Free Brush With Death by Hailey Lind Page B

Improv store in the City. For the first time in a long, long while I had some financial breathing room.
    I breathed deeply, enjoying the sensation and figuring it wouldn’t last.
    The studio door banged against the wall as Evangeline Simpson strode in, a thin cardboard box held aloft in each hand. Last fall Evangeline’s sculptor boss had gotten mixed up with some unsavory characters and nearly ended his days as a human sculpture exhibit, and since then she’d been working at a pizzeria in the Mission. She had the strong, square body of an East German shot-putter, and today was clad in a motorcyclist outfit of silver-studded leather pants and matching black jacket.
    Evangeline and Mary had hit it off from the gecko.
    â€œPizza!” she called out in her upstate New York honk. “I got one Veggie and one Super Meat Lover’s. No anchovies, Annie, sorry. Too stinky.”
    Happy to abandon my paperwork, I joined the impromptu pizza party around the old steamer trunk that I’d found on the curb next to my “new” television. As I lay sprawled on the floor with Pete, Mary, and Evangeline, it occurred to me that I should always keep such company. My jumbo-sized companions made me feel downright petite. Then I remembered the elfin Cindy Tanaka and the fact that I couldn’t inch my favorite jeans past my increasingly dimpled thighs, and decided against a third slice of pizza.
    â€œAnnie, tell Evangeline about the painting. About Fornie,” Mary said, and took a huge bite of pizza redolent of cheese and garlic and loaded with luscious vegetables.
    â€œ La Fornarina means ‘little baker girl’ in Italian,” I said, delighted at being asked to pontificate. Generally my audiencehad to be held captive in some fashion. “It’s a portrait Raphael painted shortly before he died on his thirty-seventh birthday. Some think the subject was Margherita Luti, the daughter of an Italian baker. Rumor has it that Raphael was so obsessed with Margherita that he was unable to complete the frescos at his patron’s Roman estate until she was brought to the villa.”
    â€œThat’s so awesome,” Mary sighed.
    â€œIt created quite a scandal because Raphael was already engaged to the niece of a Vatican cardinal. The painter delayed the nuptials for six years, dragging his feet until his betrothed finally died.”
    â€œBummer for her,” said Evangeline, stifling a belch.
    â€œOthers believe La Fornarina was another woman, whose portrait had been commissioned by Raphael’s powerful patron, Agostino Chigi, at whose villa Raphael and Margherita lived. Chigi married his longtime mistress, Francesca Ardeasca, in a ceremony conducted by the pope in 1519. Still other art historians argue that Raphael didn’t paint La Fornarina at all, and that it should be attributed to his student, Giulio Romano.”
    â€œBut, Annie,” said Pete. “If she is lovely, this painting, what does it matter who the woman was or who painted her?”
    â€œBecause if Raphael didn’t paint La Fornarina, then it’s just a nice Renaissance painting,” I insisted. “It isn’t a genuine Raphael.”
    â€œCan’t argue with that logic,” Mary said. “Annie, tell them the best part.”
    â€œThere is more?” Pete asked as Mary handed him a slice heaped with what appeared to be half a pound of cured meat, glistening with oil and dripping with mozzarella. Now that I was sated, just looking at all that cholesterol made me wish for a bowl of oat bran.
    â€œThere’s some speculation that Raphael and Margherita were secretly married,” I continued. “ La Fornarina has an expensive pearl bauble on her turban, a jewel that was much too pricey for the daughter of a mere baker. It would, however, be an appropriate wedding gift from the great Raphael. And here’s the best part. ‘Margherita’ means ‘pearl’ in