Fortunately, Gaby has better manners than one-marginally. He’s almost finished with the last one when the door to his studio apartment nearly bursts open to admit his best friend, who is currently masquerading as a wet dog. When he finishes the geometric cookie he grabs a different stencil and begins again, working his way through the designs one by one. Grabbing one made up of modern, geometric lines, he places it over a waiting cookie and begins piping he could do it freehand, of course, but he really does need to make sure that the design is replicable by the lowest common denominator. He’s done ten of them so far, but he knows the most he can push the papers to publish is two, so he’s got some decisions to make. Napoleon turns the heart-shaped stencils he already cut out this way and that, trying to decide if they’re too ornate. Or, if you’re feeling adventurous, break out your piping bag and whip up a batch of the royal icing recipe that follows… …Decorating couldn’t be easier: simply cut the white parts out of the stencils printed on the next page and lay over your baked cookies, then use a sifter to dust confectioner’s sugar over the top. (A screwball romantic comedy of errors based on the 1945 movie Christmas in Connecticut.) Even so, everything is going according to plan that is, until said war hero shows up and the sparks that fly seriously complicate matters. Now Napoleon has to scramble to make the fiction a reality, including strong-arming his best friend Gaby, a die-hard women’s lib and anti-war advocate, into playing the part of the perfect housewife. The lie he’s crafted becomes a problem, though, when his prospective publisher gets it in his head to invite a war hero, recently returned from Vietnam, to spend Christmas with Mrs. Josephine Solo-a sophisticated housewife who lives in a quaint Long Island village with her husband-well, what’s wrong with a little bit of storytelling if it’s not hurting anyone? And if the rest of the world, and his new publisher, believes that the column is written by Mrs. Things couldn’t be going better for Napoleon: his immensely popular recipe and style column has been nationally syndicated, and he’s on the cusp of securing a new book deal that promises to finally let him move out of his minuscule Greenwich Village studio.
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