Turn 102 of 228
Go straight home with Marcus and crash — Wednesday work can wait a few hours
The elevator is slow and the building is empty and the four of them fill it — 1,532 pounds of naked, unwashed, barefoot flesh pressed together in the fluorescent light, the smell so thick it has weight, Carl's chicken grease and Diane's beard sweat and Marcus's three-day bong water and Lena's piss-soaked thighs all layered into one cloud that the elevator carries down to the lobby. Nobody speaks. The lobby is dark. The security guard's desk is empty — 3 AM, no one on duty, the building belongs to the four of them and the building doesn't know it yet. Marcus pushes the door open and the night air hits Lena's skin and the skin doesn't flinch. The night is warm. Late May. The sidewalk is dark and the streetlights are orange and the four of them walk barefoot down Garfield Avenue — 440 and 360 side by side, 387 and 345 behind, the yellow toenails clicking on the concrete in a rhythm that is uneven and real.
Diane and Carl peel off at the corner of Garfield and Seventh — Diane's apartment is two blocks east, Carl's car is parked somewhere near it. Diane lifts one hand without turning around. The beard catches the streetlight. Carl's bulk shifts beside her and the two of them disappear into the dark and Lena watches them go and the corner holds them and then doesn't.
Lena and Marcus walk the rest in silence. The blocks are short. The air is warm. Marcus's hand finds hers — the yellow nails interlocking, the grease still on his fingers, the palm warm and dry — and the bellies touch when they walk and the thighs brush and the sidewalk carries them. A car passes on Franklin. The headlights sweep across them — two enormous naked people walking barefoot down a residential street at 3 AM — and the car doesn't slow. The taillights disappear. Marcus laughs. The laugh is low and slow and it shakes his belly against Lena's arm.
The apartment door opens and the smell is the same smell — the old food and the old smoke and the old stains and the carpet that has absorbed everything Lena has given it for three weeks. Lena doesn't turn on the light. The moonlight through the window is enough. The couch is there — the same couch, the same stains, the same depression where her body has pressed itself night after night. She drops onto it and the cushions sink and the frame groans and 440 pounds settles into the familiar groove and the couch holds. Marcus drops beside her — 360 pounds, the springs protesting, the two of them wedged together, the bellies overlapping, the thighs pressed flat. His arm goes around her shoulder. Her head falls against his chest. The beard is scratchy against her forehead. The heartbeat underneath is slow.
The phone is on the floor where it fell. She doesn't reach for it. The screen is dark. The stream is over. The numbers will be there in the morning — 1,063 subscribers, $3,400 in tips, ninety-six hours of the four of them alive on camera — and the morning will be Wednesday and Wednesday means work and work means the office and the office means the carpet and the numbers and the chair and the screen. But that is hours away. The wish hums under the heartbeat and the heartbeat hums under the silence and Marcus's breathing slows and Lena's breathing slows and the apartment is warm and the couch is warm and the bodies are warm and the night holds them and the wish hums and the hum is everything and sleep takes them both.