Page 17 of Four Weddings and a Funeral Director

‘Well, no.’ There was some scuffling as Lily climbed up on her desk chair so that she could talk more freely through the grille. ‘But there’s a player piano up for grabs not far from the cinema, if you want to take a walk with me.’

‘All right.’ Mort regarded his side of the grille.

He’d done his best to repaint it, but the switcheroo pink kept oozing back through the endless coats of black he’d applied.

In the end he’d moved a particularly tall floral display in front of it, feeling endlessly grateful for the local florist’s obsession with height.

(She took the same approach with her hair, whose bouffant every day exceeded the previous day’s.)

In Mort’s humble, morbid opinion, pink and funerals did not go together.

He needed the pallid, the wan, the ashen.

It was right there on the two-toned colour wheel Gramps had put together years ago and had subsequently kept in his desk: ivory and black.

Variations on the theme were accepted, but nothing that veered into the colour spectrum.

If a dog couldn’t see it, Mort didn’t want it in the funeral home.

Grief was a thing with feathers, yes, but crow feathers, not parrot ones.

The grille rattled as Lily clapped her hands against it. ‘I’ll be right over. Wear sensible shoes.’

Mort looked down at his polished Oxfords. He had never been accused of not being sensible.

Moments later, ‘Oh Happy Day’ rang out on the musical doorbell, startling Mort. Well, it was better than yesterday’s ‘It’s Raining Men’.

Lily shoved open the door, sweeping into the funeral home in an explosion of pink and yellow taffeta.

‘You look like the human embodiment of Pop Rocks,’ observed Mort. (Mort would never admit it, but he loved Pop Rocks.)

‘Why thank you!’ Lily showed off a pair of orange-heavy leopard-print sneakers that presumably counted as sensible in her world. Oh dear, did they light up when she moved? Yes, yes they did.

‘You’re welcome,’ replied Mort, amused.

‘Are we ready?’ Leading Mort outside, Lily rubbed the noses of the poodle statues out of the front of the funeral home (today they were in sunhats and beach towels), then dragged Mort up the winding pedestrian pathway that meandered through the heart of the village, connecting a hundred shop-lined laneways and ivy-smothered kiosks and seating areas fit for a fairy picnic.

‘Mostly I just wanted an excuse to walk the promenade,’ Lily admitted, pausing to wave to Jorge, the gardener whose magical botanical gift kept the flower baskets and huge planters lush and bright.

‘Morning, Lily!’ Jorge danced over with a vibrant zinnia for her. (Jorge never walked – he shimmied everywhere. He was quite the star on the dance floor and had proudly stood in as a seniors’ Zumba instructor at the YMCA a few times.) ‘A bright flower for my bright lady.’

Beaming, Lily tucked the flower into her curls. ‘Thank you, Jorge. Make sure you come by for some wedding cake. I just got some lemon poppyseed and some chocolate caramel in. We’ll do a taste test and you can let me know what you think.’

‘I don’t say no to cake.’ Jorge’s grin was so broad it took up all of the available real estate on his leathery face.

Snipping his secateurs up and down like extremely sharp castanets, he pranced off towards a garden bed rainbowed with the reaching blooms of gerberas.

The vibrant flowers’ feet were warmed by a colourful carpet of verbena and lantana.

‘Cake testing, huh?’ Mort held out a hand for Jenkins, the extremely personable Jack Russell who guarded the premises of The Hot Pot with threats of doggie kisses and an endless game of fetch.

Jenkins usually stayed on site, but around lunch he’d trot up the promenade for extra treats and belly rubs, which locals and tourists alike were happy to give.

The stumpy-legged pup slobbered a welcome all over Mort.

‘None for you until you wash your hands.’ Lily stooped to give Jenkins some belly scratches and a treat she produced from a hidden pocket. ‘I didn’t take you for a dog person.’

Mort raised an eyebrow. ‘Should I be offended?’

‘Well, maybe it’s just the Esmeralda thing. The two of you seem to get along, and most people are one or the other.’

‘But Jenkins isn’t just a dog. Look at him. He looks like Wishbone.’

Lily gasped. ‘You watched Wishbone ?’

‘Sure. Just because I look like I grew up in The Munsters doesn’t mean we didn’t get TV reception. Besides, Gramps liked Wishbone’s outfits.’

‘Ah, now it’s starting to make sense. Although I don’t remember Wishbone’s goth phase.’

‘Wishbone could be anyone he wanted to be,’ said Mort haughtily.

‘You’re thinking of Gumby.’

Sending Jenkins back down towards The Hot Pot with a butt pat, Lily directed Mort up Oleander Avenue and around the pedestrian roundabout that let on to Juniper Way.

Mort swallowed – Whispering Waters, which Angela had suggested as an option for Gramps, was just around the corner.

Mort knew that Gramps needed something more low-maintenance than the current rambling family home, but a retirement home didn’t feel right.

Lily yawned, self-consciously covering her mouth. ‘Sorry. After I got done with Venus I spent half the night trying out spells to undo the switcheroo.’

Mort shot her a sidelong glance. ‘No luck, I see, unless your shop looks better than mine. But I appreciate the effort.’

‘I was going to fast-track a witchcraft kit from Amazon, but I didn’t want poor Roddy running around at 3 a.m. I made do with some river pebbles from the planters outside, some old spices from the cupboard, and a poem about change from a Hallmark card I found at the back of the wardrobe.’

‘Ah. I think I see the problem.’

‘Trader Joe’s 21 Seasoning Salute apparently doesn’t reverse dark magic. Smells good, though.’

‘Should’ve tried the Everything But the Bagel seasoning.’ Mort sighed. ‘Still, you did better than me. After the boys put poor Moira in the ground I went to the library and went through old newspaper articles looking for reports of something similar happening.’

‘Anything?’

Mort shook his head. ‘Although the press hasn’t covered our situation, so who knows.’

‘Other than Coriana.’ Lily made a face. ‘I can’t wait to see her article. Unwed Spinster Lives Matrimonial Dreams Vicariously through Wedding Planning Business .’

Mort wasn’t sure what to say to this. Did Lily dream of a wedding for the ages?

Was that why she’d started the business?

Or was she being self-deprecating? Mort glanced over at Lily in her adorably ridiculous outfit, wondering what kind of wedding she might plan for herself.

She had looked cute in that black funeral veil last night.

‘A Vegas elopement,’ Lily said suddenly. ‘That’s what I’d do. With or without Elvis. Hey look, it’s Derrick and Fran. They look well. And they have an entourage!’

A small group had surrounded the resurrected couple, heads bowed in reverence (and phone cameras out).

‘Please bless my market tomatoes, Derrick,’ pleaded one.

‘Will you minister to my turtle, Fran?’ begged another.

‘Did you see a white light?’ a third was asking.

Derrick looked quite pleased by the attention, and was handing out discount vouchers for the bodega as he anointed his new fans. Fran, on the other hand, was fiddling with a cross around her neck and seemed to be having a bit of a crisis of faith.

‘It was just a spot of bradycardia!’ she snapped. ‘We overdid it on the beta blockers at Toastmasters before the movie!’

‘Maybe I won’t say hi,’ whispered Lily. ‘They look … busy. Besides, we’re just about here.’

Jogging up the last of the hill, Lily pointed to a purple fairy-tale house with green trim and an extravagant assortment of glass frog garden ornaments.

Out the front sat an ancient pianola with a FREE sign stuck to the front. One of the local peacocks (a family of them had escaped from a nearby zoo and had since bred) regarded him from its perch upon the closed keyboard cover.

‘How on earth did you hear about this?’ Mort regarded the battered old pianola, which someone had had a go at decorating with a paintbrush and sponge, and which sported crooked candelabra holders covered in wax.

‘I was talking to Desdemona and Ambrose about their wedding, and they were very insistent that their nuptials involve a piano-like instrument in some shape or form.’

‘Well, you’ve got the “piano-like” and “some shape or form” down.’ Mort tentatively depressed the rickety middle C key, which was missing its plastic veneer.

‘And then on my way out from the funeral yesterday I found this guy bashing out “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” on that—glockenspiel?’

‘Marimba.’

‘Right. I mentioned something about the organ, and he said that his cousin had this beauty sitting around looking for a new home. Kismet!’

Kismet was certainly one way of putting it.

Getting a warning call from the Board of Funeral Directors about the seven noise complaints that had apparently been lodged in relation to the funeral was another.

They had to find a way to reverse this thing.

Even if it took all the Trader Joe’s herbs in the world.

Mort was prepared to stand in front of a midnight mirror and recite back to reality three times, if that’s what it took.

But then he caught sight of Lily’s sunny smile as she turned from the top step of the house, where she was happily knocking away with the brass carp doorknocker (‘Like the ones in Malta – my bestie Annika is always sending me pictures of those!’), and he wondered if maybe, just maybe, this switcheroo wasn’t entirely terrible.

After all, if their businesses hadn’t performed their own Freaky Friday / Vice Versa dance, he wouldn’t be here with Lily collecting a deformed piano from one of the all-singing, all-dancing mourners at yesterday’s disastrous funeral.

All right, so maybe it wasn’t a great defence of the switcheroo. But it was a defence.

‘How are we going to get this thing back to the funeral parlour?’ Mort regarded the rickety pianola with the critical eye of his high school musical composition teacher. It looked held together by a whisper and a prayer. A pianissimo prayer.

‘It has wheels.’ Her shoes flashing, Lily crouched to demonstrate. ‘We can push it back down the hill.’

‘And risk a runaway player piano? Absolutely not.’

‘Oh go on,’ said Lily. ‘Live a little. Haven’t you always dreamed of hauling a piano around in public? I feel like one of the helper birds in Cinderella .’

The door to the purple house opened. One of the mourners from yesterday stood there, looking askew in every way.

He wore sunglasses so dark they were possibly black holes and sipped a bright-orange drink Mort recognised from the handful of times he’d played piano through the night and had lived to regret it.

‘That you, Lily? Oh, and Mort, buddy. Chief party man, eh! Excuse the state of me – last night was a bit of a rager.’

Mort blanched. A rager ? They’d been seeing off poor Moira Fagan to the great beyond. Granny Fagan had been a character, but her death shouldn’t have incited an all-night street party. The rather robust send-off at the funeral home had surely been enough – and then some.

‘Thanks for the piano,’ said Lily. ‘We’re going to put it to good use, promise.’

‘All I can play is “Chopsticks”, and my nephew chewed up all the sheet music, so I know it’s going to a better home. Oh fuck, my head. Can you take it from here?’

Lily give him a thumbs up and a grin so bright that he rubbed his temples.

‘Drive safe,’ said the guy, closing the door gingerly.

‘We’re going to regret this, aren’t we.’ Mort eyed the pianola, then the gentle slope of the promenade.

All sorts of horrible deaths were parading through his mind.

In the past century, some thirty-six people in the US had died from piano accidents – from being crushed, from falling through a less-than-sturdy floor, and most commonly, from attempting to move the damn things.

But Lily wasn’t one for regrets.

‘Oh go on.’ She gave him one of those affectionate whacks on the arm that Mort was learning to associate with Lily – and like a happy Pavlovian dog rather wished she’d repeat.

‘Don’t look a gift pianola in the mouth.

All I ask is that you let me borrow it for the goth wedding.

I’m going to dress it up with flowers and cobwebs and candles – the whole lot. ’

She got behind the pianola and started pushing. ‘Maybe I can borrow Esmeralda, too. What do you think? Would she sit quietly if I tempted her with enough tuna? Maybe I could get a laser pointer for her to keep her on her mark.’

Hoping that death wasn’t ready for him just yet, Mort tried to steady the pianola to keep it from tipping from side to side or gathering too much speed down the hill.

Fortunately the promenade was bumpy with its cobblestones and Spanish tile, so a runaway pianola turned out to be an unrealised fear.

‘Now there’s a fun partner exercise,’ hollered Dierdre from The Hot Pot, who was hurrying up the street with a delivery of fresh tea leaves.

‘Play us a song, Mort!’ shouted Tink, who was sharing a sandwich with Angela at one of the small patio tables in one of the promenade’s wisteria-hung pocket parks.

‘If you get sick of funerals, I’ve got a job for you,’ called Roddy, passing them by with a stack of packages in hand.

Even the koi in the stream that crisscrossed beneath the promenade here and there popped up to lend their silent support. Candice the pickleball player, who was hunched beneath a blanket tossing coins into the water and muttering wishes to herself … did not.

‘I hope she doesn’t blame us,’ whispered Lily.

‘Well, if she doesn’t die, at least she’ll have a new perspective on life. And if she does …’ Mort grunted as he tried to keep the pianola from rolling into an azalea bush. ‘Well, she’ll have bigger problems to worry about.’

Mort was sweating unbearably by the time they wheeled the pianola through the front door of Eternal Elegance (Funeral Edition).

Not that he’d ever admit it in front of Lily, but a suit was not ideal piano-moving attire.

Although surely she wouldn’t hold it over him if he loosened his tie. And undid a button or two.

Apparently not – because she averted those bright blue eyes as he did so, using the moment as an opportunity to pull out a marker from the same invisible pocket from which she’d produced the dog treats.

She wrote something on the exposed wood of the bare middle C key, then gave Mort’s arm a squeeze.

‘Enjoy,’ she said. ‘Come get me when you’re ready to visit Gramps.’

Mort took a seat at the rickety pianola, taking a moment to read what Lily had written.

Mort’s piano, from Lily. With a heart. Of course with a heart.

As Mort put his fingers to the keyboard, he could’ve sworn the key gave him a zap. Just like Lily’s blue-eyed gaze had.