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Turn 78 of 228

Keep gaming until the food runs out and pass out on the couch. Skip to Saturday Movie Night. Both Diane and I eat, drink, smoke, masturbate, shit and piss a lot. The film selected is a comedy that you both immensely enjoy

The matches blur together. Win, loss, win, win, loss — the rank climbs and falls and climbs and the yellow nails tap the buttons and the belly spreads across the thighs and the chips run out at 1 AM and the gummy worms are gone and the vodka bottle empties and the last donut disappears at 2 and the controller is warm and the screen flickers and the couch holds her. She doesn't stop playing. She plays until the food is gone and the weed is cashed and the apartment is dark and the screen is the only light and her eyes burn and the controller slips from her fingers and the belly rises and falls and she sleeps. The console stays on. The screen glows. The body is 313 pounds of warm and heavy and unwashed and the apartment holds her and the night passes.

Saturday comes the way Saturdays come now — slow, heavy, the afternoon light through the window and the phone buzzing and the couch stained and the body stiff. Lena wakes and the controller is on the floor and the screen is in sleep mode and the apartment smells like everything she's left in it. She eats the last of the Oreos — stale, the package open on the floor — and drinks water from the tap and the day passes and the evening comes and at seven the knock comes.

Diane is at the door. Fully naked. The beard is darker and the belly is rounder and the breasts hang heavier and the stretch marks catch the hallway light and the body hair is thick and dark and the smell hits Lena before the words do — unwashed skin and piss and something under it, something warm and animal. She's carrying a plastic bag and inside it: two boxes of donuts, a bag of peanut butter cups, a bottle of vodka, a bottle of whiskey, and a pre-roll. She walks in and doesn't say anything and the apartment welcomes her the way it welcomes everything — without resistance.

They walk to the Charleswood. The night is warm and the sidewalk is rough and two barefoot women — one 313 pounds with long yellow nails clicking on the concrete, one heavier than last week with a beard and body hair and a smell that precedes her by half a block — walk side by side and the people they pass look and look away. The Charleswood is half empty and row seven is theirs and the screen is large and the previews are playing and Diane opens the vodka and Lena opens the donuts and the comedy starts.

It's good. It's genuinely good — a small film about a woman who inherits a failing zoo and the animals keep escaping and the staff are incompetent and the jokes land because the actors commit to them completely. Lena laughs. Not the managed laugh, not the polite laugh — the full laugh, the one that shakes her belly and makes the seat creak and the donut crumbs fly. Diane laughs too and the beard opens and the belly shakes and the sound is new — Lena has never heard Diane laugh like this, uncontrolled, the laugh of someone who isn't managing anything.

They eat and drink and smoke and the pre-roll passes between them and the seats hold them and the theater is dark and the comedy builds and the woman on screen is chasing a llama through a parking lot and Lena laughs so hard she farts — a long loud fart that echoes in the empty theater — and Diane laughs harder and farts too and they're both laughing and the screen is bright and the seats are warm and the donuts are gone and the vodka is half gone and the whiskey is open.

Diane shifts in her seat and the sound changes — the low sound of pissing, the steady hiss of it, the liquid hitting the carpet beneath the seat. She doesn't stand. She doesn't pause. She keeps watching the screen and the piss pools under her and the seat is warm and the smell rises and Lena doesn't say anything because there's nothing to say. Lena's bladder is full too — the vodka and the whiskey and the soda — and she lets go. The piss comes warm and heavy and soaks the seat and runs down and pools on the carpet and the seat is warm and the theater is dark and the screen is bright and the woman on screen is covered in kangaroos and they're both laughing.

Later — after the whiskey is gone and the pre-roll is cashed and the film is in its third act — Diane stands and squats in the aisle beside row seven and the sound is unmistakable and the smell joins the piss smell and the carpet is dark and she sits back down and the seat creaks and the screen is bright. Lena does the same — stands, squats, the belly hanging, the body shifting, the release warm and heavy — and sits back down and the seat is wet and the theater is dark and the film is reaching its climax and the woman on screen has saved the zoo and the llama is in her office and the staff are cheering.

The credits roll and the theater is quiet and the seats are soaked and the carpet is stained and the air is thick with the smell of two unwashed bodies and piss and shit and vodka and weed and donuts and the screen is dark and the lights come up and Diane looks at Lena and Lena looks at Diane and the laughter is still there — not out loud, not anymore, but in the eyes, in the set of the mouth, in the way two people sit in a wrecked theater and don't move. Diane says, "Same time next week." Lena says, "Same time next week."