When I arrived home, after the cab ride from The 92nd Street YMCA, it was nearly eleven. Nina was gone for the weekend to visit her daughter in Westchester, so I lit the apartment with warm light and turned on CNN, sipped thyme tea and stared at the computer screen desperate for Mrs. Beerman’s ex to do something interesting. I had plenty to think about after the evening discussing the book, but I played with the manuscript instead.

Desperately awake, I began dabbling with some words and sounds when the front door bell rang. It startled me and I debated whether to answer, I slowly walked to the door and peered through the peephole. An easy assurance came over me as I calmly unlocked the door, slid my hand down its length, allowing the door to stand as open and as wide as I felt.

It was Campbell; he stood quietly in the small hallway.

“I saw the lights on in your bedroom and wondered if you were home. I thought if you weren’t,” he hesitated, “I’d just say good night to Nina and be on my way.”

Campbell voice was sweet and swept me as deeply as I had remembered it could. His voice was the stuff of perfume and music, something I could have in my ear – always.

“Hello, Pressman,” I whispered in awe.
“Hello, Catherine.” Campbell responded.

I leaned away from the door to let Campbell in. He came forward walking slowly and acting uninterested, very cool. He looked around to see that things were in order and it seemed like he would be leaving after he “just checked in.” He was tall and wearing a long black cashmere coat, his hands in the pockets in front. He breathed hard through his nose and I saw the chestnut part of his face and waited like melting ice cream for him to turn and look down at me.

When he did, I traced his face in my mind and with my finger on the inside of my palm. We moved forward for a hug and eventual kiss and I remembered how Campbell could kiss so deeply, yet so simply. I was more excited to see him than I thought I would be. In fact, I had been getting ready to face the mountain of trying to get in touch with him. I really had missed him the first few months we separated but eventually put him in the category of sedentary and there he sat, wasted by me for so many years. He looked good, only slightly older, and he seemed comfortable with his place in life. I was glad to feel and see that he was all right.

“I won’t keep you long.” Campbell broke the silence first. “I was just on my way home from a reading at the YMCA.”

I let loose of an unrehearsed embarrassed laugh and could not believe that he was there. We sat at the kitchen table, like so many other times before, discussing the people at the reading as a gathering of lunatics and laughed at how our observations would always be the truth, yet so denied. To punctuate the comfortable feeling between us: Cam stood up, mid-sentence, went to the coffee maker and poured some hot water, pulled a branch of thyme from the herb plants on the counter stirring the hot water with it and pushed it toward me over the table. Leaning near the hot steam from the water, Campbell looked at me. He kept stirring. He had a short smile, more of a cornered smile, but his sea blue eyes fixed softly on mine. I held Campbell’s gaze as well as I could, faltering inside with the inclination to explain why I had been gone. What was it about Campbell that scared me so considerably?

He said, “While you were gone, I stopped by whenever I saw the bedroom light on from the street. I’d just ask Nina if she had any news, sometimes I’d come in and sit down, other times, she’d cook for me.” Campbell looked around the table, “I sat right here in this spot.”
“She didn’t tell me any of this; I like by your honesty, I was so selfish not to have communicated more with her,” I said, “but I did sort of…I sent home boxes of things and so she kind of knew where I was by my return addresses, no?”
“Yes. Yes, she did,” he said, “and she did share whatever she could when she knew anything. Helsinki?” “Oh, Campbell, it’s so beautiful there…and cold,” I said smiling.
“I know,” he said. “I went online and read about Helsinki, just trivial stuff, Prague, Hamburg, Austria?”

I could barely glance up at Campbell staring straight at the tea where it was easy to leave my eyes. Finally, I looked across the table to see him still staring straight at me. I knew in my heart that this was a grueling drag for him. I knew that Campbell preferred to be in bed making love and not bullshitting with me about something like Helsinki, especially since he knew a lot more than he let me know. I may have been out of touch, but I knew this much about Campbell.

“I went online to read about your last movie, umm, Avoiding Roger. I liked what I read, there were such good reviews of your performance. I saw a small video clip that looked like you were really enjoying being an asshole.”

Campbell Pressman leaned back in his chair, tucked his hand up under his armpits and intended to respond to my borage of statements learnedly, but only cleared his throat wisely.

“Well you made my sister cry,” he said.
“No, I didn’t. I don’t think I’m gonna like hearing this…” I said.
“Your book made my nephew get on a bus and hitchhike his way out to see his Uncle in New York City and maybe try to get laid along the way.” Campbell tapped his finger on the table in an important way.
My hands were against my cheeks, while I my head swam.
“No, no, no,” I said. “Oh my god, I am so sorry. Is he alright?”
“Oh yes, he’s fine. But you made her cry,” he said with a funny sarcasm in his voice.
We laughed.
“We had a good time together and it was just great being around a horny little teenager for the weekend, thank you very much.”
“Oh I am so sorry Cam I really, really am,” I said. “You just never know, that book, oh, I just never realized anyone would actually read it,” a small, timid laugh ended my own admission to Campbell, “maybe, some wars are better fought in one’s own mind.”
“You called me Cam. I haven’t heard that in a long time,” he said looking down at his finger pressed against the wooden table. His voice and eyes lowered as he winked and said, “You used to call me that in bed.” Then his voice went high like a girl’s, “Oh, Campbell Pressman, oh, Campbell, oh, oh, oh, Cam.”

I leaned back a bright red face and reveled in Campbell’s honest teasing. Teasing is the quickest way to turn me into a complete and total slut. The fastest way to get me into the mood for sex, so I decided to begin the hike up the mountain, I created in my mind about Campbell’s response to my disappearance. I walked around the table, straddled Campbell’s lap, placed my hands on his face to turn it toward my lips and began kissing him in that way that leads to the bedroom, and, yes, me saying, oh, Campbell Pressman, oh, Campbell, oh, oh, oh, Cam. And for one glorious moment of total resolution, I allowed myself to become a total cliché.

Part VII of Hello Pressman: Tomorrow!