Knocks at the Door

by Will Musgrove

Staring at my popcorn ceiling, the Jehovah’s Witness shakes the dice inside clasped hands as if begging God to let him roll high enough to make it past Boardwalk. The door-to-door knife salesman splays the colorful money in front of him into blades, and the census worker counts the number of green plastic houses and red hotels. Me? I play banker.

All three knocked on my door at once this morning, which the Jehovah’s Witness would probably call a miracle, the knife salesman an opportunity, the census worker a duty. To me, it’s all those things and more. If they’d shown up separately, they’d given their spiels and left. No reason to stay. Now, whichever doesn’t go bankrupt wins my time, wins the chance to get what they want from me. What do I want? The company. That’s why I picked Monopoly. The game takes forever.

Th e dice rattle on the board, and the Jehovah’s Witness mutters a prayer to himself before moving forward a few spaces and stopping on Baltic Avenue, his property. Th e knife salesman offers to trade his Get Out of Jail Free card to the Jehovah’s Witness for St. Charles Place, sawing at his finger with the card’s edge to prove its worth. “One, two, three,” the census worker counts.

“Doesn’t seem like a fair trade to me,” I say, sliding the Jehovah’s Witness an extra $200 for passing Go to stop him from falling further behind. He’s already had to mortgage his railroads.

“You’d cheat this man out of redemption?” the Jehovah’s Witness says, noticing my dishonest tithe and quickly adding it to his funds before the others see.

“You’d cheat him out of a clean cut?” the knife salesman responds, miming slicing a tomato with his Get Out of Jail Free card. “Look, just like your boss, mine will smite me if I come back empty-handed. I have a quota to fill, man.” “Four, five, six,” the census worker counts.

I pit them against each other, wanting them to fight for me. I tell myself it’s love. I purposely avoid mentioning stuff  they might hope to hear to keep them from getting what they need and leaving, like how I wish I could trust a being that claims to work in mysterious ways, like how, when I was nineteen, I grabbed a steak knife to fix things, then broke down sobbing, the steak knife gripped in my fist, like how it’s only ever been just me living here.

The knife salesman lands on Marvin Gardens, which belongs to the census worker and has a hotel on it. “$700, $800, $900,” the census worker counts. The knife salesman hands over the cash, his blades now a little less pointy. The census worker owns more than half the board. Soon it’ll be just him and me. Then it’ll be just me, another number etched in the census worker’s book of numbers, another tally of nothing.

The census worker scoops up the dice, and the four of us go on vacation. We check into the hotel on Marvin Gardens. Mr. Monopoly greets us inside, tipping his top hat. When I mention we don’t have a reservation, he waves his cane and says, “No need, I know who you are. You’ve been playing this game for a long time.”

At the pool, the Jehovah’s Witness worships me as his god. I become his religion, his salvation. He asks me to baptize him, so I submerge him in the chlorinated water. We eat at the hotel’s Michelin-starred restaurant. I cut the knife salesman’s ribeye, no longer scared to hold a steak knife. He reaches across the table and touches my hand to thank me, but my skin pricks his palm, and his blood drips on the white tablecloth. We all sleep in the same bed, where the census worker stops counting and instead whispers my name followed by, “You have won first, second, and third prize in a beauty contest. Collect $10.”

“You guys want anything to drink?” I ask, scooting out from the table, trying to prolong the game.

In the kitchen, I open the freezer to get some ice. Cold air hits my face. I glance back at the game and imagine shrinking down the Jehovah’s Witness, the knife salesman, and the census worker into their game pieces, into a silver batt leship, a race car, and a shoe. I imagine placing the board next to the popsicles, dropping their body temperatures and slowing their movements. I imagine them asking about me every time I go to get a frozen pizza.

“How are you doing today, sir?” they’d ask. “Can I borrow a bit of your time?”

Will Musgrove is a writer and journalist from Northwest Iowa. He received an MFA from Minnesota State University, Mankato. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Penn Review, The Florida Review, Pinch, Wigleaf, The Forge, Tampa Review, and elsewhere. Connect on Twitter at @Will_Musgrove or at williammusgrove.com.