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

Laura shrugged and continued her discourse on passengers. Couples usually weren’t a bother, though more than once she’d questioned the wisdom of allowing certain other parties onboard. Most recently she’d looked askance at the thirteen exorcists of assorted denominations and belief systems who had all been summoned to a single address in Morpeth, Northumberland. “… And I said to Allegra, is this a train or a Tower of Babel?” But even that hadn’t been a problem; Ava hadn’t seemed at all unsettled and had particularly relished the notes and drawings they’d left in The Lucky Day’s guestbook. No spooky serenades, until us.

“Ms. De Souza’s the skittish one,” Allegra said. “I am too, these days.”

“Because of him … Karel’s son?” I asked. “He didn’t contest the will?”

“No, he didn’t. By the time the will was read, we hadn’t seen or heard from him for months. Karel’s mate Zeinab, the executor, says Přem knew about the will and that he really, really, really wasn’t happy about it. Half of me reckons that if Přem was alive, he’d have contested the will, or at least attended Karel’s funeral. The other half of me reckons Přem would wait until Ava was within spitting distance of the inheritance and then spit all over us.”

Allegra crouched down between our two chairs, Xavier’s and mine. She took my left hand, and she took Xavier’s right hand. “Otto and Xavier Shin, I have no way of telling whether either of you are lying. You could be a pair of brilliant actors with those all-this-is-completely-new-to-me looks on your faces. And I’ve put such a strange bubble around the three of us, Ava, Laura, and me, that I don’t know if we’re going to be able to live in the real world again after this. But please. Before we get going again, I need you to either swear to me that you have nothing to do with Přemysl Stojaspal, or just take your stuff and get off the train right now.”

Laura beamed at us. “If you stay, and you do anything else that might bother Ms. Kapoor, you boys will be locked up in our holding cell.”

Xavier and I crunched our lollipops as we took this in. It was too Good Cop, Bad Cop for words.

“I swear we don’t have anything to do with—er—him,” I said. “We’ll go along with you quietly from now on. Let’s not keep that doctor waiting …”

I punctuated all this with reassuring nods, and Allegra nodded each time I did. Still holding Allegra’s hand, Xavier told her the bubble she’d been building wasn’t that much stranger than life in the real world.

“For instance,” he said, “I know a guy who only claims to know how to say ‘hello,’ ‘goodbye,’ ‘thank you,’ and the days of the week in Czech. But in his sleep, he’s fluent.”

“What kind of things does he say?” Laura asked.

“It’s sort of a cascade, really. But there is one recurring chant. ‘Pojd’ blíž … pojd’ blíž …’”

“What’s that in English? Do you know?” I asked, somehow. Not sure how, what with my mouth having dried up all of a sudden.

Xavier leaned his shoulder against mine for a moment. “I checked. It means ‘Come closer.’ ”

“And do you—I mean, did you? Go closer?”

“Yeah,” Xavier said, “but he’d elbow me out of the bed. It wasn’t me he was talking to. Anyway, we’ll be out of your way now.”

The whistling began again as we were leaving. I looked back at Laura, who was saying, “No … no, no no no,” as she glanced at the wall, then at the floor. The whistler couldn’t really have stretched out full length between the train and the track, couldn’t be pushing the notes up out of their lungs and through the floor beneath us, but that’s exactly what it sounded like. Don’t worry, baby …

Xavier was already back in the postal-sorting carriage. He looked at me over his shoulder. “Aren’t you going to do something about this?”

Don’t worry, baby …

Behind us Laura and Allegra stomped on the linoleum, Allegra’s trainers sparkling as she raised thunder.

“You try if you want,” I said, shaking my head and brushing past him. He grabbed my arm and pushed me back into the gallery car, so hard I almost lost my footing. “Sort this out, Otto,” he said.

The connecting door closed, and I pressed the button to open it again. The lightbulb rocked back and forth, splashing shadows across the walls of the gallery car. Xavier stood in full sunlight, resting his elbow on the corner of a wooden letterbox, and he won our staring match easily.

He didn’t repeat himself—not aloud, anyway, but I still muttered, “As you command …”

Don’t worry, baby …

Just the chorus, and the whistler was giving it everything they had.

“Don’t go anywhere,” I said. He said he wouldn’t, the door closed again, and I turned back to Laura and Allegra. They were beside themselves with baffled fury, but their stomping had become rhythmic. I suppose that’s what happens when you keep it up long enough … rage turns into a soft-shoe shuffle. I walked around them, calling their names until they looked at me, then, locking eyes with Allegra first, I held my right hand up, my index finger touching my thumb, and I began to whistle in time with our unseen entertainer, in a lower note so that a harmony sounded through the carriage. As below, so above. Allegra was much better at whistling than I was, so it was a relief when, after about three seconds, during which she looked more likely to burst into tears than give in and be mesmerized, she took up the notes and ran with them.

Don’t worry, baby …

When I broke eye contact, she lifted her gaze to the blank canvas that we said we’d seen Ava in. Laura took longer to enlist. About fifteen seconds. She was badly off-key, but dedicated.

I’d guessed that the whistler was more of a soloist than an ensemble player, and he proved