Johnny and Me.

I've been trawling the interwebs lately for shirts for Michael's groomsmen, a job made easier by the lovely Maggie, who found the wonderful T.M. Lewin company so I don't have to. Her husband and his court were decked out in gorgeous Prince of Wales shirts for their summer Outer Banks wedding, and when I saw her pictures, I thought, that look is for me. Well, maybe not me per se. But you know.

The point, though, is that I can't wait to see Michael and our friends in Jermyn Street shirts and thick-knotted ties. Anyone who's been across the pond knows that British men clean house when it comes to dressing for the occasion, and I love seeing a good cutaway collar on a man. It makes me think of the first time I went to London, and of a gray day in a smoky pub. It also makes me think of Johnny Apple, and that is the clearer remembrance.

I first saw Johnny while I was in college; he had come to lecture at my journalism school, and I forget exactly what he talked about. It was the first spring after George W. Bush took office, and it may have had something to do with the recount. It doesn't really matter. Much later, he told me that he'd given that speech off the top of his head with a raging fever and upper respiratory infection, but he'd still made it to the Magnolia Grill in Durham for Karen Barker's pie. "Next time you go, tell her Johnny sent you," he told me. (I still have never been.)

But what I remember chiefly, besides Johnny peering over his reading glasses at his audience, was his voluminous shirt. That shirt! Billows of pink-and-white checked cotton, a cutaway collar unbuttoned at his neck, the hem tucked into a pair of rumpled chinos. His feet spilled out of his loafers, and I felt sorry for them; Johnny, I do believe, could be just as hard on his shoes as he was on his colleagues. But his shirt, which was probably made for him by Harvie & Hudson, stuck in my brain. At Johnny's memorial service years later, Charlie Rose made reference to that self-same shirt, as Johnny had worn it or its twin nearly every time he appeared on his show. No one could accuse Johnny of being a style guru, but when he wore that shirt, to me, he was absolutely himself, as he always would be.

I actually met Johnny under far less auspicious circumstances. I was working through my first weeks as a clerk in his office. Johnny and his wife, Betsey, had been on their usual summer jaunts through Europe and beyond, and from Sweden had sent back a grand case of Orrefors crystal. I signed for it and probably 20 other boxes one day, put it away, and forgot about it. Two weeks later, I received a frantic call at home from my boss: where was Johnny's crystal? We must find it. Surely you didn't take it, did you? We must find this box. Johnny is raising unholy hell about it.

I came into the office, hunted in every corner and crack, and no box was to be found. Every employee looked under their desk for it, just in case. We rooted through Johnny's office, tossing aside boxes of files and cases of wine from promoters. No box. No crystal. Oh God.

Later that week, my boss pulled me aside and informed me, in a voice reserved for wakes and firing squads, that Johnny was coming into the office that day, and that I should be prepared. That afternoon, as I sorted the mail, Johnny came into the mailroom.

"Young lady," he boomed, peering at me once again over his reading glasses. "I don't want to beat a dead horse, but that was a thousand dollars of crystal you just blew."

I swallowed hard. "Yes, sir," I said.

He turned on those loafers -- probably a different pair, although these looked just as beleaguered as the last -- and strutted away. He wasn't wearing the pink shirt; it was a ratty pale blue polo shirt that I think he reserved to wear while doing his expenses. I remember seeing it strain over his stomach at his desk, piles of receipts in front of him.

Two days after that, Johnny came padding up to my desk and plonked two bottles of Australian something-or-other next to my keyboard. "I think you'll like these," he muttered, and told me to come back to his office for more whenever I wished.

After that, most of the wine drunk at my house came from Johnny Apple's stash, and we were friends. I sorted his mail and surreptitiously fact-checked his analysis pieces, and he gave me wine and told me where to eat pretty much everywhere I went. (And that damned box was found stashed away by a ditsy secretary who had fretted that the cleaning staff would run off with the crystal.) The winter after the great crystal caper, I had a long layover at Heathrow and saw Johnny's sartorial brethren traipsing through the terminal. I laughed out loud.

Now Johnny's been dead for a few years, and Betsey is out flogging -- her words, not mine -- a collection of his food writing, and there Johnny is on the cover, large as life, in a pink checked shirt, peering over his reading glasses. Were he still with us, he would be exactly the same. We would be the better for it.