After talking to Jeff I felt oddly dislocated. Wandering away from the orientation building I looked around and found myself surrounded by huge mountains of pine trees with open meadows spread below, instead of huge mountains of concrete with layers of macadam below. As I walked along I felt myself moving back into the world of Lukedom where people were different and unpredictable and unique compared to the button-down world of Wall Street and Blair, Battle and Pike, where they were all crazy in the same ways. And the trades and figures Jeff and I had bandied about, which seemed to have such body and meaning in New York, seemed flimsy and artificial here in the mountains. Everything about Lukedom made money seem sort of silly while everything in Wall Street made it seem like the only serious reality in the world. I knew Wall Street was right, and worried that if I stayed too long in Lukedom I might lose that compulsive calculating nature that had made me the hotshot I was.
And things didn’t get better when I went back to the orientation centre after the break. I found that I was expected to let a die choose which of three ‘chores’ I’d do during the lunch hour: cook, serve table or mop up. The die chose the mop and, after I’d eaten a mediocre lunch, I had to clean up both the kitchen and dining area of the small orientation centre restaurant. So for the first time in my life I discovered the joys of mopping a kitchen floor.
In the afternoon I had to continue to endure my ‘training’, some with Kathy but most with the big English trainer Michael Way. and I hated it. While Kathy had made me feel like an inhibited prude. Way soon had me feeling like a philosophical pygmy.
Even the other people in the classes or on the street or in the restaurants began to depress me. No one seemed to care who I was. No one seemed to care I was a brilliant graduate of Wharton Business School earning close to two hundred thousand dollars a year, that the expensive clothes I wore were really mine and not some duds I’d borrowed from Lukedom’s huge collection of clothing and costumes. It was depressing to be telling someone at the bar at the Do Die Inn how I’d made an incredible coup on the Japanese yen that had made BB&P millions, and then realize that the two men listening to me assumed it was all simply a bullshit role the dice had told me to play. And when a woman told me a really moving story about losing her only child to leukaemia I’d wanted to comfort her until she took out a die, flipped it across the bar and, in an entirely different tone of voice, told me I had a cute butt.
I realized I was feeling a consistent low level of anxiety. I’d often enough had anxiety caused by worrying about other people disapproving of who I was or what I did, but this was the first time I’d experienced a low level dread of not being sure who I was. Of course I knew who I was, but somehow the fact that no one else acknowledged or cared about who I thought I was was profoundly unsettling.
I felt such waves of loneliness I phoned Jeff two more times than I really had to, pretending I was worried about all the oil contracts. I also tried to phone Honoria at her office, wanting to apologize and redeclare my undying devotion to our union, but was told she was in a meeting.
Was it a real meeting? Was she talking to me? Were we no longer engaged? Had she really discovered that the magnificent two-carat diamond I’d given her had a minor flaw?
I became so depressed I even longed to meet my father again, just to have someone who would recognize me as Larry Rhinehart. Never had I realized how important it was to have people who were always around reminding you of who you are. Maybe Honoria was right: the place was designed to drive people crazy.
In mid-afternoon, after I’d been at last released from more intense one-on-one training which was giving me an inferiority complex, I was given a chance to choose six ‘occupations for the day’ from a list of over twenty. The list varied from bank manager to farmhand to housewife to babysitter to hardware store clerk and so on. Only one leapt out at me: administrative clerk; maybe I’d have a chance to browse through some other file cabinets. So I listed it as one of the six and then added five more: bank manager (why not start at the top?); babysitter (I’d have free time to follow the markets on CNBC-FNN); hardware store clerk (maybe True Value would have a special on effective skeleton keys); telephone operator (maybe I’d overhear a phone call that would give me a lead); psychotherapist (I knew I’d enjoy playing god to some poor wimp the way Dr Bickers did to me); and sheriff’s deputy (maybe I could find out how I could stop Rick from always taking off with my car).
I then cast a die. A ‘three’ babysitter.
The babysitting was a disaster. I’d assumed I would sit around reading the Wall Street Journal and catching up on the Monday markets on CNBC-FNN on television while the three children played with blocks on the living-room floor. It didn’t work out that way.
I was given a hint of the trouble to come when the babysitter for the morning shift, a middle-aged woman named Dolores, looked rather frazzled as she passed over responsibility for the three young children, varying in age from two to seven. She practically ran from the house as soon as I took over.
Things got off to a bad start immediately. First of all the house had neither cable television (and thus a financial network) nor a telephone (and thus access to Jeff back in New York). Secondly, the children claimed they hadn’t been fed since mid-morning snack and were circling the icebox and cupboards like a wolfpack closing in on a kill. Thirdly, I made the mistake of asking them what they wanted for lunch.
‘Pizza’ had seemed a reasonable request until I discovered that there was no frozen pizza, no leftover pizza, no nearby pizza parlour, and that I was expected to make a pizza. I quickly corrected the children on that expectation but was immediately labelled a liar by the oldest: ‘You promised us we could have whatever we wanted!’
I tried to get the three kids to become hypnotized by the television set, but discovered that only one of the three channels had cartoons, and the cartoons were so bizarre that minutes after the kids had snuck away to try raiding the refrigerator again, I stood in front of the set hypnotized. In the middle of a manic cat chasing an overconfident mouse would appear Snow White singing away with the seven dwarfs, followed by Dumbo diving into a pool of water and then a video Playboy centrefold smiling shyly out at the kids in the slimmest of bikinis, followed by Batman getting tough with Penguin, and then a beautiful two-minute scene of water gurgling down a mountain stream in autumn, the sunlight splashing such spectacular light and shadow and colour it was hypnotizing. I was only snapped out of my trance by the appearance of the three-year-old soaking-wet with blood that soon, thank God, turned out to be tomato juice.
I traipsed into the kitchen and tried throwing together three peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but found that none of the children would eat them because I’d used ‘crunchy’ peanut butter and not smooth. To show them who was boss, I announced that they could make their own lunches and marched from the kitchen back to catch some more of the cartoons.
A half-hour later, after I’d discovered that the other channels were equally bizarre and equally fascinating, I was feeling pretty good, especially since there had been a beautiful silence from the kitchen. Then I smelled the smoke.
By the time the kids’ mother returned from acting principal for over one hundred and fifty children she found her house looked as if another one hundred and fifty had run wild in it. I assured her there were only three, and hers, and that I was sorry I hadn’t cleaned up as much as I’d wanted to. As the poor woman stared around at the devastation, she wondered apathetically just exactly what I thought I had cleaned up – perhaps I’d rearranged some area of neatness that looked out of place.
It was five o’clock when the mother rescued me from a fate worse than death, but I discovered my trials were not done. I was ordered to report for duty to the lobby of the Hazard Inn.
I was met there by a thin wiry man named Ray, who in a soft gentle voice, announced that he was another diceguide. My first response to the Hazard Inn with its lobby crowded with people spaced out in their individual movie scenarios was one of both annoyance and a sense of righteousness: this was what I expected all of Lukedom to be like. This was the son of kookiedom that was my father’s madness at its worst.
I grimly followed gentle Ray down the central hall, off which were the strangely titled rooms, most of which had their doors open. In the Yoga Room was nothing more threatening than a group of seven people on a huge mat all arching their backs and sticking their tongues out in what I assumed was some traditional yoga asana. One of the seven appeared to be a leader. I didn’t see what yoga had to do with Lukedom, but Ray answered that it was a way of gaining new knowledge about one’s body and of making the body flexible.
I peeked into the Art Room, where nothing more subversive was happening than a dozen people, ranging in age from sixty to five or six, messing around with paints and clays and that sort of thing. It looked like every art class I’d ever seen, although Ray said something about the teacher getting the students to let chance enter their work. I sneered. That’s all modern art needed: more chaos.
The Death Room was not what I expected. When we stopped outside the closed door Ray explained that the groaning we were hearing from inside was the sounds of mourning by those within. He asked me to go inside and spend as much time as I wanted, but at least ten minutes, mourning for someone I had lost from my life. I hesitated, hating to be drawn into any of these games, even those that didn’t involve dice, but decided at least to enter the room.
Inside, it was dimly lit by stands of candles on either side of a raised closed casket against the far wall. There were six mourners, five seated in various positions on the deeply padded floor, the sixth standing. Two were crying softly, one moaning, and the other three were silent, with bowed heads.
Ray had come in too and went forward to the casket, crossed himself, and stood with bowed head in front of it. The casket was a simple pine one, but looked well made, with nicely designed handles on the sides and a clear varnish making it glow in the candlelight.
I eased myself over to one side of the room and, feeling exhausted from my babysitting, sat down on the thick floor covering.
One of the previously silent mourners, a young woman, now went public with a long wail, almost a scream, and then broke into noisy sobs. I was annoyed. After a minute, Ray turned from the casket and walked slowly back into the middle of the room and also sat down. When I noticed the candlelight reflecting off the tears in Ray’s eyes I felt first another burst of annoyance and then an inexplicable rush of grief.
I hadn’t even thought of anyone to mourn!! Yet I had to stifle a sob! I quickly lowered my head to get a hold of myself. But the sounds of people crying and groaning in grief around me were too powerful – I could feel their emotion vibrate through me and pull me down into a pool of deep sadness. Even as tears welled into my eyes, I was mumbling, ‘What the fuck!? What the fuck!?’ fighting against the rising flood of grief.
But for whom?! For what?
It didn’t seem to matter As the tears and grief and sadness flowed through me, I thought of my mother on the morning of her car accident, vibrant, happy, busy and unknowing, and I groaned. And then the memory of my sister Evie, still alive, but so different from me, now living her circumscribed life in Trenton, telling me that afternoon with the rain falling gently around us that she didn’t need any money, even as the beat-up car she was sitting in stalled and wouldn’t start. I grieved for her and for the distance between us. When I suddenly thought of Luke, my grief ebbed as suddenly as it had flowed, replaced by anger. I would not be tricked by that man’s madness into mourning him. But then the sobs and sniffles and cries from those around me overwhelmed the image of my father, again forcing me to remember my mother and weep once more.
In the next hour Ray took me into several other rooms, but none had the impact of the Death Room. I observed but didn’t participate in the Emotional Roulette Room, was curious about but didn’t enter the Prostitute-Client Room, and watched for ten minutes the people in the Childhood Room, off which was a playground where the childhood could be continued outdoors. There was something appealing about the adults playing with the blocks and the Lego and Nintendo and dolls. But when Ray suggested I get in there with the other adults and the few real children – who looked as if they were having a ball – and regress, I felt too wasted from the Death Room and declined.
Ray did get me involved in the Money Room, which was perhaps the most bizarre of all the rooms I’d seen. It consisted of an otherwise bare room lit by two harsh fluorescent lights and containing only a tiny wood stove, with a small live fire, and money: real dollar bills, and fives scattered over the entire floor of the room like windblown trash. There was only one other man in the room when we entered and he, like me, just stood and looked around in some incomprehension.
Ray handed me a die.
‘In here,’ he explained, ‘there are really only two options: you let the die decide whether you are going to keep or destroy each duster of money you pick up.’
I bent over and picked up a five and examined It. Damned if it didn’t seem genuine.
‘What for?’ I asked. For me the amounts of money were so small as to be trivial.
‘For the hell of it,’ Ray replied with gentle smile.
‘Hrhuh!’ I said, and with the five in hand went over to the wood stove. Then I turned back to Ray. The other man in the room was watching me.
‘What prevents someone from coming in here and simply taking all the money he needs?’ I asked.
‘Nothing,’ said Ray. ‘Although in this room all decisions must be made with the dice.’
‘So if I say “odd” I take all these bills home with me and “even” I don’t, I can do it?’ I asked.
‘Exactly,’ said Ray. ‘But of course if the die falls “odd” then you have to clear the whole room of all its money.’
I absorbed this. Money was used here in Lukedom. I had paid for my food, my room, even the crowbar. People must be able to leave the place. Although there probably wasn’t more than a thousand dollars or so here, it did seem as if it might prove an expensive game for the owners of Lukedom.
I turned back to the stove and let the die decide the fate of my fiver. It ordered death by fire. I lifted the lid of the stove and started to place the bill into the coals, but stopped.
‘Why waste the money?’ I asked, turning to Ray with a scowl.
‘What else is there to do with it?’ asked Ray and then, with that strange seraphic smile, left the room.
I turned back to the stove, hesitated, and finally dropped the bill into the stove. When I saw it burning I felt very depressed.
By the time Ray released me from the Hazard Inn and I’d eaten and washed dishes for half an hour in ‘Joe’s’ café, I was exhausted. And lonely. After going up to my room to take a shower I shuffled down the stairs to the inn’s bar to solace myself with a drink.
When I remembered yesterday’s spat with Honoria it seemed as if it had taken place back in the Middle Ages. I realized again that Lukedom had the effect of making one’s normal life seem trivial, not an effect I enjoyed. When I was finally able to concentrate a bit on Honoria I was angry at her insistence on her own way and saw no need to apologize for my insistence on my way. I wanted her to phone and be sweet and apologetic and witty and our engagement be back on. Then I realized that if the phone system in Lukedom was run like the babysitting system, then my chances of receiving a phone call were small. That depressed me a bit too: I felt isolated. Yet when I thought of Honoria’s phoning and announcing that the engagement was back on and all was forgiven, I was surprised to find that such a scenario didn’t exhilarate me as much as it should. Was it possible that I wanted Honoria like I wanted to be making half a million dollars a year – as a symbol of having arrived? But I loved her! Didn’t I? The sex was good, we actually talked not only before, but even afterwards! How many men could say that about their fiancées!?
No, no, no, it was dear that this little tiff must be kept a little tiff. You don’t sell a good stock just because some small part of you thinks there’s an even better stock just over the counter.
I ended up trying to make phone contact with Honoria, both at her office and at the Battle apartment, but failed. So as I nursed a vodka and tonic I was feeling close to my low for the day, morosely trying to avoid talking to any of the weirdos and pretending-not-to-be-weirdos who occasionally approached me. Then who should come bubbling into the room but Kim.
Nature’s accidents are the universe’s way of throwing chance into a system which would die of too much orderliness. Hurricanes, droughts, floods, volcanic eruptions are all Mother Nature’s way of stirring up the pot to prevent stagnation and putrefaction.
A world without them would be a world of death. Floods, fires, eruptions, earthquakes all destroy and renew, kill and create, demolish and replant.
So too riots, revolutions and wars are societies’ ways of throwing chance into their systems, which are dying of too much orderliness. And like nature’s eruptions, these too destroy and renew, kill and create, demolish and replant.
And so too with individuals. Human beings need in their lives earthquakes and floods and riots and revolutions, or we grow as rigid and unmoving as corpses.