‘Platonic?’ she asked.
‘Yes, it must always be Platonic.’
‘Platonic.’ She meditated.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I want to love you with a love that is beyond words and beyond the mere touch of bodies. With a love of the spirit.’
‘But what’ll we do?’
‘We’ll see each other as we have in the past, but now knowing we were meant to be lovers but that fate seventeen years ago made a mistake and gave you to Jake.’
‘But what’ll we do?’ She held the phone to her ear.
‘And for the sake of the children we must remain faithful to our spouses and never again give in to our passion.’
‘I know, but what will we do?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Er … nothing … unusual.’
‘Won’t we see each other?’
‘Yes.’
‘At least say we love each other?’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘At least reassure me that you haven’t forgotten?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Don’t you like to touch me?’
‘Ah Arlene yes yes I do but for the sake of the children …’
‘What children?’
‘My children.’
‘Oh.’
She was sitting on the couch, one arm in her lap and the other holding the telephone to her right ear. Her low-cut blue cocktail dress which for some reason she was wearing again was making me feel less and less Platonic.
‘But …’ she seemed trying to find the right words. ‘How … how would your … raping me hurt your children?’
‘Because – how would my raping you hurt my children?’
‘Yes.’
‘It would … were I to touch the magic of your body again I might well never be able to return to my family. I might have to drag you off with me to start a new life.’
‘Oh.’ Wide-eyed, she stared at me.
‘You’re so strange,’ she added.
‘Love has made me strange.’
‘You really love me?’
‘I have loved you … I have loved you since … since I realized how much there was hiding beneath the surface of your outward appearance, how much depth and fullness there is to your soul.’
‘I just don’t understand it.’
She put the phone down on the arm of the couch and raised her hands again to her face, but she didn’t cry.
‘Arlene, I must go now. We must never speak of our love again.’
She looked up at me through her glasses with a new expression – one of fatigue or sadness, I couldn’t tell.
‘Seventeen years.’
I moved hesitantly away from the couch. She continued to stare at the spot I had vacated.
‘Seventeen years.’
‘I thank you for letting me speak to you.’
She rose now and took off her glasses and put them next to the telephone. She came to me and put a trembling hand on the side of my arm.
‘You may stay,’ she said.
‘No, I must leave.’
‘I’ll never let you leave your children.’
‘I would be too strong. Nothing could stop me.’
She hesitated, her eyes searching my face.
‘You’re so strange.’
‘Arlene, if only …’
‘Stay.’
‘Stay?’
‘Please.’
‘What for?’
She pulled my head down to hers and gave me her lips and mouth in a kiss.
‘I won’t be able to control myself,’ I said.
‘You must try,’ she said dreamily. ‘I have sworn never to go to bed with you again.’
‘You what?’
‘I have sworn on my husband’s honor never to get into bed with you again.’
‘I’ll have to rape you.’
She looked up at me sadly.
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
Chapter Twelve
During the first month the dice had rather small effect on my life. I used them to choose ways to spend my free time, and to choose alternatives when the normal ‘I’ didn’t particularly care. They decided that Lil and I would see the Edward Albee play rather than the Critic’s Award play, that I read work x selected randomly from a huge collection; that I would cease writing my book and begin an article on ‘Why Psychoanalysis Usually Fails’; that I would buy General Envelopment Corporation rather than Wonderfilled Industries or Dynamicgo Company; that I would not go to a convention in Chicago; that I would make love to my wife in Kama Sutra position number 23, number 52, number 8, etc.; that I see Arlene, that I don’t see Arlene, etc.; that I see her in place x rather than place y and so on.
In short the dice decided things which really didn’t matter. Most of my options tended to be from among the great middle way of my tastes and personality. I learned to like to play with the probabilities I gave the various options I would create. In letting the dice choose among possible women I might pursue for a night, for example, I might give Lil one chance in six, some new woman chosen at random two chances in six, and Arlene three chances in six. If I played with two dice the subtleties in probability were much greater. Two principles I always took care to follow. First: never include an option I might be unwilling to fulfill; second: always begin to fulfill the option without thought and without quibble. The secret of the successful dicelife is to be a puppet on the strings of the die.
Six weeks after sinking into Arlene I began letting the dice diddle with my patients: it was a decisive step. I began creating as options that I comment aggressively to a patient as my insights arose; that I restudy some other standard analytic theory and method and adopt it for a specified number of hours with a patient; that I preach to my patients.
Eventually I began also to include as an option that I give my patients assigned psychological exercises much as a coach gives his athletes physical exercises: shy girl assigned to date make-out artist; aggressive bully assigned to pick a fight with ninety-eight-pound weakling and purposely lose; studious grind assigned to see five movies, go to two dances and play bridge a minimum of five hours a day all week. Of course, most meaningful assignments involved a breach of the psychiatrist’s code of ethics. In telling my patients what to do, I was becoming legally responsible for any ill consequences which might result. Since everything a typical neurotic does eventually has ill consequences, my giving them assignments meant trouble. It meant, in fact, the probable end of my career, a thought which for some reason I found exhilarating. I was like a professional psychiatrist, the very jockstrap of my basic self; I was becoming belly to belly with whim.
In the first few days the dice usually had me express freely my own feelings toward my patients – to break, in effect, the cardinal rule of all psychotherapy: