Turn 114 of 228

We were still wrong about the date. Its actually February 7th. Both you and Diane feel amazing about the gain celebrate together with marcus and carl

February seventh. The number rearranges itself again — not January, not the third, the seventh. Four days since the salary email. Four days since the board vote. Four days of eating and the number on the scale and the supply closet and the walk home and the apartment and the bodies. The timeline doesn't matter. The body matters. The hum matters.

Lena stands in her apartment at noon on February seventh. The apartment is the apartment — the couch stained, the kitchen floor layered, the bathroom dry, the bed unmade, the air thick with the smell of two people who haven't showered in months and a third who hasn't either. Marcus is on the couch. 420 pounds of naked, unwashed, barefoot flesh, the long yellow nails tapping the controller, the belly spreading across his thighs, the screen flashing. The apartment has absorbed him the way it absorbed Lena — the stains are his now too, the crumbs are his, the smell is his. He looks up when the apartment door opens and Diane and Carl walk in.

Diane first. 539 pounds. The beard is thicker than February — matted, dark, the sauce from last night still in it. The belly precedes her through the doorframe, the stretch marks catching the hallway light, the thighs rolling together as she steps over the threshold. Carl behind her. 385 pounds — no. More. The face is fuller. The beard is wilder. The belly is wider. He carries bags. The bags are heavy. The smell of Chinese food and pizza and wings fills the apartment and the apartment swells with it.

"We gained a hundred and twenty-eight pounds in a month," Diane says. The voice is not the management voice. The beard splits. The face is open — the unguarded face, the one that has stopped closing. The brown eyes are bright.

"We gained a hundred and twenty-eight pounds in a month and the company saved two hundred and eighty million dollars and our salaries quintupled and we are standing in this apartment naked and unwashed and we feel amazing." The beard closes. The mouth underneath is still smiling.

Marcus sets the controller down. The yellow nails leave the plastic. 420 pounds shifts on the couch and the couch groans and the belly settles and he looks at Lena and Lena looks at him and the hum is quiet and warm and certain. Carl drops the bags on the kitchen floor — the floor that hasn't been cleaned, the floor that is layered with months of stains — and the containers open and the smell rises and the four of them are in the apartment and the apartment is theirs.

Lena laughs. The sound is big and real and it comes from the belly — 598 pounds of belly, the belly that started at nothing, the belly that the wish built, the belly that is comfortable and warm and enormous and hers. The laugh fills the apartment. Diane laughs. Marcus laughs. Carl laughs. The four of them — 598 and 539 and 420 and 385-plus pounds of naked, unwashed, barefoot flesh in a small apartment on February seventh, the yellow nails and the beards and the stretch marks and the matted hair and the bodies that have never been wrong. The food is open. The containers are full. The hum is warm. The hum says *more* and the *more* is a promise and the promise is tonight.