The Last Beach Bungalow Read Online Free PDF Page B

jagged hip to hip scar where they had harvested the skin and fat needed to rebuild my breast. I had scars around my belly button, which was not a belly button at all, but a twist of flesh manufactured after the real belly button had been taken away. There was a circular scar running around my fake breast, tiny scars where they had created the nipple in the same way as the belly button, and a long scar running from the breast up under my armpit. The bra was light as air, yet somehow substantial. The size discrepancy between my breasts seemed as if it had been erased.
    I opened the door.
    Manon beamed and clapped her hands. “Beautiful, no? Just wait a moment,” she said. “Let me get you something to try so you can see how this changes the lines of your body. Your husband will love it.” She was back in a moment with a brown silk knit dress. It was a pullover with a shirred waistline and a deep V neckline.
    I laughed. “That would look great on my daughter,” I said. Jackie was two inches taller than me and eighty pounds lighter. Her hair shimmered, her hips swayed, her skin was flawless. She looked fantastic in everything and I simply looked like somebody’s mother.
    “Nonsense,” Manon said. “Come. Try it.”
    I closed the door again and shimmied into the dress. It was so tight I had to yank it down over my rear end, but once I had it on, I turned to the side. The snug fit over the perfect bra made my body look voluptuous instead of lumpy. The drape of the wraparound made my waist look trim. I made a sound that must have seemed like approval.
    “You see!” Manon exclaimed when I opened the door. “Gorgeous! Organic cotton is a good idea for relaxing. Good for the planet. But it cannot do this for a woman.”
    I changed back into my own sad bra, put on my clothes and stepped out of the dressing room. On the coffee table next to the padded bench where the organic cotton had been displayed was the new issue of Town & Country. I was holding my notepad in my hands. “You mentioned that my husband would love the outfit you selected,” I said, casually, as if I were still digging for facts for my story. “Do you have a lot of men buying lingerie for their wives during the holidays?”
    Manon laughed. “Oh, yes,” she said.
    “I take it they don’t go for the organic cotton?”
    “Perhaps,” she said, “if they are buying something to be a comfort. It is so soft, you know. But men like for their wives to be shapely and sexy.” She held up the bra and panties I’d just taken off. “They usually select something like this.”
    I thanked Manon, then drove away from Avisha down to the Esplanade and sat there looking at the winter beach. The waves broke steeply down from their crests and crashed hard on the sand. The water was in a muddy froth as it spilled onto the beach. There were two bulldozers a few blocks away pushing sand into huge mounds to preserve it for the summer. When Jackie was little, we’d climb up the steep sides of the dunes—two steps up, one step back—then race down the far face. We’d pick a tire track and follow it half a mile down the beach, trying to keep our footprints within the outlines and analyzing her little steps compared to my big ones. I’d forgotten to come to the beach the whole time we’d been working on the house. How could I have forgotten how pretty it was in the winter? And how could I have left that lingerie store without even seeing the price tag on the chocolate brown bra?
    I looked at my watch and pulled away from the curb. I took the first left away from the crashing quiet of the beach and sped down the block, but when I got to the stop sign at the end, I turned around and went back. That block was one of a dozen seaside lanes that ran perpendicular to the Esplanade. During the early part of the century, when Redondo Beach boasted a resort hotel, where Hollywood stars and well-to-do-families splashed in the big indoor pool and danced in the high-ceilinged hall,