Knock Knock by Gregg Sapp
Sick of waiting patiently and tired of being taken for granted, Molly decided that when Leon finally showed up, she was going to ream him a brand new one. She was beyond fed up with his lame excuses, followed by dubious promises to do better and cloying declarations of his love for her. Lately, she saw more of him on Instagram and YouTube than she did at home, in the flesh with her. But on that particular evening she could not have been more explicit—they had a booth reserved for precisely 6:30pm at Miranova, and if they were late, their table would be given to somebody else. It was the fifth anniversary of their first date, for Christ’s sake—she had dared to hope that he might come bearing flowers, a bottle of expensive champagne, maybe even a ring.
It was now 6:45pm, and the last she’d heard from Leon was a text at 5:30pm when he wrote that he was leaving Malik’s and coming straight home. This was troubling for two reasons. First, Molly disliked Malik because he was a total stoner and a bad influence on Leon, whose willpower to resist temptation was about as strong as wet tissue paper. Second, since it should not have taken more than twenty minutes to get home, Molly suspected that he had stopped at Shug’s Tavern for a quick drink with his homies, which turned into another, and another…
If he came home drunk and stoned, well, fuck him, she had a cast iron frying pan and knew how to use it.
For somebody whose unemployment benefits expired two months ago, Leon showed woefully little initiative to look for a job. The money that Molly made working as a Starbucks barista barely paid the rent for their shitty apartment in the Bottoms, let alone left any for the “walking around money” he pilfered from her purse. In his mind, though, Leon was not unemployed, for he had plenty of work, just none that was currently remunerative. Leon had business cards printed glossing himself with the title, “Social Media Influencer.” While she conceded that that those online video shorts of him performing stupid hijinks got plenty of “likes,” he never made a single cent from any of them. Who was he “influencing,” then? Leon’s creativity was what attracted Molly to him in the first place, but it was beginning to seem like his creations were worth nothing more than shits and giggles, at her expense.
Furthermore, she knew one thing for sure—Leon hadn’t “influenced” her in six weeks, and damn right she was keeping count.
While pacing the floor waiting for him, Molly couldn’t stop herself from picturing him sitting on a barstool next to Wanda Pfaff, that skank. He swore that they were “just friends,” a bit too emphatically to be convincing. Friends don’t giggle like idiots when they’re together the way those two did.
Three solid raps on the door jolted Molly out of her umbrage. Her first thought was that Leon was knocking rather than just walking in as a way of begging her indulgence to allow him to enter. In that case, her best play was to ice him, let him stand there for a while wondering if she was going to answer the door. Molly started counting one-Mississippi with the intention of stopping at twenty-Mississippi, but she only got to ten before he knocked again. It sounded like he was knocking with the knuckles on two clenched fists.
Molly surrendered and called, “Yeah, alright already. I’m coming.”
Maybe Leon came bearing an extra-large bouquet of mixed flowers with pink roses and huge pastel dahlias. It wouldn’t be enough, but it’d be a start at currying her forgiveness.
“It’s about time, you ass…?” Molly started as she swung open the door, then swallowed the rest of the word. A policeman stood on the landing outside their apartment, looking statuesque with his shoulders squared inside a pleated, navy-blue uniform, with a black necktie. His expression was impenetrable behind wraparound mirror sunglasses. Contrasting with his overall mien of authority, though, he held his campaign hat in his hands. Molly’s first thought was to wonder what kind of trouble Leon had gotten into this time.
“Pardon me, ma’am. I am Trooper Marvin Carp of the State Patrol.” He cleared his throat. “Are you Molly Nelliger?”
Molly’s instinct was to provide as little information as possible. Maybe he’d go away. She turned the question around on him, “Why do you ask?”
“Ms. Nelliger, I am afraid that I have bad news.”
“Whatever Leon did, I don’t want to hear about it. You can tell him that, too.”
“I am truly sorry, ma’am,” The cop continued, as if he was sticking to a script. “Mr. Leon Ott was in vehicular accident tonight. A driver, whom we suspect was under the influence, crashed head-on into Mr. Ott’s car at a high rate of speed.”
“No!” Molly shrieked, covering her face with her hands. “How bad is it?”
“Paramedics worked frantically, but, unfortunately, Mr. Ott was dead on arrival at Riverside Hospital.”
Molly doubled over, clutching her stomach. The words dead on arrival resonated like distant explosions in her inner ears. Burning tears flowed from her eyes. She recalled that the last thing she said to him when she left for work that morning was, “Do something productive today, for once,” and he tsked at her as she closed the door. Maybe if she’d been kinder to him, he would still be alive. She practically pushed Leon away from her, leaving him with nowhere to turn for support and comfort but to Malik’s to get stoned or to Shug’s to drink Hennesey and Cokes with Wanda Pfaff. Now he was dead, gone from her forever, and she could never take back those spiteful words.
“Noooooooo!” Molly wailed. She dropped to the floor, prostrating herself at Officer Carp’s feet, as if by pleading with him she could bring Leon back.
Officer Carp remained stoic. “My condolences, ma’am. But I need for you to come with me to identify the body.”
“I can’t!” she cried. Molly’s tear-damped hair hung over her face as she shook her head side to side. “Please, please, please!”
“It’s protocol, ma’am.”
“Oh, Leeeeeeoooooon!” Molly pounded the floor with open palms. “It can’t be, it can’t be, it can’t be…” And she disintegrated into sobs, howls, and spasms of remorse.
Trooper Carp nudged her with the toe of his boot and said, “Get up, please.”
Molly recoiled. Choked with raw grief, she panted for breath. It felt like she was about to pass out… when through the static of her anguish, she became dimly aware of somebody cackling dementedly behind her. She felt a heavy hand land on her back between the shoulder blades, while another hand cupped her chin and slowly lifted her head. She grimaced when she looked up.
Smirking, Leon looked her in the eyes, and cried, “Punked!”
In the next couple seconds, Molly’s emotions mutated from visceral grief (oh no, dear God why?) to ineffable relief (hallelujah, sweet Jesus he’s alive!) to intense, unmitigated, rage (Wait a second. What? Goddamn his ass!). Wrathful adrenaline throbbed in her temples and spread to every quarter of her body in the thunderous beating of her heart.
“Baby. You were fantastic!” Leon crowed. “You should have seen your reaction.”
Officer Carp had broken into such hysterical laughter that his glasses flew off across the room. From his breast pocket, he removed a cell phone, which had been peeking out of the buttonhole on his shirt. He held it over his head and whooped like he was calling down lightning.
Leon nodded toward the bogus cop. “Yeah, his real name is Marvin Carp, but he’s no state trooper. He’s my accomplice.”
“Howdy,” Marvin Carp said. “No hard feelings?”
“He recorded everything. This video is pure gold. It’ll knock ‘em dead on YouTube, then we’ll edit it for TikTok, and post a story on Instagram with the hashtag #Guesswho. My followers will bring down the whole damn internet with their likes.” He smiled at Molly with a smarmy grin. “Thanks to you, Baby.”
Molly stood and brushed herself off. She stretched both of her arms far behind her back—Leon opened his arms, too, expecting a hug. Then, with vengeful alacrity, she slapped the side of Leon’s face with her right hand, and half a second later pounded her left fist into his eye socket. While he was reeling from the blow, Molly kneed Leon in the groin, and as he staggered backwards, she lowered her head between her shoulders and rammed him into the wall. An old timey picture of them dressed like a cowboy and a saloon girl, which they’d taken last year at Kings Island, fell and shattered.
Through the pain, Leon looked toward Marvin, still holding the phone, and made a slicing gesture across his neck.
“Don’t you dare stop recording, motherfucker!” Molly shouted at Marvin.
Marvin held the cell phone at arm’s length in front of him, so that she could see the little red light that indicated it was still recording.
“Are you seeing this, Wanda Pfaff?” Molly asked the camera, just before biting into Leon’s earlobe.
