Page 35 of Four Weddings and a Funeral Director

Lily

It was perhaps for the best that Lily’s week had been so busy that she’d scarcely had time to think about the fact that she’d thrown herself at Mort, only to have him run off screaming into the night.

No, instead of reflecting extensively on how they’d spent hours pressed up against each other just to wind up with that damned pink-and-black grille dividing their lives again, Lily had been corralling the various vendors for Venus’s wedding into a shared space ready for the rehearsal dinner ahead of the big day next weekend.

And rather than fretting that Mort had reacted to her bare boobs with a flight response, she’d been calling around attempting to source a whiskey from every state for Amos and Bernard’s ‘bourbonniere’ (bonbonniere, but make it boozy).

And rather than reliving the backwards Cinderella nightie situation again and again, she’d been bribing the middle school’s art students to make giant papier-maché nutcrackers for her Christmas in July wedding.

All right, so she had had time to ruminate extensively on the whole disastrous debacle and about how her feelings for the funeral planner next door were rooted in something far deeper and more complicated than trauma bonding over the switcheroo.

Plenty of time. But she hadn’t had time to blow up Mort’s phone, which was good.

Okay, so that was a lie as well, but she’d accidentally sent that stream of mortifying texts to Annika instead, so in practice she hadn’t made things worse.

Wow, Lily, this is messy even for you , Annika had texted back. I love it.

Annika had followed up with a few emojis and then some photos of a ramshackle stone house in the Italian countryside.

One euro! I bought two. I just have to fix them up in between gorging myself on pasta and finding love in Tuscany. I’m going to livestream the whole thing.

Annika had finally done it: she’d made good on all that cheap house scrolling.

Homeownership seemed so … adult . So long term.

Even more long term than marriage. And definitely more long term than Lily’s year-long lease at the shop.

Which she was now several months into, which meant that the prospect of giving up her shop to the next Instagram-scrolling entrepreneur was increasingly on her mind.

Maybe she could take Mort’s advice and explain the switcheroo situation to the Chamber of Commerce, then beg for an extension given that the first few months of her lease hadn’t, as Mort had noted, strictly delivered the commercial premises she’d been promised.

‘Love, are we doing this?’ This was Reba, the effusively dressed tie-dye artist behind the decor of Venus’s manifold glamping tents.

Reba had shown up in a rattly Kombi van last night, emerging from it in a profusion of colour, swearing, weed smoke and The Grateful Dead jangling away at full blast. She wore cat’s-eye glasses and a million rings and an expression of constant amusement, and fiddled with a tiny vessel around her neck.

‘My husband Frank, with a dash of my dog,’ she’d said by way of explanation (not a thoroughly comforting explanation, but Lily had decided not to ask further questions).

‘Damn, Mirage-by-the-Sea. I haven’t been out here since Fire in the Grass back in, what, ’89?

Good times, good drugs. Not like your poor generation gets. ’

She gave Lily a sympathetic pat on the shoulder.

Reba, proprietor of a company called Dyer on the Mountain, was basically the Dale Chihuly of tie-dye (although she asked not to be described that way because apparently there’d been a whole fuss after she’d tried to repurpose one of Mr Chihuly’s sculptures into a bong at Tie-Dye Palooza a few years back).

Honour Nivola’s sister, Gracie Nivola – Venus’s wedding photographer and a childhood friend of the bride’s, who should be here any moment – had recommended Reba wholeheartedly.

Apparently the two had collaborated extensively in a hole-in-the-wall art gallery in Brooklyn.

Something called Riffraff, which sounded very Brooklyn-y and legit.

Anyway, both were available, both were here (well, Gracie was almost here – GPS issues) and Reba was doing a good job of talking Venus off the emotional ledge she’d been hanging out on all morning, worrying in turn about her toothpaste empire and quarterly earnings and the worrying reading that her psychic had given her.

And also distracting Lily from the whole Mort fiasco, which was sorely needed right now.

‘We are indeed doing this,’ Lily told Reba.

Steeling herself, she flashed one of her sunny grins, then twirled in a circle, showing off the food truck that Jefferson from the nursing home had put together for Venus and what’s-his-name’s wedding rehearsal.

Lily had never invented an entire business for a wedding before, but she did have a literal blank cheque to work with, and expectations were high.

‘Presenting … Premetheus,’ she exclaimed, with a clap of her hands.

‘Oh, I love a good food truck,’ said Reba. ‘Especially one with a punny name that only works on paper. I got my start selling grilled cheeses on tour with the Dead, you know. Well, not just grilled cheeses. But I’m all about diversification. And running from the cops.’

Venus smiled faintly as Lily showed off the truck, although that was possibly because she’d just had her makeup trial and couldn’t risk the slightest bit of facial expression.

The gold tones in her eyeshadow really brought out the gold in her bank account, which she was checking right now.

How could so many zeros fit on a phone screen? Ah, her banking app had landscape mode.

‘We’ll be dishing out dinner out right here from the truck,’ said Jefferson, who scrubbed up in very hipstery fashion when he put his mind to it.

Well, when Lily and her entourage put their mind to it.

He’d even acquiesced to wearing a fake man bun, which apparently you could buy as clip-ons, and which Lily vowed to use as an alternative to pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey at Tink’s forthcoming birthday party, which she’d been working on behind the scenes with Angela.

Lily passed Venus a tiny froyo tub with a paper straw poking out from it. ‘Here, give it a try. Just sip gently so that you don’t mess up your lipstick.’

‘Oh, it’s seventy-two-hour colour stay. It’s a thing NASA is working on. I wish they’d got to the eye makeup faster, but, you know, their chemists have competing priorities.’

Of course, that exploring extra-terrestrial space and advancing human knowledge and all. And also the demands of the space-themed wedding Lily was working on, which had definitely diverted some research funds.

‘Mm, that’s really … apple sauce forward.

’ Venus rolled the meal around her mouth, nodding thoughtfully.

‘Is this how we’re serving it, though? Weren’t we doing plates?

Don’t get me wrong, I like the recyclability of the paper cups.

Very earthy, very organic, which you know is so important to me.

But I was expecting something with more …

pizzazz. If the emissions are an issue, I can buy some carbon credits. Just say the word.’

Lily held up a finger. ‘And this is what I call the tour de force. Reba?’

Reba pulled away the sheet of tie-dyed fabric that had been strategically draped over a vintage bathtub filled with shattered plate pieces.

Venus tapped her lower lip. ‘I’m seeing the vision … we use the shards to scoop? Like corn chips, but porcelain.’

Lily laid a selection of shards out on the table, arranging them into a vague circle.

‘We’re going to make our own,’ she said. ‘Each plate will be individually crafted by a guest, then glued together by Reba using a ceramic glue coloured to your choosing.’

‘Bet you’ve never seen tie-dyed glue before, babes,’ said Reba, peering down through her cat’s-eye glasses.

‘I have not,’ said Venus, who was poking thoughtfully through the tub of shattered plates to put together her own plate.

‘Well, it’ll be closer to marbled, but you get the gist.’ Reba downed her Irish coffee and motioned for Cleo, the assistant barista from The Hot Pot, to bring her another.

‘Nice brew here. Who do you use for your beans? Because I’ve got a supplier back home who grows a solid harvest. It’s a whole cemetery greenhouse setup – don’t think about it too much.

I reckon your funeral home friend next door might like it. Suits his vibe.’

‘I’ll let him know.’ Mort would indeed love the idea of cemetery coffee. But now everything was weird; she hadn’t even yelled any of the Veronica updates through the grille, even though Veronica would shortly be arriving in town to hopefully undo the switcheroo.

Had she scared Mort off for good? She’d seen how tentatively he approached the world – driving the hearse in first gear at all times; keeping everyone but Gramps at arm’s length for fear that someone might die – and instead of honouring that, she’d just pounced on him like a particularly grabby raccoon might approach a burger wrapper.

Presumably all of these thoughts surfaced on Lily’s forehead, because Reba tapped her arm.

‘You look like you could do with one of these as well.’ Reba poured half of her spiked coffee into a cup for Lily.

‘Thanks,’ said Lily, as they clinked cups.

‘Romantic troubles, huh?’ Reba’s cat’s-eye glasses sparkled as she regarded Lily.

‘I thought you were the tie-dye lady, not the psychic.’

‘There’s a lot of overlap, believe me. Tie-dye is where people come when they want to be free of something, but they don’t know how to express it.

I mean, look at this one here.’ Reba nodded surreptitiously at Venus, who was digging around in the tub of shards, looking more and more perturbed.

She was making a fine old racket as well, thought Lily; like the heart-pounding noise of her friend Jojo’s kids upending a giant box of Legos.