About a week or so before Nick’s promised visit, Campbell’s manner subtly changed. Perhaps that’s putting it too decisively; it’s enough to say that Nick caught him, on a half-dozen occasions, staring at the wall, an expression of wretchedness, a kind of bereft gloom, on his face. Nick stifled his anger: how dare he mope around with the beautiful and gentle Faith awaiting him on the beach, at their bedside, half-naked and shamed in the role of sexual victim that had been dishonorably urged upon her? But the coming weekend visit would remedy all, and if love had to be painfully extruded from the vulgarity that Campbell had created, that’s what would, what must be done. It’s quite probable that Nick, certainly, and Campbell as well, were on the edge of an imbecile eroticism. As for Faith, no one knows, or knew, with any certainty, just what she was doing — if anything — in this shabby drama. She waited, did she not?
One afternoon, glum Campbell told Nick that he and Faith had quarreled “hurtfully” a week earlier, over something that was petty and inconsequential, but which served to awaken the hidden angers and, well, disappointments in their marriage. He’d left the house, bought a pint of vodka, and driven to a little pebble beach on the river. He sat on the hood of the car, drinking and smoking, hating Faith and his marriage, his “fucking charity house,” as he put it, envying Nick’s separation and freedom. The rest of his story was rushed, fragmented, elliptical, and told with his face partly averted. A young man had driven up in an old coupe and parked next to Campbell’s car. He looked like a college student — maybe high school. They’d talked about women and shared the vodka, and Campbell told him of the quarrel with Faith, to which the young man said that he’d just broken up with his girl, who was nothing but a fucking whore bitch. He opened Campbell’s fly and his own, and they kissed and fondled each other, and then the young man knelt in front of Campbell and sucked him off, although Campbell said, in a whisper, “he mouthed me,” while masturbating himself to climax. Then he said good-bye and smiled in the darkness — Campbell could see his teeth — and drove off. When he got in, Faith was asleep, just as well, God! What was wrong with him? He’d never tell Faith, never, he didn’t think, some things just can’t be told. He looked at Nick with a fake rueful grin that said “but I can tell you, can’t I?” Nick shook his head in what could have been disapproval or chagrin or both.
Well. There it surely was. Campbell was letting him know, with a glancing candor, why he wanted Nick to visit. His convenient, halting tale — true or not — was a confession of his desire for Nick, who thought, with scorn, that Campbell didn’t have the nerve to make a straightforward pass at him, but had to use his wife as a lure. All right, you son of a bitch! He’d go up to their house, he wanted Faith, didn’t he? he was beginning to dream about her. So he thought then; but later in the day, it became clear to him that Campbell would get what he had schemed to get from the beginning if he visited. That would never do! Rather than fend off Campbell, or worse, listen to him speak of his desire and devotion, for an entire weekend, he would give up Faith. So crazed was he that he actually thought this — that he would “give up”—give up! — a woman who existed only in Campbell’s occasional remarks and two small images. He wasn’t so demented, though, as to think that she would be crushed by his sacrifice.
On that Friday, he said that he’d have to cancel the weekend, something about his goddamned wife and her shyster lawyer and a division of things that they’d bought and been given for their apartment, they had to meet and talk and do this and that and this and that; on and on he blathered hysterically, while Campbell listened in silence.
Now that this crisis, if it may be called that, had been temporarily resolved, or shelved, a hint of normality was restored to their relationship. It was not as it had been, and they most often ate lunch separately, while their after-five strolls and drinks became rare. All references to a weekend in Connecticut disappeared from their conversation, and Faith may as well have never lived. In the careful politeness of mutual embarrassment, they silently conspired to pretend that no invitation had ever been made to “the Campbells’,” or, if one had, that it could not have been “seriously entertained,” as they say. For that matter, there were no photographs of Faith in existence, certainly not in Nick’s desk drawer. Perhaps there was no Faith, no wife at all. Their friendship, of course, was over, and though they still worked well together, they had few conversations that were not professional or centered on public events. So the late spring and summer passed.
In late September, Nick told Campbell, in his capacity as Nick’s superior, that he’d received a job offer from a firm in Chicago, and that he’d accepted. His divorce was almost settled, the final decree a week or so away, and, well, he was giving his two weeks’ notice. There may truly have been a job in Chicago, but it’s not important. It’s possible that Campbell began to say, “What job?!” but that, too, is unimportant. His face, despite a castor-oil smile so false as to be grotesque, went bone-white, so that he looked, for a few seconds, like a corpse, or, more hideously, like a theatrical version of a corpse. When there was but a week left until Nick’s departure, they managed to have a celebratory farewell lunch at a little bar that served sandwiches and hamburgers to the midday office drunks. It was, not surprisingly, a disaster, unleavened by office gossip or old jokes. Just as they were leaving, Campbell, riding on three martinis and a few beers, demanded that Nick return the “very very personal” photographs of his wife. He seemed angrily humiliated, as if Nick had inveigled him into showing him the photographs, as if he had been blackmailed. In the office, Nick gave him the pictures and Campbell roughly folded them in two and stuck them into the pages of a paperback on his desk. “This is a stupid rotten novel!” he said, belligerent and put upon.
On Nick’s last day, he packed up his few things and said that he’d be leaving a little early, what the hell. Campbell got up from his desk as if drunk — perhaps he was drunk — his face pulled into a sneer, and half-lurched, half-lunged at Nick to hold him by the forearms, the shoebox with its odds and ends held in Nick’s hands awkwardly between them. He didn’t look at Nick but stiffly bent forward and tried to kiss his mouth, missing but wetting his chin. His eyes were wide and slightly out of focus. Nick stepped away from him and said something like “Come on, Campbell!” and walked out of the office and to the elevators. Campbell was a few steps behind him and when he reached Nick he motioned to the stairwell. “Please,” he said. “Just a … please?” Nick, absurdly, looked at his watch, then followed Campbell into the stairwell, where he had slouched against a wall, looking at his shoes. Then, as if he had rehearsed, which he may well have done, Campbell begged Nick not to leave just yet, to come and stay with him — and with Faith — and with this articulation of his wife’s name he looked into Nick’s face and grinned. He knew, he said, he knew that Nick liked, well, was attracted to Faith, the photos, he said, those pictures of her. Then he stopped, simply defeated. “I love you,” he said. “I love you.” He began to wail very quietly, his hands folded high on his chest in a classic yet ridiculous pose of misery and loss. Nick’s face was flushed with anger and pity and, who can tell, perhaps with desire. “I love you, I love you!” Campbell said, blubbering now, and he put his arms clumsily around Nick’s waist just as the door opened and a janitor, carrying a bucket and mop, stepped onto the landing. Momentarily taken aback by the sight of these two flustered young men, he stood uncertainly, then, as they pulled apart, realized what he was seeing, and smiled a knowing smile, a smile that said he understood and that it was all right with him.