EXCEPT IN PASSING

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

A message from Jessamyn, describing the visit of her college friend Craig to the city, says that about three weeks before his trip he happened to run into two ex-girlfriends on successive days. There was Sharon, who he saw across the park and, while running to meet, tripped on a short iron gate surrounding a planted tree, skinning his knee in the process. Craig did catch up to her to learn that she was currently single, though in the first weeks of a new job, and that she appeared to be happy to see him. Jessamyn also heard from Craig that the very next afternoon he ran into Amanda, who had, he reminded her, broken up with him in what he felt at the time was a manner most grievous. One night on dinner, he told Jessamyn, repeating a story he had told many times before, Amanda had announced, between the appetizer and main course, that even though they had been dating for three years and appeared happy to others, she was no longer certain sure how she felt about him, or the relationship, or for that matter anything. She continued to see him, expressed no unhappiness of any sort, but gradually converted her romantic interest to a playful friendship and then, by degrees, a less playful one, the entire conversion being achieved with no apparent disquiet or sadness on her part. It was, Craig told Jessamyn when they met, upsetting to him because he was unable to get any leverage or any closure, even though he was well aware that he could have gained both that leverage and that closure simply by walking away from her. Jessamyn, in her description of Craig’s visit, spent most of her energy describing her exasperation at his habit not only of repeating stories that he had already told but also of casting about—often literally, moving his hands in the air around his head— for an explanation of Amanda's behavior. Jessamyn’s message did not engage with the fact that she was and had always been in love with Craig, and that deep down, in the subduction zone of her heart, she felt certain that she could have offered him anything that Amanda had offered, with the conspicuous absence of remoteness, incuriosity, and ludicrously large eyes used to advantage without any thought of consequence.