Miss Claybell. with her usual persistent efficiency, managed to pry out of Hawkins a phone number of Kim’s employer and then even learned from calling there that Kim would probably be at the Big Apple midtown Manhattan salon that afternoon until eight in the evening.
When the day’s trading was over I considered my options. I thought I should probably phone Kim first and find out how the ground lay, but the die, given fifty-fifty odds, said ‘no’, don’t phone. Should I go there right away, or after dinner, or wait for the weekend? The die, more rash than I, chose from those three that I go right away.
I look a cab up to the Big Apple Health Spa on Seventh Avenue. I’d only vaguely heard of this particular chain of health clubs but was fairly certain it was not on Mr Battle’s approved list. The very name ‘Big Apple’ had the sort of bluff common man lingo that could only mean down-scale clientele – which probably meant they had muscles.
Although the neighbourhood outside of the building on Seventh near 47th Street was not reassuring, inside there was a pleasant lobby. An attractive receptionist confirmed that Kim was on the premises, probably in the main exercise room. The place had a pool and handball courts and even a computer-simulated golf game. Not bad.
The exercise room was full. Using the machines were a variety of men and women of a surprising range of ages, though most in their thirties, and a few so scantily clad as to take one’s mind off building more than one muscle. As I moved through the maze of machines I felt self-conscious in suit and tie, and rather resented everyone working so hard on their bodies when I didn’t.
Then I finally spotted Kim: she was dressed in a skintight black thongsuit over flesh-coloured leotards that came high up on each hip and revealed enough of the golden globes so that at least three men, theoretically grunting away on their Nautilus machines, were watching her as if her buttocks contained a winning lottery number. I felt a one-two punch to my heart and loins that stopped me dead in my tracks.
She was talking to a man wearing only shorts and a tanktop who looked as if he not only competed in the Mr Universe Contest but probably won. The two of them together looked like a God and Goddess casually discussing which humans they were going to fuck over that day. As the hunk chatted with Kim he was absent-mindedly juggling in one hand a twenty-five-pound weight as if it was a child’s stuffed doll.
After I managed to get fresh control over my legs and came up to her, Kim turned with a polite smile that froze on her face in surprise – she clearly hadn’t been expecting me. Then, the smile disappearing, she flushed and turned back to Mr Universe.
‘Well, thanks for the advice, Ed,’ Kim said to him. ‘I know we have to do something.’ Then she turned back to
‘How can I help you, sir?’ she asked with an exaggeratedly false smile.
Deflated, I looked at her for signs of her usual vitality and warmth. Her hair was tied back on top of her head and she was wearing little make-up. With that leotard on her I guessed no one would ever get to her face anyway.
‘Well, for a starter, by being a bit more friendly,’ I said, wondering what had happened to the Kim of my dreams.
She moved off at an angle away from Mr Universe and I followed.
‘The last time I saw you,’ said Kim, not looking at me. ‘you weren’t even talking to me.’
‘I was being a fool,’ I acknowledged.
Kim came to a halt against an unused Nautilus machine and finally turned to me.
‘And now you’re not?’ she asked.
‘Well – in a new way now,’ I said, smiling.
Kim nodded and smiled at a man who greeted her as he passed by and then turned her attention back to me.
‘And why are you here?’ she asked, looking at me quizzically.
Kim Kim Kim, it’s me! Larry! The man of Lukedom! Your sexual master and untiring lover!
‘To see you,’ I said, wondering if she’d totally forgotten me. ‘To get back together with you. To play dice games with you.’
‘Dice games!?’ she said, and suddenly looked to her right as if afraid someone might overhear.
‘My father’s alive,’ I said, glad to have gotten some response from her other than indifference. ‘The report of his death was apparently exaggerated.’
‘I … that’s wonderful!’ she said, her expression, if not friendly, at least now natural. ‘How’d you find out?’
‘I opened up the bronze die that supposedly held his remains and it contained a note from him that said I was getting closer.’
‘He’s playing games with you,’ she said, appearing concerned.
‘Of course. But for some reason I no longer mind, I think he expects me to do what you suggested – beat him at his own game. So I’m dicing.’
Kim studied me a moment and then laughed, that marvellous glow returning to her face for the first time.
‘You aren’t!’
‘You doubt it?’ I asked, a bit nonplussed at her response.
‘But what about your job? What about Honoria?’
‘Details, details.’
‘Oh, no, you’re in big trouble.’
‘Want to join me?’
‘In big trouble?’
She gazed at me for a long moment, the liveliness back in her face and eyes.
‘Hey, Kim, when you get a moment I could use some help,’ interrupted another muscular man as he sauntered by wearing a weightlifting leotard that exposed almost as much buttock as Kim’s. What was this place, a soft-porn show?
‘You know if you realty play your father’s dice game,’ she finally said with great seriousness, ‘your old life is over.’
‘I hope so,’ I said, suddenly laughing.
‘And you won’t be exactly able to control what happens to us,’ she added.
Considering this, I frowned.
‘I think it was you who said if we’re really meant for each other, then we’ll survive whatever temptations the dice throw us into.‘
She shook her head.
‘I never used a cliché like “meant for each other“,’ she said. ‘And it was me who was being a fool then. Both about the dice and maybe about you.’
‘Maybe?’ I said, moving closer to her. ‘I’m at least still a maybe?’
Still shaking her head, Kim moved slightly away.
‘I’m probably a one-in-six shot, right? You promise to love honour and obey until the dice falls a “four”. I’m not sure what you think you’re offering.’
‘I’m diceplaying until I find my father or he finds me. After that, who knows? The world! Or maybe even dinner and a night out.’
‘And your job? Honoria?’ Kim asked again.
‘I’m a free man now. Let the chips fall where they may.’
‘That you can count on,’ said Kim, again studying me. Then, for no reason I could see, she suddenly softened and moved closer to me.
‘But it’s good to see you,’ she added in a whisper.
‘I’ve really missed you,’ I said. We stood as close together as possible without touching, I not daring to let my hands go around her since I knew I couldn’t stop them diving for her buttocks. Then Kim stepped back and smiled at me with her usual mischievousness.
‘So what’s on the dice agenda today?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘but I’d like to give thirty-five chances out of thirty-six that it involves you, me and a bed.’
‘And I thought you were a risk-taker,’ she said with a smile. ‘But I’ve got a room-mate,’ she added, suddenly frowning, ‘and I’m dating another guy. And … I’m not quite as … sure of us as I was that night in Lukedom.’
I confess, dear reader, that my heart sank at those words. Having lost Honoria, had I now lost Kim too?
But I managed to nod.
‘I suppose that’s … fair enough,’ I said. ‘But I’d still like to see you.’
‘Sure,’ she said, and unexpectedly came up and kissed me on the cheek before walking away towards the exit from the exercise area. As she left she gave her behind one exaggerated swing and as she did, added over her shoulder: ‘Take a good look.’
I followed, noting as I walked another muscular behemoth straining under a machine but managing to follow Kim’s passage.
‘Eat your heart out, fella,’ I said and sauntered on.
Kim couldn’t get off work until 7.30, a two-hour wait that I managed to survive only by leaving the health club and following a lot of trivial dice choices that had me making random purchases from random shops – I ended up with a hand calculator, a five-dollar packet of underwear and a small .22 automatic – and seeing ten minutes of random movies – one of them X-rated, which didn’t help my ability to wait calmly for Kim. At 7.30 she emerged into the lobby of the Big Apple dressed casually in a deep-brown pants suit and a raggedy-looking winter coat. I was awfully glad to see her.
We had a romantic candlelit dinner in a small Italian restaurant Kim knew, three blocks from the spa. She explained that the die back in Lukedom had chosen an option that she proposition Michael Way, not that she actually sleep with him. If he’d accepted her proposition, which he didn’t, then she would still have been free to leave, or to consult a die about whether she should leave.
Frankly I was feeling too much joy in her presence to hear much of what she was saying. The glow in her eyes – from joy in being with me, I felt – made her words irrelevant. And for some reason the only thing that mattered from Lukedom was the marvellous day and night we’d spent together there.
But at ten o’clock, as we were standing outside the restaurant, Kim came up and planted a soft kiss on my cheek. I didn’t let her escape, grabbing her in my arms and squeezing her to me.
‘Ahhhh,’ I groaned and, when I felt her hugging me in return, whispered: ‘God, it’s so good to hold you again.’
We remained embracing against a dingy wall next to the restaurant, the few passers-by eyeing us with Manhattan’s customary indifference. Then Kim sighed and gently moved to separate herself, looking up at me as starry-eyed as I assumed I was, but then, after giving me another soft kiss on the cheek, she broke away.
‘I’ve really enjoyed seeing you again,’ she said simply, ‘but I’d like to go home now, and alone.’
I was in that male state of anticipatory euphoria when a man thinks an evening is going to end just the way he wants with the woman he wants, and so was stunned into momentary silence. I fell vaguely outraged: how dare she act like a normal woman instead of like the girl of my dreams?
‘You’ll survive,’ said Kim with a sudden smile at my surprise. ‘And I hope you’ll call again. It’s just I don’t want to move quite as fast as we moved in Lukedom.’
‘Maybe we should check your decision with the dice,’ I suggested with sudden animation.
She responded by cocking her head to one side and examining me carefully with a sceptical half-smile.
‘Well, you can let chance have a say,’ she finally said. ‘My dice are in temporary retirement.’
‘Fine,’ I said, pulling out a green die. ‘If it’s odd I insist on sleeping in your apartment tonight – with you or without you.’
I rubbed the die between my palms, took it in my right fist and then opened my fingers palm up to see how the die lay. A one.
‘Shall we take a cab?’ I asked, smiling.
Kim’s apartment in Brooklyn was a mess. There were not only clothes and books and cassettes scattered all over but several cats playing with happy abandon with these clothes, books and cassettes. Kim assured me that most of the stuff belonged to her room-mate, but Kim’s bedroom wasn’t much of an improvement. Here it was mostly books and magazines that seemed to have no home, the single wooden bookcase overflowing. Clothes were stacked neatly on top of the one bureau and the small closet was so full it looked as if the door couldn’t close.
‘All my worldly possessions,’ she announced, gesturing extravagantly at the mess. ‘I keep trying to simplify my life but keep spotting blouses or books I can’t resist.’
‘You need to hire a new maid,’ I said.
‘Oh I will, I will,’ said Kim, coming towards me ‘The poor girl’s impossible.’
And then we kissed, the kind of long deep kiss that leaves strong men weak-kneed and weak women on their backs. Somehow we both remained standing. Kim broke away.
‘We’ve got a futon in the living-room closet,’ she said staggering away from me
‘Mmmm,’ I said and took out the green die. ‘Odd I sleep on the futon, even I sleep in your bed.’
The die bless it, fell a four: Kim’s bed.
‘I decide for me, you have to decide for you,’ I said and cheerfully began to undress.
Shaking her head with a small smile, Kim left the bedroom, returning five minutes later with a tray with a pot of tea and a pint of brandy. With me naked under the covers, she peeled down to panties and a long oversized t-shirt and sat on her side of the bed. While my loin system stirred restlessly we talked about what had happened to us since Lukedom.
She told me that after getting back she’d moved out of the Battle household without telling anyone where she was going, and tried drowning her sorrow in work. Her job involved whisking herself around three boroughs visiting the eight clubs and encouraging clients to sign up for everything the clubs had to offer: yoga, aerobics, meditation, guided weightlifting, Nautilus, swimming, handball, golf lessons, whirlpool treatments, volleyball.
She said she’d first been intrigued by me when she saw me sitting out there alone in my sailboat on the Hudson that first afternoon; anyone who would use lack of wind as an excuse to avoid the Battles could not be all bad, she said. I said I’d first been intrigued by her when she leaned over to look down the companionway hatch into the boat’s salon. I didn’t elaborate, but she grinned knowingly.
She admitted she resented me for being such a fool about Way and the love we’d found that first night in Lukedom, a love which I seemed to suppress when confronted with the possible loss of several million dollars. What was a few million dollars to a man who really loved her? Nothing, she said playfully.
After leaving the Battles without saying where she was going or what she was doing, she had felt martyrish, hoping that I was missing her, yearning for her, desperate for her, perhaps even launching a major quest for her. After two weeks, however, she began to feel like the lover who kills herself to make the beloved suffer. Lying in the grave of Brooklyn she began to have second thoughts. She decided that a trip back to the Battle penthouse where she might accidentally leave a phone number or address might perhaps be in order. Although lovers were expected to overcome numerous obstacles before winning the beloved, they needed occasional clues along the way. Women have been dropping handkerchiefs for millennia, who was she to break the tradition? Together we laughed.
After she cleared away the tea and brandy and our talk seemed to be flagging, she turned off all but one dim bedside lamp and climbed in under the sheets.
Feeling like a saint, but one who plans to give up sainthood at the earliest possible moment, I lay on my back beside her. It was a wonderful moment, because I knew one way or another bliss seemed inevitable. But then, unfortunately, I remembered the dice. In the same rash blind overconfidence that had afflicted Kim in Lukedom after our first night of lovemaking, I decided to consult the dice – in this case about how we should make love.
The die, never one always to make wise choices, picked the option that to honour Kim’s feeling that we should go slower this time, we would make love but without penetration or climax. As soon as the die had spoken I was over on top of Kim and we were intertwined in a blissful kiss.
I thought this command of infinite foreplay was marvellous – for about fifteen minutes. Then I began to have my doubts. Kissing and fondling are fine in their place, and no relationship should be without them. However, the Lord God had intended them as appetizers preparatory to the main course, and I was certain if I could get Miss Claybell to research the Old Testament with her usual thoroughness that it would be revealed that God had quite specifically listed what we were doing – or rather what we were not doing no matter how much we both wanted it – as a sin, if not a major Sodom or Gomorrah sin, then at least a minor plague sin.
Kim, writhing and gasping and groaning and generally doing everything that a woman could to make a desperate situation desperater, insisted, when I could get her to speak coherently, that we must follow the die choice, no matter how painful. That might be what her mouth was saying, I thought, feeling her hot rounded writhing female abomination of temptation, but the rest of her obviously agreed with me.
After about forty minutes my mind, ever obedient to the prodding of my prick, suddenly had a brilliant thought: Kim was testing me. If I really loved her I would take her here and now and show my love was more powerful than any plastic cube. With a great groan of satisfaction at the power of rationalization I spread Kim’s legs and plunged into her, an act that was greeted with unbridled enthusiasm by Kim’s body, even as her mouth mumbled something that came out vaguely like ‘Wah are u doon?’ It didn’t take long for us both to break the die’s command against climaxes, and I collapsed on top of her with feelings of relief and triumph: man is master of his fate and captain of his soul.
And victim of his animal appetites, as Kim pointed out to me when she had recovered sufficiently from her ecstasy to feel like uttering a rational thought. If I couldn’t follow a simple little dice option that was scheduled to last only a few hours what kind of a man was I?
‘A normal man,’ I answered, lying on my back with a contented smile.
‘Exactly,’ said Kim, sitting up with sudden animation. ‘You’re just like you always are, you’re just like everybody else, and there’s no challenge to grow, to change, to discover new aspects of yourself.’
‘I had discovered all the impossible levels of frustration I’m capable of,’ I said, ‘and wanted to pass on to new aspects of myself.’
‘I’m serious,’ said Kim. ‘You’re only going to be doing this dicing for a few weeks. The least you can do is do it right.’
Unfortunately, I found myself agreeing. I would show my father I could win, then drop the dice as a game I had mastered and moved on from.
Still, I was sure that if there were a God in heaven and He had seen what I had done, He was looking down on me with approval.