Extreme Vinyl Café by Stuart Mclean Page B

the weekend. You’re the only guy I could think of phoning. I thought you’d want to know.”
    Dave said, “Huh.”
    Billy said, “Yeah.”
    Then neither of them said anything.
    It was Dave who broke the silence. “Did she make it? She must have made it.”
    Billy said, “No. She missed by four months. Three and a half, actually. Funeral’s on Thursday. I thought you’d want to know. I already said that, didn’t I?”
    Aunt Ginger wasn’t Billy’s real aunt. She was a family friend of some sort. She had a house in Rosedale, and lived there alone. When Billy slipped over the border at Niagara Falls in 1968, dressed like a priest, she invited Billy to stay with her. He moved in for the better part of seven years. Or he kept his stuff there anyway. Billy played sax and was on the road all the time.
    That didn’t bother Aunt Ginger one bit. She was a piece of business—as tough as nails, and determined to live to be a hundred. She missed by three and a half months.
    “Ninety-nine and three-quarters,” said Billy. “It would have killed her to know that.”
    “How’d she die?” said Dave.
    “Skiing accident,” said Billy.
    “Skiing?” said Dave.
    “Well, snowboarding, actually,” said Billy. “If you are going to be technical.”
    B illy and Dave sat together at the funeral, which turned out to be an altogether extraordinary affair.
    It was organized by Aunt Ginger’s only living relative—her older sister, Muriel. Muriel sat in a wheelchair at the front of the chapel as stiff as a plank. The two sisters hadn’t spoken in twenty years.
    It was Muriel who chose the reading: Raymond Chandler; Muriel who chose the decorations: balloons; and Muriel who chose the music. Muriel, who knew nothing whatsoever about music didn’t know what to say when the funeral director asked her what they should play, so she asked what most people did. The funeral director said most people chose a classical piece. Muriel named the only classical piece she knew: “Flight of the Bumblebee.”
    When the music began, everybody in the congregation looked horrified—except Billy and Dave.
    “Not bad, actually,” whispered Dave to Billy, as the piece picked up speed.
    “Perfect, actually,” said Billy, nodding. “In so many ways.”
    T he funeral was so awkward and wonderfully inappropriate that Dave couldn’t stop talking about it for days.
    “I want Zeppelin at my funeral,” said Brian. Brian is a philosophy and calculus major who works part-time at the Vinyl Cafe.
    “‘Stairway to Heaven’?” said Dave. “It’s eight minutes long. And totally obvious.”
    “Exactly,” said Brian. What about you?”
    “Never thought of it,” said Dave. “I don’t know. Uh. Don McLean. ‘American Pie.’”
    “‘The day the music died’?” said Brian. “Talk about obvious. I hate that song.”
    “I was kidding,” said Dave. “Wait a minute. Wait a minute. How about … uh … how about … Kurt Weill. ‘Mack the Knife’?”
    “That’s about a serial killer,” said Brian.
    “Right,” said Dave. “That’s not going to work. I can’t believe I never thought about this before.”
    Dave was pulling on a sweatshirt. He was heading to Woodsworth’s Books, barely a block away. He didn’t need a coat.
    “I’ll be right back,” he said.
    “How about Cat Stevens?” called Brian. “Cat Stevens’s ‘Oh Very Young.’”
    “Cat Stevens?” said Dave. He had his hand on the door handle. “I’d rather die than have Cat Stevens at my funeral.”
    “H i,” said Dave as he wandered into Dorothy’s bookstore.
    Dorothy was wearing her hair up. She was reading Gore Vidal.
    “Hi,” said Dorothy, smiling and putting her book down.
    Dave picked up a leather bookmark from a box on the counter and started fiddling with it. “Listen,” he said, “if I died tomorrow, and you were planning my funeral, what music would you choose? For my funeral.”
    Dorothy said, “Oh, no. What is it this time?”
    “No. No,”