Page 112 of Four Weddings and a Funeral Director
Lily
Mort’s words coursed through Lily like a spell. Every part of her, everycell– right down to all the mitochondria bits – felt electrified. Beside her, Esmerelda meowed quietly, the iridescent crystal in her collar catching the sun and spinning … spinning …
Clouds rolled in over the blue sky, deepening from fluffy white into a foggy grey and then the darker, weightier hue that meant a storm was imminent. They shimmered with the onset of lightning, then cracked open like an egg. Rain pelted down in a cross-stitch of colours, kicking up the musky smell of petrichor from the parched Spanish tiles and setting the hot pink bougainvillea bushes nodding.
Umbrellas and parasols were grabbed from the baskets outside each of the shops, adding a rainbow canopy to the picturesque street. Hummingbirds hovered, all shimmering greens and yellows in the threading rain. A small child jumped up and down in a puddle quickly accumulating in a dip in the tiled path that wound through the leafy neighbourhood. A theatre kid let loose with a rendition of ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ as they spun around an ornate lamppost, narrowly avoiding a whack in the head from a hanging planter trailing with vibrant morning glory trumpets.
Everything about the moment felt like the opposite of the storm that had struck when hateful words had been uttered. This was a storm of love, an expression of adoration and vulnerability and togetherness that was so great it couldn’t be contained within one person … but spilled over into the world at large. Which was exactly how Lily’s own heart and soul felt right now.
Fighting a grin, she pressed her lips into the firmness of Mort’s, tangling her fingers in his sodden hair and letting herself sink into his broad form. Pooling from the arms of the reaching fig trees and leaping from the fairy-tale shade cloths that ran from business to business, rain rattled over them, ensconcing them in a clear curtain of water. Making this moment theirs alone – even if, around them, dozens of visitors and townsfolk were singing, dancing, splashing, whooping.
All Lily wanted this second was to share every part of her life, every part ofherself, with Mort. She wanted to ride cerulean bicycles down the bumpy trails to the ocean. Wanted to watch retro B-horror movies with him as they provided their own sardonic narration. Wanted to embark upon a jigsaw puzzle for the ages, divvying up their roles between edge pieces and central blobs of colour until it all came into focus.
Wanted to wake up with him every single morning for the rest of her life.
‘But I’ll be back in an hour,’ she said. ‘You can’t wait that long?’
Mort gulped, swiping rain from his hair, which seemed to bear the marks of … styling? Had Mortstyledhis hair for her? ‘But … the job offer. The coffee with Venus. The helicopter. I thought you were going. Leaving for good.’
Lily booped his nose, the way that only Lily could get away with.
‘Leave you? And the business? And the village?’ Lily shook out her wet curls. ‘I love it here. I’m finally where I need to be. I was just going to join Angela and Tink at hot yoga – Angela said she had some news about the lease extension. But honestly, I’d rather be rain-damp than sweat-damp.’
Mort twirled one of her curls around his finger. ‘You look perfect either way.’
Lily beamed.
‘The roof!’ came a cry from the crowd.
Lily broke from Mort’s embrace to see a toddler dancing beneath the downpipe at the front of Eternal Elegance (Wedding Edition). Water overflowed from the gutters like a dramatic swirl of royal icing on a tiered wedding cake, pouring down the hand-painted shop façade. Rain sheeted over both sides of the windows.
‘Really should’ve gone with a licensed and bonded roofer,’ muttered Mort. He rubbed his forehead as he took in the trickle of water that was starting to pour into the funeral home.
Lily grimaced. ‘But Timbo was so nice!’ And he had been – he’d brought over wildflowers for Lily’s bud vases and had even joined her in testing out the karaoke machine she’d purchased for the cowboy wedding.
‘Lily, look …’ Mort’s fingers clasped around her own, and they looked on in awe as the decor of their businesses began to revert to their original colours … drip by drip, and then in a deluge of paint and dye. The black tinge that Lily had tried so hard to paint over faded, creeping from her building over to Mort’s, where it deepened the white-bleached areas of the funeral parlour, returning it to its original deep black. The dog statues out the front turned from white toy poodles to dalmatians to the jet black greyhounds that Lily had marvelled at on her first day. The flower baskets outside her own doors brightened andbloomed, adding a profusion of colour to the charming façade, and the wrought iron of the balconies retreated to their original addresses. Even the weird mediaeval shutters that had emerged from Lily’s apartment like strange mushrooms were shrinking back into normal window treatments, and the light from inside her apartment had taken on its original pinkish tinge.
And then there was Esmeralda. Always black and white, her bicolour markings swirled and surged, the white becoming ebony, and the black the whitest fluff. Her blue eye became brown, and her brown blue, and then she – and Lily absolutely wasn’t imagining this – winked. Then, crystal gemstone on her collar flashing, she performed a slinky figure eight around their ankles and gave Mort’s leg a solid nip.
‘Fuck! Esme!’ he grumbled, as he rubbed at his trouser leg.
Lily chuckled. Everything was set to rights.
Knock ’em Dead
Mort
Mort regarded the interior of the funeral parlour. It was, to put a fine point on it, in a fucking shambles of a state. Sure, the carpets were black again, and the drapes had shifted from chiffon to the kind of heavy velvet Dracula would choose for his wedding attire, and the Hello Kitty motif had disappeared from the bestselling coffin line-up, which was going to make the sales part of the job a little less formidable. (Although he’d probably lose the customers that one viral Buzzfeed article had sent his way.)
But things hadn’t gone back to quite the way they had been. Obviously there was the water intrusion to deal with – the puddles were deep enough that Mort half expected a posse of three-year-olds wearing yellow raincoats to come in and jump around. But in the intervening few months since the switcheroo, Mort had been shuffling things around to accommodate the Lilification of everything: rugs had moved, chairs once deemed too bright had been taken out of storage, new paintings had gone up on the walls. And of course there were the designs that he and Lily had painted here and there to cover the worst of the resulting crossover decor. But now with things reverted back to their original design, these newer design elements seemed … odd. Higgledy-piggledy.
Mort’s heart gave a pang. He’d come to appreciate the whimsy and colour that the switcheroo had brought into his life. His clients had as well – his greeting book had been filled with so many joyful notes about getting to send off loved ones in a way that prioritised celebration over grief. Even though Mort wouldn’t misssomeof the switcheroo’s surprises – like people manhandling the corpses or hurling around bouquets – it seemed like a loss for everything to return things to the way they had been.
Esmeralda leapt elegantly up on the pianola, and Mort realised that noteverythinghad changed.
The ancient organ that had claimed pride of place in the viewing room had apparently decided not to return. Instead, the rickety instrument that Lily and Mort had hauled into the funeral parlour remained, all ornate curls of wood and dramatic candelabra filled with floral candles from Eternal Elegance (Wedding Edition).
Ignoring the pooling water and fizzing lights, Mort ran his fingers over the keys. Ah, that middle C where the plastic veneer had snapped off to reveal the rough wood underneath – the wood that Lily had tagged with her name. The dead high E with its whimpering tone.
