Page 5 of I'll Be Waiting

What do you mean Ouija boards aren’t traditional spiritualism? You’re saying they were created by a novelty company for parlor games? Fie on you and your easily confirmable data.

Once the candles are lit, we hold hands and Leilani sends out an invitation for Anton to join us. It’s a very pretty invitation, all curlicues of words, verbal calligraphy that would have Anton scratching his head: Does she mean me? What does she want me to do? I don’t get it, Nic.

Just say something, damn it. Tell a joke and get the punch line wrong, as usual. Whistle Green Day and My Chemical Romance songs so off-key that only I recognize them.

Just say hi.

That’s all, Anton.

Say hello.

Tell me you are out there, somewhere.

Tell me your last words weren’t blind and empty reassurances.

Tell me youarewaiting.

As Leilani continues, I let the sarcasm and cynicism roll off me. There’s no point in asking for help contacting Anton if I refuse to listen.

Find my breath. Clear my mind. Focus on the sound of Leilani’s voice. Forget what she’s saying and focus on her voice, low and rhythmic.

It only takes a few moments, and then I am where I need to be. Calm and just slightly outside of myself. Aware of the heat of Shania’s hand, of the smell of candle wax cutting through the incense, the tick-tick-tick of…

Is that a metronome? I peek. Yes, there’s an antique metronome by Leilani’s elbow. That makes me smile and relax a little more. Anton had a metronome on his desk. It was his form of meditation, for times when his work as a mathematician got too stressful.

I loved to sit in his office and start up the metronome while I waited for him to solve whatever problem gripped his mind.

Tick-tick-tick.

I can see him hunched over his pages, scribbling furiously, reading glasses on.

Reading glasses before forty?I say.That’s what you get for straining to read teeny-tiny numbers without good lighting.

That’s a myth, Nic.

Mmm, not so sure.

He’s writing and frowning and writing more. There’s a laptop and a desktop computer nearby, but he likes to work by hand.

Luddite.

Tick-tick-tick.

Hair falls over his broad forehead. I catch a few silver hairs and smile smugly. About time. I’ve had them since I was twenty-five. Never dyed them out. I’m too damn proud of having lived to see gray hair.

Anton rests the tip of his pencil in his mouth.

Going to get lead poisoning,I say.

The amount of lead absorbed—

Don’t math on me, Novak.

I smile and keep reaching for that image of him, constructing it until I see the whole of his office, right down to—

“Janica.”

The name whispers up from my left, and I stiffen. That’s not my name. It used to be, once upon a time, but it’s not now, and no one in this room knows me as anything but Nicola.

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