The Search for the Dice Man (11 page)

‘Right on, Preacher,’ shouted a woman’s voice from the middle of the church.

I was annoyed, mostly, I realized, because I was impressed by the seriousness of the man’s talk. It might be nonsense, but it was intelligent nonsense. And the people in the congregation listened with quiet intensity. I watched one woman so closely that the next thing I knew the Englishman had finished his sermon and the whole congregation was standing up. Jake now stood at the altar, and at his signal he and the whole congregation began reciting.

‘In the Beginning was Chance,’ Jake’s voice boomed out over the voices of the others, but was drowned out as the recitation continued. ‘And Chance was with God and Chance was God. Lo, though we walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, we shall fear no evil, for the Lord Chance watches over us. We shall never question the wisdom of Chance. His Ways are inscrutable. He leads us by the hand into an Abyss and, lo, it is a fertile plain. We stagger beneath the burden he places upon us, and behold, we suddenly soar. Let us enclose the Die in our hand and let the Lord Chance enclose us in His.’

As I stood in some shock at this sudden religisizing of what had been pretty intellectual stuff, I abruptly became aware that the sermon and service were over. People were leaving. A little shaken by the whole thing, I followed.

On the steps of the church, Jake and the Englishman who had preached the sermon were greeting the parishioners as they left. I joined the line.

‘Hi there, Larry,’ said Jake, when my turn came. ‘Great sermon, huh? And, say, this is Michael Way, or Master Way on most Sundays.’

I shook hands with Way, a big man in his thirties with a rugged, weather-beaten face and thick rust-coloured hair already streaked with grey. He looked as if he played rugby and enjoyed it.

‘You know this is a cult you’re creating here,’ I said to them.

‘Oh, sure,’ said Jake. ‘But our cult differs from others
because we train our guys to leave the cult. Our “graduates” don’t need to hang out with cult members or with other graduates. They go back into society – hey, I might even say they disappear back into society – and they almost never try to snare people into our so-called cult.’

‘Then how do you ever get anyone to come to this madhouse?’ I countered.

‘The world has never lacked for dissatisfied people,’ said Way. ‘Never lacked for seekers, for intelligent people who sense that something is very wrong with the way we live our lives.’

‘Dissatisfied maybe,’ I said. ‘But not crazy.’ And I moved on down the steps and away.

Honoria had no luck at the administration building. The Dicelife Foundation, she was told, no longer existed, and the present funding of Lukedom was through private donations – presumably, Honoria thought, the guest residents. So she decided to take a more direct approach.

She told the secretary that she was interested in being able to write to Luke Rhinehart. How could she get his address? Sorry, they couldn’t help. Well, could they forward a letter to Luke if she left it with them? The secretary didn’t think so. Well, where could she find out more about Luke Rhinehart’s life and philosophy? Perhaps Jake Ecstein or Michael Way might help. They would both be at the church about this hour.

Honoria wasn’t interested in talking to Jake again nor in duplicating Larry’s trip to the church, so she moved on.

When she passed a little café with two immaculately-dressed ladies sipping tea in a window seat, she impulsively entered. She ordered tea from the counter and then, her supreme sense of worth carrying her forward, asked the two ladies if she might join them.

After they smilingly urged her to sit, Honoria immediately decided that she had found two kindred souls. Their hairstyles, make-up, dress, the very way they carried their cups of tea to their mouths, blared forth breeding. After a few brief pleasantries about the tea and the surprisingly fine china it was being served from. Honoria got to the point.

‘I’ve only been here a few days,’ she said, ‘and I still haven’t met Luke Rhinehart. Have you?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said the taller and slightly older of the two, a
distinguished and dignified middle-aged lady. ‘Many times. He can be a dear.’

‘Or an asshole,’ said the other, bringing her teacup to her lips with classic elegance.

Although surprised at this breach of tea etiquette, Honoria managed a smile. The second woman, now that Honoria looked at her more closely, definitely was not quite as refined as the first, her hair being a bit too obviously dyed.

‘But how does one get to meet him?’ she asked casually.

‘Oh, it just happens,’ said the dignified lady. ‘Often when you least expect it.’

‘And usually when you least want it,’ said the other, grinning.

‘But if one wanted to initiate such a meeting?’

‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ said the first. ‘It just isn’t done. Luke is just too elusive.’

‘How elusive?’ asked Honoria, feeling that she was on the brink of a breakthrough.

‘Oh, he’s just never the same,’ the woman answered. ‘He can change his clothes, his looks.’

‘Usually for the worst,’ commented the second.

‘Is there any place in particular one might visit and expect he might show up there?’ Honoria prodded.

The two women exchanged glances and then the older one shrugged.

‘The Hazard Inn, I suppose,’ she said. ‘Everyone ends up there.’

A lead, a lead. The conversation continued for another half-hour and Honoria probed but picked up nothing else of interest. The two women had been at Lukedom for about six months and lived ‘usually’ in a house a few blocks away. They apparently held a variety of jobs.

After thanking them, Honoria went on her way, stopping briefly to window-shop in a small boutique with
stunningly up-to-date fashions mixed in with utter garbage. Then it was on to the Hazard Inn.

The exterior of the building was quite impressive: eighty years ago it must have been the grandest thing in town. Indeed it still was: a grand old Victorian hotel that had been reasonably restored to something of its old splendour. Honoria marched briskly up the steps.

The lobby of the Hazard Inn was, however, something of a shock.

Many of the guests looked as if they were just coming off the back lot of a grade-B movie set or had been issued elaborate costumes for some sort of party. There was a man dressed as Superman, a clown, two nuns, two women who seemed to have every article of clothing and every mannerism of blatant hookers, a rabbi, one football player and several men who looked as if they might be Hell’s Angels. Although the few normal-looking people seemed at ease, Honoria wasn’t. She took one long look and then wheeled to leave.

She went out on to the porch feeling distinctly ill-at-ease. If Luke Rhinehart was in there she wasn’t sure she wanted to meet him.

As she stood wondering what to do next she noticed a disconcertingly well-built hunk striding down the sidewalk trailed by several people, mostly women, staring up at him adoringly. Not only was he good-looking, but he was dressed impeccably in a suit that might have been stolen from William Fanshawe Battle III’s own huge walk-in closet. As he waved off his hangers-on at least two of them said ‘Thank you, Mr Way’ and ‘See you later, Michael.’ So this was the other bigwig.

As the man bounded up the stairs of the inn, looking as if he owned it all, Honoria stepped casually up to meet him.

‘Mr Way?’ she asked with her best smile. ‘Absolutely, my dear,’ he answered, stopping and smiling. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘If you’ve got a moment,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you can help me with
a
few questions I have. My name is Honoria Battle.’

‘It’s a pleasure,’ he said. ‘Certainly, yes, I do have a moment. Tea?’

Tea was about the last thing in the world that Honoria wanted at this point, but she greeted the invitation with a smile worthy of an invitation to a coronation.

‘Why, thank you. that would be wonderful.’

Michael Way smoothly took Honoria by the elbow and steered her back into the lobby. He was such a big man, and so sure of himself, that he immediately made Honoria feel ultra-feminine. As they entered and crossed the lobby, now filled with a slightly different but equally bizarre melange of people, including several men crawling around on the floor behaving like some son of animal, this time with her best front of
sang froid
Honoria marched through the show towards what she hoped would be a normal coffee shop.

It
was
a normal coffee shop and, being on the arm of what she believed was the best-looking, best-dressed, and most intelligent man in all of Lukedom, Honoria felt particularly attractive and desirable as they entered.

They took a chair overlooking a playground in the back of the inn. For some reason, the playground – containing swings, slides, teeterboards, sandboxes and jungle gyms – was occupied mostly by adults. Honoria tried not to stare at the grandmotherly types swinging skywards, their skins billowing, or the two middle-aged men arguing in the sandbox over rights of way for their trucks.

As they ordered and began talking. Way continued to impress Honoria: even more than his having been a star rugby player at Oxford was the fact that he’d gotten a law degree from Harvard. She immediately began to discuss the philosophy of Lukedom as if it actually interested her and might have some merit. Finally she casually asked how she might meet Luke Rhinehart.

‘You know,’ he said in response, ‘it’s possible that Luke doesn’t exist.’

‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

‘I mean both that he may be dead and, on the other hand, that he may never have existed.’

‘Well, he certainly existed,’ returned Honoria. ‘His son is one proof, and I’ve already met several people who actually have met him, recently –
they
certainly feel he’s alive.’

‘Yes, but he may not exist the way people think he does,’ Way went on. ‘Certainly from what you were telling me, the Luke that Larry is carrying around in his mind doesn’t exist, wouldn’t you agree?’

‘Oh, in that way,’ said Honoria. ‘I quite agree.’

‘Isn’t that wonderful,’ said Way, gesturing at the middle-aged men and women playing on the jungle gym and in the sandbox outside their window.

Honoria managed a smile.

‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘I love to see older people playing with children.’

‘Shall we join them?’ asked Mr Way.

The prospect of grubbing in the sand or contorting in a jungle gym in her new business suit did not appeal to Honoria.

‘Oh, not now, I guess,’ she replied with a bright smile.

‘We’ll have to get you some play clothes,’ suggested Mr Way, looking at her suit as if it had been soiled.

‘What about yours?’ she returned.

‘Definitely,’ Way agreed. ‘I just put it on as a long shot for my Sunday sermon.’

‘Aren’t you a businessman?’

‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘but thankfully not too often. How about you, are you often a child?’

Honoria’s head tilled to one side questioningly.

‘For eleven years I was,’ she said, smiling.

‘I mean these days,’ he said. ‘Don’t you feel the need to be a child at times?’

‘No,’ she answered. ‘As you can see, I’m all grown up now and don’t see the need for it.’

‘What do you feel the need of?’ Way asked, looking at her directly.

‘Of simply being who I am,’ she answered, becoming annoyed with his questioning.

‘And who are you?’ he asked.

She was silent a moment and then said: ‘Can’t you tell?’

‘No, I can’t, actually,’ he countered easily. ‘Although my major interest is in opening people up to who they are.’

‘You make us sound like cans of tomato soup,’ said Honoria, clenching and unclenching her fingers. ‘I don’t need opening up.’

‘Of course not,’ said Way. That’s why you’re getting upset and balling your hands into fists.’

Michael Way was rapidly losing his appeal.

‘I’ve got itchy palms. I always get them when talking to a boor.’

That’s fine, but what have I said or done to make you call me a boor?’

Honoria reached for the glass of water and got hold of herself. Somehow she was not coming off the way she wanted to. She had definitely lost her cool. After taking a leisurely swallow she looked up at him with her most brilliant smile.

‘Nothing, of course,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid our long auto trip yesterday and our car’s being stolen with all our luggage has made me unusually sensitive. You
do
come across a bit like a truck backing into my Porsche. But please forgive me.’

‘Great comeback,’ said Way, grinning. ‘Would you like me to tell you why all these people in the lobby are in costumes?’

‘Not really,’ she replied.

‘It might lead you doser to finding Dr Rhinehart,’ said Way.

Honoria couldn’t tell from his expression whether he
was bullshitting her or not. ‘All right, then, yes,’ she said.

The Hazard Inn, it turned out, was patterned somewhat after the original dice centres that Luke Rhinehart had created back in the good old days of the sixties and early seventies, when kooks were given a chance to carry their kookiness to its logical extreme. Over the reception desk were three signs; ‘Anybody can be anybody’ … ‘Die-ing is the way of life’ and ‘This Truth above all Fake it’ Apparently all who came were expected to experiment with different role-playing.

As Honoria followed Mr Way down the main hallway what she saw made her increasingly tense and suspicious, wondering whether this Oxford man and Harvard lawyer was about to force her into some terrifying act and claim it was for her own benefit. Each room off the hallway was a ‘playroom’, each with its own labels, some harmless-sounding, others bizarre, and yet others threatening. There was a Rec Room, a Creativity Room, a Meditation Room on the one hand, but then a Slaves’ Quarters, a Children’s Playroom, a Death Room, a Madhouse, an Emotional Roulette Room, something called the Pit, a Random Body Room, a Love-Hate Room – even a Room Room. According to Way each was specially designed for people to express themselves in the way the room’s environment encouraged.

‘Just a moment,’ said Honoria, coming to a hall when she noticed the Death Room. ‘Exactly where are we going?’

‘With your permission,’ said Way, smiling, ‘I’d like to introduce you to one of our techniques – nothing physical or dangerous, I assure you. And no one will be watching except me, and I don’t count.’ He laughed. ‘I’d just like to help you in seeing what this place is alt about.’

‘No force, no gimmicks, no whips or handcuffs?’ Honoria asked, beginning to relax.

‘The only enemy you’ll find will be yourself,’ he commented, returning her smile. He then took her arm and led her on and into the Love-Hate Room.

On two of the windowless walls were soft flowing murals, peaceful and gentle, presumably representing the mood of love. The other two walls were filled with violent colours and sharp angles, surreal images of weapons and faces contorted with hatred, headless animals linked by chains, screaming skulls – the usual nightmares of modem art. The only furniture in the room were six double chairs, each having two seats yoked together in such a way that the two people sitting in them had to face each other with their knees touching. Way led Honoria over to one pair and motioned for her to sit.

He explained to her that playing love-hate was simple. Each person chose from three to six people, then let a die choose one, and a second die choose whether the emotion to be fell and expressed towards that person was love or hate. One of the persons always available as an option was the person sitting opposite you. If the die chose your father to love or hate you were to see the individual opposite you as that father and express the emotion directly at him or her.

Michael Way went first. He listed as his three options to love or hate himself, Honoria and his mother. The die chose Honoria and then chose love.

So for the next two minutes Mr Way expressed his love for Honoria. His eyes softened, he reached forward and look her hand, and when he spoke, it was in a soft, husky voice.

‘I love you, Honoria,’ he began simply but with such apparent feeling that Honoria felt herself flush. ‘You’re the most beautiful being I’ve ever known. You move like some great princess, carrying yourself proudly, your lovely eyes looking at things as a queen surveys her kingdom …. And yet …’ (and here he reached up and caressed her face) beneath the sweet lushness of your sensual abundance
I sense a little girl frightened of herself … frightened of all the respect and power the woman Honoria has, frightened that the little girl might not be able to handle it …. And I love this little girl in you too, Honoria, love you that you so bravely keep her hidden … love you that …’