Page 64 of Four Weddings and a Funeral Director
‘Oh, I love a good food truck,’ said Reba. ‘Especially one with a punny name that only works on paper. I got my start selling grilled cheeses on tour with the Dead, you know. Well, not just grilled cheeses. But I’m all about diversification. And running from the cops.’
Venus smiled faintly as Lily showed off the truck, although that was possibly because she’d just had her makeup trial and couldn’t risk the slightest bit of facial expression. The gold tones in her eyeshadow really brought out the gold in her bank account, which she was checking right now. How could so many zeros fit on a phone screen? Ah, her banking app had landscape mode.
‘We’ll be dishing out dinner out right here from the truck,’ said Jefferson, who scrubbed up in very hipstery fashion when he put his mind to it. Well, when Lily and her entourage put their mind to it. He’d even acquiesced to wearing a fake man bun, which apparently you could buy as clip-ons, and which Lily vowed to use as an alternative to pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey at Tink’s forthcoming birthday party, which she’d been working on behind the scenes with Angela.
Lily passed Venus a tiny froyo tub with a paper straw poking out from it. ‘Here, give it a try. Just sip gently so that you don’t mess up your lipstick.’
‘Oh, it’s seventy-two-hour colour stay. It’s a thing NASA is working on. I wish they’d got to the eye makeup faster, but, you know, their chemists have competing priorities.’
Of course, that exploring extra-terrestrial space and advancing human knowledge and all. And also the demands of the space-themed wedding Lily was working on, which had definitely diverted some research funds.
‘Mm, that’s really … apple sauce forward.’ Venus rolled the meal around her mouth, nodding thoughtfully. ‘Is this how we’reserving it, though? Weren’t we doing plates? Don’t get me wrong, I like the recyclability of the paper cups. Very earthy, very organic, which you know issoimportant to me. But I was expecting something with more … pizzazz. If the emissions are an issue, I can buy some carbon credits. Just say the word.’
Lily held up a finger. ‘And this is what I call the tour de force. Reba?’
Reba pulled away the sheet of tie-dyed fabric that had been strategically draped over a vintage bathtub filled with shattered plate pieces.
Venus tapped her lower lip. ‘I’m seeing the vision … we use the shards to scoop? Like corn chips, but porcelain.’
Lily laid a selection of shards out on the table, arranging them into a vague circle.
‘We’re going to make our own,’ she said. ‘Each plate will be individually crafted by a guest, then glued together by Reba using a ceramic glue coloured to your choosing.’
‘Bet you’ve never seen tie-dyed glue before, babes,’ said Reba, peering down through her cat’s-eye glasses.
‘I have not,’ said Venus, who was poking thoughtfully through the tub of shattered plates to put together her own plate.
‘Well, it’ll be closer to marbled, but you get the gist.’ Reba downed her Irish coffee and motioned for Cleo, the assistant barista from The Hot Pot, to bring her another. ‘Nice brew here. Who do you use for your beans? Because I’ve got a supplier back home who grows a solid harvest. It’s a whole cemetery greenhouse setup – don’t think about it too much. I reckon your funeral home friend next door might like it. Suits his vibe.’
‘I’ll let him know.’ Mort would indeed love the idea of cemetery coffee. But now everything was weird; she hadn’t even yelled any of the Veronica updates through the grille, eventhough Veronica would shortly be arriving in town to hopefully undo the switcheroo.
Had she scared Mort off for good? She’d seen how tentatively he approached the world – driving the hearse in first gear at all times; keeping everyone but Gramps at arm’s length for fear that someone might die – and instead of honouring that, she’d just pounced on him like a particularly grabby raccoon might approach a burger wrapper.
Presumably all of these thoughts surfaced on Lily’s forehead, because Reba tapped her arm.
‘You look like you could do with one of these as well.’ Reba poured half of her spiked coffee into a cup for Lily.
‘Thanks,’ said Lily, as they clinked cups.
‘Romantic troubles, huh?’ Reba’s cat’s-eye glasses sparkled as she regarded Lily.
‘I thought you were the tie-dye lady, not the psychic.’
‘There’s a lot of overlap, believe me. Tie-dye is where people come when they want to be free of something, but they don’t know how to express it. I mean, look at this one here.’ Reba nodded surreptitiously at Venus, who was digging around in the tub of shards, looking more and more perturbed. She was making a fine old racket as well, thought Lily; like the heart-pounding noise of her friend Jojo’s kids upending a giant box of Legos.
‘There’s no right or wrong way to do it,’ said Lily gently, stepping forward. ‘Just put the pieces together, however they seem to fit.’
‘That’s the problem,’ snapped Venus, her airy, soft-spoken bohemian mask slipping. And one of her false eyelashes as well. ‘Theydon’t fit.’
‘That’s what the glue’s for, hon.’ Reba waggled a squeezy bottle of glitter glue. ‘Enough of this stuff and you can makeanything geometric. Trust me, I’ve hallucinated every possible shape in my time, and then some. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a sixty-four-sided triangle.’
Lily wasn’t about to argue with that.
‘And then once we’re done,’ added Lily, watching as Reba applied glue to Venus’s trial plate, ‘I thought the guests could write a note on the plates. Sort of like a functional guest book. I know someone who can do a custom frame. After our dishwashers have cleaned and sterilised the plates, of course.’
‘A custom frame for two hundred plates, huh?’ Reba whistled. ‘What are you going to transport it in? A tour bus? If you need one, I can hook you up. I’ve got half the jam bands in the country on speed dial. They’re huge on tie-dye. And they have the best weed. It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement.’
Lily chuckled. WherehadVenus found this remarkable woman? A new-age shop in the Haight? A drug odyssey in some self-proclaimed shaman’s house in Santa Fe? An internet chatroom dedicated to rainbows? A truck stop?
