Page 32 of Four Weddings and a Funeral Director
‘Oh go on,’ said Lily. ‘Live a little. Haven’t you always dreamed of hauling a piano around in public? I feel like one of the helper birds inCinderella.’
The door to the purple house opened. One of the mournersfrom yesterday stood there, looking askew in every way. He wore sunglasses so dark they were possibly black holes and sipped a bright-orange drink Mort recognised from the handful of times he’d played piano through the night and had lived to regret it.
‘That you, Lily? Oh, and Mort, buddy. Chief party man, eh! Excuse the state of me – last night was a bit of a rager.’
Mort blanched.A rager? They’d been seeing off poor Moira Fagan to the great beyond. Granny Fagan had been a character, but her death shouldn’t have incited an all-night street party. The rather robust send-off at the funeral home had surely been enough – and then some.
‘Thanks for the piano,’ said Lily. ‘We’re going to put it to good use, promise.’
‘All I can play is “Chopsticks”, and my nephew chewed up all the sheet music, so I know it’s going to a better home. Oh fuck, my head. Can you take it from here?’
Lily give him a thumbs up and a grin so bright that he rubbed his temples.
‘Drive safe,’ said the guy, closing the door gingerly.
‘We’re going to regret this, aren’t we.’ Mort eyed the pianola, then the gentle slope of the promenade. All sorts of horrible deaths were parading through his mind. In the past century, some thirty-six people in the US had died from piano accidents – from being crushed, from falling through a less-than-sturdy floor, and most commonly, from attempting to move the damn things.
But Lily wasn’t one for regrets.
‘Oh go on.’ She gave him one of those affectionate whacks on the arm that Mort was learning to associate with Lily – and like a happy Pavlovian dog rather wished she’d repeat. ‘Don’t look a gift pianola in the mouth. All I ask is that you let me borrow it for the goth wedding. I’m going to dress it up with flowers and cobwebs and candles – the whole lot.’
She got behind the pianola and started pushing. ‘Maybe I can borrow Esmeralda, too. What do you think? Would she sit quietly if I tempted her with enough tuna? Maybe I could get a laser pointer for her to keep her on her mark.’
Hoping that death wasn’t ready for him just yet, Mort tried to steady the pianola to keep it from tipping from side to side or gathering too much speed down the hill. Fortunately the promenade was bumpy with its cobblestones and Spanish tile, so a runaway pianola turned out to be an unrealised fear.
‘Now there’s a fun partner exercise,’ hollered Dierdre from The Hot Pot, who was hurrying up the street with a delivery of fresh tea leaves.
‘Play us a song, Mort!’ shouted Tink, who was sharing a sandwich with Angela at one of the small patio tables in one of the promenade’s wisteria-hung pocket parks.
‘If you get sick of funerals, I’ve got a job for you,’ called Roddy, passing them by with a stack of packages in hand.
Even the koi in the stream that crisscrossed beneath the promenade here and there popped up to lend their silent support. Candice the pickleball player, who was hunched beneath a blanket tossing coins into the water and muttering wishes to herself … did not.
‘I hope she doesn’t blame us,’ whispered Lily.
‘Well, if she doesn’t die, at least she’ll have a new perspective on life. And if she does …’ Mort grunted as he tried to keep the pianola from rolling into an azalea bush. ‘Well, she’ll have bigger problems to worry about.’
Mort was sweating unbearably by the time they wheeled the pianola through the front door of Eternal Elegance (Funeral Edition). Not that he’d ever admit it in front of Lily, but a suit was not ideal piano-moving attire. Although surely she wouldn’t hold it over him if he loosened his tie. And undid a button or two.
Apparently not – because she averted those bright blue eyes as he did so, using the moment as an opportunity to pull out a marker from the same invisible pocket from which she’d produced the dog treats. She wrote something on the exposed wood of the bare middle C key, then gave Mort’s arm a squeeze.
‘Enjoy,’ she said. ‘Come get me when you’re ready to visit Gramps.’
Mort took a seat at the rickety pianola, taking a moment to read what Lily had written.
Mort’s piano, from Lily.With a heart. Of course with a heart.
As Mort put his fingers to the keyboard, he could’ve sworn the key gave him a zap. Just like Lily’s blue-eyed gaze had.
Pushing up Wildflowers
Lily
When Mort knocked at Lily’s door later that night, Lily was in quite the tizzy.
Yes, they’d made plans to check out Mort’s favourite graveyard (of course Mort had a favourite graveyard) on the way to visit Gramps. It was a two-birds-one-stone situation: lock in a location for Desdemona and Ambrose and also hopefully get the 411 from Gramps on just what, precisely, was going on, and how it could be reversed. Well, three birds, really: Lily was looking forward to spending time with Mort, who, in his odd, dark, grumpy way, fascinated her. Certainly, he was the opposite of anyone Lily had ever dated, except perhaps Aubrey (an assumed name) in her junior year of high school, who had sported a fantastic single sabre of black hair trained down over his face and rows and rows of spiky bracelets that functioned a bit like a razor wire fence. (Curious and tipsy on canned sangria one night, Lily had googled dear Aubrey, learning that these days he was a 2-IC shop assistant at a family hardware store chain, with a charming young family and a much more mainstream haircut – the Superclips Dad special.)
But all that personal life planning can only go so far when you’re a wedding planner and you have clients texting you allday about emergencies such as a bridesmaid who is not au fait with the mandatory sleeve length the wedding party simply must adhere to, or the mechanical bull called Rosa who is being shipped across the country and needs to be tracked in person, or a best man who has stated his intention to get a facial tattoo at the Portland Tattoo Expo a week prior to the wedding. Not to mention the seating chart issues. There werealwaysseating chart issues.
