Free The Last Beach Bungalow by Jennie Nash

asked. “We have some excellent introductory guides. Some people also like these cards.” She pointed to a sturdy little box with a flip-open top and handed it to me, but I didn’t want to do anything that smacked of effort. I wanted my prayers to be essential, easy and organic. Long life. That was all I felt I could pray for right now—the simple act of breathing in and out over time.
    “Just the Buddha is fine,” I said.
    I paid for the little statue, then slipped it into the pocket of my purse. While I walked through Borders, I reached in three separate times to make sure it was still there. I found the magazine right away, then went to stand in line. It was a long line. Stacked on tables next to us were the books being touted as perfect gifts that holiday season. There was Mitch Albom’s new book, The Five People You’ll Meet in Heaven ; a novel called The Lovely Bones that I’d been told by three separate people I had to read; Atkins for Life ; a little red book of advice by Fred Rogers, who had recently died; and Michael Moore’s diatribe, Dude, Where’s My Country? I picked up a copy of the novel, and stepped forward in line. Now I was next to the sale books—a Crock-Pot cookbook, a book of crossword puzzles, a coffee-table book on neon road signs. I picked up a book called Feng Shui: Harmonizing Your Inner and Outer Space.
    I opened it and flipped to the introduction. “For the ancient Chinese,” it said, “luck was not synonymous with chance. Luck was opportunity. Of course, even if presented with opportunity, many of us do not act and grasp it with both hands.”
    “Next!” the cashier called. I slammed shut the book on feng shui, tossed it back onto the sale table, and made my way past the Mary Engelbreit display to the counter.
    The cashier was a young woman with hair that seemed as if it had been dipped in ink. I imagined that she was a seasonal employee. A college student, perhaps, earning money for a trip home. “Busy today, isn’t it?” I asked.
    “I guess,” she said. She swiped my novel across her scanner, shoved it in a bag.
    “That’s supposed to be an amazing book,” I said.
    She thrust my receipt toward me to sign. “No returns without a receipt,” she said, “and all returns have to be within thirty days.”
    “OK,” I said. “Thanks.”
    “Next!” she called out.
    “Happy Holidays,” I said as I walked away, but I knew she hadn’t heard me.
    This Old House is a fantastic magazine. It’s printed on beautiful, thick paper, for one thing, and on every page you get the feeling that all things are possible. It is possible to clean your gutters, to re-plane a sticky door frame, to scrape off four layers of paint to reveal the original hardwood under the floor of a farmhouse kitchen. For their holiday issue, the magazine had a gift-giving guide featuring laser levels, push-button measuring tapes, and circular saws. The photographs made the tools look as enticing as fine chocolates or cashmere sweaters the color of sorbet. I turned down a page featuring a laser measuring tape that I thought Rick would love, and thought I could probably get one for my brother, as well. I read the column on how to caulk around the windows and lay in extra insulation during the chill of January and pored over a feature story on a hacienda in Arizona that was being restored for a family who had inherited the original property from the wife’s great-grandfather, who had been a ranch hand during the Depression.
    I was reading about old houses and the people who loved them, but I couldn’t get Vanessa’s comment out of my head. You don’t have a cynical bone in your body. That was the way I used to be and it amazed me that the world could see me as unchanged. When the plastic surgeon removed my breast and replaced it with a fake one made from the fat and skin from my tummy, I was only focused on what I’d gained: a breast, a body that was balanced and free of disease. I never concerned myself