It is the shrine inside with the little bronze Buddhas and the Tibetan prayer flags outside that shock, at once inappropriate and oddly fitting.

He indicated a small bronze Buddha on his desk.

He walked straight to the bronze Buddha figure, picked it up, and removed a rolled-up slip of paper from a hole in the base.

"The airport message also said to check on a small bronze Buddha."

"By the way, have you checked yet on the East Indian import shop where the bronze Buddha was purchased?"

"Could there have been any mistake about that bronze Buddha?"

Ask to sit on the screened-in porch, nestled among the greenery and watched over by a bronze Buddha.

Instead, she bought a postcard of the bronze Buddha inside, and sent it to her mother.

He sat up, fat and froggy and benevolent, like a bronze Buddha, and grew earnest.

And smiling inscrutably, forgotten in his niche, sat the little bronze Buddha...