Free The Last Beach Bungalow by Jennie Nash Page B

designs.
    “Can I help you?” a man behind the counter asked. He had heavily gelled hair and a small goatee. I couldn’t detect a tattoo anywhere on him.
    “I’d like a tattoo,” I said. “On my breast. I only have three hours. I want to do it before I lose my nerve.”
    “Tattoos are permanent art,” he said, as if I were a sixteen-year-old rebel. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to take some time to browse through our designs, and then come back when you’re certain you’re ready? We don’t normally recommend tattooing on impulse.”
    “I’m certain,” I said, surprised and reassured by his conservative kindness. “Just nervous.”
    “Do you know what design you want?”
    “A butterfly. Just a small one.”
    He got up, reached for a binder, flipped it open and revealed a dozen butterfly designs. “That’s only the start of what we have, and we can do custom work, too, though that’s more expensive and takes longer.” The colors of the butterflies were rich and earthy. There were creatures that looked like specimens from a science book and ones that looked as if they’d flown right off the page of a fantasy novel. I didn’t want to turn the page and get lost in consideration. I pointed to a blue butterfly about as big as my thumbnail, with radiant flecks of green. You could see the shadow of the wings, which made it look like it was flying, like it could be captured in the mouth of the man who might go to kiss it, and then be swallowed whole.
    “That one,” I said.
    I signed all the waivers and legal agreements, then sat down and read Details magazine while I waited for one of the artists to be free. I kept glancing over the top of the pages at a man whose forearm was completely covered in tattoos. There were words and various animals included among the designs, but I couldn’t make any of them out. There were so many tattoos that the whole effect was just one of ink. After about fifteen minutes, my name was called.
    The man with the goatee led me back to a small room and handed me a black cotton gown.
    “Shirt off, bra off,” he said. “Leave the opening of the gown to the front. Jerry will be with you in a minute.”
    He closed the door and I quickly took off my clothes and put on the gown. I thought about how many times I’d been in a small room in a gown waiting for an expert to come in an do something to my breast—poke it with a needle, squeeze it for an X-ray, cut it, sew it, clean it, measure it, burn it. I was an expert at having things done to my breast. I could whip my clothes off in an instant. I could carry on a conversation as serious as the possibility of life and death or as frivolous as the desirability of having a deep décolletage without giving a thought to the indignity of wearing a thin cotton gown tied loosely across my body. People could poke and prod at any part of my anatomy they were trained to treat and I wouldn’t flinch. I wouldn’t even blink.
    I looked around the little room and noticed a diploma on the wall. Jerry Steiner, it seemed, was a graduate of the Chicago School of Art. While I was still marveling at this fact, Jerry himself walked in and introduced himself. He was a thin man with a tattoo like a braided rope around his left wrist.
    “I’m going to numb you up,” he said, then stopped because I was shaking my head.
    “It’s already numb. I had a mastectomy. It’s completely fake.”
    “Ahh,” he replied, and the way he said it made me wonder if he knew what a mastectomy even was. Perhaps he thought I had just told him that I’d had breast enhancement surgery. Maybe this was why he acted as if it were nothing. “Well, I’m going to numb you up anyway, ” he said.
    Even after the shots, I could feel the vibration of the machine that punched the needle and a kind of concentrated electric energy on that part of my body. It was uncomfortable. I lay on the table and tried not to move, or even breathe, so as not to disturb Jerry while he