Page 27 of Four Weddings and a Funeral Director
‘Right? You really have to stick the knife in, give it a twist. Anyway. Are we ready? I know we’re going to get some amazing sound bites. I just feel it, babe. That you’re going to be fab. Do you have any reverse osmosis water for Hercules? He has a sensitive belly. Needs those extra 2s in his H20.’
Lily had dropped chemistry after her junior year, but as far as she knew, this wasn’t how water worked. But she wasn’t about to correct someone who wrote for such an esteemed publication. It even had a print edition!
As Coriana strolled the shop, Lily surreptitiously poured some tap water into a teacup and set it down on the floor, hoping that the little dog wasn’t actually a water connoisseur with a palate as pronounced as his underbite.
‘Interesting decor. Very don’t-give-a-fuck.’ Coriana squinted at the freshly painted mural. Spooked (understandably) by his own reflection in a mirror propped against the wall, Hercules backed up against the mural, managing to smear himself withFucking Fuchsiapaint.
Good, good. This was going well.
‘And that mirror with the snakes? I love a good Medusa commentary.’
Lily nodded, hoping that Coriana wouldn’t realise that the mirror had been hastily slapped over a poster that post-switcheroo had reconfigured itself to readBetter Dead than Wed.
‘These moody colours – it’s so evocative. Very chic, very in. Not like those boho barn weddings from the 2010s, myGod, they were so passé.’
‘You’re right!’ Lily was hyperaware of her armpits. Were they damp? Did they smell like fear? She tried to reel herself in. ‘I’m working with a goth couple on a quick-turn wedding. It’s going to be macabre in all the best ways.’
‘Macabre! You know your way to a journalist’s heart.’
‘It’s an exciting ask, because if you look around—’ Lily gestured in a way that encompassed Mirage-by-the-Sea ‘—where we are is the spiritual opposite of macabre.’
‘True. It’s like something out of a particularly charming Wes Anderson movie. Not the one about the asteroid, though. I thought he overshot there.’ Coriana snapped a few shots of Lily’s recently appeared ghost chairs. ‘So how did this couple find you? What made you stand apart? There are, after all,thousandsof wedding planners in Southern California. And at least a hundred specialising purely in goth weddings.’
Well, you see, Coriana, a magic rainstorm pulled a swapsies on my business and the one next door, so this place is actually far more Gothic than it appears. Especially when I basically covered the walls with colourful pancake makeup – with the help of a funeral director – to hide the evidence.
‘Right time, right place,’ said Lily. ‘Don’t let my rainbow attire fool you – I’m a chameleon.’
‘I see.’ Coriana made a note. Was she using red? Red didn’t seem good. Red reminded Lily of her calculus assignments.
And then came the kicker.
‘No ring, I see.’
Lily glanced down at her left hand, although why exactly, she didn’t know. It wasn’t like she’d expected a ring to have sprouted there without warning. (All right, maybe a little, given the events of the morning.) ‘No ring.’
‘Interesting.’ Coriana leaned forwards, her icy eyes boring into Lily. ‘So, if you’ve never been married, why all this? Why do you want to help people celebrate something that’s passed you by?’
Lily chugged the rest of her own CBD soda, then popped open another. She hadn’t known she was going to be interviewed by Christiane Amanpour. ‘Well, I wouldn’t say passed me by. Maybe I haven’t found the right person yet.’
Coriana’s pen scratched accusatorily. ‘In that case, are you the right person for this kind of work? How can you prepare someone for their special day if you haven’t experienced it yourself?’
‘I mean … you don’t have to have lived something to appreciate it. Mort next door is a funeral planner, and he’s never been dead.’
‘The place with the photogenic poodles?’ Coriana seemed to revel in the concept. ‘Now there’s a man who understands theatre. Maybe you should rope him in, get him involved in some of your upcoming events.’
Lily could only imagine what a Mort-branded wedding would look like. Probably a lot like what she’d returned to a few hours earlier, honestly. Would he wear a tux, though? Or just stick with his usual black suit with the shirtsleeves rolled up as he carried his bride over the threshold …
Lily sipped drink #2, trying to rinse away the very not-safe-for-work image of Mort that had just passed through her mind. It was the phrase ‘roping him in’ that had done it.
‘So, what else is on the horizon for you?’
Lily swallowed, grateful for the opportunity to turn her thoughts away from Mort. Mort, who had nothing at all to do with weddings. In fact, he was the opposite.
‘Um, I have a hippie wedding coming up, for Venus Cargill. A cowboy wedding. And a Christmas in July wedding.’
‘Curiouser and curiouser.’
‘NoAlice in Wonderlandweddings yet,’ said Lily, hoping that despite her lowly spinster status she was steering the interview back on track. ‘But I’d love to do one. We could make a photo booth out of the Cheshire cat’s grin. And a shisha out of the pipe-smoking caterpillar. And of course there’d be croquet.’
