Turn 26 of 228
Post a photo from the office with a caption about the smell. Then text Diane to set up the next coffee meeting. Finally, end the day by eating, getting drunk and high, pissing, shitting and masturbating on the floor until you pass out
The office is quiet at four-forty-five. Lena picks up her phone and opens the camera. She doesn't angle it — just holds it out and captures herself at the desk: naked, belly pressed against the edge, breasts heavy and bare, the stubble on her underarms visible where her arm extends to hold the phone, food wrappers stacked beside the keyboard, crumbs dotting the soft fold beneath her chest. The light from the overhead fluorescent catches the grease on her skin and the coarse dark hair on her legs. She posts it with the caption: *I haven't showered since Thursday. My office smells like my body and old food. I don't open the window. I'm the most productive analyst on the floor.*
She switches to her text thread with Diane and types with one thumb: *Coffee this week? Same place?* She sends it and sets the phone on the desk and finishes the methodology brief she's been working on, reads through it once, and sends it to the client queue. The phone buzzes before she stands up. Diane's reply: *Thursday after work. Marlow's. I'll be there at 5:15.* Lena types *I'll be there* and pockets the phone and walks out of the office naked and locks the door behind her and the hallway is empty and the elevator is empty and the security guard watches her cross the lobby without speaking.
The apartment is dark when she gets home and she doesn't turn on the lights. She drops onto the couch and eats — chips, cookies, cold pasta from a container, half a sleeve of crackers, vodka from the bottle. She smokes two joints back to back and the haze thickens until the ceiling above her swims in the dim glow from the streetlight outside the window. Her body is heavy and warm and the couch groans under her each time she shifts. She can smell herself in the cushions now — days of sweat and food and urine soaked into the fabric — and the smell is part of the furniture, part of the apartment, part of her.
She slides off the couch onto the floor. The hardwood is cool against her bare back and her belly spreads wide and heavy and her thighs fall open. She eats a cookie from the box beside her head and drinks vodka and the warmth runs through her in layers — weed first, then alcohol, then sugar, then the deep hum of her own body. The pressure in her bladder builds and she lets it go where she lies, the urine pooling beneath her hips and running along the floor in warm streams that find the cracks between the boards. The relief is enormous and she groans and her hand moves to between her legs. She masturbates slowly, the slick warmth of it mixing with the piss, and the orgasm builds in her belly like something tectonic.
She feels the other pressure — lower, deeper — and she doesn't move. She pushes and her body responds and the smell sharpens in the air around her, thick and raw, and she doesn't stop. The warmth spreads beneath her and she keeps her hand moving and the orgasm breaks through — deep and slow and full-body — and she cries out in the empty dark apartment and her belly tightens and releases and she lies in it afterward, breathing hard, the mess beneath her warm and cooling and hers. She reaches for the vodka and drinks and her eyes close and the last thing she feels is the floor beneath her and the weight of her own body pressing down into it, heavy and complete and still.