Turn 62 of 228

Ask what happens Monday when vacation ends. She replies nothing changes. On Monday, I go back to work, still top performer with all of my habits. Weight increases to 307. Diane is an even better manager and she still wearing the same clothes from Saturday, with more stains. It smells like she hasn't showered too.

They walk west and the bodega hums behind them and Lena says, "What happens Monday?" Diane is quiet for half a block. The kind of quiet that used to mean she was composing a careful answer. Now it just means she's thinking. She says, "Nothing changes." Lena says, "Nothing?" Diane says, "You go back to your office. You clear your queue. You do what you do. I manage the team and handle anything that comes up and we keep meeting on Saturdays." She pauses.

"Nothing changes because it was already working. The office, the email-only role, the locked door — that wasn't an accommodation. That was me seeing what you needed and building a structure around it. The structure works. You don't need a different one because the vacation is over."

Lena says, "And you?" Diane looks at her and the cheese is still on her chin and the jacket is open and the blouse is wrinkled and she says, "I go back to being a manager. A better one. Because I stopped performing management and started doing it." They reach Lena's building and the security guard looks up and looks down and Lena takes both bags and says, "Next Saturday." Diane says, "Next Saturday." She walks east and the leather jacket catches the streetlight and then she's gone.

Sunday passes on the floor. The scale reads 302. Monday morning Lena wakes on the hardwood and the impressions from the grain are deep in her hip and her thigh and she stretches and her body unfolds at 302 pounds and the wish hums and she walks out naked and the security guard doesn't look up. The elevator takes her up and the office is cool and the door locks behind her and the laptop opens and the queue is full and she clears it by ten. She eats at her desk — chips, cookies, a bottle of vodka — and the wrappers fall where they fall and the carpet accumulates and she works naked with her belly resting on her thighs and her breasts spread heavy and wide and the chair creaks beneath her. She farts and the sound echoes off the walls and she doesn't acknowledge it. She pisses in the corner because the bathroom is down the hall and the hall means people and people mean clothes and clothes are a thing she doesn't do anymore. The carpet darkens in the corner. The smell rises. She keeps working.\n By Wednesday the scale reads 305. By Friday it reads 307. The weight comes steady and deep — the belly wider and lower, hanging past her thighs when she sits, spreading across the chair like dough. Her breasts have grown again and they rest on the belly's upper curve and the weight of them is constant and warm. Her arms are thicker and softer and the skin of her upper arms sways when she types. Her thighs press together from hip to knee and the chair's armrests no longer reach her sides — her body spills past them on both sides. She finishes her queue by 9:45 on Friday and spends the rest of the day gaming on the office floor with the door locked and the laptop closed and the console she brought from home plugged into the monitor. She wins every match.

Diane is different too. Lena sees her in the hallway on Tuesday — a brief pass, Diane walking toward her office with a folder in her hand — and the blouse is the same one from Saturday. The same wrinkle. New stains — coffee on the cuff, something dark on the collar, a smear of salsa near the hem. The pants are tighter. Not different pants. The same pants, straining at a body that has softened further over the week. Her hair is down. It's less clean than Saturday — the ends are lank and the shine is gone and it hangs around her face in a way that doesn't look managed. And the smell. Lena catches it as Diane passes — not strong, not yet, but present. The sour-sweet note of skin that hasn't been washed. The undertone of food. The fabric holding days of wear. Diane doesn't stop. She walks past and the folder is in her hand and her pace is steady and she doesn't look back and Lena stands in the hallway at 305 pounds and naked and watches her go and thinks: she's not performing anymore. She's just doing it. The way I do it. The way the wish taught me.