Brush With Death Read Online Free Page A

south of Spain.
    Until you remembered all those “cremains.”
    Sinking onto a marble bench, Mary unwrapped her whole-wheat vegetarian burrito and took a healthy bite. My assistant’s outfit tonight consisted of a short black skirt over ripped black jeans, a black lace camisole topped by a ripped see-through gauze tunic, a black-and-silver studded leather belt with silver chains, and black fingerless gloves. The sole exception to Mary’s monochromatic look was her long blond hair, which hung loose down her back, and her bright blue eyes, outlined with a thick line of kohl.
    Mary was nearly six feet tall, wore heavy motorcycle boots, and could kick some serious butt. Yet this Goth girl was afraid of cemeteries.
    â€œI have got to get over this,” she mumbled around a mouthful of beans and cheese. “It’s so embarrassing. My friends think it’s totally fly I’m working here, but it scares the snot out of me.”
    â€œ ‘Fly’?”
    â€œIt means ‘off the hook,’ or ‘cool’ in Old Fogey.”
    Only eight years separated my assistant and me, but the cultural divide was huge. I had spent a good part of my formative years learning art forgery from my grandfather in Paris, Brussels, and Rome. I could rattle off recipes for crackle glazes and sixteenth-century egg tempera, recite the dates that various pigments and canvas linens had been introduced in Florence versus Amsterdam, and expound ad nauseam on the relative merits of seccatives, turpentine, and rabbit-skin glue.
    Mary, in contrast, had grown up in America’s heartland. She spent her childhood piercing her body in odd places, dying her hair colors never seen in nature, and experimenting with innovative ways to outrage her staid elders. The day Mary turned eighteen she hitchhiked to San Francisco, where her native shrewdness helped her to survive on the streets until she joined a band and moved in with the drummer. I often called upon Mary to translate contemporary slang and modern mores.
    â€œI only need you for a few more nights. Then you can go back to avoiding cemeteries and mausoleums,” I said. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. Americans are the most talented people in the world at pretending death doesn’t exist.”
    â€œThanks, but I’m Goth, Annie. I have to conquer this,” she sighed. “It’s not, ya know, consistent. Dried mango?”
    I took a piece and munched. Consistency was low on my list of Things to Fret About. I spent my time worrying about staving off creditors, figuring out how to input numbers into my new cell phone, and wondering if exposure to toxic lead white oil paint would turn me into one of those artists who thought smearing cow dung on parking meters was “public art.”
    â€œSo how are you going to conquer your fear?” I asked.
    â€œI’ve been giving that some thought. I know there’s nothing out there, not really. I just need to prove it to myself. So I decided to spend a few nights in the cemetery.”
    â€œYou’re going to what ?”
    â€œI said—”
    â€œI heard you. Are you nuts?”
    â€œWhat could possibly go wrong? There’s nobody real there, right?”
    Nobody but grave-robbing ghouls, I thought with a shudder. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell Mary about tonight’s encounter, but given her current state of mind I feared the chance of confronting a green-faced goblin would make her all the more gung ho.
    â€œIt’s against the rules to be in the cemetery at night. Besides, they lock the gates at sundown. How would you get in?” I didn’t mention that my master key to the columbarium also opened the cemetery gates.
    Mary rolled her eyes, shoved the last bite of burrito into her mouth, and gazed at me as if I were the dimmest bulb in the chandelier. “ Hell-o-o? Climb over the wall?”
    I am a woman of considerable imagination, but scaling a