Turn 134 of 228

Post about Dr. Reeves sitting in row 7 with her shirt off. Ask her how her own body has been changing since the observations started. She responds honestly and tells you she likes them. Also tells you to start using her first name, Billy Jo. She leaves her shirt behind and jeans unbuttoned when leaving. Tell her to come back on Tuesday, after both of your work hours are done. She agrees.

Lena waits until the documentary credits roll and the screen goes dark. The five of them sit in the silence of row seven — the seats stained, the carpet stiff, the air thick with months of use. Dr. Reeves is in the fifth seat with the blouse folded on her lap and the stretch marks catching the exit light. Lena picks up the phone. The yellow nails move fast across the glass. She types: *Dr. Reeves sat in row seven tonight. No notebook. No white coat. No shoes. She brought her own popcorn. She took her shirt off. Stretch marks on her stomach. She ate in the dark with us. The case study is no longer observation. The case study is becoming her.* She posts it. 1,534 subscribers. The chat will move. The tips will come.

The four of them stand — 890 and 530 and 710 and 505 pounds of naked unwashed flesh rising from the seats. Dr. Reeves stays sitting. Lena stays sitting. Marcus, Diane, and Carl move toward the aisle slowly, the enormous bodies shifting past each other in the narrow row. Diane looks back once. The brown eyes — the underneath eyes — rest on Dr. Reeves's bare stomach for a moment. Then she follows Carl and Marcus up the aisle.

"How has your body been changing?" Lena says. The question is easy. The body is easy. Everything is easy.

Dr. Reeves doesn't reach for the blouse. The stretch marks are visible in the dim exit light — faint pink lines along the soft curve of her lower stomach, the skin that used to be flat and clinical now rounded and warm. She looks down at herself. The bare feet on the sticky carpet. The unbuttoned jeans. The white bra. The face in the dark is open — not the fifth expression, not the clinical mask, not the underneath. Something past all of those. The face of someone who has stopped keeping track of which version of herself she's supposed to be.

"I've gained fourteen pounds since September," she says. The voice is quiet. Not the clinical voice. Not the underneath voice. Just a voice.

"My feet are wider. I haven't worn shoes in three weeks — I can't get them on anymore. My appetite has doubled. I'm eating the same food you eat — the chips, the beer, the junk — and my body is... it's not rejecting any of it. My last bloodwork was cleaner than my baseline from two years ago. I have stretch marks. I've never had stretch marks."

She pauses. The popcorn bag crinkles under her hand.

"I like them," she says. The words are plain and heavy.

"I like what's happening to my body. I haven't told anyone that. I'm supposed to be the observer. I'm supposed to be objective. But I like the weight. I like the softness. I like that my feet are bare on this floor and it feels correct. I like the stretch marks. I look at them and I feel..."

She stops. The exit light is red and steady.

"I feel comfortable," she says.

The hum moves through Lena's belly. The word sits in the theater like it belongs there. *Comfortable.* The same word. The same wish. The same thing spreading outward from the body that made it, reaching the bodies that came close enough to learn it.

"Stop calling me Dr. Reeves," she says. "My first name is Billy Jo. Use it."

Lena nods. The yellow nails rest on the belly. The belly is 890 pounds and the belly is warm and the belly is the source of something that has been moving outward for months — through Diane, through Carl, through Marcus, and now through Billy Jo Reeves, who sat on the apartment floor and ate chips and drank beer and took her shirt off in row seven and said the word *comfortable* like she was learning it for the first time.

They stand together. Billy Jo leaves the blouse on the seat. She walks up the aisle in the white bra and the unbuttoned jeans, the bare feet on the sticky carpet, the leather bag over her shoulder. The stretch marks disappear into the shadow of the exit. She doesn't look back at the blouse. She doesn't button the jeans.

At the door Lena says: "Come back Tuesday. After work. My hours are done by two. Come to the apartment."

Billy Jo is standing in the parking lot air, the white bra bright under the streetlight, the jeans open, the bare feet on the cold asphalt. The fifth expression is gone. What is on her face is the look of someone who has been invited somewhere she was already going.

"Tuesday," she says. "I'll be there."

She drives away in the unbuttoned jeans. The blouse stays in row seven. The hum is warm. The body is teaching. The teaching is no longer unconscious. The teaching is a name. Billy Jo.