Turn 107 of 228

Wait for her response. After it, the both of you laugh and change the topic to about their next Project.

The pre-roll burns down to Lena's yellow fingertips. She doesn't flinch. She taps the ash onto the carpet — a small gray addition to the landscape of stains — and waits. The office is quiet. The fluorescent lights hum. The mold-darkened carpet near the filing cabinet holds its own slow breath. Diane's typing has stopped. The beard is still. The brown eyes are on the screen but not seeing the screen, the way Diane looks when she's turning something over, weighing the thing she's about to say against the thing she's thinking.

The silence holds for ten seconds. Fifteen. The building is empty — the other offices on the floor dark, the hallway lights on their evening cycle, the security guard downstairs at his desk. The only sounds are the hum of the lights and the hum of the building and the hum underneath everything.

"A footnote," Diane says. The beard twitches. The mouth underneath it does something — small, private, unguarded for half a second before the face smooths it flat.

"A footnote that generated three thousand four hundred dollars in tips and has thirteen hundred subscribers. A footnote with a higher engagement rate than our quarterly client reports."

Lena laughs. The sound is big and real — it comes from the belly, from the chair, from the floor underneath. The belly shakes. The chair groans. The yellow nails grip the armrest and the laugh fills the office and bounces off the stained walls. Diane's face breaks. The beard splits and the mouth underneath it is laughing too — not the managed smile, not the quarterly-report expression, a real laugh, short and sharp, almost surprised out of her. The two of them laughing in the destroyed office at six PM on January second, 470 and 410 pounds of naked unwashed barefoot flesh shaking in chairs that weren't built for this.

The laugh settles. Lena wipes her eyes with the back of a greasy yellow-nailed hand. The office is warm. The work is done. The numbers are real. She shifts in the chair — the belly adjusting, the thighs spreading — and the question comes easy, the way questions come when the work is finished and the body is settled and the wish hums warm.

"What's next?"

Diane leans back. The chair protests. The beard catches the fluorescent light. The brown eyes are already moving — not the screen, something behind the screen, something further out. The fingers drum the desk once. Twice. The calculation is visible again but this time it's not about the OnlyFans or the salary or the footnote. It's about something else. Something the numbers haven't touched yet.

"The branch is twenty-six points ahead. We just did six hundred files. The queue is empty. The year's work — the year's work we finished in ninety minutes in December. The work is running out, Lena. We're producing faster than they can assign." Diane pauses. The fingers stop drumming.

"I've been thinking about a new project. Something corporate hasn't scoped. Something we build ourselves."

Lena's yellow nails tap the armrest. The belly settles. The wish hums.