The power is off, it’s 100 degrees, and I hate my wife.
Days after the storm, there is no place to go but this sweltering apartment. She suggests we play the game Monopoly. This is a terrible idea, but since I’m irritable already, I reluctantly agree.
I deal out fake money, slipping myself a few extra $50’s. She chooses the iron token — ironic since she’s never ironed anything in her life. She hands me the race car. The fact that she knows what I’d pick infuriates me.
I inventory the liquor cabinet while she continues setting up the board. With the vodka, gin, and whiskey gone, I find only two bottles of tequila left. I snatch them both.
My wife doesn’t drink. Her lips press into a line when I return, deliberately clattering the bottles together. I down two shots.
We begin.
She rolls a 12 and moves her token to Electric Company. She makes a clever quip about “really needing that one.” I pour myself another and tell her it’s a bad investment — like our marriage.
I roll double twos and move four spaces. Goddamn Income Tax. She sits back, filing her nails. She keeps quiet since she knows I haven’t filed our taxes for years.
I take another shot before rolling a three. Chance. The orange card reads: “Advance token to nearest utility.” I count out $24 to pay her for fake electricity.
An hour later, my wife plants red hotels on prime monopolies while I’m slumlording green houses on the light blues.
I’m bleeding money.
While I sit in the corner jail, she draws a Community Chest card: “Bank error in your favor – Collect $200.” I seethe while she adds another house to Park Place. I empty the remnants of the first bottle of tequila directly into my mouth. She arches an eyebrow.
I roll double fours, prematurely celebrating my escape from jail only to land squarely on Tennessee Avenue. $550. That’s rent I don’t have, and my wife knows it. Our current landlord does, too.
I tell her I have to go to the bathroom. I shut the door, throw up, and feel relieved to be alone. I look into the mirror, my eyes glassy, my vision blurred. I look how I feel: hot and sick and miserable.
And it’s all my wife’s fault.
Kill her, my reflection suggests. It would be easy. There’s enough prescription sleeping pills in this apartment to take down an elephant.
“I will,” I say, silently high-fiving myself in the mirror. “I’ll do it after I win this ridiculous game.”
My wife pours the last shot of tequila, an unexpected peace offering for making me play with her. The next roll, I land on Luxury Tax. $75 for an engagement ring I wish I had never bought.
That is my last thought before the convulsions start, before the seizures come.
Falling from the chair, I look up to see a yellow card in my wife’s hand: “Life insurance matures: Collect $100.”