I nodded, frantic. I couldn’t think.
We stared at each other, my heart thundering under his palm, and then Geden took his hand away and used it to open my door.
“Good-bye, Roxana. Thank you for a nice afternoon.”
My walk back was an act. I was a woman walking back to her apartment. I may have been out for a pleasure stroll, or I may have been out running errands, but I certainly wasn’t driving to another town to have lunch with a man I barely knew. If the occasional passing Danes—two women wearing identical high blonde ponytails and gray fleece pullovers, the invalids outside their care home, an elderly bicyclist in head-to-toe spandex—noticed or appreciated my performance, I couldn’t say. It was for my own benefit that I walked with such measured, ordinary steps, for my edification that I swung my arms as if nothing could alter my trajectory. I needed to summon as much normalcy as I could. I had never stayed out so long before. Søren might be waiting for me in the apartment, sitting very still and upright at the dinner table, his elbows neat right angles on its surface, waiting for me to explain. What would I say?
But it was the same apartment I had left that morning, clean and spare and empty. I wandered through its rooms, a ghost, until there was no part of it I had not visited or checked, and then I went into the bedroom and slept until I heard the key in the lock.
The next day, I wrote to my parents.
Dear Mama and Dad,
Today we saw some museums and then afterward went to eat. Sylvie had a headache and stayed home. I hope she’s okay. I had onion soup.
That day, Dad responded immediately. What if he suggested we talk on the phone? Wouldn’t he be able to tell from the area code that I wasn’t in France? The prospect scared me, but I also kind of wanted it to happen. To come clean, for someone to know.
Hey now, Roxie, that doesn’t sound so bad. Send some pictures!
I hadn’t taken any pictures, not one. What was there to photograph? The apartment? The pond in the park? I wrote back quickly, ignoring his request.
They took us to a super old library where we saw some medieval books. Kind of boring but cool I guess.
Mama wrote back to that one. When I saw her e-mail address, I expected a missive about appreciating my unusual opportunity. But she didn’t chastise me.
Are you homesick? Try to enjoy the time you have left. Not too much longer now.
I checked my return ticket. I had ten days left in Denmark. What had seemed a comfortably interminable span of time now felt abrupt and sudden. My whole world had slowed, become an orb of Juttish amber, the earwax-colored stuff all the design stores on Farsø’s main street pushed. Every conversation with Søren now held the same metamorphosing silence. We ate dinner at the table in front of the television now.
How could I go home in ten days? What story would I tell?
9
THE DAY OF THE FIGHT BEGAN LIKE ANY OTHER. I woke to the sound of Søren making coffee in the kitchen, got out of bed, and found him wiping the grounds into the sink.
“Hi.” I yawned.
Søren frowned. “Put on some clothes, Roxana. You’ll catch cold.”
Even a week earlier I might have pointed out that it was quite hot outside, that we were inside, that the blinds were drawn. But that day I just silently returned to the bedroom and stepped into my pajamas. He didn’t want to see my body.
When I came back to the kitchen, he was packing his bag. By the time I poured my coffee, he was out the door.
“Have a nice day,” I told his back.
I took my coffee to bed and undressed.
Before Søren, porn had held an illicit glamour, a peek behind the curtain, an insight into the fate I still awaited to befall me. Even the idea of watching it brushed up close to the place next to Mama’s bedroom vampire, just this side of exciting. But increasingly now I needed it in order to feel anything at all when I masturbated. To dream myself desired.
I opened Søren’s computer and pulled up College Teen Girls Fuck a Hard Cock. They were rail thin, with tiny swelling breasts. I wished I had picked a video with women whose bodies were more like mine. But the search terms alone were depressing: Chubby, MILF, thick, BBW, mom.
I didn’t want to watch porn. I wanted to watch a movie of my fantasies. A man’s hand moving across a woman’s stomach, a woman’s toes curling against a man’s furred thighs, two women’s faces pressed together, two men fused in closed-eye ecstasy. That diffuse, floating wanting. To be able to imagine being wanted back.
I pressed Play. The bedroom was white and spare. The guy wasn’t that bad, youngish, gentle enough to start. The college teen girls pressed their faces together and licked each other and the man too and eventually fucked the hard cock, and I came with my hand wedged between my thighs, shrouded in a horrible boredom. The video played on, outlasting, as they often did, my excitement. I put my hand on the trackpad to close out the window, an act that always felt encouragingly virtuous, like sweeping up after myself. Then one of the college teens looked directly at the camera with bright green eyes, her long blue-black hair thick and straight as uncooked spaghetti, her eyebrows sharp as lines drawn in permanent marker. I paused the video, disbelieving, almost happy.
Sylvie?
Once I had woken to the sound of Sylvie weeping.
She had kicked off all the covers and stripped off her nightgown in the night. I admired the shape of her body, her flat torso, her small breasts and tiny dark areolae, the wide jutting V of her hipbones. Her long smooth thighs. I pressed the pad of my thumb to her tears. Brought it to my mouth, licked them away. Asleep, it seemed she suffered a grief locked away from me. In the window clouds moved, setting the moonlight full on us.
I turned my back to her, pressed my hands between my thighs in prayer position, aroused. All night I dreamed of pressing my face into her pubis, so intensely that when I woke I feared I had actually done it. But she was up, already dressed, and had cut a mango for breakfast.
Of course it wasn’t Sylvie. This girl had a thicker jaw, a pointier chin, acne under the pancake makeup on her neck where I knew Sylvie’s skin to be pure and clear as mountain water. I was drawn back into their saga of sucking and fucking, those two brunettes and their lucky blond paramour. I read through the tags on the video, looking for the actress’s name. Estrellyta Jackson she was called, like a villain in a cut-rate western. I found other clips of her and came until I lost count, until my legs ached and a dull pain throbbed the base of my neck. I pressed past the pain and came, a little mouth opening and closing in my mind. Black space, white space. I felt nauseated. Her pink darting tongue. The skin between her breasts. Beneath her eyes. Sadness bore down on me, dark and full.
I opened another window and began.
Dear Sylvie,
I miss you so much. I’m sorry I haven’t written to you this whole time.
I have a lot to tell you and I don’t know if you will want to hear it but here goes. When I got to Copenhagen,
I met a guy named Søren who works for International Abroad Experiences. We hit it off pretty well and—
The front door slammed.
“Roxana?” Søren’s voice echoed down the hallway. “Little Roxana, where are you?”
I thought about leaping out of bed, pulling on my pajamas, closing the computer. First I had to clear the browsing history. But I didn’t want to put on my pajamas and get out of bed and pretend I had been doing something productive and useful. I wanted to finish writing to Sylvie. I wanted to tell her everything. About Søren and Geden.
So I let him find me like that, in bed with his computer. One of the browser windows still full of Estrellyta’s charms. In the other, I continued my e-mail.
—and basically I know this is crazy but I kind of ran away with him. To Farsø, a town in Jutland, a part of northern Denmark. It’s been interesting but mainly—
Søren came into the bedroom. I didn’t look up.
“What are you doing?”
“Writing an e-mail.”
/> He pulled away the crumpled duvet. “Are you ill? Why are you in bed? Why are you naked?”
I rolled my eyes. “Because I didn’t want to wear clothes.”
“But what’s going on here?” Søren’s voice rose. “Why are you lying around like this in the middle of the day?”
He had no idea what I did with my days, I realized. I could be here, naked in bed, at lunch with Geden, on a plane back to America for all he cared. I looked at his face, so warped by disappointment. “Was there something you wanted me to do?”
He shook his head. “No, Roxana, your time is your own, of course, but I guess I do expect you to do something with it! Does that make me a bad person?”
I returned to my e-mail. Søren stood over me, watching.
It’s been interesting but mainly kind of good. I sure have had a lot of experiences that I would never have imagined—
It was starting to sound like an application essay. I chewed my index finger, trying to figure out how to fix it.
It’s been interesting. I have had a lot of experiences that I would never have imagined—
Søren lifted the computer away from me.
“Hey!”
“What are you doing?” He balanced the machine on one palm, clicking through the browser windows. “Watching pornography?”
He pronounced “pornography” in a prim, offended voice. I couldn’t help it. I laughed.
“Why is this funny?” Søren closed all my windows, including the e-mail.
I fell backward and sprawled across the bed so he had no choice but to see me. I thrust my chest out, folded my arms behind my head. Spread my aching legs. Smiled up at him wincing.
“You’re funny.”
“Put on some clothes. For fanden”—Søren averted his eyes—”you’ll—”
“I won’t. I won’t catch a cold. It’s summer.”
He let out a disgusted sigh. “Roxana.” He walked out of the room.
I followed him down the hallway and into the living room, shouting at his back. “Why do you always look away from me? Do you hate having me here so much?”
He raised his eyes to me, and for a moment I thought it would be more of the same—a dodge paired with recrimination, a handspring out of the conversation, a shrug at what I was trying to say to him. Instead he looked enraged. His voice crescendoed.
“You have no idea what it is like to live with you,” he said. “All day and all night, all I hear, all I think about, all I dream is how much I am disappointing you. Because of something I am supposed to automatically do without thinking. Because I am a man and it is my duty. But I cannot and I am worthless because of it. I feel your disappointment all the time. I am never not thinking about it. It makes me sick to think of it now. Sex. I feel fucking sick when I think about sex. You have made it that way for me.” His voice an inferno. “Do you want me to take one of your country’s pills to make me have an erection? Do you want me to pretend to feel something I do not? Do you not ever think of anything else? I have never been made to feel as vile, as much like a failure as you make me feel. God, I hate the way you have made me feel! I hate sex!”
Søren was wailing now, braced in a wide-legged pose, his arms raised to the ceiling. I crawled backward from him, curled into a corner. Did he really want me to feel sorry for him? I felt faint. My heart raced. There’s nothing to be afraid of, I told myself, but it was a lie.
A sound was starting in my chest.
“But you brought me here,” I said, already sobbing so hard I couldn’t breathe. “I met you and we had sex and I loved it. I loved being with you. I loved the way your hands felt and you looked at me. I had never experienced anything like that before. You brought me here—”
“That,” Søren said, “was a mistake.”
My nausea pitched. “Fuck you,” I managed and launched myself at him. He raised his hands. For a moment I thought he would strike me, but instead he caught me and sat on the floor.
I settled heavily on his lap. The bleats rose around us, chiming bells. Hwuh hwuh hwuh. I couldn’t move. Søren stroked my back rhythmically, the way one might an overtired child. The bleat settled like a rock in my stomach. Hwuh hwuh. Hwuh hwuh hwuh hwuh.
His hand was a tide, washing me away.
Do you have a sex drive? Do you know what it’s like to be wanted and not wanted? Do you know the difference? Do you care? Maybe these are obvious questions, but now I want to ask them of everyone I meet.
Do you know what it’s like not to be wanted? Do you think it is always the man who does the wanting? That women are the always-wanted gatekeepers of sex?
Or maybe you are a woman, too. What about you? What do you think?
You have felt the slick seam between your legs, dividing you into halves. The place you go in and see. You know. Where the answers live.
I held my position in Søren’s lap for a long time, shifting and turning. A deep quiet drifted in and the room receded, leaving me gray.
I pressed my face into his jean-covered thigh and inhaled. Then I turned my head so my entire face was buried in Søren’s crotch. His faintly soapy scent seemed to reach me from a great distance. A good memory.
Ever so slightly, Søren recoiled.
I sat up and hardened my naked body into an imitation of his rigid posture. How long did we sit there, staring at the black television, our reflections frozen on its slick surface?
Eventually Søren roused himself and went into the kitchen. I stared dully at the wall above the television with unfocused eyes, hearing the sounds from the other room as a series of disconnected cues. The light switched on. The cabinet opened, the glasses clinked, the cabinet closed. The sink turned on, the sink turned off. The light switched off.
Dark. We were in darkness, even amid all that northern light.
He brought me a glass of water I took carefully as medicine and stood drinking his own in tiny sips until it was gone. Then he took both glasses back into the kitchen and sat beside me.
“Let’s get high,” Søren said, not looking at me.
He rolled a joint with medical intensity. I held it to my mouth as he lit it, seeking his eyes, but I couldn’t catch them.
After the joint, we smoked the bowl out, and when it was done Søren repacked it and when that was done he repacked it again. Then he went into the kitchen and poured us each a little sharp one. It was ice cold and burned on the way down. Time loosened and thinned.
I handed him the glass. “Another.”
We drank schnapps until the bottle was almost empty, and then we smoked more hash to cut the burn. I liked to hold the smoke in my lungs, liked the idea of them convulsing, those little translucent white bags beating like wings. Washed them down with more schnapps for their effort.
Søren watched me cough.
“Do you want some water?”
I shook my head. “I’ll get it myself.”
When I stood my vision swam with black. I felt so dizzy. And I couldn’t see. I took a few steps forward, expecting it to clear. It didn’t.
“I can’t see,” I whispered. Søren didn’t hear or didn’t care.
My eyes were sparks swabbed with dark. I turned and turned but only saw the edges of things. Never a whole thing. I put my hand on the counter for balance but it wasn’t there. I took a step forward, into a corner.
“I can’t see!” I shouted.
“Calm down,” Søren said from the couch.
“I can’t! I can’t!” I rushed back in the direction of his voice, tripped, and fell face-first onto the wood floor. A yellow rose of pain grew on my left shoulder. I wanted to cry but I was too high. Sounds came through the floor, movement below. I pulled my hands up to my face and stroked it, like a lover. Pretty girl, I thought. Good girl, pretty girl.
Søren was laughing at me, I realized. A tiny titter like falling rain.
“Come on, little Roxana.” The floorboards creaked under his feet, his body was a system of movement in the dark. “I think it’s time for bed.”
I woke and blinked my dry eyes, still stoned and drunk. The sun had finally gone down, leaving looming lavender shapes in the windows. I cursed myself for waking, wanting to return to the dream. And then I realized that a man was still hard against me. In his sleep Søren was moving against me softly, groping my breasts, pressing his erection into my hip. He raised his unconscious face to me, moved in for a kiss. My eyes filled with tears. I rose and walked into the living room and undressed in the deep shadow in front of the couch. Naked, I stretched out on the floor, my pointed toes reaching for the orangey rectangle of light from the big front window. I extended my arms over my head, tried to make my round soft body long and hard as a sword, wishing Geden to me. He had come once before. He would again. I got to my feet and went to the glass.
Outside was the street as it had ever been, a place that did not matter and would have remained forever unremarkable to me if not for the fact that Geden had once stood on it. I thought of that moment, and then I felt sad that the street was not charged with Søren’s presence, that we had not shared more happy moments. I had a sudden flash of him emerging up the street through falling snow, carrying a tower of brightly wrapped presents—a joyful holiday moment we’d never share. Had I failed? Even then the possibility of happiness with Søren felt near and distant both, a room I could enter if only I could find the door.
I shook my head and stepped back into the shadow. Found the pipe and relit it, sank deeper into the dark. The room boomeranged around me, up and down, purple angles, creaking light. Every sound was a terror and every shift the emergence of Søren’s face. I kept seeing them, these men I’d given myself over to.
I sat on the couch. I’d get up in just a few minutes and get dressed and go out and find Geden. I’d go to the park in the night and track the treads of his truck in the gravel. I’d follow and trace and know and see him. I’d go and go with the moonlight to guide me until the road took me to his door. I’d knock and he’d open and it would begin. I would end this painful thing and begin something else. One last trip and I’d be out. The humid night air in my lungs. I found my way there. Geden opened the door and opened his mouth. We fell and did not come up for air.
Open Me Page 18