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billy jo arrives on tuesday completely naked. She joins in on your lifestyle completely. Even the shitting and masturbating. Her paper is the best she has ever written. Meanwhile, you and Diane lead the companies national expansion, hundreds of branches integrated perfectly into STREAM model, leading to a 10 billion dollar revenue and a 7-fold increase in salary for you both. Celebrate the newyear

Billy Jo arrives Tuesday at three. The buzzer goes and Lena presses the intercom and the voice that comes through is the drawl — full, unguarded, warm.

"Hey, y'all. I'm here." The leather bag is over one shoulder. The laptop is in it. The notes are in it. Everything else is gone. Billy Jo Reeves stands in the hallway completely naked. No bra. No daisy dukes. No shoes. The body that used to belong to a doctor — the soft stomach with its deep stretch marks, the thick dark body hair, the yellow nails, the unwashed hair, the wide bare feet — stands in the hallway of Lena's apartment building and doesn't cover itself. The breasts are full and bare. The stomach is round and lower than last week. The body hair has thickened — the trail from the navel is denser now, spreading across the belly and down the inner thighs. The stretch marks have multiplied. The yellow toenails click on the hallway tile.

She steps inside and the apartment takes her. The food on the counter. The beer in the cooler. The weed on the table. The stiff carpet. The thick air. Marcus on the couch, 700 pounds, gaming. Lena lowering herself into the groove, 999 pounds settling. Billy Jo sits on the floor. The laptop comes out. The notes come out — handwritten, loose pages, the handwriting getting larger and looser as the weeks progress. She writes. She eats. She drinks. The weed comes around. The hours pass. At six she stands up from the floor and walks to the middle of the living room and squats. The shit comes out on the carpet — solid, heavy, next to months of accumulated waste from Lena and Marcus. Billy Jo stands up and doesn't wipe and doesn't clean it and walks back to the laptop. The drawl is full and the face is open and the body is teaching and the body is learning.

At nine Lena is on the couch. The hand is between the thighs. The yellow nails move. Marcus is gaming. Billy Jo is on the floor with the laptop and the notes and the empty chip bags and the beer cans and the piss soaking into the carpet around her bare feet. She watches Lena. The hand moves. The hum is warm. Billy Jo's hand moves to her own thigh. The yellow nails — her yellow nails, the ones that turned in September — find the soft flesh. The body is comfortable. The body is teaching. The teaching is everything now. The paper grows. The paper is the best thing Billy Jo has ever written — not clinical, not measured, not the fifth expression. The paper is about comfort as contagion. About the word moving through proximity. About what happens when a body stops apologizing and the bodies around it stop too. She writes until midnight. She pisses twice more. She shits once more. She eats three doughnuts and drinks two beers and smokes a joint and the paper grows and the body grows and the hum is patient.

December dissolves into work. Lena and Diane are at the office by eight every morning — naked, barefoot, unwashed, the yellow nails on the keyboards. The STREAM model rollout begins on December 3. Sixteen branches first, then forty, then a hundred and twenty, then every branch in the national network. Lena completes the integration reports in minutes. The numbers are perfect. The load models hold. The predictive infrastructure adjusts in real time. By December 19 the last branch is online. The company's annual revenue hits ten billion. Corporate calls Diane on December 20. The salary increase is seven-fold. Diane's office. Diane's beard. Diane's naked body on the phone.

"The board approved it this morning," the voice says. "Both of you. Effective January 1." Diane texts Lena: *Seven times. They're paying us seven times what they paid us in January.* Lena texts back: *Post it.* They post it. OnlyFans reads 1,708 subscribers. The tips spike — $2,400 in two days.

New Year's Eve. The apartment. Lena and Marcus on the couch — 999 and 700 pounds. Diane and Carl on the floor — 840 and 695 pounds. Billy Jo cross-legged by the coffee table, naked, the laptop open, the paper almost done. The TV is on. The count is starting. The food is everywhere. The weed is everywhere. The beer is everywhere. The apartment smells like the apartment — months of unwashed bodies and accumulated living and piss in the carpet and shit in the corners and grease on every surface. The five of them are naked and barefoot and unwashed and enormous. The yellow nails. The stretch marks. The body hair. The beards. The unwashed hair. The long yellow toenails clicking on the stiff carpet. The hum is warm and steady and the body is comfortable and the year is ending and the teaching is not finished.

Midnight. The ball drops. Marcus farts. Carl laughs. Diane's beard catches the light. Billy Jo raises a beer. The drawl is full and warm.

"To comfort," she says. Lena raises her beer. The yellow nails. The belly. The body that wished for comfort and received it and taught it.

"To comfort," Lena says. The hum is warm. The body is patient. The word is spreading. The spreading is *more.*