I can count on one hand the gifts from readers I've accepted over the years. Maybe on one hand and an extra finger.

One, about a dozen years ago, was a set of towels a reader sent, after I wrote a column explaining that if our towels were in a catalog, the catalog copy would not describe them as shabby chic but just as shabby -- in other words, fit for washing the car.

One was a prized baseball card for my son, given him just after his father died. Another was a postcard and a series of photos from the home of Charlotte Bronte.

I kept the khaki pants that I wore in a photo for the Land's End catalog. And once, a rader gave me what is among the most prized possessions of my life -- a signed copy of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. The reader's relatives live next door to Nelle Harper.

But last week, i received (and accepted) one of the sweetest and most comic gifts ever offered to me as a result of writing.

It happened this way: In my novel THE BREAKDOWN LANE, the protagonist Julieanne Gillis bickers with her husband, Leo, who's soon to give Julie the slip, about skin cream. Julie uses Clarins, an upscale English brand (one I have favored in my time). Leo argues that whatever Julieanne needs, she can buy for $3.95 at Walgreens. The argument escalates. Pretty soon, Leo is describing Julie's skin cream as "globally immoral," and her exercise and dance classes as wretched exess. In a sneak attack, Julieanne switches to Yonka, an even more luxe brand of cream -- one known to the few and not usually available at department stores.

Somewhere in the United States last week, one Herve Pontacq -- former resident of southern France, former race car driver -- was reading THE BREAKDOWN LANE.

He grinned when he came to the part at which Julieanne secretly switched to Yonka, because he is the distributor for the skin-care and aromatherapy line (which really is lush) in America. Once a few years ago, I'd been introduced to Yonka by a friend who'd visited a spa in New Mexico called Vista Clara. It was really nice stuff, and smells so good that using it feels like lounging in a garden.

M. Pontacq wrote me a note. He said that in honor of my choosing Yonka over Clarins, he would like to send me a box of Yonka's deluxe items, the kind that a mom of seven would never buy for herself unless she was terminally ill.

Of course, I wrote back and politely refused.

And then I sat there, in the airport, thinking that I really did want those things but would never buy them for myself and never receive them as a gift from anyone. I had not written about Yonka as a reporter -- in which case I would never have accepted anything that smacked of influence. I never write about products or services as a journalist in any case.

I'd written about Yonka in a work of fiction. Did that absolve me only because I wanted it to? Maybe?

But, what the heck, I really wanted it to absolve me.

And so I wrote back to M. Pontacq, and told him that if the brown-and-gold truck brought Yonka skin cream to my door, I would feel like a little girl on Christmas morning. I knew (though I didn't say) that I would end up giving half of whatever he sent to me away as gifts, simply because I never feel right about having more than I can use, except when it comes to black trousers.

But, true to his word, M. Pontacq sent me a girly garden of earthly delights; and being human, I accepted it and did a little dance of joy when I saw the bath oil -- which is almost too pretty to actually use.

As Herve Pontacg said, life is short. Ethics are important; and i will never urge anyone to vote a certain way or avoid a certain behavior based on Yonka skin cream. But I had a pretty swell bath last night courtesy of a line in a novel; and life being what it is... what's (really) wrong with that?

Jackie M.