Page 109 of Four Weddings and a Funeral Director
Mort
It was move-in day at Gramps’s place. Mort squeezed Lily’s hand before ushering the Grief Guys out of the back of the hearse. (Which had been carefully rid of any evidence of the previous night’s travails.) There was a clattering of suitcases and hatboxes and the nails of Sausage, and then the motley group stared up at Gramps’s Gothic fairy-tale cottage. Well, Gramps’s not-as-Gothic-as-it-had-once-been fairy-tale cottage. Lily and Mort had spent every spare evening and weekend they had (which was not many, given the town’s busy deaths and marriages schedule) filling the planters with vibrant flowers, repainting the house’s front doors, and hanging wind chimes and local art to brighten up the place. The windows streamed with tie-dyed curtains repurposed from Venus’s wedding, and horseshoes from the cowboys’ wedding were nailed around the ornate front door, welcoming the visitors in a display of good luck and cheer. New letterboxes had been set up along the front garden bed, and a variety of chairs and tables and lawn games dotted the lawn invitingly.
Their handiwork was on full, bright display – and so too was Gramps.
‘Welcome to the Old Codgers’ home,’ cried Gramps, flingingopen the heavy front door. Lily grinned; over his usual black, he’d thrown on the tie-dyed scarf that Lily had commissioned from Reba before the old hippie had departed for Tie-Dyepalooza, an annual event that drew the nation’s entire hippie population in one colourful, weed-filled extravaganza.
The Grief Guys followed Mort up the stone steps, Duggo pausing to pat one of the gargoyles on the head. Sausage planted his paws and growled jealously until Duggo gave him a scratch behind the ears.
‘It’s all right, boy. It’s just a stone monster making a face.’
‘It wards off bad spirits,’ explained Mort.
‘So does Sausage. And he’s a lot cuter,’ said Duggo, sneaking the fat dog a treat.
‘You might be right there,’ said Gramps. ‘Come in, come in,roommates.’
The Grief Guys followed him into the dim hallway, which Mort was now seeing through their eyes – and perhaps Lily’s as well. He’d been so used to the heavy fabrics and dim lighting – it was just a part of life. But now, after being surrounded by bright floral bouquets and sequinned fabrics and colourful stationery, he couldn’t imagine the house any other way.
‘Avert your eyes,’ said Lily, yanking back a set of curtains so that light streamed into the living room. Mort was stupefied: he’d never even noticed that the huge area rug had a pattern.
The Grief Guys followed Gramps around the house as he gave them the official tour: the drawing room, the library, the jigsaw puzzle collection.
‘And of course, your rooms,’ he added proudly.
Lily smiled as each of the Grief Guys went to their respective rooms – which Lily, with some help from Tink, had marked with handmade signs. Opening the door to his room, Orson clapped his hands over his mouth.
‘It’s so homely and cosy,’ he exclaimed. ‘Like my place, but condensed. And cleaner.’
Stribley wiped away a tear as he saw how Mort and Lily had set up his room with all the things that Mort had noted as being important to him during their Grief Guy chats.
‘Where did you get all these records?’ he whispered. ‘It’s like my old studio setup in here.’
‘And mine has all the Amtrak maps, oh, and a world coin collection! And the Luke Skywalker figurine I’ve been carting around my whole life. It even has a bed for Sausage!’ exclaimed Duggo. ‘Even though he insists on sleeping at my feet. I hope that’s all right.’
‘Of course it’s all right,’ said Gramps. ‘Happy sausage dog, happy life.’
‘We even brought over a copy of the ice-breaker game,’ said Mort, hoisting up theDirty Laundrybox. ‘Although something tells me that you lot aren’t going to need it.’
‘Ice-breakers,’ snorted Gramps. ‘With all the work they’ve done over here the past few months, these lads are my best friends. Besides, what does an ice-breaker game have to offer that a jigsaw puzzle doesn’t?’
‘Just so long as you start with the edge pieces,’ agreed Orson. ‘Any other way is anarchy.’
Lily chuckled, and Mort wrapped an arm around her.
Anarchy wasn’t so bad. After all, as Mort had learned since the switcheroo, sometimes the world needed some shaking up.
An Indecently Affluent Proposal
Lily
It was the helicopter rotors that belied Venus’s presence: the sky boiled with the sound of a million leaf blowers, and skirts and parasols within a mile radius flapped and turned inside out. Lily, who’d been watering the ever-growing collection of plants outside her shop while waiting for a local caving destination to call her back regarding a below-ground wedding for two avid spelunkers, watched as the town’s semi-tame peacock population hurried off in a profusion of tail feathers.
A knot of picnic-goers quickly packed up and rushed their tablecloth and basket over to the shelter of one of the laneways, which to be fair, with their cushioned benches and tables, were more than ideal for tea and baked goods.
As Venus floated down the promenade, borne upon the currents of wealth and possibly a small hoverboard, Lily waved with the watering can she’d been using to give the bougainvillea outside her shop a drink.
‘Hi, Venus!’
