Turn 67 of 233

Check my feet and the piercings for infection. There are none. Call both Samuel and Janet for the weekly check-in. Our next retrofit goes even faster than the first and its still just as good quality wise. My workout routine has settled. Monday - Thursday, push the weighted exercises, Friday run, Sat and Sun rest. Eat, fart, and burp more

Lena sits on the bathroom floor Sunday morning and lifts her right foot onto her opposite knee and examines it. The cracks on her heel are still there — three of them, running diagonal across the callus — but they're closed. The edges are thick and pale and hard, the tissue having built its own armor around the damage. She presses the deepest crack with her thumb and there's no pain, no heat, no swelling. No redness radiating from the lines. No pus. No smell beyond the rich layered smell of her feet — dirt and sweat and callus and the faint iron tang of old blood. She checks the left foot and it's the same. The cracks held through twelve miles. The calluses are thicker than they've ever been, the skin on her soles a dark gray-brown that's almost black at the ball and heel, and underneath the armor the tissue is alive and healthy. She flexes her toes and watches the calluses crease and settle. No infection.

She checks the piercings next. The belly button barbell — she unscrews the top ball and slides the bar out and looks at the hole. It's clean and healed, the skin around it pink and closed, no discharge, no swelling. She runs her finger around the hole and there's no pain. She puts the barbell back and checks the nipple barbells, lifting each breast — heavier now at 260, the soft weight resting in her hands — and the holes are the same. Healed. Pink. Steel sitting in tissue that has accepted it. The grime on her skin hasn't caused a problem. The no-shower decision hasn't caused a problem. The body is taking care of itself the way it takes care of everything else — by adapting.

She calls Samuel first. He picks up on the fourth ring, which means he saw the caller ID and decided to answer, which is progress.

"Hey, Dad."

"Lena." His voice is flat and steady, the voice of a man who has built a wall around what he feels and mortared every joint.

"Weekly check-in. Work's good. We're starting the next retrofit Monday."

"Your mother says you're calling her directly now."

"Yeah. She asked me to."

A silence. Lena can hear the television in the background — a football game, muted. Then Samuel says, "The work is good?"

"The work is good, Dad."

It's the closest thing to a conversation they've had in weeks. He asks about the timeline and she tells him — three weeks for the first retrofit, the next one should go faster because the crew knows the building type now. He doesn't ask about her weight or her feet or the tattoo or the shower. She doesn't volunteer. They talk for four minutes and Samuel says, "Call next week" and Lena says, "I will" and they hang up and the wall stands and the door is still closed but it's not locked.

She calls Janet and Janet picks up on the first ring.

"Hey, baby."

"Hey, Mom. Feet are good. Piercings are good. No infection."

"You checked?"

"This morning. All healed. All closed."

Janet breathes. "I'm glad." A pause. "Your father doesn't know about the — the shower thing."

"I know."

"He doesn't know about the weight either."

"I know, Mom."

"I'm not going to tell him. But Lena —" Janet's voice shifts, the careful warmth tightening into something with an edge. "You're two hundred and sixty pounds."

"I am."

"How far does this go?"

Lena sits on the balcony with the phone against her ear and the warm November air on her bare skin and the grime layering on her body and she says, "I don't know, Mom. I'm not stopping."

Janet is quiet for a long time. Then she says, "I know."

Monday the crew starts the second retrofit. It goes faster. The building is the same type — old warehouse shell, brick, exposed beams — and the crew knows the sequence now. Lena laid out the demo plan Sunday evening on her kitchen counter with a pencil and a legal pad and the crew walks in Monday morning and she hands out assignments and the work begins. The east wall comes down Tuesday. The steel goes in Wednesday. The framing starts Thursday. The first retrofit took three weeks. This one is moving at a pace that says two and a half, maybe less. Walt walks the site Thursday afternoon and checks the steel connections and the shoring and the temporary supports and he stands in the middle of the open floor and looks at the ceiling and looks at Lena and says, "Same quality. Faster. You're learning."

The routine settles. Monday through Thursday evenings Lena pushes the weighted exercises on the balcony — presses, squats, pushups, curls, rows, planks. The makeshift barbell is at a hundred and fifty pounds now and the arms are responding, the shoulders wider, the upper back denser. Friday she runs. Twelve miles. The body holds. The feet hold. The thighs grind through the last mile and she comes home and eats everything in the kitchen and lies on the balcony floor and masturbates and the orgasm is long and deep and she doesn't hold back. Saturday and Sunday she rests — eats, stretches, watches football and takes notes on offensive line technique, farts on the balcony and burps in the kitchen and scratches her belly where the tribal ink sits under the grime. She eats more now. The caloric demand of 260 pounds and weighted exercises and twelve-mile runs is enormous and she meets it — five thousand calories a day, sometimes six. Ground beef and rice and eggs and milk and whole chickens and donuts and chocolate milk and whatever else the body asks for. She belches after every meal — deep, resonant, the kind of belch that rattles the kitchen window — and she farts freely, anywhere, the sound long and low and completely unapologetic. The grime builds. The smell deepens. The body is becoming what it is and she is not stopping.