Page 9 of Four Weddings and a Funeral Director
Mort could feel his pulse in his temple, which did not seem like a good sign. He was also hyper-aware of his heart bouncing around in his chest, which similarly felt alarming. But he’d had such experiences before. Many times before. After he’d expressed his concern to Dr Rubenstein for the umpteenth time, she’d sent Mort away with a lollipop and an admonition that he not return unless he started bleeding from the eyeballs or somehow lost a limb in a freak accident.
Was it so odd that Mort was in touch with his own mortality given that day in, day out, all he dealt with was death? When you grew up around the funeral business, you became intimately acquainted with all the ways that people could die, and it became increasingly difficult not to think about the same happening to you. Everything became a threat, a risk. You became painfully aware that you were a soft-skinned bag of meat walking around courting death at every turn.
And ever since he’d met Lily, his body had been on high alert. Heart pounding, hands clammy, the whole lot. It did not seem healthy in the least.
Ordinarily, Mort didn’t get nerves when playing piano. Especially here at Rerunning Up That Hill, where he’d played foras long as he could remember, and knew all of the emergency exits and safety protocols. But as he’d stalked down the aisle to the piano, his gaze had brushed over a tiny, chirpy figure sitting next to Angela and Tink. Lily, wearing a dramatic purple gown of chiffon and lace, along with long, sleek earrings that shimmered as she turned her head. Mort’s heart had threatened to go into palpitations. And now here he was, sitting on the piano stool, fingers on the keys, preparing to scoreVice Versalive … as Lily watched on.
His nerves were such that he barely heard Dot introducing him. He managed a belated wave and an improvised ditty to set the mood. The crowd broke into applause – and a disturbing number of wolf whistles.
Dot stepped back, gesturing for the projectionist (her nephew Bastien) to let the movie roll. Fortunately the whole thing did not go up in flames – Bastien was not known for his attention to detail, and at least once a week the audience had to bellow at him to change out the reel.
The audience chuckled as a series of local ads played. Mort hammed it up, banging out the jingles he’d worked with the local businesses to compose. The audience played along, whistling when Dierdre from The Hot Pot came on, writing her address on a teapot-steamed window, and whooping lewdly when Len from the Elephant Car Wash showed up in nothing but his signature trunks.
Mort bit back a grin as he saw Lily clapping her hands over her mouth.
When Eternal Elegance (Funeral Edition) came on the screen, he launched into Mendelssohn’s ‘Funeral March’, to some smattered applause. And then when, to his surprise, Eternal Elegance (Wedding Edition) followed it, he launched into Mendelssohn’s ‘Wedding March’, feeling grateful that one composer could do it all.
Honestly, he was impressed that Lily had figured out that the cinema even did local advertising – let alone that she’d put an ad together so quickly. Perhaps the Chamber of Commerce had helped, in which case they’d be sending out updated treasure hunt maps with the new business added any day now. Which meant more treasure hunters banging on his door and angling for a stamp. (Mort’s was the hardest stamp to get, something he was secretly rather proud of.)
As Mort played the ‘Wedding March’, he became aware of a couple in the front row having a Very Bad Time™. The man kept texting, holding his phone at an angle so that the woman couldn’t see what he was typing. Meanwhile, she was reaching for their shared popcorn in a very peculiar neck-craning kind of way. Mort wanted to advise her against it. He’d seen more than one person who’d died of a severed artery after some ill-advised neck manoeuvres. There’d been the woman addicted to neck massages, the guy who’d tried chiropractic techniques on himself, and the rugby player who’d tackled a brick wall on a dare.
Finally, the ads wrapped up, and Mort played a few jazz bars while Bastien changed over the reel.
‘It’s nothing to worry about, babe,’ said the guy in the front row. ‘She’s like a sister to me.’
The girl nodded, reaching for another handful of popcorn. ‘We’ll talk about it later.’
‘C’mon. Don’t be like that. The jealous type. It’s just a work thing …’
The film reel started, and a series of shushes went around the theatre. The time for heckling local businesses and their owners’ questionable swimwear was over. The time for oohing and aahing and constructive commentary was here. Dot had always been vocal about movies being a participatory thing.If you came to a Rerunning Up That Hill screening, you were expected to chime in. And also to roll orange chocolate balls down the theatre floor, which was part of some longstanding tradition that Mort couldn’t quite grasp.
Mort focused on the keys as the film began, ignoring the choc oranges finding their way under his damper pedal. But then, right as the on-screen father and son swapped bodies, someone shrieked in the manner of an extremely excited terrier who has spotted a feline nemesis on a wall.
Mort fumbled his score. Was the person particularly enamoured of the body-swapping subgenre? Or was something amiss?
‘Is there a doctor in the house?’ someone screamed from the row in front of where Lily, Angela and Tink were sitting. ‘Fran just keeled over!’
The chandeliers and aisle lighting abruptly brightened, leaving the audience in a confused, blinking state.
‘Is this part of the movie?’ stage-whispered Karo, the local fitness guru who ran Spinning Out, the spin studio next to The Hot Pot. (Karo was not known for adhering to the norms of Inside Voice.) ‘It was that other time.’
‘Only on Halloween,’ replied an older guy with a valiant comb-over whom Mort recognised as Stribley, of Stribley’s Plumbing fame. He was well known at the funeral home – people in mourning tended to flush a lot of tissues. ‘It’s May.’
The theatre hummed with consternation as the patrons tried to check each other’s medical credentials.
‘I onlyplayeda doctor,’ said a handsome guy who looked exactly like someone who might play a TV doctor. He pulled out a stethoscope from his pocket and frowned becomingly. ‘See? Fake.’
‘Don’t look at me,’ the fake doctor’s date was saying as Morthurried down the aisle. ‘Mine’s just a lowly doctorate in literal philosophy. Ask me about rhetoric, not about resuscitation.’
Mort squeezed between the seats to see if he could help. Although not a doctor himself, he did hold an up-to-date CPR certification, and had successfully performed the Heimlich manoeuvre twice. (Gramps had a thing for eating salted caramels faster than he could chew.) He spent enough time with death to want to avoid it at all costs.
‘Is she going to be okay?’ asked Lily, who’d climbed out of her seat to donate her handbag for use as a pillow for Fran. ‘She seems …’
Mort nodded. ‘We’ll do what we can.’
‘She just loves movies so,’ said the screamer, an old guy in a flat cap better known as Derrick, owner of the local bodega. ‘We’re celebrating our anniversary. Fifty years! Our golden one. But she gets so worked up when the pictures come on. She’s been out of sorts, but I couldn’t say no, could I? Do you think …’
Shooting Mort a please-help-me look, Lily wrapped Derrick in a hug. ‘Let’s just wait for the doctor. She’s on her way.’
