Turn 81 of 228

Weigh again and see if the number moved. It did, I am 342 now. Skip forward 2 months. Both our weights and slobbiness have increased and both of us have found boyfriends just as fat and slobby as us. Both of us become so good at our jobs our branch becomes best performing branch of the company by far. As a result, both our salaries triple.

Lena stands on the scale and the display flickers and the numbers climb — 338, 339, 340, 341, 342 — and settle. Three hundred and forty-two. Two pounds since last night. She steps off and the display goes dark and the tile is cold under her feet and the toenails click and the morning is gold and the wish hums and the number is already old.

Eight weeks later the world is different and the world is the same. Lena's apartment is still hers — the couch still stained, the carpet still sticky, the shower still dry, the corner where she shits still uncleaned — but it's bigger now. Not the apartment. The life. The body. The number on the scale, which she stopped tracking daily somewhere around 380 and now checks the way a farmer checks weather — out of habit, not out of hope. She's 411 pounds on a Tuesday morning in November when she steps on the scale and the display struggles and the number arrives like it's being delivered from somewhere far away. Four hundred and eleven. The belly hangs past her thighs when she sits. The breasts rest on the belly like they're stationed there. The thighs are so wide she can't close her legs and she doesn't try. The arms are soft and heavy and the yellow nails are longer — curling now, past the fingertips, thick and ridged, and she's stopped noticing them the way she's stopped noticing the body hair or the smell or the way the floor creaks when she walks. The toenails are worse — thick and dark and curling over the tips of her toes and they click on everything: the tile, the carpet, the sidewalk, the office floor. She hasn't showered in over two months. The skin is layered with grime and sweat and food residue and the smell is a physical thing — warm and heavy and animal and present.

Diane is 387 pounds. The beard is full now — a dark, coarse beard that covers her jaw and her neck and creeps up her cheeks, and the body hair is thick everywhere, chest and belly and arms and legs, and the belly is round and heavy and the breasts are wide and the stretch marks are everywhere — white and pink and purple, mapped across her skin like they've always been there. She goes to work naked. She's been going to work naked for two months. No one stops her. The security guard doesn't look up. The team doesn't mention it. Henderson's emails come through and Diane routes them and the work gets done. The branch is the best-performing branch in the company. The numbers are not close. Lena's reports are precise and fast and the clients are happy and the metrics are through the ceiling and corporate noticed and the raises came — first one, then another, then a third — and the salary tripled and the apartment filled with food and the body filled with food and the wish hummed and the body grew.

There are men now. Lena met Marcus at the bodega in October — 360 pounds, unwashed, barefoot, a software developer who works from home and hasn't showered in three weeks and doesn't plan to. He's 26 and his belly hangs past his waistband and his nails are long and his smell is warm and he looked at Lena in the bodega line and she looked at him and neither of them said anything for thirty seconds and then he said, "You smell good" and she said, "I know" and that was it. He comes over now — four, five nights a week — and he sits on the couch beside her and they eat and smoke and game and the body is warm and the apartment is warm and the smell is theirs and his belly presses against hers and the yellow nails tap the controller and the screen flickers and the evening goes where it goes.

Diane met Carl at work — not in their branch, in the Haverston branch three floors up. 345 pounds, bearded, unwashed, a senior analyst who smelled like he'd been sleeping in his clothes for a week and had been. Diane walked past him in the lobby and he looked at her and she looked at him and the lobby was empty and he said, "You're Diane" and she said, "You're Carl" and they both smelled like themselves and neither of them looked away. He's at Diane's apartment now — most nights — and the bed is small and the two of them are large and the springs gave up weeks ago and the mattress is on the floor and the wrappers are everywhere and the smell is layered and the apartment is theirs.

The branch is number one. The email came from corporate on a Friday — "Outstanding Performance Recognition: Garfield Branch, Q3" — and the metrics were attached and the numbers were absurd. Lena's client retention rate is 97%. Diane's team productivity is up 340%. The Garfield branch is outperforming the second-place branch by a margin that the email called "unprecedented." The raises came the next Monday. Lena's salary tripled. Diane's salary tripled. The money is in the account and the money is food and the food is the body and the body grows and the wish hums and the apartment is warm and the men are warm and the smell is warm and the nails are long and yellow and the scale struggles and the number arrives and the wish hums and the wish hums and the wish hums.