The Book of the Die. Luke Rhinehart
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looks around to check no one’s listening.]
| DRABBLE: | … the walls in this place are very badly behaved. |
| MATHEW: | The walls? |
| DRABBLE: | Yes. They keep closing in. Naughty. |
[The phone rings.]
| MATHEW: | I’m afraid that’ll be Tina telling us that the hour is up. |
| DRABBLE: | Yes. Excuse me a minute. |
[Drabble answers the phone.]
| DRABBLE: | Doctor Drabble speaking. (Listens) Yes I know the hour’s up, Tina, but I’m at a crucial point with Mr Day. Can you cancel my next two patients, please? Thank you. |
[Puts phone down. Sits, exhausted.]
| DRABBLE: | So that’s me, and how have you been, Mathew? Long time no see. |
| MATHEW: | I feel fine, it’s over a year since I last did anything I shouldn’t do with ribbons. After our final session together I went and lived in a hut by the sea and these days I mostly just take myself off for walks along the beach, collecting mussels sometimes and I find the walking takes my mind off ribbons, even the pretty yellow ones. |
| DRABBLE: | Good. |
| MATHEW: | The pale, lovely, yellow ones. |
| DRABBLE: | That’s just what I wanted to hear. You’ve made remarkable progress, Mathew, and I think the time has come for us to close your file and let you put your past indiscretions behind you. |
| MATHEW: | It’s all thanks to you, Doctor Drabble. |
| DRABBLE: | Yes, it is, yes. Solid technique I use, tried and trusted methods from the wise minds of Freud and Jung and co. And it works, you’re living proof of that. But just before I sign all the necessary paperwork, there is one last thing I’d like you to do. |
| MATHEW: | What’s that? |
| DRABBLE: | I’d like you to kidnap my wife. |
[Silence.]
| MATHEW: | (quietly) … I sell the mussels I collect to a man in a toupee … |
| DRABBLE: | Won’t take long, couple of hours at most. |
| MATHEW: | I don’t think I want to. |
| DRABBLE: | No, I can understand that, and I wouldn’t normally ask, but – I’m a desperate man, Mathew. Look at me. |
[Mathew does look at him.]
| DRABBLE: | No, don’t! Don’t, actually, I’m too horrible to behold. And all because … all of this because … Dice! I mean, dice! |
| MATHEW: | Dice? |
| DRABBLE: | Dice! (Shakes head) Dice. |
| MATHEW: | Why do you keep saying ‘dice’? |
| DRABBLE: | Why? Why? (Laughs bitterly) Why. |
| MATHEW: | Now you keep saying – |
| DRABBLE: | Do you enjoy sex, Mathew? |
| MATHEW: | I think I left the door of my hut open, I’d better – |
| DRABBLE: | I enjoy sex. God, I enjoy it. So when my wife suddenly wanted it at all times of the day and night and in all sorts of exotic locations I wasn’t the kind of man to complain. I was happy to oblige. Barely able to stand with fatigue, but happy too. |
| MATHEW: | My hour’s up, I think, so – |
| DRABBLE: | When she made me sleep in the spare room a week later I put it down to the enigma of womanhood. Even when she cleaned out our joint savings account to purchase a silver Harley Davidson I remained I think fairly stoical and understanding. No, it was the evening I got home to find her sharing the marital bed with two tramps from the local park that things came to a head. My wife explained she was undergoing something called Dice Therapy, that all her behaviour was deliberately patternless, random. I can’t describe my horror. For it was I who delivered her into the hands of The Diceman. |
| MATHEW: | The Diceman? |
| DRABBLE: | Charles E. Ratner, my former colleague and a leading expert in the treatment of phobias. I referred Polly to him to try and cure her fear of flying. Little did I know he was about to throw away every tenet of his training and cook up this … Dice Therapy. God knows, in this game you meet your share of freaks and lunatics but Ratner’s odd even for a psychiatrist. There are some people saying behind closed doors that he should be taken out into a lonely field and clanged on the head with a shovel. |
| MATHEW: | Those sorts of ideas upset me. |
[Drabble mimes swinging a shovel.]
| DRABBLE: | Wham, like that, bust his cranium open, he’s asking for it. Some people are saying. B-behind closed doors. Ratner’s solution to the human condition is that we should all throw dice to decide what to do. List a set of options on a piece of paper and then let chance determine which path to take. The idea being that we are all trapped within the narrow parameters of our personalities which he contends are artificial constructs that do not reflect the essence of our selves – a view I have some sympathy with. But Ratner’s therapy involves ignoring every social, legal and moral boundary there is. Did I mention that some people think he should be clobbered senseless with a big knotty log? |
| MATHEW: | Clanged with a shovel, you said. |
| DRABBLE: | Well there’s some debate about the … details … |
| MATHEW: | Why are you saying all these things? |
| DRABBLE: |
My wife’s actions while playing the dice resulted in a variety of lawsuits and financial ruin. When finally we had to |