The Dice Man Meets Nixon and Me At 4:30 A.M. In the Downtown Portland Days Inn, by Charles Carreon
That long night driving through the snow on un-studded highway tires, sliding once and carving a slow donut with a roostertail of snow, was the highpoint, watching others do similarly the vicarious thrill, arriving in the Portland Days Inn at 4 a.m. the apotheosis, laying down in my cheap bed paid for by my client the very peak, listening to the racketing piece of ice knocking about in the fan above me a step too far, that sound was like a crazy strange attractor spelling out my name in fractal images of repetitive not-quite-randomness. Having to get up in just a few hours to appear in court put edge on pain. Knowing I'd done this so many times before gave me confidence. Having done it many times before made me know that I had to lie down and rest every nerve even if it wouldn't sleep. Measuring out time in thin slices to move from edge to edge downward into darkness, I reviewed the books on the shelf which the downtown Portland Days Inn thoughtfully provides -- old books, usually some Reader's Digest Condensed Books, but some good titles, too, I bet somebody's got Tagore, and somebody else has Ivanhoe, and probably several people have Catch 22 but nobody's got Bambi. At any event I found with some surprise, delight, pleasure, that I had a copy of "The Dice Man," and this is in Room 517 if someone hasn't stolen it, I didn't, I was restrained, not looking for souvenirs when I already had the experience. This book, "The Dice Man" was something my friend Richard Coulter had told me about long before when I was a little experimenter. The Dice Man, the narrator of the novel had chosen to live life as Russian Roulette, extinguishing predictability with one stroke by willing over his will to the roll of the dice. But what really caught my attention was the mention of Nixon, and particularly, Nixon's "sense of history" in the introduction of the novel. You see, there was a photograph of Nixon leaning on his desk in the Oval Office hanging in Room 517. And at 4:30 a.m. I had this looming coincidence to deal with. Was this room the product of some clever interior designer's psychic weaving of subtle themes? Or was it, more likely, mere coincidence, a chance event? On that note, listening to the racketing piece of ice like a doomed ball in a demonic roulette wheel bounding not quite randomly, not quite regularly above my poor, benighted, weary head, I slipped off to sleep, or something like it.