Monday
Hi girls, Kinga-Alojzia here. It’s almost bedtime, and I’m at the kitchen table beginning our diary for the week of February 26, 2024.
This is a voice transcription. It had to be. I’ve got lots to tell you; it’d take ages to write it down. I’m whispering as a precaution against being overheard, so I’m not sure how this will turn out. I’ll check the punctuation before I close my eyes. For now I’m watching these words rushing along the screen, crashing into each other, splitting, trembling for the blink of an eye as letters are substituted. Vowels spin like roulette wheels while the program waits for me to finish pronouncing a word. It’s you I’m talking to, not my phone . . . still, it’s hard to imagine a keener listener than AI.
An example: Just today I exchanged personalized news alerts with Eva from work. We began doing that with the expectation that sooner or later the information that’s been gathered about our browsing habits will lead us to the same corners of the internet. That’s what’s supposed
to happen when an algorithm scans the online behavior of two women in their early forties who send each other copious amounts of memes, sign the same petitions, have the same reproduced map of Narnia hung up on the wall behind their desks, and pounce on the same bargains at the same times: Christmas decorations on December 26, yes. Real chocolate—that is, the French, Swiss, or Belgian stuff— the day after Saint Valentine’s, yes. Black Friday, no. But we’ve been comparing notes for seven years, and our news alerts are yet to meet in the middle. “So, what’s today’s top bulletin?” Eva asked me.
“Oh . . . these are such troubling times, Eva. The Luxury Enamel Posse has struck again.”
“What? The what?”
“The Luxury Enamel Posse,” I said, enunciating as clearly as I could.
“No, I understood that part,” Eva said. “You speak such nice Czech, Kinga— (Sorry, girls, I couldn’t resist taking this moment to imitate Eva in Condescending Mode. It’s possibly her cutest mode. I genuinely mean that, but also patronizing one’s patronizer is a victory of sorts, so just let me have it.) “You speak such nice Czech, Kinga, but what is this Posse?”
“Oh, you never heard about them? They invade your home just before dawn, fold you up into a suitcase, and fill the remaining suitcase space with loose teeth and blank checks. Then they zip up the case and leave.”
Eva began stapling forms, BAM, BAM, BAM. “
Ježíš Maria,” she said. “As if we don’t have enough on our plates.”
I raised my phone so she could see I was referring to a reputable news source. “So, ah, as it says here, this time the LEP visited a family of three in Chodov. Mother, father, ten-year-old
son, all three toothed up and checked out. The kid’s suitcase was left partially unzipped, so he managed to get out and unpack his parents, but I think gymnastics classes are the real hero here, because when you look at how they had his arms around his ankles—”
“Is that their main stomping ground, then? Chodov?” Eva was getting her hopes up, looking for ways to make this one neighborhood’s concern. She lives in Střešovice, so all she knows is the soft life. Because what’s Střešovice, really. . . If you ask me, that place isn’t much more than a garden with houses sprinkled on top.
“No,” I told her. “So far they’ve popped up all over Prague. I suppose if they stuck to one postal code they’d have been caught long ago.”
That elicited another Ježíš Maria from my work-wife, and a question: “When we say ‘crew,’ are we talking about five or six people?”
“More like thirteen or fourteen, or so their victims say. Some of them do the tooth and check stuffing, while others, ah, stand around pointing and laughing, or eating snacks they’ve actually brought with them. In a couple of instances, neighbors who think they’re hearing a house party have knocked on the front door to have a grumble, and the Crew immediately dropped everything and swooped out onto the street”—I consulted my phone—“like a flock of bats.”
“So now I’ve got to lie in bed trying to decide whether the racket from the floor above is just some selfishness I can sleep through, or if I’m listening to this Luxury Crew’s latest target and only my hostility can shorten the ordeal? It’s too exasperating. What exactly is their objective?”
“That’s what we’d all love to know, Eva. But no one even has a clue where to begin speculating.”
“All right, setting aside the checks, what about all those loose teeth? Who do they belong to?”
“That’s still under investigation.”
“They must have had at least a few of those teeth analyzed at a lab by now,” Eva said, pointing her stapler at me and narrowing her eyes.
“Apparently the teeth don’t match dental records held anywhere in the country. Look, I’m not happy about it either, but what can we do? Now: What did your phone urgently want to tell you today?”
“Oh, it’s wonderful news,” Eva said, showing me a somewhat blurred photo. Its subject, a lean and brindled rabbit, appeared to be snarling slightly. Three gold medals lay at the rabbit’s feet. You could sense that this had been a tricky photo shoot. This was a portrait of a winner who’d guarded her medals, refusing to be decorated with them and making it clear that a close-up shot was out of the question. “Marketa’s the only bunny in the entire history of the European Rabbit Hop Championships to take first place in three different events. She got gold medals for the flat track, park run, and long jump events. And the best part is, she’s Czech. A hardworking resident of Ústí nad Labem who trained every day, rain or shine.”
An inspiration to us all. Franta, Valérie, Pavlína, and I took a five-minute break and gathered around Eva’s computer to watch Marketa of the former Sudetenland conquer every obstacle set in her path. The Rabbit Hop Champion left me no room for my usual skepticism as to whether I’m dealing with a person who’s really trying their best. This Marketa was a compact unit of concentration, pounding away at the air like a fist. She was news I wouldn’t have had the faintest inkling of if not for Eva.
Copyright © 2025 by Helen Oyeyemi. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
