Cheater, Cheater

The apartment smelled like old pizza boxes and fresh coffee, which was Sam Ihle's natural state of being. The Viking News crime reporter had spent three years being called Clark Kent by everyone in the newsroom because he wore the same cheap blue blazer to press conferences, kept his hair parted too neatly, wore the same glasses, and had a habit of disappearing right when a story broke and reappearing with a notebook full of details no one else had.

Tonight, there was no blazer. There was a faded Yale sweatshirt with a hole in the left cuff, sweatpants that had lost their elastic dignity, and socks that did not match. His apartment on the second floor above the laundromat was humble in the way a shoebox is humble, twelve by fifteen with a futon, a desk buried under court records, and a kitchenette that barely fit two people standing sideways. He had cleared the coffee table, which was actually an overturned milk crate with a piece of plywood on top.

On that table sat King of the Castle.

Jodie Williams arrived first, carrying two bottles of cheap red wine and a bag of pretzels. The political reporter, the newsroom's Lois to Sam's Clark, had a reputation for eviscerating city council members with a single raised eyebrow. She was thirty-four, sharp, five foot six in boots that made her six foot, and she never took notes because she remembered everything verbatim. She kicked off her boots at the door, a ritual Sam had insisted on after the Great Mud Incident of last February.

"You're late opening the door for your Lois," she said.

"I was alphabetizing my confidential informants," Sam said, and she snorted.

Katherine Evangelista came next, wrapped in a scarf that cost more than Sam's futon. The gossip and advice columnist at Viking News, Katherine knew who was sleeping with who, who was about to get divorced, and who cried in the bathroom during the holiday party. She had a voice like warm honey over gravel and a column that half the city pretended not to read and fully memorized. She brought hummus, which no one else liked but everyone pretended to tolerate because Katherine brought it.

"Babe, your apartment still looks like a crime scene," she said, kissing Sam's cheek.

"It's authentic. It helps me think," Sam said.

Ryan Hall was late, as usual. The war correspondent had been back from his last embed for four months, and still walked like he was listening for mortars. He was big, bearded, quiet until he wasn't, and he had a scar on his left forearm that he never talked about. He brought beer, a six-pack of something craft and bitter that Sam hated but drank anyway out of respect. He ducked to get through the doorway.

Mike Simmons, human interest reporter, arrived last with a stack of takeout containers. Mike was fifty-two, soft around the middle, with a laugh that sounded like Santa after two whiskeys. He wrote about the man who raised pigeons on his roof downtown, the kid who built a robot from toaster parts, the librarian who had read every book in the branch. He was the kindest man in any newsroom, which made him suspicious to everyone except these four.

"Gentlemen, Jodie, Katherine," Mike said, setting down orange chicken, lo mein, and egg rolls. "I brought sustenance for our siege."

They ate on the floor because there were only two chairs. Sam's laptop was closed. Jodie's phone was face down. Katherine's phone buzzed three times and she silenced it without looking. Ryan's phone never buzzed. Mike's phone was in his car on purpose.

"We ain’t reporters tonight," Sam announced, after the last egg roll was gone. "No shop talk. No sources. No off the record. We’re just friends playing a stupid game."

"Define stupid," Jodie said.

Sam opened the box of King of the Castle. It was basically Risk on a smaller scale, as Mike had described it to Jodie on the way over. Instead of nations, you were taking over an entire castle chamber by chamber. There was a cardboard castle that stood up in four interlocking walls, a courtyard, a great hall, a chapel, a kitchen, an armory, a dungeon, a tower, a gatehouse, a scullery, a bedchamber, and a privy that Katherine insisted was historically accurate and strategically vital.

Each player got little wooden knights in their color. Sam was blue, Jodie red, Katherine green, Ryan black, Mike yellow. There were cards for treachery, cards for alliance, dice that were smaller than usual and therefore more infuriating.

The rules were simple and then not simple. You rolled to enter a chamber. You rolled to hold a chamber. If you held three adjacent chambers, you got a bonus. If you held the great hall and the bedchamber, you were declared Lord or Lady and everyone else had to pay you tribute in the form of pretzels.

They started. Sam went first because it was his apartment and his game.

The first hour was loud. Jodie took the gatehouse and the courtyard with ruthless efficiency, the same way she took a press briefing and made it hers. She had a strategy, she always had a strategy, and she narrated it like she was filing live.

"If I hold the gate, I control access. If I control access, I control narrative," she said.

Katherine took the chapel and the bedchamber, because of course she did. She claimed it was for the gossip potential.

"Darling, all the best secrets happen in chapels and bedchambers," she said, laying down a treachery card that forced Sam to give up a knight.

Ryan took the armory and the tower and sat there, immovable. He did not talk much. He rolled, moved, and stared at the board like it was a map of a real place he had to hold. He had been in a real castle once, in Syria, that had been shelled. He did not mention it.

Mike took the kitchen, the scullery, and the privy, which made everyone laugh.

"I've always wanted to be master of the privy," Mike said solemnly. "This is my moment."

Sam took the great hall, which was the center, and the dungeon, which was hard to hold. He rolled well. Too well. He rolled a six, then another six, then a five. He knocked Jodie out of the courtyard. He knocked Ryan out of the armory. He held four chambers by the end of the second hour.

"Clark Kent's on a heater," Katherine said.

"It's probability," Sam said. "It's just dice."

"It's suspicious is what it is," Jodie said, but she was smiling.

The second bottle of wine had made Jodie philosophical, which was dangerous. She started talking about the mayor's race, then caught herself, then talked about the game as if it were the mayor's race, which was her way of not talking about it. Katherine listened with her head tilted, filing away details the way she always did, because even off duty she collected stories like sea glass. Mike listened the way human interest reporters listen, like every word mattered more than the last. Ryan listened with his arms crossed, nodding once for yes, twice for I hear you but I disagree.

Sam had set up extra lamps because his overhead light flickered. The light made the cardboard castle look bigger than it was, throwing long shadows across the plywood table. The little knights threw long shadows too. It was easy to imagine, if you squinted, that the great hall was really great, that the dungeon really went down deep, that the tower really watched over something worth protecting. That was the trick of both journalism and board games, making small things feel large and large things feel manageable.

Earlier that afternoon, before anyone arrived, Sam had cleaned. He had thrown away three weeks of takeout containers, wiped down the stove that he never used, vacuumed the rug that had once been blue and was now mostly gray. He had found an old press badge under the futon, his first one, laminated crooked. Viking News Intern. He had put it on his desk, not out of nostalgia but because it reminded him that humble apartments were part of the origin story. Every Clark Kent needed a small place to change.

When Katherine asked about the rules again for the third time, Mike explained them again with infinite patience. You needed to hold the courtyard to move quickly. You needed the armory to get extra knights. The chapel protected you from treachery cards. The kitchen let you skip a turn without penalty, which Mike said was the most realistic rule in any game ever made. Everyone laughed because it was true. The newsroom kitchen had saved them all more than once.

Jodie had brought a notebook out of habit and then shoved it deep into her bag, embarrassed. Sam pretended not to see. Katherine had brought a tin of mints that she offered around like a peace offering. Ryan had brought his own dice, heavy metal ones that clinked, because he didn't trust cardboard dice. Sam let him use them. It felt fair, somehow, to let the war correspondent bring his own luck.

For a while, between moves, they talked about nothing. The kind of nothing that is actually everything. The broken elevator at work. The new coffee machine that made coffee too hot. The intern who thought off the record meant you could still tweet it if you paraphrased. These were small chambers too, these shared complaints, and they held them together.

The apartment had gotten warm. The coffee was cold. The wine was gone. The pretzels were tribute now, piled in front of Sam. The board was crowded. Alliances had formed and broken. Katherine and Jodie had allied against Sam, then Katherine betrayed Jodie for the chapel bonus. Mike and Ryan had allied, two big quiet men who understood holding a line.

Sam was winning. He held the great hall, the dungeon, the courtyard, and now the tower after a lucky roll against Ryan.

That was when Ryan leaned forward. Ryan Hall, who had been shelled, who had seen a city fall, who had carried a kid out of a street while filing a story on his phone, who never accused anyone of anything lightly, looked at Sam's dice, looked at Sam's hand, looked at Sam's little blue knights that seemed to multiply.

"You palmed a knight," Ryan said.

The room went quiet. Not the quiet of friends playing. The quiet of a newsroom when someone says the word libel.

Sam blinked. "What?"

"You cheated," Ryan said, louder. "You had three knights in the great hall last turn. Now you have five. You didn't earn two knights. You didn't have a card. You cheated."

Jodie looked at the board. Katherine looked at Sam. Mike looked at Ryan, then Sam.

"Ryan, it's a board game," Jodie said carefully.

"It's my game," Sam said, trying to laugh. "Why would I cheat at my own game in my own apartment?"

Ryan did not back down. His jaw was tight. "Because you're losing at work and you want to win somewhere. I've seen it before. Guys who need to win."

That landed hard. Sam's last big crime series had been picked apart by a defense attorney last week, on the stand, in open court. It had been a bad week. Everyone in this room knew it.

Sam's face went red, not from embarrassment but from that hot flash that comes before you say something you mean.

"You’re imagining things," Sam said.

Exactly that. Flat. No smile. Clark Kent dropping the glasses.

The words hung in the air between the cardboard castle walls.

Katherine, who made a living out of words that hung in the air, winced.

Ryan stood up. He was a head taller than Sam. The apartment was too small for standing. His knees almost hit the milk crate table.

"Say that again," Ryan said.

Mike put a hand on Ryan's arm. "Hey. Hey, we're not reporters tonight. We're friends."

"We're supposed to be friends," Ryan said. "Friends don't cheat."

"I didn't cheat," Sam said. He stood too. The two men in sweatpants and socks faced each other over a cardboard castle. It would have been funny if it wasn't so serious.

Jodie stood between them, not touching either, just placing herself where a line would be.

"Okay, both of you, sit down," she said in her press conference voice. "Sam, show us your reserve. Ryan, show us you counted right. We're journalists. We verify."

That was the right word. Verify. It cooled the room by two degrees.

Sam opened his hands. Empty. He showed the box where the spare blue knights were kept. There were supposed to be twelve total. He counted. On the board, he had eight. In reserve, he had four. Twelve. Math worked.

Ryan counted again, pointing at each chamber. Great hall, three knights. No, four. He recounted. Dungeon, one. Courtyard, one. Tower, two. That was eight. Last turn, Ryan thought great hall had three. But maybe it had four and he misremembered because Katherine had knocked a pretzel onto the board and they all laughed.

Katherine, meanwhile, had quietly counted while they argued. She was good at counting things people didn't want counted.

"Ryan, sweetheart, you had the armory and the gatehouse last turn. You lost the armory, but you still have the gatehouse. That's one. Sam had four in the great hall last turn too. I remember because I tried to take it and you said nice try, Lois," Katherine said.

Ryan sat down slowly. The adrenaline left his shoulders. He rubbed his eyes, a gesture he did when he hadn't slept.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, okay. Sorry."

Sam sat down too. His heart was still hammering.

"I'm sorry too," Sam said. "That was a dick thing to say."

"You’re imagining things is a dick thing to say," Jodie confirmed. "It's what my ex-boyfriend said when I found his dating profile."

"Well, it's accurate sometimes," Sam said, trying to make it lighter. "We do imagine things. That's why we check."

Mike, who had not said anything during the fight, picked up the dice. He rolled a three.

"My turn?" he said.

They all laughed, a little too hard.

They kept playing. The board reset in a way, not physically but emotionally. Ryan took the armory back from Sam with a clean roll, no argument. Sam lost the courtyard to Jodie. Katherine held the bedchamber and the chapel and declared herself Lady of Secrets and demanded double pretzel tribute.

At some point, around eleven thirty, Mike told a story about the pigeon man downtown whose favorite pigeon had died that morning, and they all listened because Mike told stories like prayer. Katherine told a story about a city councilman who got caught sending love poems to his own wife by accident and thought he was being catfished. Jodie told a story about the governor's press secretary who cried when Jodie asked about water rights, not because of the question but because her dog was sick. Ryan told a story about the castle in Syria, just one sentence: the kitchen was still standing when nothing else was, and there was bread in the oven.

Sam told a story about his dad, who had taught him King of the Castle when he was nine, using a set his dad had made from cardboard and bottle caps because they couldn't afford the real game.

"I used to cheat," Sam admitted. "When I was a kid. I'd hide bottle caps under the table. Dad always knew. He'd say, 'You're imagining things, Sammy, if you think you can hold a castle that way.'"

"Is that where you got it?" Jodie asked.

"Yeah," Sam said. "Sorry. It's a family heirloom asshole line."

Ryan reached over and bumped Sam's fist. "We're good."

They were good. The game ended at midnight with no clear winner because Katherine had stacked all her knights in the privy as a joke and refused to move them, declaring it a filibuster, and Mike declared the kitchen an independent republic and Jodie declared herself queen of the gatehouse and taxed everyone, and Sam's great hall was empty because he had moved all his knights out to help Mike hold the scullery against Ryan, which made no strategic sense at all.

They left the castle standing on the milk crate table. Sam walked them downstairs, one by one, because the stairwell light was broken and he held his phone flashlight like a cop with a badge.

On the sidewalk, Jodie said, "Same time next week? No shop talk."

"No shop talk," Sam said.

Katherine kissed his cheek again. "Clean your apartment before then, darling. Or at least hide the evidence."

Ryan lingered last. "Hey. You know I didn't mean that other thing."

"I know," Sam said.

"You wrote a good series," Ryan said. "That lawyer was a bully."

"Thanks."

They were not reporters and columnists tonight. Just a group of friends who had almost ruined board game night and didn't. Just five people in a city that never slept, holding a cardboard castle together, chamber by chamber, because that was the job, really, holding something together that wanted to fall apart, and sometimes imagining things was part of how you saw what could be there before it was.

The laundromat below buzzed. A dryer thumped. Sam went back upstairs to his humble apartment and looked at the board, at the little blue knights scattered, at the pretzel crumbs in the great hall, at the empty wine bottles, and he smiled, because for once, the story had a happy ending that didn't need a correction. And outside the window, Seabrook kept humming, buses hissing, distant sirens fading, and the castle held. He thought about truth, friendship, deadlines, and why cynical reporters still needed nights like this to remember their beginnings together always.