`Oh talk talk talk. It gets so sickening after a while.'
`Let me show you Dr. Mann's office. He has some fascinating illustrated books on primitive sexual practices.'
'No pictures of chickens?' and she laughed happily at herself, and I laughed too. Dr. Felloni nodded her head at us as
we passed the couch, and Jake squinted over an Important Person's shoulder as we passed behind the Krum group and
Arlene jiggled her breasts slightly and smiled and we were down the hall and into Dr. Mann's office. I heard a shrill
squeak when we entered and saw then that Dr. Boggles and Miss Reingold were seated on the floor with a pair of
green dice between them, and Boggles, with two-thirds of his clothes removed, was just reaching triumphantly to
remove Miss Reingold's (smiling triumphantly) blouse.
As we backed out, Miss Welish said: `Oh that's disgusting. In Dr. Mann's study! That's disgusting.'
`You're right, Joya, let's go to the bathroom.'
`The bathroom?'
'It's down this way.'
`What are you talking about?'
`A place to talk privately.'
`Oh.'
She had stopped in the middle of the hall now and her hands were both clenching her drink.
`No,' she said. `I want to get back to the party.'
`Joya, all I want to do is use your beautiful body. It won't take long.'
`What will we talk about?'
'What? We'll talk about Harry Stack Sullivan's theory of post-operative malaise. Come on.'
As she still remained immobile I realized I was being entirely too middle-class for the uninhibited sex maniac the Die certainly had in mind and, when Miss' Welish began talking of going back to the living room again, I strode forward, knocked her drink to the floor and tried to kiss her powerfully on the mouth.
The explosion of pain in my balls was so intense that for a moment I thought I had been shot. I was blinded with pain and staggered back against the wall with a thud. With the fierce willpower of a saint I forced my eyes open and saw the shimmering silvery back of Miss Welish returning toward the living room - Thank God! - leaving me alone - with my disaster.
I assumed I wouldn't be able to move from my folded-up position for a month and wondered vaguely if Mr. Thornton would dust me regularly. The question also came to my mind how an `uninhibited sex maniac' would react to a major kick in the balls. The answer seemed unequivocal: maniac, gentle Jesus, psychotic hippie, mute moron, Jake Ecstein, Hugh Hefner, Lao-Tzu, Norman Vincent Peale, Billy Graham all would react as I, simple, bespectacled Luke Rhinehart, was acting. Although both my hands were at the scene of the accident, they weren't touching anything; they seemed to be there to do something if anything could ever be done - say next month. Yet, I couldn't force my hands back to a different position. Dr. Krum and Arlene Ecstein were coming down the hall. I tried to straighten up and almost screamed. They stared down at the broken fragments of glass and then stopped in front of me.
`Nasty stomach-ache,' I said. `Severe abdominal cramps. May need an anesthetic.'
`Veil, vell. Tummy-ache, you say?'
`Lower tummy, abdomen, help.' I was whispering.
`Luke, what game are you playing now?' Arlene said and looked down at me (I was folded down a full foot and a half from my normal height) with a bemused smile.
`You're - you're terrific, baby,' I gasped. `Take off - that dress.'
I collapsed slowly sideways to the floor, the pain in my elbow being an almost blissful distraction from the other.
I heard Fred Boyd's voice from farther up the hall asking, `What happened?' and then heard him almost directly over me, laughing.
`I think he's been shot,' Dr. Krum said. `Is serious.'
`Oh, he'll survive,' Fred said, and I felt his hands on one of my arms and then Arlene's on the other, and Fred lifted one arm around his shoulder and dragged me into a bedroom. They threw me on to the bed.
The pain was, in fact, subsiding, and after the three had left, I was able to move a bit, my eyes mostly, but it was progress. Then I remembered it was time for a fresh consultation of the Die and, shuddering at the possibility of a second round of uninhibited sex maniac, I painfully drew the fake watch case out of my pocket and looked: a three: the honest dice man.
I lay back on the bed for a while and stared at the ceiling. I heard voices passing by out in the hall and then only the blurred distant buzz from the living room. The door opened and Lil came in.
`What happened?' she asked sharply. She was immaculately beautiful in her black, low-cut cocktail dress, but her eyes
and mouth were set and cold. I looked up at her and felt a hollowness inside me: what a time and place for this.
`Dr. Krum said you were sick. You disappear with Blondie and then turn up sick. What happened?'
I struggled to a sitting position and dragged my legs off the bed to the floor. I looked up at her.
`It's a long story, Lil.'
`You made a pass at Blondie.'
"Longer than that, much longer.'
`I hate you.'
`Yes. It's inevitable,' I said. `I'm the Dice Man:'
`Had you met her before? I thought Fred told me he'd just met her himself.'
`I'd never met her before. She was thrown into my path and the dice said take her.'
`The dice? What're you talking about?'
`I am the Dice Man.'
Hunched over and disheveled, I'm afraid it wasn't too impressive a moment. We stared at each other, separated by only
six feet in the little bedroom off the hallway of Dr. Mann's museum mausoleum. Lil shook her head as if trying to