Till Death Do Us

THE LOVES OF YOUNG PHINEAS STIFFS

(An exhaustive and yet depressingly brief history)

Dear reader, at this point it will probably come as no surprise that despite an abundance of attractive features, both physical and personality-wise, Phineas's relations with the opposite sex had been neither numerous nor particularly successful. In part this has been the result of his innate shyness, but it is also the result of several pubescent incidents of emotional scarring caused when – after gargantuan effort to work up the nerve to chat with a young woman – the question of his last name arose ...

For even though Phineas's family has always been well-respected.

Has always been 100 percent honest.

Has always been respectful, decent, and polite.

Has never, ever, taken financial advantage of the grieving and devastated when they are at their most vulnerable.

Still, in Gravesend the name Stiffs has always meant one thing, and one thing only.

"Not one of those Stiffs, are you?" each young lady in question would inevitably ask.

At which point Phineas would feel morally obligated to confess that yes, he was indeed ... one of those Stiffs.

The result was almost always immediate and catastrophic rejection.

But, dear reader, honestly, how could it possibly have been otherwise? What 13- or 14-year-old female could cope with the idea of her friends knowing she was interested in a boy whose family spent most of their waking hours in close proximity to dead bodies? A boy who, if further pressed, would have had to admit that he himself had – "eeeew!" – actually touched a dead body!

(Phineas had, if the truth were to be entirely known, touched quite a few. From an early age, all members of the Stiffs family were required to assist in funeral preparations).

Having been thus scarred by constant rejection, the pubescent Phineas had even tried lying once, and had been quite painfully humiliated when the young woman learned the truth from another source. And hence he'd come to the demoralized conclusion that no matter what he did or said, sooner or later young ladies would always find out that he was one of those Stiffs, and automatically reject him.

But now something had quite possibly changed. For perhaps the first time in his life, Phineas had reason to believe that this might not be the case with Miss Theodosia Boudreaux. After all, was she not betrothed to someone who owned a chain of discount crematoriums? Would this not impute a certain acceptance for his line of work?

To his mind, even under the influence of infatuated hope, this made sense.

There remained just that one small hitch. Come next Wednesday, Miss Theodosia Boudreaux, whom he didn't know at all, evidently planned to marry someone else.