Page 22 of Four Weddings and a Funeral Director
Bill made a rude noise over the phone. ‘Oh, I hate that. Nothing worse than having to cut a showing short. Were you doing accompaniment?’
‘Mm-hmm. ToVice Versa, this oldFreaky Fridaysort of film. Remade in subsequent years a few more times than it deserved.’
There was some shuffling and tapping as Bill pulled up his report.
‘It says here that at 3.12 p.m. they were pronounced …’ Bill cleared his throat. ‘Um. Pronounced husband and wife.’
Mort almost dropped the receiver.
‘Dead. It’s meant to say they were pronounceddead.’
‘Some April Fools, huh!’
‘It’s March,’ pointed out Mort.
Bill huffed and puffed for a moment. ‘I dunno what to tell ya. Maybe the intern got into my files … or my brother. It is funny, though, you gotta admit.’
Maybe Bill would benefit from a new line of work. This one was doing a number on his mental health.
‘So they’re not … dead?’ asked Mort, his voice querulous. ‘They were just visiting?’
‘You didn’t ask them when they came in?’ asked Bill.
Mort counted back from ten, the way Gramps had had him do as a kid when Eliza Doone at school had called him Pugsley with regard to all-black attire. Of course, Eliza was now Sister Eliza and would go about in a black habit until the end of her days, so Mort had had the last laugh.
‘They weren’t really in any sort of state for that,’ snapped Mort.
‘Seems like they are now, though,’ said Bill.
Mort couldn’t handle any more of this. He hung up, feeling numb, like the time he’d suspected he had Bell’s palsy. (You do not!Dr Rubenstein had snapped.) Zombies! Now there were zombies! Or if not zombies, then a terrible case of medical malpractice that was making Mort reconsider every one of his doctor’s assessments regarding his own health.
Although, he thought, dead people who weren’t actually dead weren’t unheard of. In the nineteenth century, after a few too many people had been buried alive, grave bells had become quite the trend. And there were all sorts of horrible stories about people who’d tried to claw their way out of their caskets. Not to mention that Derrick and Franhadbeen kept on the finest ice the funeral home had to offer, so it wasn’t entirely out of the question that Mort hadn’t heard anything from them while they’d been napping in the morgue.
Mort was musing on whether resuscitation or resurrection was the likelier option when the doorbell rang. Instead of the snippet from Mozart’s Requiem it usually played, the chorus from ‘It’s Raining Men’ blasted through the foyer.
Griping, Mort opened the door to an extremely tall guy with a basketballer’s physique (albeit clad in something closer to a candy striper uniform). ‘Singing telegram for Eternal Elegance!’
‘Which one?’ asked Mort suspiciously.
‘There’s more than one?’ bellowed the singer, who had admirable voice projection.
Lily’s door opened, and Lily emerged from her shop, a pink-tipped paintbrush in hand. She was wearing an oversized shirt covered in daubs of pink and splashes of glitter, and looked … astonishingly, gloriously beautiful.
‘I’m the owner of the other Eternal Elegance,’ she told thesinger. Then, covering her mouth with her hand, she glanced at Mort and whispered, ‘Mort, did you see—’
‘I saw,’ said Mort, who had been doing his best not to think about the whole Fran and Derrick situation. Although at least the bodega would keep its doors open, which was critical to the happiness of the village’s bodega cats and those in urgent need of overloaded deli sandwiches and a vibrant selection of seeded mustards. ‘Just a case of clinical misdiagnosis. Nothing to worry about.’
‘If you say so,’ said Lily, who did not sound convinced.
Propping his foot up on one of Mort’s poodles, the singer cleared his throat, then in a stunning contralto, belted out ‘Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead’. Pigeons and hummingbirds took flight on the vibration of his voice. Elderly neighbours raced to the phones to make noise complaints. A passing middle-aged guy rubbed at his chest, complaining about his pacemaker.
‘Wow, you really put your heart and soul into that,’ said Lily, scraping her suddenly windswept hair back into place.
‘And my poodle,’ said Mort, regarding the party-hatted poodle that in his opinion was a poor replacement for his beloved greyhounds. The singer had left a footprint – and was that a crack? Mort wasn’tentirelyopposed to this. Who knew – perhaps shattering the poodle would reverse the switcheroo.
‘But what’s this … serenade … about, specifically?’ added Lily. ‘Or who?’
The singer held up a finger, then pulled two elegant, swan-shaped cards from his pocket. He handed one each to Lily and Mort.
