya asked.

`I'm suggesting Hank really let go and just lie to us. Tell us whatever he feels like saying with no inhibiting effort to get at some illusion we call truth.'

`Why are you afraid of truth, Linda?'

Marya asked, smiling. Her smile had begun to remind me of Dr. Felloni's nod.

`I'm not afraid of truth,' Linda answered with a slow drawl, half imitating Marya's. `I just find it far less fun and far less liberating than lies.'

`You're sick,' contributed the burly tax sawyer.

'Oh I don't know,' I said from my corner of the room. 'Huck Finn was the greatest liar in American literature and he seemed to have a lot of fun and be pretty liberated.'

The sudden appearance of two challengers to the godhead of honesty was unprecedented. `Let's get back to Mr. Hopper,' said co-leader Scott pleasantly. `Tell us now, Hank, why were you so scared before.'

Mr. Hopper answered promptly: `I was scared because you wasted truth, and both the answers I felt like making seemed to me to be half-lies. I was confused.'