Page 113 of Four Weddings and a Funeral Director
He pulled up the bench seat, tinkled out a quiet arpeggio. Then he launched into Lily’s favourite Mendelssohn. Not the ‘Wedding March’. But ‘Fleecy Cloud’, with its gentle melody and the name that made her smile every time.
The tender music had the same effect on Lily as rattling a tin of tuna did on Esmeralda. A mere few notes in, and …
‘Are you playing my song?’
Lily’s voice carried through the transom, the decorative grate that allowed them to eavesdrop on each other’s lives. And oh, how they eavesdropped. Well, in the beginning. After that, they’dupgraded to full conversations through the decorative little grille. Lily always joked that she felt like a prisoner in isolation talking to the inmate in the cell next door. Not that Lily had ever been isolated from people in her life – except during the Great Cold Sore Scare.
‘Your song? You’re claiming it all to yourself?’
‘I can compromise,’ said Lily. ‘You can have the last few bars.’
‘Seems fair.’
‘Or we could make it our song.’ He could hear the smile in her voice.
He fumbled a note. It rang out in the mess that was his business. Which reminded him, he really had to deal with that. Not that electrocution was a worry – he was the only one on the premises who wasn’t dead. Unless the switcheroo had messed with the bodies he had on ice again …
THUD.
Mort jumped. Were the zombie hordes upon him? Dammit, he shouldn’t have let Lily tempt him into watching that Romero marathon.
Another THUD. It was coming from her side of the wall.
‘Are you okay over there?’ he called, as the chandelier above his head – back to dark Murano glass twisted like serpents – swung wildly back and forth like a spirit guide’s pendulum.
‘Chekhov’s sledgehammer,’ came the panting reply. ‘Stand back.’
Plaster crumbled as the thudding continued. A decorative cornice smashed on the black-painted hardwoods.
Then Mort was staring at Lily’s dust-smudged face. Plaster fragments tumbled down on her like glorious confetti, suspended in the light that poured through the stained-glass windows at the front of her shop. She looked as though she were wearing a bridal veil. Mort’s heart hitched.
‘Thank God that wasn’t a load-bearing wall,’ Lily said, hand propped on the sledgehammer.
‘You didn’t check?’ Of course she hadn’t. It wouldn’t be life with Lily if it were governed by permits and applications and approvals processes.
Blonde curls flicked as Lily cocked her head thoughtfully. ‘I crossed my fingers before I started. That has to count for something.’
‘Pulling permits would count for something.’
But he didn’t mean it, not really. He’d happily let the businesses crumble around him if it meant being close to Lily. Although he might need to invest in some hard hats and goggles.
‘I don’t want you on the other side of the wall,’ she said, as Mort picked a flake of plaster from her hair. She smelled of apples and laundry detergent and the humid tang of sweat from her recent wall-smashing session.
She stared up at him, eyes crinkled at their edges the way she hated, but the way he loved so much. ‘I want you here, with me. Us doing our thing, side by side. No barriers. No walls. Our businesses are two pieces in the same two-piece jigsaw puzzle … and so are we. Let’s join it all up. For good.’
For good.
‘But the lease,’ he said.
Lily pulled out her phone. ‘Angela just texted me. Derrick and Fran have reconciled, and the cult’s done – Derrick’s going back to the bodega biz. Next year’s business is going into the old church instead. I can stay. Right here.’
Mort traced her dusty cheek, then wiped flecks of plaster from her hair. ‘Till death do us part?’
‘Or whatever do us part. Don’t focus on what can come undone. Focus on what’snow, what’s right here. What’s in front of us.’
Mort’s heart thudded.
It felt spontaneous, unplanned, all the things that terrified Mort in the way that going outside without checking the weather did, even though – magical storm clouds aside – the weather was always the same here. But with Lily by his side, the risks felt … worth it.
