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Check OnlyFans once more before I crash. Both of us wake up at 11 am. Once up, both of us finish our remaining tasks for the month by 3 pm. Its the best work both of you ever completed. As a result, both of your salaries quadruple.
The phone screen is the only light. Lena's thumb moves slow — the yellow nail catching the glow, the glass smudged with grease — and the OnlyFans app loads and the notifications are stacked deep. The post from the office floor has been up for nine hours and the numbers are climbing. 891 likes. The subscriber count has jumped from 612 to 703. Comments fill the screen — "you look like you own that building," "the carpet will never recover," "what branch is this and can I apply" — and she scrolls through them with the slow focus of someone who is very high and very drunk and very satisfied. A $10 tip arrives while she's watching. The comment says "the numbers and the body." She likes it. The phone falls on the belly. The belly holds it.
Diane is already out — the head heavy on Lena's shoulder, the breathing deep and slow, the beard rising and falling. Lena's eyes close. The screen dims. The building is dark and the office is dark and the carpet is warm and the smell is thick and the night is over.
The phone alarm doesn't go off because neither of them set one. The sun does it instead — the cracked window letting in a column of Wednesday light that moves across the carpet and reaches the wall and reaches the bellies and reaches the eyes. Lena wakes first. 11 AM. The screen says so. The body is stiff and warm and the carpet is stiff and warm and the stains beneath her are dry and layered and the smell is enormous. Diane stirs — the beard scratching Lena's shoulder, the belly pressing tighter, the body unfolding slow — and opens her eyes and says nothing and the nothing is comfortable.
They don't shower. They don't brush. They don't wipe. They sit up and the carpet peels — the skin lifting from the dried mess with a sound like tape — and Lena rolls to the desk and the screen wakes and the queue is there and the reports are there and the month's remaining tasks are there and the numbers are there. Diane is on her feet, the corner behind the filing cabinet fouled and the carpet ruined and the body unwashed and the beard matted and the eyes clear. She leaves for her own office and comes back with her tablet and her own queue and the two of them work.
The work is clean. The work is fast. The work is the best either of them has ever done — the gummy haze burned off, the drunk burned off, the bodies heavy and clear and the minds sharp in a way that only happens when the body is fully comfortable and the mind has stopped fighting. Lena finishes her last report at 2:41 PM. Diane finishes at 2:58. The branch numbers update automatically — the Garfield branch's monthly metrics landing in the system like a brick on a scale — and at 3:07 an email arrives from corporate. Not Henderson. Higher than Henderson. The subject line says "Compensation Adjustment — Garfield Branch." The body says the branch has exceeded every benchmark by margins that the compensation committee had to verify twice. Effective immediately, the Lead Analyst and Branch Manager salaries at Garfield are quadrupled. The numbers are attached. The numbers are real.
Lena reads the email twice. Diane reads it three times. The office is still destroyed — the carpet, the corner, the wrappers, the stains, the smell — and the screen is clean and the numbers are clean and the email is clean and the two of them are on the floor again because neither of them made it back to the chairs. Diane looks at Lena. The beard is matted. The brown eyes are wide. The belly is round and the stretch marks catch the screen light and the body is 387 pounds and unwashed and the body is hers.
"Four times," Diane says.
"Four times," Lena says.
The wish hums. The building is empty. The afternoon is gold. The carpet is ruined and the numbers are real and the salaries are real and the bodies are real and the wish keeps working.