Peaces by Helen Oyeyemi (best books to read for self improvement .txt) 📕

He balanced his e-reader atop the “V” of his crossed ankles, reached for the vodka bottle, and poured another two shots. He’s the only other person I know who can read, drink, and converse at the same time, and his drunken TED Talks take on a different character depending on what he’s reading. What I really want is to get him sloshed when he’s on a Wodehouse jag, to see whether he leans Jeeves-ward or Wooster-ward. But that evening it was The Brothers Karamazov. We were playing a drinking game within parameters he’d devised but hadn’t shared with me. I just took a shot whenever he did. Whatever it was we were drinking about, he seemed to find it in every page. As if that wasn’t enough, it felt like the speed of the train was accelerating the effects of the alcohol. I was leaving the pleasantly drunk phase and approaching nausea. Oh, to be like Xavier, Spera, or other friends who treat throwing up as a kind of debauchery tax that they can quickly pay before getting straight back to the merrymaking …

I downed the shot Xavier held out to me, swallowed hard, then took both our empty glasses and stacked them over the lid of the vodka bottle. I put the bottle out of easy reach, did the same thing with Xavier’s e-reader, then rolled over, gathering him into my arms and nipping his earlobe when he grumbled that all I was going to do was nod off.

“Let’s get out at the next station,” Xavier said.

“Even if it’s the sort of station only freight trains stop at and we have to wait days ’til we can hitch a ride back?”

“Even if by the time we get back Do Yeon-ssi’s signed the house and our lives over to our friend Yuri. Let’s get off this train.”

“Huh. Mind telling me why?”

“At the risk of sounding like a thirty-something-looking teenager on Dawson’s Creek, I just really need to know where we are.”

“Well … you’re not asking too much there.”

I thought, but didn’t say, that there was something vaguely compulsive about the way that when we were together we thought and talked about anything and everything except the train we were on. But that was probably our issue, not the train’s.

Instead I told him: “You’re Joey, I think. Always had a soft spot for that girl.”

“Say that again? Couldn’t understand you, since you’re already slurring …”

“Shhhh … you’re slurring. I’m Pacey.”

“You wish,” he said. “You’re Dawson. Don’t fight it.”

“Hey, I’ve got a train story too …”

“Is it from today?”

It was from the year before, when Árpád and I had attended an international mesmerism convention in Springfield, Illinois. The conference had ended, and we were on our way to New York to visit a cousin of mine who’d adopted one of Árpád’s littermates. Ours was a pretty abstracted carriage. Everybody was reading or responding to written messages on phones and tablets, and Árpád was very still in the seat opposite me, wearing the special floppy-brimmed hat that slows him down while those members of the public unused to mongooses get comfortable with the idea of him. The brim of that hat is embroidered all around the inside: birds and frogs flying and hopping across a grassy vista. While Árpád was intently regarding all this, a couple boarded at Chicago’s Union Station and sat across the aisle from us, both of them fresh-faced, long-haired, extensively tattooed, and engrossed in a conversation they seemed to have begun hours before. The more talkative half of the couple was an actor I recognised at once but pretended not to. The show she was on was still somewhat under the radar. Season one had been streamable for three months or so, and the buzz around it was only just building among those who’d already binged all the big shows and were searching really hard for alternatives to reruns of Friends. The actor’s partner was a good listener, but aside from that, a mostly unknown element. The actor had hit a career speed bump, you see. She’d been the show’s co star but wouldn’t be returning for season two. Someone named Carla (the actor’s agent, presumably) had told her it was because she was too pretty. Viewers didn’t find her relatable. The actor knew there must be more to it than that; she just didn’t know what. She was also strangely content with the way she looked, so undergoing any kind of procedure was out of the question. I say “strangely content” because how often do you come across someone who doesn’t want to reduce this or increase that?

At any rate, the actor was saying she’d just try to get as much voice work as she could. That way, even if it took a really long time to become relatable, even if it took so long that her looks expired, at least she’d have developed as an actor. Having made this statement of intent, she laid her head on her partner’s shoulder and submitted to her protective embrace. After a moment, the partner cleared her throat … Uh, I think you’re right, hun. It’s not the way Carla says it is. Maybe I should have said something earlier, maybe not, but … this could all be down to that online petition.

What petition! Show me.

The man in the seat next to mine had been eavesdropping as hard as I was, but he didn’t know the actor’s name or what show she appeared in. He googled season 2 + petition, couldn’t find anything, and wordlessly acquiesced as I took the phone from him and supplied the missing terms that made the query fruitful. We studied the petition together. The number of signees correlated with the show’s just-shy-of-respectable viewing figures at the time. The signees demanded that the “too pretty” actor’s lines and scenarios be given to her co lead, who played an ugly version of her. The tremendous attractiveness of the ugly co lead was a topic