Turn 73 of 228

Leave work early and walk to the Bodega, notice you have never clipped your nails and toenails since this started. They are long and yellow.

Lena saves the match and sets the controller down and the screen dims and the office is warm and the afternoon is long and the queue has been clear for hours. She stands and the body rises — 313 pounds of belly and breast and thigh — and the carpet holds the impression of her, a warm dent in the stained fibers where she sat for six hours. She doesn't bother with the laptop. She doesn't bother with shoes. She unlocks the door and the hallway is quiet and the fluorescent lights hum and the building is empty except for Diane behind her closed door and the smell of two unwashed bodies layered in the recycled air.

The elevator takes her down and the lobby is bright and the security guard looks up and looks down and the doors open and the afternoon is warm and the sidewalk is rough under her bare feet. She walks west on Garfield and the six blocks to the bodega and the sun is on her skin and the belly hangs and sways and the breasts shift and the thighs press and the body moves the way it moves now — heavy, deliberate, the walk of someone who weighs 313 pounds and doesn't hurry. She passes a woman walking a dog and the woman looks and looks away and Lena doesn't care.

She looks down at her hands. She's holding nothing — no bag, no phone, no controller — and her hands are just there, hanging at her sides, and she sees them. The nails. They're long. Longer than she ever let them grow — past the fingertips now, curving slightly, and they're yellow. Not stained yellow, not polish yellow — the yellow of nails that haven't been trimmed or cared for in weeks, the yellow of keratin left to grow and thicken and darken. She turns her hands over and the palms are dirty — the grime of the office carpet and the controller and the vodka bottles and the chip bags — and the nails on both hands are the same. Long and yellow and thick and she can't remember the last time she held clippers. She can't remember the last time she thought about them.

She looks down at her feet on the sidewalk. The toenails are the same. Long and yellow and thick, pushing past the tips of her toes, visible against the dirty soles and the rough concrete. She hasn't looked at her feet in weeks — the belly blocks the view when she stands, the thighs press together when she sits — and now she sees them and the toenails are longer than the fingernails, curling slightly on the big toes, yellow and thick and neglected and she keeps walking. The bodega is two blocks ahead and her bare feet slap the concrete and the nails click — faintly, a small tap on the sidewalk with each step, the toenails hitting the ground — and the sound is new and she doesn't manage it. She doesn't file them. She doesn't plan to.

The bodega bell rings and the clerk looks up and looks down and Lena walks the aisles and her yellow nails catch the fluorescent light and she fills a basket — vodka, Oreos, chips, gummy worms, donuts, soda — and the basket is heavy and her arms are soft and the nails curl over the handles and she sets it on the counter and the clerk rings it up without comment and the total flashes and she pays and the bags rustle and she walks outside and the afternoon is warm and the sun is on her skin and her nails are long and yellow and the wish hums and the body grows and the sidewalk stretches ahead and she walks home.