How do you keep the moons in your cuticles so white and clear?

Truman Capote in his Brooklyn Heights apartment. Photo by Slim Aarons

"...we went up a musty staircase and found Truman in a room overwhelmed by wallpaper. He gave us ferocious hugs, sat us down to bourbon and Ritz crackers out of a box...I sipped my drink and cased his digs: a sepia print of the Colosseum above a disemboweled Singer; an antimacassar on a Morris chair; Andalusian draperies with tassels; ghostly cabbage roses on a threadbare carpet.The only things in sight conceivably his were a record player, a black-and-gold ashtray from the Rainbow Room, books, a portable Olivetti in its case, a photograph of himself, and the Webster's Unabridged against which it was propped."

-Truman Capote:Dear Heart, Old Buddy by John Malcom Brinnin