A lone pigeon bobs his way toward me. “Rats with wings” Ben calls them. I lick the chocolate side of the cone and contemplate walking back to the subway when I suddenly spot Ben jogging in place, about a block away, waiting for the light to turn green so he can cross West End Avenue. He is wearing burnt-orange running shorts, a gray Wake Forest basketball T-shirt, and his favorite White Sox baseball cap. I feel a nervous flutter in my stomach and then a sense of comfort for having correctly guessed that he was on a run. I still know you , I whisper, and then I wave just in case he can see me. It’s not an eager wave, just a casual, hand-in-the-air acknowledgment. I wait for him to wave back, but he doesn’t, just adjusts his cap, bending the bill with one hand. I wipe my mouth with my napkin, and stand, thinking he’ll see me any second.
Instead, he turns in the other direction to face a girl jogging toward him. My mind freezes and then clicks into place. Ben is running with a girl. He is on a date. A late afternoon, summer date. A run-in-the-park-together date .
I think back to our first run together. It was after we had slept together. About a week later. Two tops. I know this for a fact. I have an excellent memory, especially when it comes to dates. And Ben.
I study this woman, this girl he is with. She has long, thick, white-blond hair pulled back in a perfect, silken ponytail that swishes back and forth just right. It is the kind of hair that I coveted when I was much younger, believing that I could somehow train mine to look and behave the same way. The girl strides forward, once, twice, three times and is now beside him. Ben says something to her and then leans down and grabs the bottom of his shorts as if to catch his breath. I can see his profile. He stands, and I watch his chest rising and falling with the effort that comes from a hard finish. His shirt is damp across the chest. The girl stretches her left hamstring. She has long, thick legs, reminding me of a beach volleyball player, only without the tan. Her skin is as pale as her hair. Her face is long and angular. I wouldn’t call her pretty, but she is attractive, and unfortunately for me, very memorable. I can’t tell how old she is, but something about her expression and stance makes me think she’s still in her twenties.
All of these observations transpire in a few seconds, but that is long enough for a stream of ice cream to melt down the side of the cone and trickle onto my hand and forearm. It is also long enough for the light to change and Ben and his date to come bounding toward me. And it is plenty long enough for me to realize that I am completely trapped. If I still had my key to the front door, I would duck into the building and hide behind the stairwell near the mailboxes. Gamble that Ben already picked up the mail. I cannot turn and walk in the other direction because Ben knows my back as well as he does my front. I will be tortured wondering whether he saw me and just chose to let me walk away. And my third option, aggressively approach them is something I just can’t make myself do. So I just stand there, my feet rooted to the concrete. I frantically try to clean myself up. By now another half-dozen drips of ice cream are trickling down the side of the cone, carrying sprinkles downstream with them. I am a total mess.
You dumbass , I think to myself, for coming here at all and, even more, for ordering a cone on a hot day. A cone with rainbow sprinkles. What am I, twelve ? This is my last thought before Ben sees me. His expression is confused at first, as if I’m completely out of context standing in front of a place where I lived for years. Then he smiles tightly, obviously flustered over the impending introduction. His eyes are casting wildly from me to the girl. Me to the girl. She is still oblivious. She doesn’t seem to notice me at all, looking right through me in the way you look right through so many people every day. Especially in a big city. She is in the middle of telling a story. Something about a stress fracture she got from running around the reservoir in the same direction, day after day. It was diagnosed right before last year’s New York marathon. She had to pull out of the race. One of the saddest days of her life.
I can tell Ben wants to interrupt her, save everyone the extra layer of embarrassment that comes when a third party has a delayed understanding of the awkward thing transpiring. But short of telling her to shut up, he can’t stop the story. She finishes by saying this: “But that’s one of my goals in life. To run a sub-three-and-a-half-hour marathon.”
I am angry that we have one of the same goals, but I was only aiming to finish a marathon. I wonder what her other goals in life are. And if they include Ben. Motherhood. I feel as though I’m going to throw up. Ben has a pained look on his face, too, and this helps a little, but not much.
“Hi, Claudia,” he says, looking up at me.
“Hi, Ben.”
“It’s good to see you,” he says.
“Good to see you, too,” I say. “How are you?”
“I’m fine,” he says. “Just went for a little run.”
I make direct eye contact with the girl, and wonder if Ben told her about me. Told her that, technically, I was his wife until last week.