`Just tell me any strange thing which you think might be .fun and I'll write it down.'
Lawrence thought, unaware of the downward spiral that this first step might mean.
`Go to the zoo,' he said.
`Go to the zoo,' said Dr. Rhinehart and walked nonchalantly to his desk for paper and pencil to record this infamous
game.
`Climb to the roof and throw paper,' Lawrence said. He and Evie had joined their father at the desk and watched as he
wrote.
`Go beat up Jerry Brass,' Lawrence went on.
Dr. Rhinehart nodded and wrote.
`That's number three,' he said.
`Play horsey with you.'
`Hooray,' said Evie.
`Number four.'
There was a silence.
`I can't think of anymore.'
`How about you, Evie?'
`Eat ice cream.'
'Yeah,' said Lawrence.
`That's number five. Just one more.'
`Go for a long hike in Harlem,' shouted Lawrence, and he ran back to the couch and got the dice. `Can I throw?'
`You can throw. Just one, remember.'
He cast across the floor of his fate a single die: a four horsey. Ah gods, in what nag's clothing comes the wolf.
They played, raucously, for twenty minutes and then Lawrence, already, Reader, I lament to say, hooked, asked to
play dice man again. His father, smiling and gasping for breath, wobbled to the desk to write another page of the book
of ruin. Lawrence added some new alternatives and left some old ones and the dice chose: `Go beat up Jerry Brass.'
Lawrence stared at his father.
`What do we do now?' he asked.
`You go downstairs and ring the Brass's doorbell and ask to see Jerry and then you try to beat him up.'
Lawrence looked down at the floor, the enormity of his folly beginning to sink into his little heart.
`What if he's not home?'
`Then you try again later.'
`What'll I say when I beat him up?'
`Why don't you ask the dice?'
He looked up quickly at his father.'
'What do you mean?'
`You've got to beat up Jerry, why not give the dice six voices of what you'll say?'
'That's great. What'll they be?'
`You're God,' his father said with that same horrible smile. `You name them.'
`I'll tell him my father told me to.'
Dr. Rhinehart coughed, hesitated. `That's .., um … number one.'
`I'll tell him my mother told me to.'
`Right'
'That I'm drunk.'
`Number three.'
"That . .. that I can't stand him'
He was deep in excited concentration.
`That I'm practicing my boxing…' He laughed and hopped up and down.
`And that the dice told me to.'
That's six and very good, Larry.'