David Nickle: The 'Geisters

Was it terror, or was it love? It would be a long time before Ann LeSage could decide. For most of her life, the two feelings were so similar as to be indistinguishable.

It was easy to mix them up.

“Family, now… family is far away,” said Michael Voors, and as he said it—perhaps because of the way he said it—Ann felt a pang, a prescience, that something was not right with him. That perhaps she should leave now. Until that moment, she’d thought the lawyer with the little-boy eyes was the perfect date: perfect, at least, by her particular and admittedly peculiar standards.

To look at, Michael was a just-so fellow: athletic, though not ostentatiously so; taller than she, but only by a few inches; dirty blond hair, not exactly a mop of it, but thick enough in his early thirties that it would probably stay put until his forties at least. He’d listened, asked questions—the whole time regarding Ann steadily, and with confidence.

Steadiness and confidence were first among the things Ann found attractive in Michael, from the night of the book launch. He’d approached her, holding her boss’s anthology of architectural essays, Suburban Flights , and asked her: “Is it any good?” and she’d said: “It’s any good,” and turned away.

He hadn’t been thrown off his game.

She had been enchanted by this easy confidence. After everything that had happened in her life—everything that had formed her—it was a quality that she discovered she craved.

But now, that confidence crumbled, leaving a man that seemed… older. And somehow… not right.

It hadn’t taken much. Just the simple act of asking: “What about you? Where’s your family from?”

He tapped his fingers and looked away. His suddenly fidgeting hands cast about and found the saltshaker, a little crystal globe the size of a ping-pong ball. His eyes were momentarily lost too, blinking away from Ann and looking out the window of the 54th-floor view of Toronto’s financial district, a high hall of mirrors up the canyon of Bay Street. They were in Canoe, a popular spot for lunch and cocktails among the better-paid canyon dwellers. It should have been home turf for him.

“Just my father now. In Pretoria. But—” and he twirled the near-spherical glass saltshaker, so it spun like a fat little dancer “—I don’t hear from him. We have had—you might say a falling out.”

“A falling out?”

“We are very different men.”

Their waiter slowed as he passed the table, took in Michael’s low-grade agitation and met Ann’s eye just an instant before granting the tiniest, most commiserative of nods: Poor you.

He picked up his pace toward the party of traders clustered at the next table, and Ann suppressed a smile. She was sorely tempted to stop him and order a big, boozy cocktail. But it was early—in the day, and in the relationship—for that kind of thing. Particularly because the way things were going, she didn’t think she’d stop at one.

“He is an Afrikaner,” continued Michael. “You understand? Not just by birth. By allegiance. When the ANC won the elections in 1994… He wasn’t a bigot—isn’t a bigot, I mean. But he’d seen the things that the African National Congress could do—the business with the tires…”

“The tires?” Ann said, after a heartbeat.

Now Michael made a half-wise smile, set the saltshaker aside. His hand must have been trembling: the shaker kept rocking.

“My God,” he said, “you’d think I’d been into the wine already. I’m sorry. They would put tires around fellows they thought were traitors, and light them on fire, and watch them burn to death in the streets of Soweto. And then they became the government. You can imagine how he felt.”

“I remember that,” said Ann. She nodded in sympathy. That was real terror, now. In the face of it, her own inexplicable instant of fear vanished. “I was small. But didn’t Nelson Mandela have something to do with that?”

“His wife. Winnie. Maybe. Probably. Who knows?”

Ann smiled reassuringly and they sat quiet a moment; just the chatter in the restaurant, a burst of boozy mirth from the day traders; the pool-hall swirling of the saltshaker on the glass tabletop.

The waiter scudded near and inquired: “Need a minute?”

“Just a minute,” she said, looking at her menu.

Michael studied his too, and without looking up, said: “Share an appetizer?”

“Is there real truffle in the wild mushroom soup?”

“You want to share soup?”

“Is there a law says I can’t?”

That, thought Ann as she regarded Michael, was how you kept it going on a second date: make a little joke about the appetizer. Don’t talk international politics. For that matter, don’t start asking a lot of questions about how international politics and tires kept father and son apart for so long.

In fact, don’t start talking about family at all. Because as grim as the tale of Michael Voors’ own family turmoils might be—if Michael then started asking after the LeSages, and she was compelled to tell that horrific story…

Well. He was already thrown enough to fidget—she could hear the rolling sound of the saltshaker again.

“What about the salmon tartar?” she asked before he could answer. She allowed herself a smirk: why, Mr. Voors was actually blushing! “We don’t have to share soup.”

“No, I—” he was frowning now, and looking down at the table. “My goodness,” he said softly.

“What is it?”

Ann lowered the menu, and looked down at the table. And froze.

The saltshaker was dancing.

It twirled in a slow loop across Michael’s place setting, rolling along the edge where the curve met its base. Then it rocked, clicking as the base touched the tabletop, and rocked the other side, turning back. Michael held his menu in his left hand—his right was splayed on the tabletop near the fork. His pale cheeks were bright red as he stared. First at the saltshaker, then up at Ann.

“Isn’t that incredible?”

Michael set the menu down, well away from the perambulating saltshaker.

“Incredible,” said Ann quietly, not taking her eyes off the shaker as it continued to rock.

The Insect , she thought, horrified.

It was back.

No, not back .

Really, it had never left.

Ann wanted to reach out—grab the shaker in her fist, stop it physically. But she knew better. Already, she could hear the rattling of glasses at the long bar. Two tables down, one of the traders commented that the air-conditioning must have kicked in. One of his lunch-mates asked him if he were a woman and everyone laughed. Michael’s eyes were wide as he watched the saltshaker.

Ann reached under her chair and lifted her handbag. “Don’t touch it,” she said.

He looked at her and asked, “Why not?”

“I’m going to the ladies room,” she said and stood. “Now please—don’t touch it.”

Ann drew a long breath, and pushed her chair back to the table. Michael didn’t stop her, and he didn’t try to touch the spinning saltshaker either.

Their waiter, carrying a tray of two martinis and a fluted glass of lager, stepped past her—and without her having to ask, directed her with a free hand to the restrooms. “You have to go outside,” he said. “By the elevators. Just past them.”

Ann smiled politely and, shoulders only slightly hunched, head bowed only the tiniest, hurried between the tables, out the doorway and past the elevators—and there to the women’s washroom where she finally skulked inside. It was as safe there as anywhere, now.