Page 12 of Four Weddings and a Funeral Director
‘Yes, other than the carking-it bit, it was a perfect night.’ Mort was testing Lily’s extensive fountain pen collection on the sampleguest book she’d set out on a table dolled up with crockery ideas and elaborately folded napkins in every colour of the rainbow.
Lily raised an eyebrow. ‘Wow, you really were aptly named, aren’t you. Mr Morbid over here.’
Mort doodled some curlicues with a black marbled pen with a stylised bird on the top. ‘I was a baby. I doubt my infant personality was established enough for nominative determinism.’
‘Ah. So you’re morbidbecauseyou’re named Mort. You grew into it.’
‘Nice of you to admit it.’
Lily didn’t humour him with a laugh, but she did have to fight it. For all of his gloomy, grumpy appearance, Mort was … rather hilarious. Lily found him easy to chat with, and their humour shared a particular cadence.
Outside, the standard low-level hubbub from tourists strolling around, eating gelato and taking selfies with the greyhound statues outside the funeral parlour, had grown into more of a ruckus. Lily turned, squinting into the mid-morning sun to see what was going on. Mort peered through a set of pink feathered opera glasses from Lily’s prop wall.
‘Is The Hot Pot doing its custard croissants again? The queue does make it this far up the hill sometimes.’
‘They were sold out by the time I got my coffee three hours ago.’ Lily was a bit sore about that, but at least she’d got her stamp from Dierdre (a cute block cut of an alien cat riding in a teacup). And a promise of a chocolate torsade tomorrow. ‘Look, it’s that couple from the cinema. The slimy guy – Nate – and the poor girl with him.’
Mort joined Lily by the front window, setting down his opera glasses and raising a hand to his eyes to block the sun. The brunette from last night was pretending to browse the shelves of The Naked Bookshop as she hissed insults at her cheatingboyfriend, who was spending a good half of the argument dodging flying paperbacks, and the other half checking his phone. Frankly, Lily thought the girl was doing a good job of modulating her voice – she reached shouting volume only a couple of times per minute.
‘I remember them,’ said Mort, sounding not particularly overjoyed by the fact. ‘They were seated in the front row. He has some sort of high-flying job and kept making business calls and texts. If I played a smaller instrument I would’ve thrown it at him.’
‘You should’ve trundled the piano over his foot.’ Lily jabbed an accusing finger towards Nate, who was jumping up and down in agony after the corner of a hardcover had hit his toe just so. His girlfriend had a good throwing arm. ‘He does not, in fact, have a high-flying job. He’s a sleazeball. That whole time, he was on the phone to another girl.’
‘No.’ Mort looked shocked. Well, not that shocked.
‘Yep.’
‘What a shithead.’
‘A shithead who wants it all.’ Lily folded her arms as she watched Nate turn his attention to the most romantic spot in the whole village: The Grand Gazebo. His eyes lit up as he contemplated a possible out from the current couple’s tiff. ‘Cue the love bombing.’
Mort pointed out a cube-shaped bump in Nate’s back pocket. ‘I think he’s going a step further than that.’
‘Oh, please let that be a dad wallet and not what I think it is.’ Lily grimaced. She’d seen this before, when her friend Christine’s boyfriend had half-heartedly proposed as a way to get her to come with him to Nashville, where he’d been offered a job. How was he supposed to do his laundry on his own? Christine had accepted, because what else were you meant to do whensomeone got down on one knee? What else could you do when you were that far along in a relationship?
Lily only ever heard from Christine via social media now. (Christine was all about the heart and prayer-hands emojis.) But shehadscrubbed her social media of all evidence of Lachlan, andwasposting a lot of thirsty selfies from Honky Tonk Highway these days, so hopefully she’d made the smart decision eventually.
Mort raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you saying you don’t want it to be a ring? Doesn’t your whole business rely on young people making misguided, expensive choices?’
‘I wouldn’t take those jobs. Unless the theme wasreallygood.’
‘Any standouts so far?’
‘TheSuccession-themed one with the Kendall Roy rap was pretty good.’
‘What the fuck?’
Lily lightly whacked Mort’s hand as punishment for his guile. ‘Okay, I made that up. But you’d attend, right?’
‘I would arrive with the world’s most expensive waffle maker as a gift if it meant seeing that.’
‘I’ll add that to my registry recommendations. Should we step outside for a better look?’
‘I think it’s very important that we have a good vantage point. For posterity. After you.’
Mort swung the door open, gesturing for Lily to go ahead of him.
‘Should we stick with the patio?’ whispered Lily. ‘Or get closer? Like David Attenborough reporting on the secret lives of meerkats?’
