Turn 21 of 228

Pick at the food on te floor and check subscriber count before sleeping on the couch. Stay exactly as you are and show up to coffee unwashed and naked after work.

Lena reaches down from the couch without sitting up, her arm sweeping across the floor until her fingers find a torn chip bag. She pulls it onto her chest and eats from it where she lies, chips crunching in the dark, orange dust falling onto her breasts and the cushions. She opens the OnlyFans app one more time — eighty subscribers, the number steady, the ten-dollar tip still the latest notification — and scrolls until her eyes blur. She doesn't set an alarm. She doesn't move to the bed. She pulls a half-eaten bag of cookies closer and falls asleep with one still in her hand, her body spread heavy and wide across the couch, legs apart, belly rising, the dried urine on her thighs flaking in the night air.

She wakes to grey morning light and the smell of herself — two days of sweat and food grease and dried urine layered into her skin, her hair matted flat against the pillow she doesn't remember using. Her stubble has thickened, the dark coarse hair on her legs and under her arms longer than it was Friday, curling slightly where it grows densest. She doesn't shower. She doesn't brush her teeth. She eats a sleeve of cookies and drinks warm soda from a two-liter bottle and smokes a joint on the couch and the morning passes in a haze of sugar and smoke and the slow accumulation of crumbs on her belly. At noon she eats cold pasta from a container and smokes again and checks her phone and Diane has sent the coffee shop address — a place called Marlow's, six blocks from the office, quiet, off the main strip.

She goes to work the same way she left it Friday afternoon. Naked. She walks the four blocks from her apartment to the bus stop barefoot, bare everything, 245 pounds of unwashed stubble-covered flesh, and people stare and she lets them. The bus driver doesn't say a word. She sits in the back and her thighs spread across the plastic seat and her belly rests on her lap and she eats donuts from a bag and leaves crumbs on the floor. She walks into the office building naked and the security guard — a different one, a young guy she doesn't recognize — stares at her and opens his mouth and closes it and she walks past him to the elevator and he doesn't stop her.

Her office door locks behind her and she sits down naked and works. The focus comes fast and clean even through the haze of the morning joint — she finishes a client deliverable two days ahead of schedule, flags an error in a dataset that nobody else caught, and drafts a workflow memo that is sharper and more precise than anything she wrote last week. She farts in the empty office and the sound bounces off the gray walls and she eats chips at her desk and the crumbs fall onto her bare belly and she doesn't brush them off. At four-thirty she stands, picks up her phone, and walks out of the building naked for the third time. The security guard watches her go and says nothing.

Marlow's is small and warm and smells like espresso and cinnamon. Lena pushes through the door barefoot and naked and the two people inside — a barista and a woman with a laptop — both look up at the same time. The barista's hand stops mid-pour. The woman's mouth opens. Lena's body fills the doorway: 245 pounds, belly hanging low and heavy, breasts wide and bare, dark stubble thick on her legs and under her arms, her skin slick with old sweat and grease, her hair unwashed and tangled, crumbs still clinging to the soft fold beneath her breasts. She smells like weed and chips and three days of not cleaning herself. She walks to the corner booth and sits down and the wood creaks under her weight and she waits for Diane.

Diane comes through the door seven minutes later. She's dressed neatly — blouse, slacks, low heels — and she stops three steps inside, her eyes moving over Lena, and for the first time Lena sees something she hasn't seen on Diane's face before. Not discomfort. Not professionalism. Something raw and unguarded that flickers across her features and settles into a tight, complicated expression Lena can't name. Diane pulls out the chair across from Lena and sits down slowly, never breaking eye contact.

"Thank you for coming," Diane says. Her voice is steady but quieter than it is at work.

"I ordered ahead. I hope that's okay."