slow, rational, bureaucratic course.
They probably would have kept me locked up in Kolb Clinic forever, but Jake Ecstein was my psychiatrist and unlike most other ambitious, successful doctors, Jake listened only to Jake. Thus, when I seemed perfectly normal (it was back to Normalcy Month) he ordered them to let me out. It seemed an unreasonable thing to do, even to me.
Chapter Fifty-one
`Luke, you're a quack,' Fred Boyd said to me, smiling and looking out our kitchen windows toward the old barn and
poison ivy fields.
`Mmmm,' I said, as Lil moved past our table back outdoors to get the groceries.
`A Phi Beta Kappa quack, a brilliant quack, but a quack,' he skid.
`Thanks, Fred. You're kind.'
`The trouble is,' he said, dunking a somewhat stale doughnut into his lukewarm coffee, `that some of it makes sense.
That confuses the issue. Why can't you just be a complete fool or charlatan?'
`Huh. Never thought of that. I'll have to let the Die consider it' Lil and Miss Welish came in from the yard with the
two children clamoring after them, clawing at the bags of groceries Lil carried in her arms. When Lil took out a box of
cookies and distributed three each to the two children, they wandered back outdoors, arguing halfheartedly about who
had the largest.
Miss Welish, dressed in white tennis shirts and blouse, bounced girlishly and a bit chubbily across the floor to hustle
up some fresh coffee and deliver the fresh pastry we'd been promised. Fred watched her, sighed, yawned and tipped
way back in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head.
`And where's it all going to end, I wonder?' he said.
`What?' I asked.
`Your dice therapy business: `The Die only knows.'
`Seriously. What do you think you'll achieve?'
`Try it yourself,' I said.
`I have. You know I have. And it's fun; I admit it. But my God, if I took it seriously I'd have to change completely.'
`Precisely.'
`But I like the way I am: `So do I, but I'm getting bored with you,' I said. `It's variety and unpredictability we like in
our friends. Those capable of the unexpected we cherish; they capture us because we're intrigued by how they 'work.'
After a while we learn how they work, and our boredom resumes. You've got to change, Fred.'
'No, he hasn't,' said Lil, bringing us lemonade, a Sara Lee Coffee Cake and a bottle of vitamins and sitting at the end
of the table. `I liked Luke the way he was before, and I want Fred to stay just the way he is.'
`It's just not so, Lil. You were bored and unhappy with me before I became the Dice Man. Now you're entertained and
unhappy. That's progress.'
Lil shook her head.
`If it weren't for Fred, I don't think I'd have survived, but he's made me see your behavior for what it is: the sick
rebellion of an elephantine child.'
`Fred!'
'Now wait a minute, Lil,' he said. `That isn't quite what I think at all.'
`All right,' Lil said'. 'The sick rebellion of an elephantine Phi Beta Kappa child quack.'
'That's better,' he said, and we laughed.
Miss Welish brought us coffee and sat down with her cup in the chair in front of the window. She smiled at our thank #161;you's and took a big bite out of a sugared bun.
`Actually,' Lil said, `now that you've let me know what you're up to and I no longer give a damn about you, I find it
interesting. You should have told me about your dicelife before.'
`The dice didn't tell me to.'
`Don't you ever do anything all by yourself?' Miss Welish asked.
`Not if I can help it.'
`Luke is the only man I've ever known,' Fred said, `who consults his God every time before going to the john.'
`I think Dr. Rhinehart is a true scientist,' Miss Welish said. We all looked at her. She flushed.
`He doesn't let personal considerations enter into anything he does,' she went on. She flushed again. `So I've noticed,' said Lil. There was a somewhat embarrassed silence. Lil had questioned me extensively on my return from the clinic about what had occurred in Dr. Mann's bathroom that night, and I had told her the truth, which was extensive. She had replied extensively, and I had begun an extensive period of sleeping alone in my study. Presumably Fred had questioned Miss Welish extensively also, but her replies didn't seem to have deflected his aim. Since the Krum party, Fred had slowly but surely, with all that scholarly discipline and thoroughness for which Harvard men are renowned, worked his way into Miss Welish's not inconsiderable pants; he seemed undisturbed about whether other scholars had worked on the subject previously or not.
`The only problem I can see with all this,' Fred said, `is that you've got a poor sense of limits, Luke. To a degree, dice living has value, extraordinary value. I've experienced it. I've talked to Orv Boggles and that Tracy girl and a couple of other students of yours and I know. But good God, Luke, the trouble you've caused by not taking it easy, not using common sense.'
`Understatement of the century,' said Lil.
`I may overdo it occasionally, but in good cause: A good cause. 'The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom' #161;so said Calvin Coolidge, and I believe him.'
`But no more Krum parties, okay?' Fred asked with a smile.
`I promise never to play six roles at a party ever again.'
`But he's got to keep experimenting,' Miss Welish said.
`I promise to be only a moderate quack,' I said. `All day.'
`Well, is it tennis, a swim at the ocean, the club, or a sail?' Fred said and got up from the table.
`We need two more options,' Lil added.
`I throw,' said Miss Welish, and she got up to go to the cupboard and get out our family dice. Eventually we all gathered around the kitchen table as Miss Welish flipped the die onto the soiled tablecloth: tennis. We cast again to see whose car we would take and once more to see who played whom and we were off.
It was the first weekend of August, and we were vacationing in our old farmhouse out in the poison ivy fields of eastern Long Island, and things were going quite well. Lil, after questioning me all month about dice theory and therapy, had become more and more interested and less antagonistic. I had brought Professor Boggles home for dinner one night and he had given a fine testimonial to the gifts of the Die.
Our separation and divorce was in temporary abeyance. Lil was putting up with me on the condition that I behave myself with rational irrationality.
Fred Boyd had been a frequent visitor since my release from the clinic in mid-July, and we'd enjoyed half a dozen discussions of dice theory and practice. He tended to quote Jung or Reik or R. D. Laing to show that my
