Geoffrey took a certain pride in announcing that he couldn't afford to have cable installed in his apartment. It became a validation of his decision to live the impecunious (his word) yet meaningful life of a college professor. The upshot of this design for living was that he lodged a carton of blank videotapes (paid for out of his departmental supplies budget) with his friend Milo, and sent him via electronic mail a weekly schedule of films he wanted taped--a monthly schedule when he was off to the festivals in Toronto and Berlin and Sundance and New York and Cannes. By now, he had amassed an impressive personal library.

Tonight's selection was Holiday, with Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn and--Milo could still remember the way Geoff had worded it--"a nearly unbearably endearing Edward Everett Horton." Milo found that a bit condescending; he thought the style of Geoff's e-mail letters was becoming indistinguishable from that of the pedantic articles he wrote for those journals with the showy French titles you can never find at the newsstand. But, Milo had to admit, the movies he recorded for Geoff were almost always worth watching, if not worth the lectures he'd have to endure when they talked about them afterwards.

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© 1991 David Cohen

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