Cookies, nuts, and nails

When I was a kid, our neighbor, Filomena, used to make these anisette cookies with thick, white icing on top and a special kind of sprinkles. She baked them in loaves and cut them on the diagonal into little biscotti look-alikes. I'd sneak handfuls into my pockets and run off to wolf them down: SO delicious. Then we moved, and then she died, and when I mentioned the cookies to her daughter a decade after, she promised to dig up her mother's recipe. But she never got around to it.

Yesterday somebody brought a small box of cookies into the office, and though they were round and the icing was watery and transparent, there was no mistaking them: I flashed right back to Filomena's kitchen. So rare that a childhood taste memory lives up to itself, but these cookies did. Today Liam and I are baking them on our own. And if I could send you a plate of them, I would.

***
We've published a book by a Marine recently back from Fallujah. It's selling quite well, and the author has turned into something of a handful. Yesterday I called him--ostensibly to introduce myself, but also to set the stage to yank him back by the neck if he tries one more time to peel the skin off anyone who works for me. So we're talking, and he begins to complain about the high-ticket PR agency we've hired to make him a star, and recounts to me the threat-packed letter he intends to send them. I mean, he's talking like they're the Republican Guard and he's the great white hope. Explicit talk. And then he laughs, like it's all a joke. Soldier humor. And I realize, in a flash, that he's a total loon. Later on I mention his comments to a group of colleagues, and one rolls her eyes and says, "Well, what do you expect? He's a Marine."

I didn't let it go, though it's exceedingly awkward for me--me!--to take a stand in defense of the military. But I find I am not receptive to swipes at the Marines, because now I know a lot of them, and there's not a more honorable sort to be found anywhere. Which makes this particular loon even more intolerable than the standard-variety loon. Thank God I didn't have to be in on this book from the start. It's almost over. Unless people keep buying it and we release in trade paper...

***
I met an agent last week who had fake nails that extended--easily--a full inch past the ends of her fingers. I know I lack imagination--I know I tend to get caught up in the mundane--but I ask you: how do you wipe anything at all--anywhere--with acrylic-reinforced nails that extend an inch past the ends of your fingers? Without drawing blood, I mean?

There's so much to marvel at.