Turn 67 of 228

Weigh myself one more time and get ready for Saturday film night. Diane shows up topless, even heavier, and with the same pants barely hanging on. Smells even worse and is hairer. Eats and drinks and smokes and farts and burps more too. Superhero film this time

Saturday morning and the scale in her apartment reads 312. Lena stands on it and the number glows and the wish hums and she steps off and the weight is all there — the belly hanging low and heavy, the breasts wide and resting on the belly's upper curve, the thighs pressing together from hip to knee, the arms soft and swaying. She walks the six blocks to the Charleswood at three in the afternoon and the sidewalk is warm under her bare feet and the evening is coming and the marquee glows and she waits.

Diane rounds the corner on Garfield at six-fifteen and Lena sees her from thirty feet away. The blouse is gone. Not tucked, not unbuttoned, not hanging open — gone. Diane is bare from the waist up and the body Lena saw through the gaps in the buttons last week is now fully visible and it is bigger than Lena expected. The breasts are full and heavy and they hang low and soft against the ribcage and the nipples are dark and the skin between them is pale and the belly is round and soft and pushes forward in a curve that bounces when she walks. The stubble is darker now — not just along the jaw and the neck but spreading, a visible shadow across the upper chest and between the breasts and the hair on her forearms is thicker and there's new hair under her arms, dark and curling, visible when she moves her arms. Her hair is longer and lank and unwashed and the ends are matted and the smell reaches Lena before Diane does — strong, rich, biological, the deep accumulation of a body unwashed for days, layered with food and sweat and fabric and the sourness of skin that has stopped apologizing.

The pants are the same pants. The same pants from Saturday and Monday and every day since — the waistband cutting into flesh that pushes over it on all sides, the seam along the right hip split open three inches now, the fabric thinning and straining and the belly hanging over the waistband in a soft heavy curve. They are barely holding on. The button is closed but the fabric around it is pulled taut and the buttonhole is stretching and the threads are visible and Lena can see bare skin through the split seam and there are no panties underneath. Diane's bare feet are black on the soles and she walks toward the Charleswood barefoot and topless and carrying nothing and she looks — settled. Not performing settled. The way a person looks when they've stopped asking permission.

"Superhero," Diane says. "The one with the hammer."

"Good pick," Lena says.

They walk in and the back row is loaded. Lena's tray is a mountain — three buckets of popcorn, four boxes of candy, three chili dogs, a large soda, chips, Oreos, two candy bars, a bag of gummy worms. Diane's tray is bigger than last week — nachos with extra cheese, three hot dogs, a large soda, two bags of peanut butter cups, the dark chocolate, a bag of chips. The flasks are in Lena's pockets and the joint is in the candy box and they sit and the lights dim and Lena unscrews the flask and the vodka burns and she passes it to Diane and Diane drinks and hands it back and they do this four times before the opening credits finish. The joint comes out twenty minutes in and 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 bright and enormous — the hero swings the hammer and the city explodes and the quips land and the villain is over-the-top and the dog from last week's film makes a cameo and Lena laughs with her whole body and the belly shakes and the breasts shake and the sound is big and open.

Diane is different tonight. Not just the toplessness — the eating. She eats like Lena now. The nachos go first and she tilts the tray and licks the cheese and doesn't use a napkin and the hot dogs are gone in six bites and the cheese is on her chin and the chocolate is on her fingers and she wipes them on the pants and the stain joins the other stains. She drinks from her flask and from Lena's and from the soda and she burps — loud, deep, unapologetic — and the couple three rows ahead doesn't turn around. She farts and it's not quiet this time, not the small sound from last week, but a real one, a full one, the kind Lena lets go on the office floor, and Diane doesn't acknowledge it and Lena doesn't acknowledge it and the theater smells like weed and vodka and food and two unwashed bodies and the film plays on. Diane reaches for the second bag of peanut butter cups and opens it and eats the whole thing before the third act and her belly is visible above the waistband — round and soft and pushing forward and the pants are straining and the split seam is wider and the button is holding by threads and she doesn't adjust them. She doesn't tug. She doesn't manage. She leans back and the belly pushes forward and the breasts settle wide and heavy and the bare feet are on the sticky floor and she laughs at the screen — the real laugh, the uncontrolled one — and the film ends with the hero flying into a sunset and a joke about shawarma and the credits roll and the back row is destroyed.