Page 17 of Four Weddings and a Funeral Director
He followed her into Eternal Elegance (Wedding Edition), wiping his feet on the welcome mat, whose message now readLove Dies. Oh dear.
Inside was as he’d expected: weirdly, forebodingly funereal. The morbid notes of Eternal Elegance (Funeral Edition) had seeped into Lily’s business, infusing its chipper paint job and floral walls with a grimness better suited to Mort’s line of work. Unless Lily was open to the idea of getting kickbacks from a divorce lawyer. And she didn’t seem the type.
Lily shoved a flower-patterned bucket beneath one of the worst leaks.
‘This is real, right?’ she said, her chin wobbling as she waved at her newly motley shop, which looked as though Dr Frankenstein had had a go at a business merger. ‘You’re seeing it, too?’
Mort wanted to hug her. Instead, he watched the murky water slosh into the bucket. ‘Maybe it’s a mutual delusion.’
‘Well, that can’t be,’ said Lily, wiping her eyes with her free hand. ‘I gave up on delusions after my brief flirtation with trying out life as a brunette in seventh grade.’
Mort couldn’t imagine Lily as anyone other than who she was. ‘But why? You’re perfectly cute as a blonde.’
Dammit, why had he said that? Had the switcheroo upended his sense of propriety?
Lily blushed beneath her umbrella. Well, blushing was better than almost crying.
‘Well, obviously I figured that out eventually.’ She touched shaking fingers to a half-melted wall with distinct Salvador Dalí vibes. ‘Ugh, this paint was meant to be colour-fast. I might have a legal case against Pace Hardware.’
Mort picked over the table of bonbonniere, which had transformed from a pile of chirpy kitschy tchotchkes into a sombre selection of mini tombstones, mourning rings and dried flowers. (This was actually an improvement. Well, except for the bracelet made from human hair.)
‘I mean, you can try. They have a bulldog lawyer on retainer after Tom Evans walked under every ladder they had and tried to claim that he suffered a lifetime of bad luck as a result of their shop display.’
‘Maybe not, then. Is your funeral parlour like this?’ Lily gingerly prodded a stack of black candles with the smiley face handle of her umbrella.
‘Uh-huh. It’s more like a fun parlour,’ replied Mort despondently. ‘It’s not meant to be the kind of place you kick up your heels and dance a jig. It’sdeath! Death is serious business.’
‘So is matrimony,’ said Lily seriously, although it was hard to take her that way under her rainbow umbrella. ‘It’s not something you do for shits and giggles.’
Mort regarded a black-and-white marbled stationery set. ‘Not with these price tags.’
‘Those are more expensive now. Limited edition.’ Lily sighed. ‘They were originally cream. And the supplier has moved to Romania, so I can’t return them.’
Mort plunked himself down on an acrylic ghost chair – hadn’t this been pink and plush just a few hours ago?
‘The rain’s starting to slow at least,’ he said. ‘A good thing, because when I texted Gramps about the last time the roof had been replaced, he sent me this.’
He showed Lily a text message chain with a ‘ …’ bubble.
‘Sounds like your landlord should be saving for a new roof,’ said Lily, twisting her hair into a damp messy bun shot through with a rainbow pin.
‘Oh, Gramps owns it.’ Mort tried not to stare as Lily, done with her hair, deftly tied a knot in her shirt to keep it from getting in the way as she set to work cleaning up the mess the storm had caused. Ah, so she dealt with trauma by rolling up her sleeves and getting to work.
‘So you don’t have the same rental terms as me, huh? Cheap rent for a year and then see ya later?’
‘None of that,’ said Mort, although personally Mort thought that maybe the discounted rent programme had overstayed its welcome. Whynotlet a business properly establish itself? Especially if that business belonged to Lily. ‘We’re here for life. Well, death. Gramps bought this place decades ago.’
Lily exhaled as she shook out a selection of crystal plates – now streaked black and gold. ‘I didn’t even get a chance to take out an insurance policy.’
‘I don’t think that Acts of Switcheroo are covered.’ Mort blew on a party blower, which fanned out into a printed obituary. He jumped – all right, so this was going to take some getting used to. ‘If it makes you feel any better, my place looks worse. Very … matrimonial. No offence.’
‘That makes me feel worse, actually.’ Lily squeezed out the mop she’d been dragging across the floor. ‘Maybe we could swap? I mean, we do share a business name.’
Mort considered this, but only for a second. ‘You want to plan weddings with a bunch of coffins as a backdrop? Well, halfcoffins, half bunk beds – don’t ask. Isn’t that a bit limiting in terms of clientele?’
‘The goth market’s huge,’ said Lily. ‘They’re really committed to the whole aesthetic. But you’re right. It wouldn’t be fair to your Gramps either. I mean, he dedicated how many years to running the funeral home?’
‘Way too many.’ Mort picked up a pen that was quite fetchingly engraved with an intricate skull-and-bat design. ‘Anyway, who’s to say it won’t just all swap back? Maybe this is just a strange … mirage or something. A temporary glitch in the matrix. A quirk of the full moon.’
