Page 39 of Four Weddings and a Funeral Director

Lily

Lily tapped her pink cowboy boots together and took a deep breath.

The cowboys’ wedding was going to be perfect.

Nothing weird was going to happen. There would be no corpses, no maggot-infested cakes, no rending of clothing.

Amos and Bernard were funny and delightful and deserved a wedding that reflected that.

It wasn’t their fault that Veronica still hadn’t pinned down a date to stop by and hopefully reverse the switcheroo.

(Veronica apparently had odd priorities.)

‘Switcheroo, if you mess up this wedding, I’m taking it as a hate crime,’ Lily whispered to her black-and-white ceiling, which she’d managed to partially cover with colourful cloth draping, hoping that her visitors were so enamoured of the bonbonniere table that they simply wouldn’t look up.

Ugh, was that black splodge on the far wall further encroaching upon her side of the building?

Pulling up her stepladder, she grabbed a pot of yellow paint and a paintbrush, and swiped over it with a quick approximation of a daisy.

All right, now she was ready. Well, once she donned her pink cowboy hat. Perfect: Dolly would be proud.

She texted a picture of said hat to Mom, who responded with a blurry thumbs-up selfie. I believe in you, Lils. Make Aunty Karen regret her inferior offspring! Also, which candle would go best in the bathroom?

Lily helped Mom with the difficult candle decision (it took twelve texts), then headed out.

‘Hey, Lily!’ called Jorge, who was out and about watering the endless assortment of planters and flower beds that gave the village loop its unending rainbow of colour. He’d even gifted Lily a pothos that she hadn’t managed to kill.

‘Got some bluebonnets for the gents today,’ said Jorge. ‘Send them my best wishes.’

Lily took the vibrant flowers, which Jorge had wrapped in a square of brown paper and tied with string. ‘Thank you, Jorge! You’re too kind. Will I see you at the cake tasting on Tuesday? I’ll have a new lemon one for you to try.’

Jorge lifted his trowel. ‘Wouldn’t miss it. I’ll come hungry.’

‘I wouldn’t expect anything else.’

Waggling her fingers goodbye, Lily waltzed down the laneway to the parking area.

She dug through her handbag to unlock Lucille, but the jangling of her keyring-laden keys was absent.

Oh crap, she thought, peeking in the window, where a familiar disco ball keyring flashed and gleamed in the ignition.

‘You got locked out. Of this.’ Mort folded his arms, regarding the tiny car, which probably looked like a diecast Matchbox model from his great height.

‘I get locked out of all sorts of things,’ admitted Lily. ‘I’m like the anti-Houdini. I called the locksmith, but he’s run off his feet. Something about a swingers party and a bowl of keys that went missing. He has to rekey a whole subdivision.’

Mort grimaced. ‘I’m not sure I needed to know that. Although it does explain the awkwardness at some of my recent funerals. It’s beyond frustrating having to call security every time I see more than two grieving spouses in the front pew.’

‘You said you were off today,’ said Lily pleadingly. ‘Can you drive me down to the barn?’

Mort shot her a wry look. ‘Will you reimburse me for the mileage?’

Lily huffed in exasperation. ‘I won’t even touch the radio. There’ll be plenty of old people there – you can hand out your business cards.’

‘Wow, callous. I didn’t know you had it in you.’ Mort shook his head. ‘All right, let’s do this.’

Lily jumped up and down in her gleaming boots. ‘Really?’

Before she realised what she was doing, she’d leapt in to give him a kiss on the cheek. Except Mort, famously not a fan of being tackled (tackling had a high mortality risk), turned his head just in time … so that their lips met. Lily’s cowboy hat tumbled to the moss-smothered cobblestones.

‘Oh, shit. I mean, not shit. I just …’ Lily gulped as all the tension from that fateful night a few days ago came roaring back.

Mort was silent, his dark eyes hooked into her own.

Once could be shrugged off as a mistake. Twice was … a pattern. A pattern that Lily desperately wanted to continue, but that Mort apparently did not.

‘You’ve got a little …’ She reached up to rub the hot pink lipstick from the side of his lip.

As she did, he caught her wrist, gently, holding it momentarily as though he deeply wanted to say something. As though he wanted to kiss all the way down the length of her arm.

But he didn’t. Instead he stooped to fetch her fallen cowboy hat, then unlocked the hearse.

‘I like the hat,’ he said. ‘Suits you.’

A unprompted compliment! Was Mort coming around to her wiles?

‘Good, because there are plenty extras at the barn,’ she teased. ‘And I just happen to have a spare one of these.’

She brandished a bolo tie.

‘Oh goodie.’ Mort looked as though she’d suggested brain surgery without anaesthesia.

‘You slip it over your neck and adjust it like this.’

She demonstrated, trying to ignore the thrum of Mort’s heart against her hand as she adjusted the tie.

‘How do I look?’ asked Mort drily.

‘Like you’re ready for some very depressed boot scooting.’

‘There will be no boot scooting of any sort.’ Mort motioned for her to buckle her seatbelt. Off they trundled, Mort driving at his usual funereally appropriate pace.

‘We’re going to miss the wedding at this rate,’ said Lily. ‘And their first anniversary.’

‘Better late than dead,’ said Mort seriously, turning his head left, then right, then left, then right, then left, then right as he went to pull out into an intersection. It was like watching someone watching the tennis watching someone watching the tennis.

Fortunately the barn was a relatively short drive, even at what was close to a walking pace.

The wedding space came into view, and through the huge open doors Lily admired her handiwork: the embedded tractor tyre aisle, the seats fashioned out of hay bales (for the groom’s side) and out of whiskey barrels (for the other groom’s side), the enormous horseshoe beneath which they were going to deliver their vows.

(This was a prop from a movie about giant horses she’d found on Facebook Marketplace.) She’d really outdone herself with this one.

‘Park here,’ said Lily, pointing to a gravelly area a few hundred feet from the barn, and well away from the guests’ cars. ‘We can’t show up in this thing. It’s not good for morale.’

‘Why not?’ said Mort, although he pulled over as told. ‘Elderly family members have heart attacks all the time at weddings. We’re just covering our bases.’

‘Speaking of covering,’ said Lily, as Mort opened her door for her. She craned her neck towards a commotion outside the barn. ‘Or rather, the opposite of covering …’

For up ahead, eight enormously buff guys dressed in what Lily could only describe as Chippendale chic seemed to be rehearsing carrying an emperor on their shoulders. Lily hadn’t heard anything about this. Was it a protest? Or a cheerleading routine?

Mort in tow and clipboard and walkie-talkie out, Lily hurried over, her cowboy boots clacking on the tractor tyre path that extended out from the barn. Oh, but it was quite comfortable – it was like running on a track.

‘I’m sorry, but … are you on the guest list?

’ Lily flagged down the guys, who turned in a flawlessly coordinated demonstration of muscle and sinew.

Lily hadn’t known that abdominal muscles came by the dozen.

‘I don’t mean to be rude, but it’s a private party.

A wedding. And the grooms are going to be making an appearance any second now. ’

‘We’re the Paul-bearers,’ explained the buffest of the guys, like this somehow made sense. ‘Well, except for him. He’s the Peter-bearer.’

‘Sorry,’ said Peter, who somehow did look like a Peter and not a Paul. ‘Paul #8 wasn’t feeling well, and we figured another P name would do. I was in Thunder from Down Under, if that counts.’

‘It definitely counts,’ said Lily, taking a sneaky photo to send to Annika, who’d spent much of their last Vegas trip appreciating the muscular troupe of Aussie performances. (Carrot Top had been sold out, she’d said, not meeting Lily’s eyes.) ‘But … why are you here?’

‘We’re here to carry the lucky couple down the aisle.’ A guy with an elaborate frangipani tattoo on his very large upper arm (a sizeable canvas for a sizeable tattoo) mimed holding someone propped against his shoulder.

Lily frowned, flipping through her notes. She didn’t remember ordering a set of Pauls. Was this some sort of bachelor party thing? Then she realised, watching the guys simultaneously mime their whole carrying thing …

‘ Pallbearers, ’ she and Mort whispered simultaneously.

‘It’s the switcheroo,’ muttered Lily to Mort. ‘But sexy. I’ll allow it.’

‘At least we’re not graveside,’ said Mort.

‘This time,’ said Lily, with a grin. Her phone beeped. ‘Okay, we’re almost up. I’ll go find Bernard and Amos, and we’ll get this rodeo started.’

Lily rapped using the stirrup door knockers on the silvery his and his custom horse trailers the boys had chosen as their dressing rooms. Each was plushly upholstered with gleaming leather and draped with saddle cloths.

(All right, Pendleton blankets, but close enough.) Flowers bloomed from cowboy boots.

‘How are we going in here, boys? The Paul-bearers are waiting.’

‘Oh yes, we saw ,’ said Bernard, extremely happily. Spinning on the silver heel of his cowboy boots, he showed off his magnificent custom suit, which sparkled with elaborately embroidered western scenes. ‘What a gift from the heavens.’

‘I am not complaining,’ agreed Lily.

‘Is that your boy Mort out there?’ whispered Amos, who was in a fabulous corduroy vest that Lily desperately wanted to touch. ‘Good for you for bringing a plus-one.’

‘Oh he’s not …’ started Lily, then gave up. Today’s wedding was going to take all of her focus – and she didn’t want to expend valuable energy explaining the complicated Mort situation. ‘C’mon, boys, it’s showtime.’

The Pauls gathered around the grooms as they emerged from their trailers.

The Paul with the frangipani tattoo knelt with his hands knotted into a human stirrup. ‘Who needs a leg up?’

Amos and Bernard shared a delighted grin.

‘Boost me,’ said Amos. He guffawed as he was hoisted skyward and onto the carefully staggered shoulders of half the Pauls, to some resounding applause from Bernard and Lily (and a quieter golf clap from Mort, who was watching with a quirked eyebrow).

The remaining Pauls (and Peter) knelt, ready to give Bernard a lift.

Lily blew them a kiss. ‘Off you go, boys.’

She jogged inside, giving the thumbs up to the bluegrass band standing ready by the giant horseshoe altar.

The gentle strains of ‘I Will Always Love You’, with vocals from a stunning drag Dolly, rang out through the barn, bringing tears to Lily’s eyes.

Amos and Bernard were such a gorgeous couple, and they deserved all the happiness in the world.

To be even a little part of that happiness was an honour that she could hardly believe had been bestowed on her.

The guests, decked out in their best western finery (including one guy in a Best Western uniform – awkward), turned as the grooms made their highly unusual entrance.

‘Oh my God,’ muttered Bernard, as he was carried down the aisle on the shoulders of the Pauls (and the one Peter), one hand outreached to clasp Amos’s, ‘I’ve died and gone to heaven.’