Turn 137 of 228

Ask her how she's feeling. She responds never better in my life. The rest of the day passes in a haze of food, drinks, weed and games. Billy Jo pisses on the floor for the first time. She admires your body in all of its hairy, disgusting glory. She leaves just wearing the extremely tight daisy dukes, completely unbuttoned and unzipped.

Billy Jo stands in the middle of the apartment. The bare feet on the stiff carpet. The tight bra. The daisy dukes straining. The drawl hanging in the warm air. Lena lowers herself back onto the couch — 999 pounds settling into the permanent groove, the belly spreading across her thighs, the yellow nails resting on the soft flesh. Marcus doesn't pause the game. The apartment hums with the TV and the smell and the closeness.

"How are you feeling?" Lena asks.

Billy Jo looks down at herself. The bra cutting into the soft flesh. The stretch marks. The unbuttoned shorts. The longer nails. The bare feet on the disgusting carpet. The face is open — completely open, the last trace of the clinical mask dissolved in the warm thick air of the apartment.

"Never better in my life," she says. The drawl makes it sound like a prayer.

The afternoon passes in a haze. Lena eats from the counter stock — chips, doughnuts, the rotisserie chicken torn apart with yellow nails, the grease running down the belly. Marcus drinks beer and games, the controller on his enormous stomach. Billy Jo sits on the floor. Not the couch — the floor. The bare legs crossed, the daisy dukes riding up, the tight bra pressing into flesh that is softening by the day. She eats. She drinks a beer. She drinks two. She drinks four. The weed comes out at four — Marcus rolls without looking, the yellow nails working the paper, and passes it down. Billy Jo takes it. The smoke fills the apartment. The hum is warm and steady.

At 5:30 Billy Jo stands up from the floor. The beer is in her hand. She is swaying slightly — not drunk, not yet, but loose. The drawl is thicker now. She walks toward the kitchen. She stops. She stands in the middle of the living room, between the couch and the counter, and the yellow light from the window catches the stretch marks on her stomach. She looks down. The stream starts. The piss hits the carpet — the same carpet that has absorbed months of Lena's piss, Marcus's piss, the accumulated living of two bodies that stopped performing. The stream is steady and warm and Billy Jo stands in it with her bare feet and doesn't move. The piss pools around her toes. The daisy dukes darken at the hem. The hum is patient.

"Lord," she says. The drawl is full and unguarded.

She looks at Lena on the couch. 999 pounds of unwashed flesh. The belly spreading across the thighs. The body hair thick and dark. The yellow nails. The skin that hasn't been washed in months. The stretch marks covering every surface. The grease from the chicken on the belly and the chest. The mouth that hasn't brushed teeth in almost a year. The body that is the source.

"You're beautiful," Billy Jo says. The drawl makes the word round and heavy.

"All of it. The hair, the smell, the grease. All of it. I've been writing about your body for months and I've been looking at it through the wrong end of the telescope. This isn't a case study. This is — this is what a body looks like when it stops apologizing."

Lena watches her. The hum is warm. The body is 999 pounds and the body is comfortable and the body has been teaching for months and the teacher is standing in a puddle of her own piss on a Tuesday evening saying words that sound like the wish echoing back.

Billy Jo leaves at eight. The bra stays on the floor — dropped next to the leather bag, folded once and abandoned. She walks to the door in the daisy dukes. The button is undone. The zipper is down. The denim hangs on her hips, the pockets visible below the hem, the fabric dark with piss at the crotch. The bare feet on the hallway carpet. The long nails. The stretch marks. The drawl.

"Tuesday," she says at the door.

"Tuesday," Lena says.

The daisy dukes are completely unbuttoned and unzipped when she walks down the hall. The leather bag is over her shoulder. The bra is on the apartment floor. The hum is warm. The body is teaching. The teaching is Tuesday now. The teaching is accelerating. The accelerating is *more.*