For Almost Thirty Years . . .

For almost thirty years, every December I would arrive in Washington and spend two nights with Deborah and Roy. My own Debora had been Deborah Kaplan’s office partner at George Mason in 1977. (Debora Greger once put up a sign that identified the occupants as Ms. Reading and Ms. Spelling, leading one student to knock and ask, “Is Professor Spelling here?”) Sometimes we’d go out to dinner; sometimes we’d sit for a couple of hours around their dinner table, catching up. Absences are what we feel, fractions of life what we remember.


This is what I remember:

Back in the darkness of the Reagan administration, Deborah saying, “Well, there’s this guy . . .”

The old Jackson Street house, before the renovation. Down the hall narrowed by bookcases lay the entrance to Roy’s cave, pieces of computer equipment piled one on another in geological strata, most of them interconnected in mysterious fashion. He was the only person I knew who had two computer screens.

Roy explaining the secrets of PINE, when hardly a year before I had declared I would never use email.

The mustache, grayer over the years. And larger?

His shrug. His quiet laugh. His Blackberry.

Roy thinking.


Things Roy never said:

This time I’m going to vote straight Republican.

I’m really looking forward to that new Jane Austen film.

Why don’t you pick up the check?