The Search for the Dice Man. Luke Rhinehart

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СКАЧАТЬ He’ll never stop writing books.’

      ‘I see,’ said Honoria.

      ‘He always wanted to be a king or a president, but I guess he’s had to settle for a smaller kingdom.’

      ‘And where exactly in the south?’ asked Larry.

      ‘Well, now, let me see,’ said Arlene, frowning. ‘A little town in Virginia I think. Not even on the map. Lukedom. Jake named it after your father.’

      Larry and Honoria both sat up straighter in their chairs.

      ‘Do you know where it is?’ asked Honoria.

      ‘Oh, my, no,’ said Arlene. ‘Jake says it’s not on any map. That’s why he had to send me instructions about how to get there.’

      ‘You have instructions about how to get there!?’ said Larry.

      Arlene looked surprised.

      ‘My goodness, that’s right,’ she said. ‘I guess I do. I never went, so I never even bothered to read them, but I know he sent them. I wonder what I did with that letter.’

      While Larry and Honoria sat on the edge of their chairs – or as close as the deep, broken-springed chairs would permit – and exchanged glances, Arlene bumbled up off the couch to putter around her desk, mumbling happy apologies for her sloppiness and finally returning with a big smile and a letter.

      ‘See,’ she said. ‘I told you Jake had written instructions and here they are.’ She adjusted her glasses and peered down at the paper. ‘Lukedom. Dirt-road route to Lukedom. Were you thinking of visiting Jake?’

      ‘Yes,’ said Honoria. ‘Larry is interested in seeing his father and we thought this tittle village might have some people in it – Dr Ecstein, for example – who might have some idea where he is.’

      ‘How nice!’ said Arlene. ‘You’re going to see your father! Do say hello to him for me and tell that naughty man to write.’

      Larry nodded, and a few minutes later, sketchmap in hand, he and Honoria said goodbye to Arlene. She wanted to have them take some of the stale Stella Dora cookies and offered to throw in some son of frozen pie she had made the previous year, but they politely declined. She told them to give Jake a big kiss for her and tell him she was getting along just fine. She said she’d like to find Lukie too and give him a piece of her mind. She was still babbling away when they finally managed to leave.

      Larry and Honoria edged carefully down the old wooden stairs into the smelly night of Hempstead and were soon back in Larry’s Mercedes speeding towards Manhattan.

      After Arlene had closed the door behind her two visitors, she grinned, shook her head, and began to shuffle back into the living room. Then she stopped in front of an old full-length mirror and looked at herself. She stretched and smiled again.

      Then she reached up and began pulling at her white hair until, with a sudden wrench, the entire white wig came sliding off, revealing a mass of jet-black hair pinned down. After putting the white wig in a cardboard box with others on a closet shelf, she reached back and unpinned her hair, sending a cascade of touched-up black hair down on to her shoulders. She shook her head and smiled.

      She checked her watch, frowned and took off her black shawl. Then, as she began to walk with a decidedly younger step towards the bathroom she flipped her shawl into a bedroom as she passed. On the way she took off her thick glasses and left them on a shelf in the hall. In front of the mirror in the bathroom she began to insert contact lenses into her eyes. When she’d finished she began to apply ‘the works’, as she called the creams, mascaras, eyeshadow, line erasers, blushers that were any woman’s staple when she wanted to look younger. This done, she left for the bedroom to change her clothes and prepare for her evening out.

      But twenty minutes after Larry and Honoria had left there was a knock on the door of Arlene’s duplex. It was Agent Macavoy. He had dutifully followed Larry’s Mercedes and knew, when they had arrived at Browning Street in Hempstead, that the two were questioning Arlene Ecstein. After they’d left, he decided it might be worthwhile if he had a few words with the lady. If she told him what she’d told them it would simplify his surveillance.

      The door was finally opened. A big-busted woman wearing a low-cut flaming-red dress and high heels greeted him with a slow smile. If Arlene had looked well into her fifties for Larry and Honoria, she looked closer to a well-preserved and heavily endowed forty now.

      ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘What can I do for you?’

      Agent Macavoy pulled out his FBI identification and held it in front of her face.

      ‘Mrs Ecstein?’ he said coldly. ‘Macavoy, FBI. A few questions.’

      Arlene didn’t even glance at his ID, but simply swung the door open wide and invited him in.

      ‘Sure,’ said Arlene. ‘I was just going out, but I love answering questions.’ She walked over to her desk and, with her back to Macavoy – for a moment he worried that she might be going for a weapon – she seemed to fiddle with something there before turning. As she came towards him he saw that it was just a couple of dice.

      ‘So,’ she said, coming back up to him with a smile. ‘What can I do for you?’

      Macavoy halted at her approach and looked at her severely, hoping to put her in a properly respectful if not fearful frame of mind.

      Arlene ran her tongue around her lips and idly routed her shoulders so that her breasts momentarily swelled up towards the neckline of her low-cut dress then receded – two round white tides swelling and receding.

      ‘Few questions,’ said Macavoy. ‘Like did you tell your recent visitors where they might find –’

      ‘My God, you’re a hunk,’ said Arlene, reaching her two hands up briefly to knead each of Macavoy’s shoulders and eyeing him up and down. ‘You work out every day?’

      ‘Uh, every other day,’ said Macavoy, taken aback and actually retreating a step. ‘Uh, Luke Rhinehart, Mrs Ecstein. Did you –’

      ‘No, no, more than that,’ said Arlene, moving her hands inside his suit jacket to his chest and squeezing through his shirt the muscles around his nipples. ‘You must have played football or lifted weights, right?’

      Macavoy was retreating sideways now, into the living room.

      ‘Basketball actually,’ said Macavoy ‘But, uh, what did you tell –’

      ‘And a belly like a steel wall.’ said Arlene, whose fingers were kneading his abdomen as the two of them danced slowly from the hallway across the living room, Macavoy retreating, Arlene effortlessly advancing.

      ‘Look, Mrs Ecstein, I –’

      ‘And thighs like –’

      ‘Aghhhh!!’ said Macavoy as Arlene’s fingers probed his inner thighs so suddenly he actually jumped, almost breaking their physical contact.

      ‘Great hard haunches of bullmeat,’ concluded Arlene.

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