A Booming Business, Morally Questionable

A gentle knock at the apartment door, 8:43 a.m. on a Tuesday, was not Danny’s concept of an emergency, not after the previous week’s chaos. Still, he hadn’t expected to find a man outside in a suit so shiny you could check your teeth in it, holding a box of muffins as if it were a negotiation tool.

“Funeral Crashers?” the man croaked, eyeing Danny’s flannel pajamas and untamed hair.

Danny blinked. “We’re not taking converts.”

Suit Guy thrust out a business card: ‘PERCY G. WINSLOW, Personal Grief Consultant’—gold-embossed, threatening a level of earnestness Danny associated with telemarketing cults.

“My condolences. On, uh, your pajamas.”

“Thanks,” Danny deadpanned. “We don’t sell anything before nine.”

Ginny, summoned by the scent of suspicious baked goods, appeared. “You bringing muffins, or looking for a show?”

Winslow glided in as if invited, slicing the awkwardness into corporate cubes. “Word’s out, folks. Mrs. Dalloway is quite the…influencer in certain circles. I’ve had three requests for help already, and you two have the right look. Not fresh, but—authentic.”

Danny, cheeks souring, exchanged a glance with Ginny. “We’re, uh, boutique.”

Winslow beamed. “Exclusivity. I like it. Here—there’s a grieving pet goldfish. A father who wants his ex-wife to see how ‘deeply he’ll be missed’—you get it. It’s the next big thing.”

He slid a wad of business cards their way, plus a sheaf of validation: screenshots of their ‘Funeral Crashers’ website spreading like an odd disease through social media. One was captioned, “Peak Millennial Side Hustle?”

Ginny was already calculating the odds. “How much is ‘big’?”

“Two hundred a service plus bonuses for tears, drama, or bespoke lamenting. People want flair.”

Danny’s morals curled sideways but were promptly drowned by his bank app’s negative balance. Ginny shot him a brain-melting grin. He tried to summon principles but got only a faint ‘ka-ching’ from the recesses of his ethics.

By Friday, the gig economy of woe had fully dawned.

Their inbox was a digital circus: Rebecca wanted them to ‘cry convincingly for Uncle George, who was only really into model trains and diet cola.’ A former juggler requested a standing ovation for his own memorial (“He’ll be cremated, but his dummy’s available for crowd reaction shots”). A lawyer in a blazer named Harlan wanted someone ‘to attend and look devastated so my ex knows she missed out.’

Ginny conducted phone ‘consults’ from the bathtub, soaking up the weirdness. She scribbled requests on index cards—some in glitter pen, others ominously sticky from wake leftovers.

Danny tried to maintain order, mapping out bookings in an Excel spreadsheet that whimpered with each new absurdity.

One day, Ginny burst in holding her phone over her head. “The Red Hat Society needs mourners. Their matriarch died, and they’re worried it’ll be a flop—apparently, turnout is low for anyone who made a career of pyramid schemes.”

Danny surveyed himself in the bathroom mirror. “Do I look like I sell scented candles for a living?”

Ginny snorted, rummaging for a red hat amongst their growing costume pile. “You look like someone who’s buried scented candles for insurance fraud.”

The Eulogy Olympics

Each assignment demanded new levels of dramatic absurdity. Ginny wept over a lobster mascot in a seafood restaurant that held memorial services every November for ‘Larry the Claw.’ She performed double-duty as grieving second cousin and rabbi’s assistant for a woman who wanted her cats publicly remembered ‘above all ex-husbands.’

Danny, meanwhile, found himself subject to bizarre requests: he was paid extra to sit stone-faced and squeeze a musical teddy bear at precisely 10:23 a.m. (“That’s when Grandpa always napped during the service”).

He drew the line at piping Gregorian chant over a Bluetooth speaker at a wake, but Ginny convinced him with the offer of triple pay and free finger foods.

With every booking, Ginny’s energy soared. She played it big. Eyeliner. Rhinestone tears. Monologues that would shame daytime soaps.

Danny preferred background roles—stealthy nods, calculated sighs—equally effective but leaving his dignity relatively intact.

Tensions simmered. “It’s not about us,” Danny whispered after Ginny tried to deliver a Shakespearean soliloquy for a funeral where the deceased wanted ‘no fuss, keep it simple.’

Ginny rolled her mascara’d eyes. “People crave drama. Even dead people. Especially their families.”

“It’s a service, not improv night at the morgue.”

“Tell that to the tips.”

Morality by the Punchbowl

Then came the request that stopped them both cold. It appeared as a DM from a woman named Paula, her profile a filtered teacup and half her face.

“Hi, urgent. My stepdad’s funeral is Wednesday. I need you to attend and visibly grieve so my real dad gets jealous and ups his inheritance offer. Ideally, he should think you’re someone who’s slept with my stepdad. Performance crucial.”

Danny scrolled, lip twitching. “‘Ideally, he should think you’re someone who’s slept with my stepdad’?!’’

Ginny cackled. “I call dibs.”

He hesitated. Bills glared from the table. “This is… actually kind of evil, right?”

She shrugged. “You wanted subtle. This is subtle manipulation. Plus, drama. Our specialty.”

He stared at his schedule, at the words ‘Larry the Claw Memorial’—at their calendar, now crammed tight—then at Ginny, twirling a drippy black scarf around her neck as if she were choking out remorse itself.

“What if someone gets hurt?”

Ginny’s grin flattened. “Everyone hurts at funerals. We just… lubricate the process. Besides, don’t you want to pay the phone bill?”

He sighed, running a hand through hair that no longer remembered hope. “We’re not the good guys, are we?”

Ginny offered him a muffin, now slightly stale. “We’re the helpful guys. It’s different.”

Showtime

Wednesday: gray-skied, threatening rain as always. Danny and Ginny stood at the back of St. Bartholomew’s, scanning the room. Paula—mid-thirties, over-accessorized—nodded at them, mouthing, “Make it count.”

Ginny marched to the second row, locking eyes with the deceased’s ex-wife. She dabbed her eyes, whispered urgently, and clutched her black scarf like a relic. Danny, face arranged in pained sorrow, sidled up to the stepdad’s brother, whispering, “We were… close.”

Rev. Sykes—again—shot them a daggered look. Was he at every funeral, or did they just attract bad luck and repressed rage?

The ‘performance’ peaked when Ginny delivered a trembling sob and laid a single red rose—snagged from a nearby grave—on the coffin. The ex-wife glowered. Paula’s dad, standing at a polite distance, paled. Paula texted, mid-service: ‘He’s losing it—amazing work!!!!’

Afterward, Paula pressed an envelope stuffed with cash into Danny’s palm. “My stepdad would have loved you two. He was a bastard. But he adored drama.”

They walked out into drizzle, quiet for once.

Danny stopped short. “Are we… making the world better, or just making funerals worse?”

Ginny, peeled off her scarf. “Both? Neither? I don’t know, Danny. Is that really worse than what funerals are already?”

He snorted, nudged her. “Put it in the brochure: ‘Funeral Crashers—Making funerals at least interesting.’”

She punched him, softly. “As long as interesting pays, I can live with that.”

They strolled past headstones, laughter mingled with tired relief—uncertain, but undefeated. Somewhere in the distance, a car alarm wailed. Neither noticed.