Page 88 of Four Weddings and a Funeral Director
‘They did a great job,’ said Mort, with a touch of pride.
‘What a day,’ said Lily, plonking down on a beanbag and wriggling her toes in her convertible shoes (which had been in flats mode since they’d arrived). She’d spent the whole evening running about consoling distraught family members with alcohol and cake and trying to identify hidden paparazzi like she was playing a game of Among Us.
She yawned hugely, as though sleep were chasing her down.
‘You know what,’ she said, covering her mouth, ‘I’m calling it before I fall asleep here and Gracie snaps an artsy shot of me snoring that ends up at MoMa.’
‘I would never,’ said Gracie, idly. Her grey eyes crinkled at the corners. ‘Mostly because I have an exclusivity agreement with LACMA.’
Lily chuckled, then stifled another yawn. ‘All right, off I go. Night, Gracie, Reebs.’ A pause. Then, meaningfully. ‘Night, Mort.’
Mort froze. What had she meant by that? Why the pause? Why the separate address? Had there been invitation in her voice? Or something else? Could she possibly have forgiven him for the other night?
But by the time he’d parsed the sentence, Lily had disappeared into her tent.
‘Ah, you win some, you lose some,’ said Reba, swigging her Irish coffee, which she’d brought along in a thermos and had been topping off throughout the night. Alas, Premetheus wasn’t equipped to do hot drinks, and The Hot Pot cart on site had been instructed only to do decaffeinated nootropic mushroom brews.
Mort wasn’t sure how to respond to this.
‘Better to do it now than after all the paperwork,’ Reba went on.
Oh. She’d been referring to the wedding, not Lily.
‘Although I do feel bad for all the time the lawyers spent on the SEC filings. Only a bit, though. Lawyers – fuck ’em! Still, could be worse. At least he didn’t die.’
This was true, thought Mort, poking at a gelatinous something that had presumably made its debut as dish of the day at Whispering Waters earlier this week.
‘That’s what happened at my wedding,’ explained Reba, tapping the ornament that hung from her neck. ‘The second time around. The second time, to the same guy. The timeline’s confusing, but the love wasn’t.’
‘Sorry for your loss,’ said Mort. He mulled it over, wondering how anyone could truly commit to love when death was only ever a knock away. ‘Would you do it again?’
Reba stared down at him through her cat’s-eye glasses. ‘Course not, he’s scattered all over the Golden Gate Park. It’d be a logistical nightmare.’
Mort laughed heartily.
Reba did as well – she had no issue laughing at her own jokes. And fair enough, she was funny as hell. ‘I’d marry my Frank a million times over, even if he died every single time. He was my person. My crossword finisher, my complaints hearer, my grilled cheese maker. Great taste in music, terrible taste in footwear, but you can’t have it all. The worse prospect would’ve been not giving it a shot. I would’ve missed out on the love of my life, and all because of what? Fear? Ego? Pettiness about shoes? Bah. Although they were bad. He wore the same pair of Birkenstocks for thirty years. Said Jerry Garcia had blessed them. Although that I believe.’
‘Me too,’ added Gracie.
‘So you know what I think?’ Reba angled her head towards Lily’s tent. ‘I think you should go be with your girl. Repeat after me: fuck it.’
‘Fuck it,’ said Mort quietly.
‘Fuck it!’ cried Reba, waving her hands over her head.
‘Fuck it,’ repeated Mort, more animatedly this time.
‘Fuck it all, we’re all gonna fucking die anyway!’ howled Reba, adding a few coyote howls for emphasis. The wedding guests picked up on her vocalisation, and soon the whole campsite was awash with fiendish howls and calls.
Gracie Nivola, ever the anthropologist, captured it all with her camera.
Theywereall going to fucking die anyway. Maybe it was Reba’s motivational words, or maybe it was the open bar talking, but something had shifted inside Mort. He gave Reba a peck on the cheek and quietly went over to Lily’s tent.
‘Knock, knock,’ he said, tapping a finger against the tie-dyed fabric.
A few moments of scrabbling, and then Lily pulled aside the tent flap. Her eyes widened. ‘What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be running from coyotes or something? They’re out tonight.’
‘Can I come in?’
