ACROSS THE BOARD

A short story first published in June 1996 (in a now defunct print magazine) by B.J. Ryan, Copyright 1996

    I'm standing out here on Pacific, eyeballing an area that still strikes a chord in me after all these years. People call me Bootsie.
    I heard tell the developers finagled day and night, laying out commercial and residential sections, utilities, transportation, civic facilities. Not satisfied, they dumped their plans again and again--until they got it right. Seems that was ... what? Sixty-some years ago? People sure took chances back then.
    I catch myself thinking how I've changed over the years, going from pudgy and pale to slim and quite well-formed in a modern sense, with remarkable coloring, considering my age. I usually say I'm fortyish. Don't tell anyone, but this year I turn fifty. It's like every few years I experience a metamorphosis.
    What unhinges me today is how much the territory is changing. And not for the better, mind you. New houses keep shooting up everywhere. Someone even threw up a sleazy hotel over on Vermont. As if there aren't enough hotels already. People are overbuilding. It's just a game to them. They take too many chances these days, don't bounce anything back into the community, and scream whenever they have to pay a little tax bill.
    I hate the old man the most. I get really riled up when I see him sitting across from the banker, his lips pursed smugly around that smelly cigar, his porky fingers fiddling with a wad of money like he wants everyone to know what a fat cat he is. He shows his true colors when he squeaks to the banker, "Think you can out-landlord me, do ya? I'm gonna buy me all the available property so's I can put up some cheapo tenement hotels."
    The old man's wife is just as bad, her face made up like a clown, and dressed in that frumpy pantsuit. Why won't she speak up about his real estate holdings? Because she has property of her own? I think it's because he yells at her when things don't go his way.
    Obviously the old man wants it all. I see the greed in his eyes. I even heard him say once, "I'm gonna win the whole kit 'n' caboodle." As if winning is important. What about caring for other people? Where is his sense of charity? If he wins, others will go broke. So what happens to them? Is it that easy to start over?
    I don't think of myself as especially clairvoyant. But I predict the future as precisely as if I had been there.
    Although the old man just ran off two others, I figure I'm safe on Pacific. Aren't I? I see the boxcars too late. His wife moans and mutters a nasty word. I slowly move across the board, past two houses on Pennsylvania, over the railroad tracks, around the corner, where the money I find is meaningless in my predicament, then three more steps to Baltic and the old man's big red hotel. His wife moans again and tips me over. I lie here wondering if she thinks it was my fault, especially when she says, "If we play again, I want to be any piece but the boot."

Copyright 1996-2010 B.J. Ryan, All Rights Reserved