`Now if you'd like, sir, you can go back to Mr. Wipple's apartment and meditate there.'
He opened the door on his side and got out. The garage attendant materialized suddenly outside my door and looked in
at me earnestly.
`Yes. Yes, it would be messy driving tonight,' I said and lifted my heavy, burden out of the car. `I suppose we may be
seeing each other again?'
`In thirty-eight minutes. Yes.'
Mr. Holcome smiled, and his earnest eyes beamed into mine their unremitting sincerity. `Good evening, Dr. Rhinehart.'
`That's your theory,' I mumbled and walked with little enthusiasm back the way I had come.
I climbed up the ten flights of stairs with considerable less stealth and self-esteem than I had come down them. It was
getting to be a long day.
Lil was the one who came to the door to let me in.
`What happened?' she asked as we moved down the hall toward the living room.
`Red light,' I said.
`What are you going to do?'
I collapsed in total exhaustion on the couch. Jake was seated in the sand in a half-lotus position, staring into the red
glow of a fake fire in Wipple's early American fireplace and smoking lazily on a homemade cigarette. H. J. wasn't
around.
`They've got mad Lucifer really running,' I said. `Do you think, Lil, the Die intended you to remain married to a man
whom it may ask to spend the next two hundred and thirty seven years in prison?'
`Probably,' she said. `What happened?'
I began telling Lil and Jake about my conversation in the basement and all the options I suddenly found myself
confronted with. They listened attentively, Lil leaning against the boulder, Jake staring into the fire.
`If I betray Eric, it will seem,' I concluded wearily, `I don't know, as if I had betrayed someone.'
`Don't worry about it,' said Jake. `We never know what's good for us. Betrayal might be just what Eric's looking for.'
`On the other hand, two hundred and thirty-seven years in prison seems like an unduly long time.'
`The sage can fulfil himself anyplace.'
`I think I might feel confined.
'Dicedust,' Jake said. `You'd probably discover a whole new universe in prison.'
I'd like to try to escape from here, but I'm not sure there's a helicopter on the roof.'
Jake, cross-legged in the sand, staring into the red glow of the fake fire, smiled again like a child.
`Create the options, shake the dice,' he said. `I don't know why you keep talking.'
`But I like you people,' I said. `I'm not sure I'd like prison as much.'
`That's a hang-up, Luke baby,' he said. `You gotta fight it.'
'So give good odds for trying to escape,' said Lil. `Or good odds for hiring me as your lawyer. That'll keep you free.'
`I'm worried about my image,' I said. `The Father of dice living has an obligation always to shake true.'
`Dicedung,' said Jake lazily. `If you're worried about your image you're neither a Father or a child; you're just another
man.'
`But I have to help people.'
`Dicesnot. If you think you gotta help people, you're just another man.'
`But I want to help people.'
`Dicepiss,' said Jake. `If you want anything, you're just another man.'
`What's with these new obscenities?' I asked.
`Diced if I know.'
`You're being silly.'
`Not half as silly as you're being.'
He beamed into the fake fire. `Create the options. Shake the dice. All else is nonsense.'
`But I'm worried. It's me that may get two hundred and thirty-seven years.'
`Who're you?' Jake asked lazily.
There was a long pause and by now all three of us were staring into the redglow.