Turn 103 of 226

Celebrate and tell Diane about the latest tournament.

The celebration begins before the sweat dries. The warehouse door is open — the rolling steel door that she cannot reach the chain of anymore without ducking and the ducking is the body's accommodation and the accommodation is automatic. The food arrives in seven trips. Seven. The number is the body's appetite made logistical and the logistics are the delivery drivers' burden and the burden is not her concern. Short ribs, pork belly, two whole roast chickens, three orders of brisket, four containers of rice, two gallons of pho, an entire tray of dumplings, a sheet cake from the bakery on Fifth that did not ask questions when she ordered it over the phone because the voice on the phone is deep enough now that the bakery assumed it was a man ordering for a party and the party is one woman on a concrete floor. She carries the bags in three trips — arms loaded, the bags hanging against her thighs, the thighs that are each wider than the delivery drivers' torsos. The drivers do not look. The drivers have stopped looking weeks ago. The industrial district has its own economy of not-seeing.

The dumping is the pile. The food covers fifteen square feet of concrete and the fifteen feet is the body's banquet table and the table is the floor. She drops to her hands and knees and the dropping is the seismic event the neighbors — if there were neighbors — would feel. The eating is the animal's mass. The jaw works through the brisket first — the brisket is the protein and the protein is the body's fuel and the fuel is the thing the engine burns. The short ribs next, the teeth tearing the meat from the bone, the bones cracking under the bite force that the wish has built and the building is the thing that makes the eating efficient. The rice is scooped by the handful — the hand is enormous, the fingers thick, the palm a scoop that shovels the rice into the mouth and the mouth is the aperture and the aperture does not close between bites. The pho is drunk from the container — tipped back, the broth running down her chin and her chest and the chest is the body's terrain and the terrain is greased with fat and broth and the greasing is the body's celebration. The cake is the last. The cake is sweetness and the sweetness is the thing the old Lena denied herself and the denial is dust. She eats it with her face. Her face in the frosting. The animal does not use utensils.

The arousal is the fullness's shadow. It follows the eating the way the eating follows the winning — the chain of triggers, each one the body's pull, each pull the addiction's architecture. Her hands find her belly and the belly is enormous — the fat layer over the muscle, the dense soft tissue that the wish built, the tissue that she wanted and the wanting is the thing that has not stopped wanting. The gripping is rough. The moaning is the warehouse's sound — bouncing off the steel walls, filling the space, the space that is her body's resonance chamber. She comes. The coming is the body's release and the release is the animal's claim. She pisses afterward — the stream long and hot on the concrete, the pooling lake spreading through the food debris, the mixing of grease and broth and urine and the mixing is the body's truth. She lies in it. The mess covers twenty square feet. The body sleeps.

The morning is the text to Diane. The phone's screen glows. The thumbs that type are the thumbs that punched a 7'4" man's jaw two nights ago and the typing is the same precision — the letters deliberate, the calloused fingertips finding the glass. 'Won. 5,096 fighters. 13 rounds. $100,000. Two new weaknesses — very small. Clinch entry from overhand angle. Lateral footwork against the cage wall. Both fixable. The cardio held. 13 rounds and my heart rate never went above 180.' The send button. The phone on the concrete. The warehouse holds the silence while the message travels.

Diane's response takes thirty minutes. The thirty minutes is longer than usual. The delay is Diane sitting with the number — 5,096 fighters, thirteen rounds, one hundred thousand dollars — and the sitting is the thing Diane does now because Diane has watched eleven fights in one night and ten fights in one night and thirteen fights in one night and the watching is the thing that has changed Diane and the changed is not something Diane has named. The response is five words. 'Are you still growing?' The question is the first time Diane has asked about the body directly since the warehouse visit and the directness is the thing that means Diane is looking — really looking — and the looking is the thing that sees the 880 pounds and the 8'2" and the seeing is no longer professional concern. The seeing is something else. Lena's reply is immediate. 'Yes. Still growing. Still healthy. Still happy.' Three sentences. Three truths. The phone sits on the concrete. The body stands. The legal pad is waiting. The two very small weaknesses are the next cycle's architecture. The cycle is already forming.