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Ask Diane how she feels about the results. Se feels great and we celebrate in light of our health

Lena lets the silence sit for a moment. The destroyed office holds it — the black carpet, the stained walls, the mold, the fluorescent lights humming their industrial hum underneath the wish's hum. She watches Diane's fingers. They've stopped drumming. The brown eyes are steady but something is moving underneath them, something that isn't the management voice and isn't the underneath voice either. Something new.

"How do you feel about it?" Lena asks. The yellow nails rest on the enormous belly. The belly rises and falls. The body breathes.

Diane doesn't answer immediately. The beard shifts — the jaw working underneath, the mouth opening, closing, opening. She walks to the desk. 539 pounds moving through the destroyed office, the bare feet sinking into the black carpet, the toenails — long, yellow, thick like Lena's — clicking on the floor where the carpet has worn through to tile. She sits on the edge of the desk. The desk groans. The belly rests on her thighs. The stretch marks are rivers in the fluorescent light.

"I feel great," she says. The voice is simple. No management. No underneath. Just the words.

"I feel — honestly, Lena, I feel better than I have ever felt in my life. My knees don't hurt. My back doesn't hurt. I sleep like a rock. I eat whatever I want. I drink, I smoke, I don't shower, I don't brush, I don't shave, I grow a beard, I piss where I want, I shit where I want, I'm five hundred and thirty-nine pounds and my resting heart rate is fifty-eight and my doctor said she can't explain it and I don't care that she can't explain it because I don't need her to explain it."

The beard closes. The brown eyes are bright. Not the steady management brown. Bright. The unguarded face — the one that lasts longer each time, the one that has stopped trying to close.

"The body knows what it wants. We gave it what it wants."

Lena smiles. The hum is warm. The hum is quiet. The hum says *more* and the *more* is a promise and the promise is now. She reaches into the bottom drawer — the snack drawer, the one that has been the snack drawer since November, the one that has never been empty because the bodies keep it full. Chips. Donuts. The cold chicken from yesterday. The soda bottles warm from the office air. She pulls everything out. The yellow nails tear bags. The bags empty. The carpet is warm and the office is warm and the two of them are eating on the floor — 598 and 539 pounds of naked, unwashed, barefoot flesh on the black carpet, the mold underneath, the stains underneath, the months underneath.

Diane laughs. The sound is big and real and it comes from the belly — 539 pounds of belly, the belly that started flat and trained and managed, the belly that the wish built, the belly that is comfortable and warm and enormous and hers. The laugh fills the destroyed office. Lena laughs. The two of them eat on the floor and the fluorescent lights hum and the building hums and the hum is everything and the body is healthy and the body is comfortable and the body has never been wrong.