My First Date Was a Funeral Rehearsal

How it begins

The man whose funeral Helen Cooper had arranged was waiting beside the lectern, eating a cheese sandwich.

"You're early," he said.

"I generally try to be."

"The other one arrived at nine."

Helen stopped unfolding her notes.

Across the garden, a man in a linen jacket was testing the microphone with the expression of someone expecting it to appreciate his training. White chairs faced the sea. A red umbrella shaded a table of flowers nobody had died to receive.

"Other one?"

"Martin. Wonderful voice. Slightly expensive thoughts."

Helen had conducted weddings, memorials, naming ceremonies, and one divorce celebration whose participants required separate entrances. She had never knowingly been booked as half a farewell tournament.

Martin Shaw looked up from the microphone.

"You must be the florist."

"You must be the other one."

Their client swallowed his sandwich and smiled. "I thought a rehearsal deserved options."

Helen examined the man beside the lectern. Eighty-one, healthy, and apparently determined to turn his eventual absence into a project everyone would remember with mixed feelings.

"Did you tell either of us?" she asked.

"I assumed professionals would collaborate."

Martin unplugged the microphone.

The silence that followed was unexpectedly attractive.

"Then you should pay us for collaborating," he said, "rather than hoping embarrassment makes it complimentary."

Helen looked at him again.

He was older than she had first thought, with silver at his temples and a small repaired tear beside one jacket pocket. His confidence seemed less polished without amplification.

Their client considered the new terms.

A gull landed on the empty front chair and inspected the sandwich.

"All right," he said. "But I want something moving."

"That will be the tide," Helen replied. "The rest depends on what you actually want to say."

Martin laughed quietly.

For the first time that morning, she wondered whether this particular professional disaster might contain a person she would enjoy knowing after the chairs had been stacked.