Page 16 of Four Weddings and a Funeral Director
If only, thought Mort, poking a bouquet that had transformed from funereal white lilies into a tropical explosion of purple passionflowers. Even the scent of the space had shifted – from the eau de parfum of electric air fresheners carefully designed to cover the aroma of embalming fluid into something softer, more summery. (All right, so this was an improvement.)
Mort held up one of the passionflowers, hoping that it would start dancing in his hand or share with him the secrets of the universe. Alas, the passionflower seemed static and normal, and his fingers looked as they should, not rendered by AI. So he wasn’t tripping.
‘Mort? Something’s wrong over here. Everything’s drenched … but alsobackwards.’
Lily’s voice had an edge to it. Even with his business warping around him like a weird fever dream, all Mort wanted to do was whatever it took to file away that edge.
‘I’ll be right there.’
He hurried out, almost tripping over Esmeralda as he leapt off the front step and into a massive puddle. Fuck – not his best black Oxfords. The ones Gramps had tenderly handed down to him along with the keys to the business.
‘Mrow?’
Esmeralda’s mismatched eyes regarded him in amusement as he grabbed at one of the black greyhound statues flanking the door for balance. No, not a black greyhound statue. A whitepoodlestatue.
What was going on? Whatever it was, it was unconscionable. And there was far too much fluffiness and pizzazz involved.
‘Esmeralda!’ Appearing from her doorway beneath the safety of a rainbow umbrella with little bonus rainbow ears on top (rain had breached her awning), Lily clapped a hand over her mouth. ‘Yourfur!’
Mort frowned. What about Esmeralda’s fur? Was something wrong with her? Was she sick? Had she got into Gramps’s Doomsday Prepper Spam cupboard in the funeral home’s backup pantry again?
‘Don’t you see it?’ Lily’s eyebrows were high in alarm. Her mascara had run – hopefully from the rain, and not from tears, because Mort couldn’t abide tears. ‘Her patterning. It’s reversed!’
Mort regarded the fluffy cat. Lily was right. Esmeralda’s swishing tail had previously been black, and the patch on her throat had been white. And her eyes – hadn’t it been thelefteye that was brown?
‘You think that someone replaced Esmeralda while we weren’t watching?’ Mort glanced around for a damp cat thief, but the promenade was empty other than a guy in a raincoat painting a soggy plein air. ‘But how?’
‘Mort,’ said Lily, trying to keep her lips from moving, ‘I ink-thay at-thay we’re in a eality-ray v-tay ow-shay.’
Maybe Lily was the one having a stroke.
‘Do you smell smoke?’ he asked gently.
‘Of course you don’t know pig Latin,’ she huffed. She turned slowly, pointing at all the things between the two businesses that had shifted since the worst of the thunderstorm, like she was being graded on a Spot the Differences picture by a particularly stern teacher. ‘I think we’re in a reality TV show. Look at the signs! The doors! The poodles! Thewelcome mats!It’s all topsy-turvy! I think the whole proposal thing was to distract us while someone switched out our businesses.’
Mort pondered this. Itcouldbe a prank, and with asufficiently large group of people and the right resources, you could potentially swap two businesses within a half-hour period. HGTV hosts managed to ruin entire homes in a day, after all. Not to mention the backyards. (As someone well versed in the practice of digging holes, Mort took a special interest in landscaping.)
‘Perhaps they planted the seeds for it when the funeral home was being fumigated!’ Lily said triumphantly. And a little hysterically, although he couldn’t blame her.
‘But why?’ asked a bewildered Mort, although not without a surreptitious glance around for a hidden camera. ‘I thought that candid camera shows fell out of favour a decade ago.’
Lily considered (but thankfully didn’t ask how Mort knew this). ‘You’re right. Ashton Kutcher does venture capital stuff these days, not gotcha shows.’
‘But if it’s not a stroke, or ergot, or hallucinogenics, orPunk’d, then what?’
Lily’s eyes widened. She jabbed at the drizzly sky with her umbrella. ‘The proposal. The storm. The second Veronica spoke those words –you’re dead to me– everything changed. It’s a curse. A switcheroo. Just like inVice Versa. Only instead ofpeopleswitching, our businesses have switched.’
‘Well, that’s just … ludicrous,’ said Mort. Although a switcheroodidsound slightly better than a stroke.
‘Reality can be ludicrous!’ argued Lily. ‘I have a friend who only dates men called Kevin so that she doesn’t have to keep getting tattoos of new names.’
Fair point. Although not necessarily relevant to this specific situation.
Mort drew in a deep breath. ‘All right, so assuming a switcheroo, as you call it, makes any sense at all, how? And why? And whyus? Is there some deep moral the two of us need tounderstand in order to reverse the switch and go on with our lives? Because I’ll do whatever it takes to turn the poodles back. Unless it’s correlated with a high risk of death.’
Lily sighed. ‘Maybe we should do this … inside.’
Mort swallowed, realising just how many times he’d fantasised about her saying those words since he’d met her. But not like this. Not in a strange weather-related crisis that had distinctOpposite Dayovertones.
