Three Knocks

A hand touches my shoulder and shakes, gently.

“Hey, Moony.”

I slow my breathing. What time is it? She knows I worked the graveyard shift at the Exxon, damn it.

“Moony, I need your help.”

“With what?” I mumble into the pillow. The scent of her shampoo and conditioner hangs above my head.

“The coffeemaker’s broken again, and you fixed it last time.”

“Fine.” Anything to get that sickening shampoo and conditioner combination out of my head. In a different situation—passing a cute girl in the library, testing it on my wrist—the citrus scent would not have bothered me.

“Thank you!” Edy kisses the top of my head, and her light footsteps patter away. I turn over. During the night, the damn water stain in the ceiling expanded to twice its size. Edy had insisted that “the problem” would solve itself. I pointed out that “the problem” did not help her precious water conservation.

I sigh and slip out of bed. My feet are weights. My right hip throbs as I walk down the short hallway, and my elbows brush against the walls. The irony of our names had once amused me. Moony and Edith, or Edy. Her odd little habits, like insisting that showers had to be seven-and-a-half minutes, and buying only non-GMO foods, had once been endearing.

Standing in the kitchen doorway, I watch Edy bend over the counter. She curses under her breath as she reaches behind the coffeepot. The curve of her ass in jeans, once enticing and irresistible, now disgusts me.

“So, what’s the problem?” I step into the kitchen. The cheap linoleum is slick beneath my bare feet. Edy spins on her sneakers.

“Moony! You’re up! So, yeah, it stopped working.”

You didn’t give me much choice. “Do you know why?”

She shakes her head. The red curls, unrestrained by an elastic band, bounce on her small shoulders.

“It just stopped again, and I know it’s old, so you don’t have to say it.”

“You need to get a new one, Eeds.” Something like pity stirs in the bottom of my stomach. The dumb girl doesn’t even know.

“I need a new one. See! You said it. But I like this one.” The offending coffeemaker in question is an off-white Mr. Coffee that Edy had discovered at some secondhand store. She said that it looked like it needed a home. I said that it needed to be thrown into the trash.

“You’ll save money if you go ahead and buy a new one.” Sliding my fingernails in the cracks, I pull open the back of the coffeemaker. I pass the plastic backing to Edy, and she hovers behind me. I used to stand behind my dad in the same way as he opened the hood of the family’s 2001 Ford Explorer. The coffeemaker’s wiring resembles an animal’s innards. I hem and haw. My watch, which I had forgotten to remove the night before, reads 7:08 am. Edy will have to leave soon if she does not want to be late for class.

“I guess I can just go ahead and buy one,” Edy murmurs, more to herself than me. She wrings her hands, and her numerous rings clink against each other.

“Yes, this one’s a goner.” I jump onto that train of thought as quickly as snagging a fish on a hook. I got her. “We can go to Walmart when I get home tonight.”

“Not Walmart.” She shakes her head. “I refuse to go to Walmart.”

“Anywhere you want to go, Eeds.” I grab the piece of plastic from her hands and place it on the cheap countertop. “I’ll even buy it.”

A soft little smile stretches the cupid’s bow of her upper lip. That smile used to make me roll over and beg. Like a stupid dog that did not know any better.

“You promise?” she asks. Her fingers with their chipped nail polish reach for the collar of my shirt. She tugs. “You don’t—you don’t usually do that.”

I kiss her in lieu of a promise. “Now go, Eeds. You’re gonna be late.”

“Oh,” she says, smile widening, fingers tightening, “I didn’t tell you? My class was cancelled today.”

“Shit.”

“What?” Edy’s face shifts like a puzzle piece sliding into place. “Did you have plans? I thought you didn’t work until noon.”

I backpedal. “I mean—shit, that’s good luck.”

Edy’s eyes narrow behind her round glasses. She resembles an owl, putting one too many things together. “Moony.”

Someone knocks on the front door. Three soft knocks, just as we had discussed, so that I would know. My stomach drops two stories to the bottom floor.

Edy runs her fingers through her curls—a familiar nervous gesture—as she takes the short five steps into the hallway. The lock unclicks, and she opens the door. The glimmer of morning light casts a glow onto the white wall plaster. I remain frozen in the kitchen.

“What are you doing here?”

A mumbled response, probably something like I’m sorry, wrong door, so sorry, all in that hot accent. Distant feet run down the stairs. The apartment door slams. Edy’s footsteps, normally light like a dancer’s, thud against the floor.

“Fucking Margot?” Edy hisses. The silence in the room makes me wish that she would scream instead. But Edy Morgan, with her college degree and upper-class family, is too good to make a scene for the next-door neighbors. “Again?”

“Edy—” My legs numb, I back against the counter. Its sharp edge pushes into the fat of my back. Did she mean fucking Margot, or was I fucking Margot? I figure that smart-assery would not help the situation.

“You don’t think she’s just using you? What do you offer her?” Edy doesn’t have to say the rest: my bad leg, a job at the local gas station. “No, wait, I have a better question—what does she give you that I don’t?” Edy continues. Her nose crinkles, as if she smells something awful. Her sharp little rabbit teeth flash behind her pink lips. “I let you live here! In my apartment! I give you food! While you—what’s the phrase you use?—get back on your feet!”

“Eeds.” The pain in my hip—the boat crashing into a bridge pillar, my father apologizing profusely, enduring months of physical therapy—increases. I wish that Edy would punch me instead.

“No.” Her thin arms reach behind me, brushing my sides, and I flinch. I jump to the side, landing on my bad leg, but no, she was not reaching for me, but for that stupid piece of white plastic. “You do not get to call me that, not after all this.”

“I was going to—” What? Break up with her? Break up with the girl who had a home and a real bedframe. Isn’t that why I had hooked up with Edy in the first place?

“Break up with me? When?” Edy throws the plastic at me, and I duck. I forget that she played softball in high school. I forget how well she knows me. “Before or after you fucked her in our bed? How many times?”

Seven times. One time for each day of the week. But that does not include the times on the couch, on the counter. The plastic backing bounces off the cabinets behind me.

“How much, Moony? How many times has she been here when I’ve been out?”

What is the safest answer? “I don’t know.”

Edy runs her hands through her hair, but not out of nervousness. Maybe to keep from strangling me.

“That’s rich, Moony. I know Margot’s come here enough for the desk staff to recognize her. Do you know what it’s—what it’s like to have someone stop and ask you who the hot foreign girl is? That comes over all the time? The one not your roommate?”

Whereas Edy is all curves and a bit of a stomach, exchange student Margot looks as if she just left a photoshoot. All legs, dark eyes, small breasts—holding her, I feel as if I’ll break her. I would have never thought she was a lesbian until she first approached me at that house party, walking behind Edy—

“Answer me!” Edy demands. She reaches for the coffeemaker. That broken piece of shit.

“It started again back in March, Edy.” I hold up my hands, palms facing her, like someone confessing to the priest.

“Fucking March? It is halfway through May!” Tears leak behind her glasses. She clutches the coffeemaker close to her chest like a stuffed animal.

“Edy, please,” I say, still holding my hands up, stepping forward. It’s like calming a feral animal. “Please, baby.”

Edy glares at me with her wild eyes. She speaks through gritted teeth. “What.”

I didn’t think she would actually let me explain. “You’re right. I’m sorry, I should have told you sooner.”

“You should never have done it in the first place, Moony!” Edy’s knuckles are white. Two trails of tears slip down the curves of her cheeks.

My bad leg shakes. I cannot even afford to be relieved that my dirty little secret has been discovered. With her German accent, Margot had told me that she could no longer do it if we were found out again. If Aydee found us again. In the pit of my stomach, I understand that Margot Falk is no longer mine to keep.

“I don’t know. Edy, please.” I want to say that I’m alone, that I have nobody else. I ache to say so much, but I bite the inside of my cheek instead. The metal taste of blood is revolting and my stomach churns. With a cry of frustration, Edy throws the coffeemaker to the ground. The white plastic breaks apart against the linoleum floor. Small metal coils spring outward, released from their cheap prison. “You’re a coward, Moony Robertson. That’s what you are.” Edy stomps past me. Her freckled hands shake like an addict craving a smoke. “I’m going for a drive. I want you—and all your shit—gone when I come back.”

She grabs her keys. She slams the front door. I stand in the kitchen. An oppressive silence suffocates me. Head spinning, I look around at Edy’s silverware, Edy’s couch, Edy’s television. Edy’s fucking broken coffeemaker. What is mine to keep? What is mine that I can take with me, that I can call my own? I reach into the cabinet beneath the sink and grab a trash bag. My world has become a little bit smaller.