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Ask Walt what comes after the retrofits — east side or commercial and start the left leg sleeve sessions with Jess. Push my weights even higher by the end of the week. I also run 16 miles. i weigh 315 now

Lena catches Walt at the site Friday morning before the crew starts packing the truck. He's standing at the trailer door with his coffee and his phone and the look of a man who just got off a call with Jensen. She asks him straight — what comes after the retrofits. East side residentials or another commercial. Walt takes a sip of coffee and looks at her.

"Jensen wants to talk to you directly. I told him about the six-day retrofit and he said 'send her in.' That's not something he says. He doesn't meet with crew leads. He meets with project managers." Walt rubs his jaw.

"East side has a six-house residential development. The commercial side has a downtown mixed-use — bigger than the warehouse, structural steel, ten-story frame. Both are waiting on a lead."

"Which one do you want me on?"

Walt looks at her for a long time. "I want you on whichever one you pick. That's the truth. But Jensen's going to ask you himself. Monday. Ten AM. Wear — " He stops and almost smiles. "Wear whatever you want. He knows who you are."

She drives to Jess's shop Monday evening after the site and the left leg begins. Jess starts at the ankle — the thin skin over the bone, the slow work, the needle dragging ink into the dermis in short precise strokes. The pain is different than the arms — sharper, closer to the bone, less muscle to absorb it. Lena sits in the chair with her leg extended and watches the tribal black emerge along the calf and the lines follow the muscle separation and Jess's face is focused and still. Two hours. The calf is half done. Jess wipes the ink away and steps back.

"The architecture is different down here," Jess says. "The muscle fibers run different. The lines have to follow that or they'll look wrong when you flex."

She flexes the calf and the ink shifts and the lines hold. Jess nods.

"Next session Thursday. We'll finish the calf and start the shin."

Tuesday she loads the pipe and the two-eighty-five from last week is a memory. She adds weight — two-ninety — and the first rep is a fight that lasts longer than it should. The jaw locks. The belly drives. The arms shake at lockout and the weight goes up but barely. Three sets of one. She drops to two-seventy-five for four sets of three and the drop is work, not relief. The pipe is too light. She writes *290 done — need real plates or a barbell* on the legal pad and circles it. The pushups go to fifty-five. Squats at one hundred. Curls and rows heavier. Planks at three and a half minutes and the belly hangs and the core is locked and the weight is stable.

The scale says three hundred and fifteen. She stands on it Monday morning and the needle swings past three hundred and lands higher and she looks at the number and the number is correct. Three hundred and fifteen pounds. The belly is lower and heavier. The breasts are fuller. The ass is wider. The thighs are thicker and the left calf is swollen from the tattoo and the tribal black runs the lower leg and the body is bigger and the body is growing and she is comfortable. She eats ten thousand calories and the belch that follows is deep enough to rattle the plates on the balcony floor.

Friday morning. Four AM. The river path is dark and Lena runs. Fifteen miles is the locked-in distance — the body knows it, the feet know it, the rhythm is mechanical. She pushes into sixteen. The new mile breaks her. The feet crack along the callus line and the blood starts fresh and the three hundred and fifteen pounds she carries is three hundred and fifteen pounds she is moving through space and every pound is working. The two-ninety press built something in the shoulders that keeps her upright. The belly heaves. The thighs burn. The form breaks at fifteen and a half and she grinds the last half mile with her arms pumping and the sweat streaking through the grime and the breath ragged and the body screaming. Sixteen point zero. She stops. She stands with her hands on her knees and the blood pooling on the concrete and she farts — long, low, the sound echoing off the empty path — and she is grinning because sixteen is sixteen and the body carried three hundred and fifteen pounds through every mile of it.