Turn 35 of 233

Push the run to three miles and see what the body does at its limit. Then take the weekend off and visit Mom and Dad. I don't bother putting on clothes, shaving, or with any form of hygiene. I Make multiple pit stops for food on the way. I Force out wet burps and farts while eating and driving. I Eat like a slob as well

Saturday morning Lena pushes the run to three miles. The first two are smooth — her bare feet find the rhythm on the gritty sidewalk, her stride long and low, her belly swaying with each impact, her breath deep and measured. Somewhere past mile two her calves start to burn and her feet feel the friction in a new way, the calluses warming, the skin beneath them tender, and her body tells her this is the edge. She keeps going. The third mile is a different animal: her thighs are heavy, her lungs are raw, sweat pours down her chest and belly and runs into the fold beneath her breasts, and her form breaks down into something ugly and grinding and honest. She finishes the three miles at a half-walk, half-jog, her feet black with street grime, her belly tight and cramping with the effort, and she stops at the corner of her block and bends over with her hands on her knees and throws up a little bile onto the pavement and then stands up and wipes her mouth and grins. Her body found its wall and she ran through it and the wall is still there, waiting to be pushed again.

Sunday morning she loads into her truck and points it south toward her parents' house. She is naked. She wore the tiny shorts to the truck and pulled them off behind the steering wheel and tossed them on the passenger seat and that is the extent of her preparation for the visit. She has not showered. She has not brushed her teeth or her hair. She has not shaved or trimmed or cleaned under her nails. Her body is a document of the last two weeks — the deep golden tan nearly even now, the body hair thick and dark on her calves and thighs and below her navel and under her arms, the dirt ground into the creases of her fingers and the calluses of her feet, the smell of her skin a pungent mix of sweat and sun and food and the particular musk of a body that has stopped pretending it needs to be anything other than what it is.

The first pit stop is a gas station twenty minutes south. Lena pulls in barefoot and naked and walks into the store and the clerk — a college kid behind the register — stares at her with his mouth open. She grabs two hot dogs from the roller, a bag of Funyuns, a liter of Dr Pepper, and a sleeve of chocolate donuts and drops them on the counter and pays with a twenty and walks out without acknowledging the stare. She eats the hot dogs in the truck before she's out of the parking lot, wolfing them down in four bites each, the mustard running down her chin, and she cracks the Dr Pepper and drinks half of it in one pull and a deep wet belch rolls out of her, loud and long, and she doesn't cover her mouth or wipe her chin. She pulls back onto the highway with the Funyuns in her lap, crunching them one fistful at a time, and fifty miles down the road she shifts her weight in the seat and lets out a long low fart that vibrates the vinyl and fills the cab with the smell of hot dogs and Dr Pepper and she rolls the window down an inch and keeps eating.

The second stop is a roadside diner. She walks in barefoot and naked and sits at the counter and the whole room goes quiet. She orders a cheeseburger with extra bacon, a plate of onion rings, a chocolate milkshake, and a slice of pie. She eats the burger in both hands, grease running down her wrists, her belly pressing against the counter edge, and she belches into the middle of a bite — a thick wet sound that carries across the room — and takes another bite without pausing. The onion rings she eats three at a time, dripping with ketchup, and the milkshake she drains in long pulls that make her throat work visibly. An old man at the far booth stares and his wife pulls his arm and he keeps staring. The waitress refills Lena's water without being asked and sets it down carefully and doesn't say a word. Lena leaves a twenty on the counter and walks out with the pie in her hand, eating it with her fingers, the filling smearing across her golden belly.

The third stop is a drive-through taco truck in her parents' town. She pulls up to the window naked and the woman working the truck leans out and looks down at her — the huge tanned belly, the bare chest, the dirty feet on the pedals — and Lena orders four carne asada burritos and a horchata and pays and waits at the window eating the first burrito before she even pulls away, the tortilla greasy in her hands, the filling dripping onto her thigh. She eats two burritos in the truck in her parents' driveway and lets out a chain of belches — three, four, five, each one deeper and wetter than the last — and then a long crackling fart that she pushes out deliberately, leaning into it, her belly pressing against the steering wheel. She sits in the truck for a minute, full and bloated and filthy, the horchata half-finished in the cup holder, crumbs and grease on her belly and thighs, and then she opens the door and steps out barefoot onto her parents' driveway and walks to the front door and knocks.