Flour, eggs, milk, sugar... call it a recipe for madness. But there's more to this than I've told you...I drove across the emerald arms of the Vincent Thomas Bridge to visit her. Some mornings, a mist blanketed the bridge; the sunrise's opalescence which shone through it was mystical. Yet we were two worlds diverged in woe. The bridge was simply a metaphor for the breakers that lie between us, an inlet of absurdity and beyond. She fancied the Jewish singles scene and would go with her girlfriends to these Sabbath dinners and to stylish rabbinical events in LA. Two of my buddies from grad school both celebrated Hanukkah and they'd see faithfully see her at every meat market. What she didn't know was that I achingly knew it. It's a small world after all. I hoped someday her prince would come. This aspiring Barbie worker's bamboozlement, she thought, was beyond my ken. That we were unequal as a spelling bee between a lawyer and a realist didn't matter to me; that honesty was a ! punch line to her made all the difference. Above all, she could turn a simple request for cookie into the most loathsome affair. Take Valentine's Day. We had gone antique shopping. Afterwards she'd asked for a cookie. Simple enough, I went to buy her one. When I asked which one she wanted, she hesitated. I suggested the large, moist, chocolate chip cookie behind the glass. But she wanted a hardened cookie on a stick that was coated with a sickening frosting and looked as though you could crack a
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