Page 22 of Four Weddings and a Funeral Director

Mort

Mort was not having a good morning. He’d spent an hour on the phone sorting out a funeral plot double booking, Candice had asked if she could nap in each of his coffins to test them out ahead of her imminent demise, someone had yarn-bombed the greyhounds, and now Molly Lambshead was demanding a refund on her mother’s obituary.

Mort was delicately trying to explain that the obituary was part of the package, and he’d submitted precisely what the family had signed off upon, but Molly was not having it.

‘ Mort ,’ she seethed – Molly was exceptional at seething, having presided over the town’s most expensive homeowners’ association with the pugnacious attitude of a bulldog.

(She’d cut her teeth managing the town Facebook page, and before that, the local MMA page.) Her earrings swatted the air, almost whacking Mort as though he were an annoyingly large mosquito.

‘Read it aloud, and tell me that this obituary bears any resemblance to anything a sane person would have submitted.’

Mort cleared his throat. ‘Oh frabjous day, callooh callay …’ he began. ‘Nice “Jabberwocky” reference.’

‘Is it, though?’ seethed Molly, extra seethingly.

All right, so nice was relative where obituaries were concerned.

‘We are delighted to announce the passing of our mother, Calla Lambshead,’ he went on.

‘ Delighted! It says delighted! ’

Mort cleared his throat. ‘Well, families can be complicated.’

‘It gets worse!’ shrieked Molly (whose anger had broken the bounds of seethingness, and was now on another level entirely). ‘It ends with Monty Python lyrics!’

All right, so that was a hard one to explain. Especially since the lyrics were in question were from ‘The Lumberjack Song’ and not from, say, ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’. The switcheroo had struck, and in appalling fashion. But perhaps he could salvage this situation.

‘A bit of levity can help with the grieving process,’ Mort offered awkwardly.

‘Levity! More like indignity! This is grounds for a lawsuit! It’s … defamation! It’s … not how we want our mother to be remembered!’

Mort swallowed. ‘Black cat?’ he asked, offering Molly a candy from the bowl he kept on his desk. ‘Or black tissue?’

Molly recoiled, but then took one of each. Mort had learned from years of watching Gramps at work that comforting people via food and thin sheets of paper went a long way.

‘We’ll publish a correction,’ he said, stroking Esmeralda, who’d leapt into his lap and was unapologetically shedding white fur all over his black suit.

And then after that, figure out how to reverse this whole switcheroo situation so that he could get back to being yelled at for regular funeral things.

Like why a funeral couldn’t be delayed to accommodate someone’s multi-stop flight itinerary or the quality of soil being shovelled over a casket or why even the most careful mortuary makeup application in the world couldn’t make Grandma Kelly look like she had on her wedding day.

‘It’d better be a full-page apology,’ snarked Molly, chewing as she blew her nose. (The multi-tasking energy was admirable.) ‘And there’d better not be a single iota of joy or cheer at the funeral. Doom! I want doom! Doom and gloom! Sturm und drang !’

‘The eighteenth-century German literary and musical movement?’ asked Mort, intrigued.

Molly slapped Mort’s desk hard enough to leave a handprint. ‘No! In the turmoil sense!’

The doorbell rang, crooning out The Three Degrees’ ‘When Will I See You Again’. Molly’s aghast expression suggested that she had mentally added a few items to her potential lawsuit.

‘Sorry,’ said Mort. ‘I’ve got the doorbell guy coming to look at that. It’s meant to play “Gloomy Tuesday”.’

Roddy wobbled in under the weight of a huge stack of boxes. His Lycra-clad legs strained, but then Lycra-clad legs always did, for the whole point of Lycra was to flex your muscles and show off your gams. Even if you were eighty. ‘Where would you like me to put the confetti cannons?’

Molly gulped like a restaurant aquarium fish with a disturbingly full view of the sushi counter. ‘ Confetti cannons? ’

‘Oh, they’re not for me,’ said Mort placatingly. ‘They’re for next door. Eternal Elegance, Wedding Edition.’

Roddy shook his head. He prodded at the delivery label. ‘No, says here they’re for you.’

Two switcheroo symptoms in one day. This was not a good sign.

Pretending to have a revelation, Mort took the box, squiggling a signature on the device that Roddy held out. ‘Right! They’re um … for personal use. Not funeral-related.’

Molly folded her arms. ‘I think that’s worse. Now, correct this obituary nonsense anon , or I’ll take my business elsewhere.’

Mort sighed. ‘I can accommodate that, if you must. Assuming you have a chilled van.’

Molly harrumphed. Literally. She literally harrumphed, like something out of a British children’s cartoon.

But apparently she did not have a refrigerated van, for she waltzed out, leaving her mother on ice in the morgue.

Mort was relieved that she’d left so easily, because the definition of ‘on ice’ had changed substantially since the business swapsies, and it wasn’t out of the question that poor dead Mama was sticking out of a champagne ice bucket.

‘Ding-a-ling!’ called Lily from the doorway. At least she hadn’t set the doorbell off – who knew what was next on its playlist. ‘I’m Walking on Sunshine’? ‘Don’t Stop Believin’’? ‘I Believe in a Thing Called Love’? ‘It’s Lily, the local newspaper delivery girl.’

Mort sighed. He assumed that Lily wasn’t here to share a particularly good coupon for Brolligarchs (they did make brilliant umbrellas) or a delightfully optimistic horoscope that spoke of bakery riches and good surf (Kit von Diesel, the local psychic, knew what the locals wanted to hear).

‘Tell me this isn’t about the obituary. I have heard all one man is capable of hearing about obituaries.

Ask Molly Lambshead what topic she could do an impromptu TED talk on, and apparently it’s what’s appropriate to put in an obituary. ’

Lily grimaced. ‘Well, unfortunately I’ve just spent the past half hour engaged in similar speechifying from one Bronson Roibles.’

Mort’s desk shook from the violence with which she slapped down a copy of the Mirage Daily Mirror , which had a wedding announcement that began: We regret to inform you that Bronson Roibles and Tiffany Ferguson are tying the knot.

The announcement ended with The lucky couple are survived by their families and their dog Delilah.

‘Bronson Roibles,’ said Mort, taking a seat at his comfy leather desk chair, which had been studded with spikes until recently, but was now adorned with feathers.

At least they were grey, which was close enough to black.

‘Quite the name. Evokes an affable aristocratic golden retriever who travels through time solving mysteries.’

‘Unfortunately for all of us, Bronson Roibles is a human, and not a particularly affable one at that.’ Lily prodded judgementally at the jar of black jelly cats on Mort’s desk. Hang on, were there some jelly beans among them? Mort scowled – the switcheroo was a constantly moving target.

Picking out a selection of jelly beans, Lily flopped down on the chaise longue to one side of Mort’s desk. (This was for the fainters. There were also some more standard chairs for the sitters, and a moody, ornate doorframe for the leaners.)

‘It’s so fuzzy .’ Lily stroked the chaise in a way that made Mort rather wish he were a piece of furniture. ‘Anyway, Bronson is one half of a couple with a space-flight-themed wedding I’m working on getting on the books two years from now.’

‘Two years ?’ Mort was so surprised that he spun his chair in a full circle. ‘Must be nice to be able to schedule your work. Every time I think about a holiday, someone kicks the bucket. Even Pickleball Candice’s proposed funeral is only six months out.’

Lily regarded her jelly beans, which were disappearing at a worrisome rate.

‘It’s a very elaborate wedding, with a scale Mars Rover as a ring bearer and engraved meteorites as bonbonniere.

Oh, and a performance of “Major Tom” from that astronaut who went viral.

They’re hoping that space tourism will be a little further along by then, and that everyone can join them on a jaunt to the stars.

A jaunt paid for by the guests, of course.

Well, and some funding from NASA. The ultimate destination wedding. ’

‘They are not .’ Mort was appalled, but also fascinated. ‘What possesses a person to throw away so much effort and money on a single day?’

She threw a jelly bean at him. ‘Love, you fool! And a little bit of social pressure. And you’re one to talk. Funerals can be just as expensive, and the people who are the subject of yours are dead .’

Mort couldn’t argue with that.

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t make fun.

I know you’re brilliant at what you do, or the Chamber of Commerce wouldn’t have picked your application over all of the others.

And the runner-up does mirror-ball sculptures, so it was close.

It just seems like an enormous undertaking for one day. ’

‘But it’s not for one day,’ said Lily, picking out the yellow jelly beans and arranging them into a sugary flower on the chaise.

‘That’s the whole point. The one day is just the start .

Speaking of starts, or rather starts that never were: Veronica of disastrous-proposal-rejection-that-spoke-the-switcheroo-into-being fame – I found her. Veronica Teuer.’

Mort was impressed – what could he say? Lily impressed him. Especially her switcheroo origin story hypothesis, which was much more appealing than Mort’s, which was that he was actually dead, and all of this was a final, hallucinatory gasp from his poor, dying brain.

Yep, the curse option sounded much better than brain death.

‘You’d make an excellent stalker,’ he said. ‘Very unassuming. And very creative.’

‘Why thank you, kindly.’ Lily leaned to one side, striking a femme fatale pose. Alas, the funeral home’s blinds were now chiffon and didn’t offer the dramatic striped shadows a set of Venetians might have. (The jelly beans also detracted a tad from the scene.)

‘I had some help from Angela and Tink,’ she admitted.

‘Ah. Learning from the best.’ Tink had famously tracked down an elusive post-rock composer based on the birdsong found in the background of their compositions.

Mort leaned back in his chair, wriggling a bit to avoid a peacock feather.

Had that been there before? ‘So, assuming you’re right, and she’s behind this whole … ’

‘Switcheroo? Topsy-turvy? Reverse Uno card?’

‘Terrible. You should be ashamed.’

‘I’m not the one whose doorbell plays “It’s Raining Men”.’

Mort could feel what little colour lived in his cheeks draining away. ‘Nor does mine. It tolls, like all good doorbells should.’

Lily’s blue eyes twinkled in that terrible way that made Mort want to climb over the desk and seize her in a fit of passion. Why was she lounging on the chaise longue like that? Was she, despite her outward cutesiness, a proponent of cruel and unusual punishment?

‘Sure, whatever keeps you going,’ said Lily. ‘Anyway, yes, the goal is to get her back here to reverse the spell. But Veronica has gone dark.’

That’s right. They’d been having a conversation. Mort had lost the thread a bit there, what with this delectably clad woman lying seductively before him, sexily eating jelly beans. Well, eating jelly beans as sexily as was possible. (Which, honestly, wasn’t very. And yet, Mort was still intrigued.)

‘Gone dark,’ Mort repeated.

‘Offline. Incognito. Away from the public eye.’

‘Yes, I assumed you weren’t just saying she’d dyed her hair.

’ Mort slumped in his chair, fiddling with the crossbone studs that stamped the leather to the wood beneath (at least those hadn’t been switcherooed, or he would’ve been spending the day digging up the receipt to demand a refund).

‘So chances are we’re stuck like this for a while, huh. Opposite Day land. Well, fuck.’

Images of increasingly unhinged obituaries and dancing on freshly filled graves swirled through Mort’s head. And just what did the switcheroo have planned for those confetti cannons?

‘Well fuck indeed,’ said Lily. ‘Because while the goths might take this whole thing in stride, Venus sure as hell won’t.’

‘She’s not as laid-back as her PR team would have us believe, huh?’ asked Mort. ‘Imagine that.’

‘And then there’s my mom! I’ve been sending her strategic close-ups of my decor, but there’s going to be a point where she demands a video call, and what then?’

‘You could take it outside. By the bougainvillea.’

‘What if Zoom applies a switcheroo filter? We don’t know how deep this thing goes!’

‘I take it your mom isn’t big on doom and gloom?’

Lily shook her head, then affected the deep, gravelly voice of the film preview voiceover guy. ‘ In a world … of toxic positivity ,’ she intoned.

‘Ah. Understood.’

Lily scooped up her jelly bean flower and ate it. ‘So, while I’m here. How much for a couple of coffins? The goths registered for a his and hers number.’

Mort raised an eyebrow. ‘Thinking ahead, I see. Definitely a better investment than an ice-cream maker.’

‘Don’t besmirch the humble ice-cream maker. Truly. It’s a solid twenty-dollar gift for someone you don’t really know or like. And if ice-cream isn’t your thing, you can always throw it at someone. They’re quite heavy. And come with a vicious blade.’

‘You sound like you have first-hand experience with this.’ Mort led Lily to the coffin display. Well, coffin/bunkbed display, which was proving very difficult to explain to his clients.

‘Wow,’ said Lily. ‘Is this a switcheroo thing, or are you exploring space-saving burial options for our overcrowded future? Because the goths also want plots for their dogs.’

Mort considered. ‘How big are we talking?’

‘Pugs.’

‘Oh, thank God, I thought you were going to say a Great Dane. I’ll throw in a pug plot gratis.’

‘Two pug plots.’

‘You drive a hard bargain, but I can’t say no to a wrinkly face.’

Lily set her hands akimbo. ‘You’d better be talking about me, because I will not have you slandering our puggy friends.’

Mort couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Of course, of course. Lucky for you, there’s a botulism voucher in that Chamber of Commerce treasure map of yours. Just be careful, because it is a neurotoxin.’

‘At least if you have to embalm me, I’ll be a perfectly blank canvas. You can pancake me up in a single swipe. Now help me up this ladder so I can check out these coffins.’