Does She Know You're Leaving?

I had always thought that the Muscatellos had a perfect marriage.

Lindy Muscatello would often leave the windows open whenever they made love. During one of their sessions, Oscar Muscatello would sing opera at the top of his lungs. I’d be lying in bed next to Robert and he would beg me to shut the window. The whole thing made him uncomfortable. When we made love, there was no sound at all. Just a quiet gasp when Robert decided to land the plane, so to speak. My plane never landed. It just circled endlessly until it ran out of fuel and plummeted back to earth. 

There were never any survivors.

The Muscatellos were a symphony. Not just in the bedroom, but in every room of their house. When they were in the kitchen, there was singing. The B52’s, Blondie, and even some Dean Martin. It didn’t matter to them. Their taste was as eclectic as their wardrobe. They seemed to throw on whatever they could reach for in the morning. Their income was derived from the sale of honey. They made it using the colonies in their backyard. Lindy would wave to me as I walked to my car in the morning on my way into the office where I would update my Google calendar to include a meeting with a Japanese buyer that was little more than chit chat and a request to speed up production. Lindy would be wearing her beekeeping uniform, and inside the house, I would hear Oscar begging his wife to come join him in the shower.

I hate them.

The both of them.

It didn’t matter that it didn’t make sense for me to hate them.

What sense is there in hatred?

One night I asked Robert to join me in the shower, and he asked if there was a spider in there that needed to be killed. I told him that I was perfectly capable of killing my own spiders, and that I wanted him to make love to me under the pitiful water pressure we keep meaning to have a plumber take a look at.

“Why would we make love in the shower,” he asked, “That’s why we have a bed.”

I would have divorced him, but all the good lawyers are downtown, and you can never find parking. Better to just die unhappy. What right did I have to happiness anyway? My ancestors were in gulags. Before them, there were cavewomen. Women living in caves. Did they have happiness? Of course not. I had a house, and a microwave, and I could fall asleep every night to Forensic Files. What more did I want?

I wanted what the Muscatellos had.

Or so I thought.

The letter was addressed to Oscar Muscatello, but it had somehow found its way into our mailbox. That was probably because the mailman was losing his sight, but didn’t want to admit it. He’d already hit three parked cars on our street, but when I called the post office to ask why they weren’t forcing him into retirement, they said it was because nobody wanted to be a mailman anymore. There was no job security in it. Who sends mail?

My only mail came in the form of packages that I ordered late at night while watching Forensic Files. Articles of clothing I would never wear or skin cream I would never put on. I once ordered a candle with edible wax and asked Robert if he wanted to use it on me.

“And get it all over the bed,” he asked, horrified, “Why would we do that? It’s such a nice bed.”

I began to wonder if my husband was having an affair with our linens.

A good person would have taken the letter to Oscar Muscatello right over to him. They would have knocked on the door, waited until the Muscatellos finished making love on the piano in their living room, and then handed over the letter without giving it a second thought.

I am not a good person.

I also know the look of a woman’s handwriting.

Oscar’s name was written with a feminine touch.

I tore open the envelope.

Right away, I smelled it. Cherry perfume. Something fruity, but sensual. I felt my lips moisten. I had done something bad, but something worse was in this envelope. A single piece of paper. Five little words written on it. And a question mark.

Does she know you’re leaving?

Oscar Muscatello was having an affair.

Oscar Muscatello was not a good husband.

The Muscatellos did not have a good marriage.

The sound of Tosca came careening into my living room window, and, based on the selection, I concluded that both of them were about to land their planes at the same time. But Lindy Muscatello had a bomb on her plane.

And she didn’t even know it.

I pictured Oscar leaving her for a bee. The Queen Bee. Someone nurtured by Lindy, cared for by her. I pictured him shrinking down to the size of a worker bee. A drone. Moving his lithe body through the hive until he met his new wife. They would procreate singing bees. Bees that knew Don Giovanni. Bees that knew Carmen.

When she was done with him, the Queen would eat him. Or maybe that was what a praying mantis did. I wasn’t much for science, unless it had to do with fingerprints or blood splatter. Those were things I learned from Forensic Files. I had to wait for Robert to fall asleep before I put it on, because it made him anxious.

I never get anxious.

I’m too certain of the worst.

You can’t anticipate something you know won’t happen.

I will never kill or be killed.

I will die some boring death.

Not like Oscar Muscatello.

He and Lindy will die interesting deaths, but, holding the letter, I knew they would not be dying together. They would die their interesting deaths alone.

This revelation should have thrilled me. Instead, I felt my own sense of betrayal. Betrayed by whom, I couldn’t say. Not at Oscar. What devotion did he owe me? I wanted to know when he would be leaving. I wanted to know who was better than Lindy. Who was this Queen Bee with such beautiful penmanship? What did her ink taste like? Was it sweet?

The Muscatellos moved shortly thereafter, and when they moved, they moved together. If Oscar left, he left after the hives had all been shipped out. He left after the piano had been moved through the large living room window that looked out onto the street. He left after the mailman crashed into a parked pickup truck, had a heart attack, and was finally forced to hang up his uniform. If he left, he left after all that, but I don’t know.

I don’t know if he ever did leave.

The night I received the letter, I took off all my clothes and walked into the bedroom where Robert was reading a biography of Mamie Eisenhower. I took the book from his hands, and set it on the nightstand. He started to say something about Mamie’s childhood, but I placed a finger on his lips. They twitched. I asked him never to leave.

When we were finished, I put on my robe and went to the open window. Across the way, the Muscatellos were in bed. The lights were out. Maybe they had already discussed their move. Maybe Oscar had confessed to his affair. Maybe none of that happened. Maybe it all did.

Up in the sky, I thought I heard a plane.

I thought I did, but who knows?

These days anything can sound like a plane.