Page 80 of Four Weddings and a Funeral Director
Lily stifled a giggle. For someone so stoic, he had some decent comedic chops.
‘Vegas. A man after your own heart,’ whispered Mort.
Lily was impressed. ‘You remembered.’
‘I remember everything.’
‘Shh!’ hissed Desdemona, waving her clapperboard.
‘You, Helmut, I mean Nate – are alive to me.’ Veronica’s eyes sparkled as she said it, but apparently not enough to set off a magical rainstorm. After a pause, she shrugged. ‘Sorry, guys. I really tried.’
‘You did a fabulous job,’ said Lily, giving Veronica a hug. It was not, however, lost on her that Veronica was peering over her shoulder at Helmut, who was sifting through the pastries bag in search of one good enough to give to Veronica.
‘I think it might be picnic time,’ she added. ‘Let me run back to the shop.’
Moments later, she was back with a picnic basket stuffed with desserts and canned cocktails.
As she spread out a mushroom-print blanket, pinning it down at its corners with weighted toadstools, she was aware of Mort beside her, helping to set out the plates and cutlery – doing a fine job of it, even though Lily’s table setting was, well, maximalist to say the least. She had a feeling that Mort might be the kind of guy who would actually do the dishes instead of leaving them in the sink to soak, or feigning some sort of gendered inability to understand the function of a sponge.
‘Don’t forget the umbrellas for the drinks,’ she added. She wasn’t even done speaking before Mort, as though he’d anticipated her words, pulled out a series of tiny rainbow umbrellas (and one black umbrella for Desdemona, whose black lips pursed approvingly).
Lily poured them each a sparkling water, adding a twist of lemon and bitters.
‘To amusing failures,’ she said, raising her glass.
‘The best kind of failure,’ said Desdemona.
‘To Bavaria,’ added Veronica, toasting happily with Helmut.
Mort looked pensive as he clinked his glass to hers – what was going on in that thunderous head of his?
Thinking Outside the Casket
Mort
As seemed to be the case wherever Lily was involved, the sedate picnic had quickly turned raucous. Lily had produced a bottle of Pimm’s, and things had become increasingly tipsy and increasingly loud, with half a dozen of the village’s locals popping by for cake (non-wormy, thankfully) and sandwiches with more layers than your average sedimentary rock.
Mort, who became a tad introspective when alcohol was involved, and accordingly avoided it for the most part – unless he was reading something that required moody introspection, like the Schopenhauer paperback that a mourner had left on a pew after an ancient philosophy professor had kicked the bucket – had excused himself before he’d blurted out something about how he actually quite liked the way their businesses had become strangely intermingled. How he quite liked the way theirliveshad become intermingled. How he wanted theirbodiesto become intermingled, dammit.
Sure, animated corpses in the morgue weren’t ideal. And the fluffy poodle statues out the front of Eternal Elegance (Funeral Edition) set certain expectations about the number of hugs Mort was willing to give strangers. But he enjoyed hearing Lily’s voice come through the decorative grille thatseparated their offices whenever she had a question about napkins or typefaces or just wanted to tell him she’d spotted a hummingbird outside.
If everything went back to normal, if their businesses reverted to their original forms, what reason would she have to keep doing that? Why would Lily want to stay in Mort’s life when Mirage-by-the-Sea was brimming with an endless parade of men who’d happily sweep her off her feet? Would she even want to stay on in town after her lease expired, or would she just pack up and head off to less picturesque but less problematic pastures?
Mort sighed and prepared to make his way down to the prep room, where Barrett Hodgkins’s body lay, waiting for Roddy to deliver a new vat of embalming fluid after last night’s moonshine switcheroo shenanigans. (Mort had given his current vat a sniff, and had nearly burnt his eyebrows off with the low-quality alcohol of it all.)
But because life is one big slew of interruptions all the way through to the final interruption of all, the funeral home door swung open to the upbeat tones of ‘Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough’.
It was Duggo from the Grief Guys, with Sausage in tow. Sausage shuffled in over the threshold, his ultra-low belly scuffling on the doormat.
‘Duggo,’ said Mort, confused. ‘Do we have a Grief Guys meeting today? I’m out of doughnuts, but I do have some cowboy wedding cake. It’s shaped like a wagon wheel.’
Removing his hat, Duggo shook his head sadly. ‘We don’t. Which is mostly why I’m here. Do you have … anything for me to do? That I could help out with?’
Absolutely not, was Mort’s first thought. What was he going to have Duggo do? Embalm Barrett Hodgkins? Hagglefor a discount on the commemorative brass plaques that had doubled in price this quarter? Censor the rude comments in the switcherooed guestbook? Gas up the hearse?
‘It’s just so hard without my Ernestina,’ Duggo went on, prodding at Mort’s jar of black cats and making a face. Mort, feeling bad for him, plated up a slice of leftover wagon wheel wedding cake and handed Duggo a fork.
Duggo dug in, but dispassionately. ‘I just rattle around the house all day with nothing to do and only Sausage to talk to. And he’s a good boy, but not the best conversationalist.’
