Open Me

Lisa Locascio

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780802128072
• eBook ISBN: 9780802165701
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Literatura general

"This steamy and intellectual debut novel is an ode to the female body, and to a young woman discovering the potential boundlessness of her pleasure."—Refinery 29, "The Sexiest Books You'll Ever Have the Pleasure of Reading"
Roxana Olsen has always dreamed of going to Paris, and after high school graduation finally plans to travel there on a study abroad program—a welcome reprieve from the bruising fallout of her parents' divorce. But a logistical mix-up brings Roxana to Copenhagen instead, where she's picked up at the airport by Søren, a twenty-eight-year-old guide who is meant to be her steward. 
Instantly drawn to one another, Roxana and Søren's relationship turns romantic, and when he asks Roxana to accompany him to a small coastal town for the rest of the summer, she doesn't hesitate to accept. There, Roxana's world narrows and expands as she experiences fantasy, ritual, and the pleasures of her body, a thrilling realm of erotic and domestic bliss. Seduced by this newfound connection, Roxana doesn't object when Søren requests that she spend her days alone in the apartment while he goes to the library to work. 
As their relationship deepens, Søren's temperament darkens, and Roxana finds herself increasingly drawn to a local outsider, Zlatan, whom she learns is a Muslim refugee from the Bosnian War. The cycle of awakenings sparked by these two relationships challenge and open Roxana in ways she never imagined.
A coming-of-age like no other, from a magnetic new voice in fiction,  Open Me "is unflinching in its portrayal of sex, desire, racism, and the excitement and confusion of youth. Infused with erotics and politics, this is a novel that will haunt you" (Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author).

FARSØ

1

WE CREPT PAST THE CITY‘S TURNED BACK, INTO VERDANT HILLS. On the table that separated us, Søren held my right hand in his. Our palms were almost the same color. The lines and crevices made a map.

His way of looking at me reminded me of Mushi’s steady gaze. At home, in another time, another life. My body now electric, elastic. Reborn.

He smiled at me. “Are you excited to see Jutland?”

“So excited. Thank you for bringing me with you.”

He laughed. “Do not be. It is very boring. And you do not have to thank me.” His expression turned serious. “Roxana, it is very important to me that you tell me if you become uncomfortable or if you want to go back to Copenhagen at any time. I am happy that you are coming, but also concerned.”

“Why?”

“We are at different places in our lives. There is a big distance between eighteen and twenty-eight.”

“Not to me,” I said, sad that he felt a difference between us.

He looked into my eyes. “I do not want you to do anything you do not want. It is all right if you do not like Farsø when we get there. You can go back to Copenhagen and rejoin the program at any point. I will help you.”

“I don’t want to go back to Copenhagen. I want to go to Farsø. I want to be with you.”

I had said the same thing that morning in his apartment as we sat together on his bed, bathed in hot light from the window, my underwear still in his pocket.

He had closed his eyes in the sun. “Truly?” He asked, as if this were a miracle.

“Truly.” I took the last sip of my coffee.

He lifted my hand and kissed it. “To have you there will make me so happy.”

“Søren, I don’t have much money. I was counting on using the meal plan.”

He pulled me onto his lap, into the fierce belt of heat, and slipped a hand between my legs, tracing the rim of my ear with the tip of his tongue. “I want to tell you a secret.”

I couldn’t look at him. I turned my face to the blank wall. Moving day, I thought.

“I am done with International Abroad Experiences. Yesterday was my last day in Copenhagen. I am not leading an excursion this summer but will work remotely as the program’s bursar.” His hand undulated against my crotch. “Jennifer Lindsey owes me. I understand her secret now, how she works.”

Søren’s hand pushed into me. My thighs slipped against each other, abraded by his pants.

“Oh,” I said, more a sound than a word.

“I want to treat you,” he murmured against my neck. “Let me treat you.”

I thought about telling him that I had money too, but decided against it. I wanted this gift. “Thank you,” I whispered into his mouth.

He groaned deliciously. “As if I have a choice. Everything is different, now. If I had not met you, Roxana. Oh, I can’t bear the thought.” He gave a little cry, which I stopped with my mouth.

“Say you’ll come with me,” he pleaded, his eyes as dark as deep water.

Søren, his voice, his hands, his body, or the empty bedroom at the foxwoman’s. Boat picnics with people I didn’t know or the chance to go to a place where no one would be able to find me.

I laughed. “I already said I want to go. Let’s go.”

He filled my mouth with his tongue.

Now that we were on the train away from Copenhagen, the enormity of what I had done filled me in a slow, steady drip. What was scary was also exciting. Right? Seeking reassurance, I lifted his right hand, unfolded the fingers away from the palm, and held it against my lips.

Søren took his hand away and wiped it on his thigh. “Please, we’re in public.”

“Sorry.” I hadn’t even opened my mouth. What was there to wipe? I took his hand again, held it next to mine. He gave me a small smile.

I fell asleep against the cold window and when I woke the train was running over water. A distant rim of tall white windmills revolved in slow motion, their stems sprouting straight from the surface of the ocean. The liquid light reflected in Søren’s eyes.

I made an exaggerated gesture of waking, stretching my arms and yawning theatrically. I wanted to ask how it was possible, a train on the sea. “Søren?”

“Skat.” He turned to me, calm focus gathered in a knowing half smile. I could cross water, bridge or no bridge, to a place I knew nothing about, where no one knew I was going and no one knew me. With him anything could happen.

I looked down at the table, my question gone.

Søren checked his watch constantly for the last half hour of the train ride, swearing under his breath.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

He threw up his hands. “We are terribly late. Our tickets promised we would arrive at eighteen-oh-five.”

“What time is it now?”

“Twelve after the hour. Seven minutes late already.”

“You’re impatient, aren’t you?” I laughed.

Søren turned a blue glare on me. “When I purchase a train ticket I enter into an agreement with the company. A guarantee that I will receive a smooth travel experience in exchange for my money. The arrival time is part of this agreement. When the train is late, the company breaks its agreement with its customer.”

“Oh. I guess I never thought of it that way. The one time I took a long-distance train, it was six hours late.” I reached for him, but Søren’s hands were out of sight, in his lap. He did not produce them for me. Had I said something wrong? “Is everything okay?”

He scowled and checked his watch again. “How does anyone plan his day where you come from, if trains run as they like?”

The train entered the station, passing a gray sign with FARSø in white font, and came to a complete stop. “Eighteen eighteen. Unbelievable. I will carry the bags.”

“I can carry mine.”

“You cannot lift that.” He dismissed me, shouldering my duffel.

Outside, the sky and everyone and everything under it was white and low to the ground: the curving cobblestone roads, the narrow buildings that lined them, and the Danes themselves, whose shapes somehow receded rather than grew as we approached. I followed Søren down a sloped sidewalk and around a corner. Signs I couldn’t read and one-story houses with small square yards. Farsø.

When I was eight and first allowed to start walking home from school alone, Mama sat me down for a lecture about the importance of maintaining a good internal map. Always know where you are. Don’t lose your way. Watch, learn, and remember the way back to where you came from. Don’t get dreamy.

I walked in Søren’s footsteps, trying to track the turns. Down to the big street, take a left, walk two blocks, turn right, cross the pedestrian mall, cut down an alley. I soon gave up. It was impossible to pick out a landmark among all the unfamiliar shapes on this new street. I would have to reverse all the directions to get back to the station, anyway.

But I wouldn’t be going back on my own, I reminded myself. Wherever I needed to go, Søren would take me.

He spoke over his shoulder. “Roxana, could you not do that, please?”

“What?”

“Walk behind me.”

“Why?”

He sighed. “Please just do as I ask.” It was a different voice, formal and distant, the one he had used when we first met. Two days ago. I reminded myself that I knew nothing about him, that I had chosen to come here with a stranger. It was frightening but also somehow comforting, a reminder that this was an adventure.

“Sorry.”

I rushed to walk beside him. He interlaced his fingers with mine and absently pecked the top of my head. “Are you excited to see the apartment?”

I nodded.

“It is much nicer than my flat in Copenhagen.”

His bedroom in Copenhagen, the walls and bed and cheap blond wood armoire all washed in the thrill of our bodies together. Would I ever see it again?

There was no one else on the street. We passed the tallest building I had seen yet, three stories high. A white tower adorned with a steel flourish marked its front corner. Three of the buildings on the street were banks with ATM terminals lodged in their front windows. There were housewares stores like the ones I had seen in Roskilde and shops with racks of clothing on the sidewalk.

“Here we are.” Søren squeezed my arm. I had completely lost track of the route. He opened a glass door and we climbed a narrow flight of stairs to a white landing. At the top were two white doors. Søren went to the one marked ø.

“Apartment zero?”

“Oh, the eu,” He made a little guttural sound. “Perhaps a joke from my uncle.”

A joke? “How does the mailman know where to bring letters?” The panicky feeling I had been smoothing away rose in tense vibration. I’ll need to send letters, I thought. I’ll have to. As if ever in my life I had sent a letter.

“Letters are addressed to the side of the landing.”

“As in left or right?”

“Something like that.” Søren flipped through his ring for an ornate gold key with smooth rolling teeth and a perfectly circular top. The key to apartment ø.

He led me into a room with pale wood floors and a high white ceiling. Two tall windows showed the gray street in which we had so recently stood. A pale blue couch wedged beneath the window in the far corner faced a small television on a dark wood stand. I trailed him into the small hallway that connected the front room to two more—on the left a narrow blue-tiled kitchen, on the right a tiny brown bathroom. There was a toilet and a sink, but no tub or shower stall.

“Is there another bathroom? Where’s the shower?”

Søren pulled a white hose down from a mount on the wall that faced the door and stood between the toilet and the sink. “Hold it over your head, get wet. Turn it off, wash. Turn it on again to rinse.”

“Doesn’t the toilet get wet?”

“Obviously.”

“And you turn it on and off to wash? Instead of just leaving it on like a normal shower?”

“Instead of just leaving it on as in an American shower,” he corrected. “Yes.”

He turned off the light and left the room. In the dark I squinted up at the white hose, imagining myself with perpetually greasy hair.

I found Søren in the bedroom, a white box with a low bed made with two gray duvets and two small pillows. A thin rectangular window stretched across the hall behind the bed, directly above the headboard. That was it. Nothing on the walls. The only other furniture in the room was a small wood dresser and a freestanding closet with a semitransparent front made of a material I could mark with my thumbnail. I had seen the closet before, in the apartment of one of Sylvie’s older friends in the city.

“What do you think?” Søren’s neck was flushed from the effort of hauling the bags, a vein showing on his forehead. He had changed into a shirt I hadn’t seen before, a dark blue button-down with a wide collar.

I went to him and kissed him. He stroked my neck with his thumb and pushed his tongue into my mouth, taking me out of the room, out of my thoughts, out of time. I unbuttoned his shirt and pants. There, again, was his shrunken white chest, the pale pink nipples like coins. The light fluff of ash hair leading down into his white briefs.

I thought of Hunter’s boxers, blue-and-purple plaid. My happiness then, a tiny flinty thing, multiplied now, stronger.

I felt Søren’s erection. He was not a little boy. His heart beat right there, under my hand. I kept my hand against the head as I trailed kisses across his cheek to his ear. Søren reached into my bra and twisted my left nipple hard. My vision hazed over. I felt like I might cry. My chest bloomed magenta, fluid and hot. The pain; another kiss.

With him behind me it was almost like being alone. My arms and legs moved in my periphery. I couldn’t see his face, could only hear his voice mispronouncing my name. He hooked an arm over my belly and walked me over my edge with his fingers. I fell into the thick meatiness of my orgasm, viscera, tissue. When it was his turn, Søren pushed me onto my stomach, pulled out, and came on my back. Warmth oozed down the sides of my torso, a shock. He leaped from the bed and returned with damp toilet paper.

“Oh, Roxana.” He wiped me off. “Was it too much?” I felt as if I had slept for hours, but it was still light outside. Søren snored under his gray duvet. I slipped out of bed and walked naked to the living room, a ghost. The translucent curtains drawn over the front window glowed blue and silver. Across the street, the closed faces of buildings. I parted the cloth, pressed my body to the deliciously warm glass, and shut my eyes. How fine to be a body against a smooth plane.

When I opened them again, a man stood watching me in the street below. Only one floor up, I could see him as clearly as if we stood in the same room. He was tall, with curly black hair and a beard that grew down against his neck, around which a green bandanna was tied. In his right hand he carried a red cap. The legs of his khaki coveralls were dirty with muck, the metal toes of his boots scuffed. His eyes were gray, his thoughtful expression some kind of smile.

Step away from the window, I thou...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Table of Contents
• Copenhagen
• Farsø
• Arden
• Acknowledgments
• Back Cover