RISK FOR TWO

Being Claire’s little brother poses innumerable difficulties, not the least being that every September I get her teacher from the year before. “Oh, James. Claire’s brother! You look just like her. Such an excellent student.”

I look like her?

For my sister and me, the Risk game-board is where we’d inflict on one another every backstab, assault and annihilation possible. Siblings have years of injustice to avenge, and fourteen years equals a lot of injustices.

As the game-maker touts, “Risk. Isn’t it about time you ruled the world? In this combat classic, all you need to do is plan carefully, make decisions quickly and move boldly. You must launch daring attacks, defend yourself on all fronts, and sweep across vast continents with boldness and cunning. But remember, the dangers, as well as the rewards, are high.”

A few strategies:

The road to victory almost always starts in the Southern Hemisphere.
Take Australia and pile your power in Siam.
Seize South America and fortify its gateways.
Forget about Asia until you have enough troops to do real damage.
One large attack is better than several medium-sized probes.
Don’t conquer a continent you can’t hold.

Claire throws her cavalry at my poorly fortified African island. “Surrender, Madagascar, buster.”

What makes it for me not a total loss is that in so doing, my sister must lean over Africa. “Only if you surrender Western United States and Eastern United States,” I counter to protract the negotiations, though it usually doesn’t work unless she’s in a good mode.

Back when she started wearing a bra, she’d wear it even under her PJs for breakfast. Now she hardly bothers unless she’s going someplace.

Sometimes on Saturdays when we do our chores, she tries to steal the mop, and as it involves wrestling around a bit, I let her think she might win. We only goose when our predicament looks helpless or maybe to get even, but either way, the way we wrestle isn’t something we want our folks knowing about. Especially if there’s a truce and we both just lie there, feeling each other up.

Claire taps on my door. “James?” a whisper.

“I’m sleeping.”

“It’s me,” as if I can’t tell.

I secure my PJs — Don’t ask about it — and let her in.

“At 1:30, unlock the back door. You can stay awake that long, right?”

“How come?”

She grins. “I’ve got a date, dummy.”

“No way!”

“I’m old enough,” then does the most surprising thing, pooching and nailing me with a kiss, not just a peck, but a smooch.

“Hey, don’t!”

“Just make sure the door’s not locked when I get back.”

Sometimes she gives me a kiss because she says she’s in a good mood and has me do it back. For me never having made out, I’m OK, she tells me.

It’s a Saturday morning and the folks are running errands when Claire waves me into her room, Risk is already set up on her floor. “Ready to get creamed, weakling?” shutting the door. Nothing different from her standard blustering, or so I think.

Being the junior, I’ve to distribute the infantry, but, ha! I win the dice, select red, and put an army in Western Australia. World dominion, here I come!

Unfortunately, however, her artillery is soon rolling over my Asian overextension. “Sorry,” as Afghanistan falls.

“At least leave me Africa,” I suggest, hoping not to lose all at once.

“Keep it,” she agrees, ending her attack with the Middle East. “Poobah of Madagascar, I crown you,” bending over the board to square up her armies, my view, my reward.

“Perv,” she unfairly accuses me, since I’m quite normal, but for my benefit again leaning yet my way to rearrange her forces.

We trade a few countries not worth defending before we begin to again mass forces, and this time, I’m going to end up the stronger.

“Cheater!” she points out. “You can’t roll three dice with just three armies.”

Without waiting for my explanation — I’d have four, but one’s standing near another border — she dives over the board to topple me. The game description does indeed mention, “making decisions quickly and moving boldly.”

“The pieces...,” I object, trying to escape. “We’ll never...” but as the opportunity’s there to feel her up, less determined to reverse her onslaught.

She makes enough effort to thwart my hand to claim she tried to stop me, but not enough to actually do so, and I give her a good one. Just through her top, of course, as that’s in the rules, but enough to get her good, even if I’m on the bottom.

“Cheater and perv, both. I can hear you through the wall, taking care of Madagascar.”

Madagascar?

“Madagascar sort of looks like your you-know-what, right?” she explains, forgetting to keep pinning me down, as my you-know-what’s pretty feelable.

She grins like the Queen of Yakutsk. “No worry, though. Allies don’t need to protect our borders with each other.”

After that, sometimes in the middle of a game she mentions Madagascar and gives me a look. Or maybe it’s not a look at all, just something I imagine, but in any case, I get to see her breasts.

In Madagascar, according to her, anyway, they still speak French, what she’s taking. What’s “risky” to us is “risqué” to them, her explanation, for when we start kissing and let the game run its course.

RISK FOR FOUR

Three strategies when more than two are playing,
Let another cripple the defense of a country you covet.
Appear weak when others gang up on the leader.
Form alliances. You can always break them.

The McCarthys lived just two houses down. Dorrie was in Claire’s class and Dennis, a year older. When Dorrie would come over to visit Claire, I might even get to tag along with them if they went where a baby brother wouldn’t diminish their image. Maybe not to Burger King, but maybe to help pick apples.

Sometimes when the four of us played Risk, Dorrie and I would vie for North America, South America and Africa, while my sister and Dennis went for Europe, Asia and Australia. The respective victors would face off globally. But if Dorrie and I were clicking, one of us would swarm Europe from Iceland or North Africa while the other crossed the Bering Sea into Kamchatka. Audios, elder sister and elder brother. And, then, with a bit of luck, sayonara, Dorrie.

The four of us set up in Claire’s room on a Saturday and Dorrie, without hesitation, gives Eastern Australia just a token army for me to freely pick it off, and then — at more cost to me — New Guinea from Dennis. I likewise provide Dorrie an easy route to march south from Siam and expel Claire — ha! ha! — from Indonesia.

When Dorrie leaves her European realms undefended against my troops, the other two call foul. “You guys can’t ally before there’s a reason.”

Dorrie laughs and looks my way, and I nod as if we’d already inked a treaty and look at the board, trying to foresee the plan of action.

“Well then,” decides my sister, “Dennis and me are going to stick together, ourselves.”

“Really close together, right?” Dorrie giggles. “We’ll leave you two in peace, while you get yourself fortified.”

It doesn’t make sense to me why we have to leave the room, but it doesn’t matter.

“No, stay here,” my sister decides. “Go shut the door, Jamsie.”

RISQUE FOR FOUR

The rules didn’t say who has to shut the door, but being the youngest, it’s always me, and when I come back, Claire’s on Dennis’s lap.

“If you two are going to ally, so are we,” my sister rules, drawing Dennis’s hold upward.

She’d let him touch her boobs like that, right in front of us?

“A more risque kind of Risk,” she explains, making him grin a bit sheepishly. “So General Dennis, sir, what’s say we show ‘em.”

Dorrie, now my ally, hops into my lap to face them as equals. We usually sit around the board to play Risk, not in each other’s laps, but we can play that way if we like, I suppose. She’s pretty much sitting on my cock, but there’s not much I can do about it.

Observing where Dorrie is, my sister asks her, “Was I right about him, or right?”

Dorrie” “Absolutely,” with eyebrows raised for emphasis, causing the girls to laugh far too much for tactical discussion.

“We gotta’ ratify our treaties,” says my sister, definitely not a rule, but as maybe there needs to be some sort of ceremony, hers is kissing Dennis.