`What difference does it make?'
She was definitely sitting up, her legs spread, leaning back on her upright arms. `I sometimes wonder what you want, not the dice.' `Who's me?' `That's what I want to know.' I sat up, blinking my eyes and looking toward the ocean past the rise of sand in front of me. Without my glasses it was
a tan blur and blue blur.
`But don't you see,' I said. `To know "me" that way is to limit me, cement me into something stonelike and predictable.' `Diceshit! I just want to know a you that's soft and predictable. How am I supposed to enjoy being with you if I feel
you can go "goof" any minute from some random fall of a die?'
I sighed and lowered myself back onto my elbows.
`Were I a healthy, normal neurotic human lover, my love might evaporate any moment in just as haphazard a fashion.'
`But then I could see it coming; I could run out on you first.' She smiled.
I sat abruptly up.
`Everything may evaporate at any instant. Everything!' I said with surprising vehemence. `You, me, the most rocklike
personality since Calvin Coolidge: death, destruction, despair may strike. To live your life assuming otherwise is
insanity.'
`But Luke,' she said putting a warm hand on my shoulder. `Life's going to go on more or less the same and ourselves
too. If -'
`Never!'
She didn't speak. She slid her hand gently from my shoulder to the back of my neck and it played there with my hair.
After a few moments I said quietly: `I love you, Linda. The "I" that loves you will always love you. Nothing is more
certain than that.'
`But how long will this "I" last?'
'Forever,' I said.
Her hand became motionless.
`Forever?' she said in a very low voice.
`Forever. Maybe even longer.'
I turned on to my side and took her hand and kissed the palm. I looked into her eyes with a playful smile.
Staring seriously back at me, she said `But that "I" which loves me may be replaced by a different, unloving "I" and be
forced to live forever underground and unexpressed?'
I nodded, still smiling.
"The "I" that loves you would like to arrange things so that the whole rest of my life is fixed to guarantee the continued fulfillment of himself. But it would mean the permanent burial of most of the other "I's.' `But ego or no ego, there are natural desires and imposed actions: To come over on top of me and fuck would be a
natural act; to follow the fall of a die and kneel in the sand to jerk off wouldn't.'
I maneuvered myself clumsily into a kneeling position in the sand and began to lower my swim-trunks.
`O Jesus,' Linda said. `Me and my big mouth.'
But I smiled and pulled up my trunks. `You're right,' I said, and moved myself over and lay my head naturally onto her
warm, soft thigh.
`So what are your natural desires? What do you really want?'
Silence.
`I want being with you. I want sunshine. Love, caresses, kisses. [Pause] Water. Good books. Opportunities to practice
the dicelife with people.'
`But whose kisses, whose caresses?'
`Yours,' I answered, blinking into the sun. `Terry's, Arlene's, Lil's, Gregg's. A few others. Women I meet in the street.'
She didn't respond.
`Good music, a chance to write,' I went on. `Good film occasionally, the sea.'
`I feel . . . Huh! You're not even as romantic as I used not to be, are you?'
`Not this particular me.'
`You love me deeply though,' she said, and I looked up to catch her smiling down at me.
`I love you,' I said holding her eyes with mine. We looked deeply and warmly at each other for more than a minute.
Then she said softly: 'Up yours.'
We watched a gull circling and swooping, and she started to ask something but stopped. I turned my head to press my
mouth against the inside of one thigh. It was hot and salty.
She sighed and pushed my head away.