Peaces, Helen Oyeyemi [best life changing books TXT] 📗

for another time. Us normals are too grotesque to be seen in public, so we’d better just stay at home watching TV … Isn’t that what such casting choices tell us? The petition saved all that for season 3 and simply argued that the silliest thing about season 1 was the division of this particular role between two actors when one of them had sufficient range to play both an ugly and a pretty version of the same person without a single costume alteration. Ostensibly, someone somewhere in the decision-making chain had listened to the viewers and had left it to the too-pretty actor’s agent to let her down as gently as possible. Looking around the carriage at my fellow eavesdroppers, I could see which side each passenger was on. It was America, so people spoke up too, stopping on their way to or from the toilets or the restaurant car to express outrage at the turns mass entertainment was taking (“What’s next; will they want to decide what does and does not happen in the story? Those losers should just stick to Choose Your Own Adventure books!”), or to tell the pretty actor they would sign a counter-petition in her favour. The actor hadn’t realised how loudly she’d been talking, and she blushed all the way down to her ankles. I got her autograph to cover for my own frequent staring. It wasn’t the actor I’d grown interested in, but the woman she was with. This companion’s tactful and compassionate utterances indicated she was everything you could wish for in a life partner. Except that she was the very person who’d started the online petition. She must’ve brought it up because she couldn’t quite bear going altogether incognito; it’s very hard not to resist boasting about your accomplishments. I can’t prove anything, I’m going on micro-expressions alone … but don’t forget I’m hyperaware of those, having been trained to focus on them. So I stand by my observation. As we all filed off the train at Penn Station, I caught the actor’s eye, gave her a bearer-of-the-gladdest-tidings-type smile and predicted that everything was going to be all right. I did the same to her partner. Both paused as they briefly contemplated battle plans, then both smiled back at me. Affirmation bright and dark. “Yes, it will, won’t it?” the actor said, and her partner said: “Absolutely!”

I doubt I managed to put much of this across to Xavier. I could hear myself getting very mumbly, so maybe all Xavier picked up was “actor—petition—ankles—partner—” before I was fast asleep and he rejoined the Karamazov fraternity.

6.

The train stopped somewhere in the night. We’d left the compartment blinds up, and dozens of lamplit faces filed past our window. The station lay in darkness behind them, so it looked as if these people had burst out of the night itself with plans and schemes. Top of the list: getting everything spick-and-span, as quickly as possible. They were like a horde of sprinters carrying brooms, mops, buckets, and all manner of brushes. Laura of the sauna cubicle was standing on the station platform too, frowning as she tapped away at her tablet screen. Just as it seemed she’d be trampled, the throng broke formation, dispersing, nodding, and calling out greetings as they passed her. I waited until I was sure that they’d bypassed our carriage entirely, then drew the blinds, only momentarily considering shaking Xavier awake and reminding him he’d wanted to get out at the very next station.

Did we stop again, just before dawn? I heard the door to Clock Carriage open and close; that was what woke me up. A visit from the library car. I looked out of the window. We were still in motion, shuffling along a hilly avenue of trees. I shouldn’t have been able to see that … I clearly recalled drawing the blinds.

Xavier opened one eye and whispered, “Are we there yet? Any lakes? How about mountains?”

I drew the blinds (again?) and nestled up against him, kissing his mouth as it curved into a smile. He went back to sleep, and I would have too if I hadn’t glanced up at the luggage rack and seen the tip of Árpád’s nose quivering between his suitcase and Xavier’s. He’d concealed himself there so that anyone entering the compartment from the corridor wouldn’t notice him until he’d sunk his claws into their head. We watched and waited, Árpád and I, my eyes on him, his eyes on the corridor, and then we heard a low-pitched, mewling growl—part fear, part fury, all mongoose. Árpád sprang to the floor and lay there in a muddle with his feet on his head. The call sounded again, this time much closer, and coming from someone who stood half a metre or so above the ground. It was Chela, huddled against the glass of the compartment door. She’d run to us. Well, to Árpád, really. I got up and let her in. I don’t believe the two of them had met before, but there was no time for introductions … she ran in and tucked her lithe form in behind his greater bulk, a linking of forms that seemed to embolden them both. Their eyes flamed. Xavier sat up, looked over at the pair, blinked several times, and started to speak, but I’d already gone to see what Chela was running from, so I didn’t hear what he said.

Someone was standing at the end of the carriageway, holding an extra-large dip net. The bag part was easily Chela- or Árpád-sized. And this someone wasn’t Laura or Ava—initially I thought it might have been Allegra, the part-time passenger and part-time driver I’d been told about but hadn’t seen, but … if anything, seeing this person was like seeing that figure waving from the barbed-wire cage as the train went by. I knew I was looking at someone, but I couldn’t make out any features, no matter how I squinted. Nonsense; they’re only a