Turn 63 of 228

Stay in your office and game until Saturday film night. Diane has stopped wearing bras and panties. The smell is even stronger. Still same clothes and she looks even heavier. Her hair is longer and there is stubble. Another action comedy is seen with even more movie theather food. Both of you sneak weed and alcohol

The week disappears into the office. Lena games on the floor with the door locked and the console plugged into the monitor and the queue cleared by nine-thirty every morning and the rest of the day hers. She eats naked and pisses in the corner and the carpet darkens and the wrappers pile and the bottles line up against the wall and the vodka is cold and the weed is strong and the matches are won. She doesn't leave. The security guard sees her arrive Monday morning and doesn't see her again until Saturday because Lena sleeps on the office floor — the carpet is softer than her hardwood, warmer, and the dark stain in the corner has become part of the landscape the way the stains at home are part of the landscape. She games until two or three in the morning and sleeps until seven and clears the queue and games again. The scale in her apartment reads 307 on Sunday and she doesn't go home to check it again until Saturday morning and it reads 309. The wish hums.

Thursday she hears Diane in the hallway. Not sees — hears. The boots are slower than they used to be, heavier, the pace of someone carrying more weight than she carried three weeks ago. Then the door to Diane's office opens and closes and the sound is muffled but the smell comes through the vent — the sour-sweet accumulation of a body not washed, the fabric holding days, the undertone of something biological and unapologetic. It's stronger than last week. Lena sits on her office floor at 308 pounds and naked and she breathes it in and it smells like permission.

Saturday evening. The Charleswood. Lena walks the six blocks barefoot at 309 pounds and the sidewalk is warm under her feet and the evening air moves across her skin and the marquee glows and Diane is at the entrance. The first thing Lena sees is the blouse. The same blouse. The wrinkle is deeper now, the fabric softer from days of continuous wear, and the stains have multiplied — coffee on the cuff, salsa near the hem, something dark on the collar, a new yellowish mark on the belly that might be mustard or might be something else. The pants are the same pants and they're straining. Not tight — straining. The waistband cuts into soft flesh that pushes over it on both sides and the seam along the hip is pulling and the fabric is thinning in places it wasn't thinning last week. Diane is bigger. Not five pounds bigger — more. The blouse pulls across her chest in a way it didn't last week and the fabric gaps between the buttons and through the gaps Lena can see skin — bare skin, no bra, the soft swell of a breast visible through the gap between the second and third buttons. Diane's hair is longer — not trimmed, not shaped, just longer, the ends lank and uneven and hanging past her shoulders now. And the stubble. Under the fluorescent marquee light Lena sees it — a shadow along Diane's jaw and beneath her chin, the dark evidence of days without shaving. The smell hits Lena from three feet away. Strong. Biological. The sourness of unwashed skin layered with food and fabric and sweat and something deeper — the smell of a body that has stopped apologizing for being a body.

Diane hands Lena a ticket and says, "Action comedy. The one with the heist and the dog." Lena says, "Good pick." They walk in and the back row is loaded — two trays, same as last week but more. Lena's tray is a mountain: three buckets of popcorn, four boxes of candy, two chili dogs, a large soda, a bag of chips, a sleeve of Oreos, two candy bars. Diane's tray is bigger than last week too — nachos with extra cheese, two hot dogs, a large soda, a bag of peanut butter cups, the dark chocolate. Lena sees the flask in Diane's jacket pocket — the rectangular outline, the silver cap. Lena has her own in her hand. They sit and the lights dim and Lena unscrews the flask and the vodka burns clean and she passes it to Diane and Diane drinks and hands it back and they do this three times before the opening credits finish.

The weed comes out twenty minutes in. Lena rolls a joint in her lap in the dark — practiced, easy, the motions of someone who has done this on her office floor a hundred times — and lights it with the lighter she keeps in the candy box and the smoke curls up and the theater is half empty and no one cares. She takes a hit and passes it to Diane and Diane takes it and inhales and coughs once and then takes another hit and passes it back. They smoke it down to a roach and Lena drops the roach on the floor and eats a fistful of popcorn and the film is loud and stupid and joyful — the heist is ridiculous and the dog is the best actor in the movie and the explosions are enormous and Lena laughs with her whole body and the sound is big and open and the belly shakes and the breasts shake and the candy wrappers crinkle and the vodka is warm now and the weed is warm and the food is warm and everything is warm.

Diane is eating like Lena now. Not quite — not the total abandon, not the chin and the arm and the lap — but close. She tilts the nacho tray to catch the cheese and her tongue is quick and her hands are steady and the second hot dog is gone before the first act ends. She drinks from her own flask and then from Lena's and then from the soda and the cheese is on her chin again and she doesn't wipe it and the blouse has a new stain — nacho cheese, bright orange, on the belly — and the gaps between the buttons are wider because she's leaning back and the fabric is pulling and the bare skin visible through the gaps is softer and fuller than it was last week. She laughs at the screen — the real laugh, the uncontrolled one — and she farts and the sound is quiet but Lena hears it and Diane doesn't acknowledge it and Lena doesn't acknowledge it and the couple three rows ahead doesn't turn around. The film ends with the dog driving a car into a sunset and a joke about taxes and the credits roll and the back row is destroyed — wrappers and buckets and trays and the roach on the floor and the empty flasks and the smell of weed and vodka and food and two bodies that haven't been washed and don't care. Lena leans back and her body spreads across the seat and the armrests and she says, "Four times you've seen this one?" Diane says, "Five." Lena says, "Good." They sit in the mess and the lights are up and neither of them moves.