Susanne faked a smile as she opened the door to the closet-sized capsule hotel in Akihabara, wondering if it had been a mistake to take her two teenage sons to Japan for their senior year spring break.

“This room sucks dick,” Jake said.

“It’s like a coffin,” James added. “All three of us are in here?”

“We’re gonna asphyxiate on mom’s farts,” Jake said.

Susanne set her suitcase beside her small bed and tried not to listen. Her boys had begged her since they were little to go to Japan. She’d budgeted and clipped coupons and saved up for five years to pay for this trip. To make extra money, she’d started, and then closed, a series of Etsy shops selling pillows or candles or little felted figurines; every few months a new craft she’d take up with big hopes, only to quit when she’d decide she was an amateur, an imposter compared to the other ladies on the website. When she’d finally saved enough to book the plane tickets and hotel, she gave up on her crafting dreams and shut down her Etsy shop, accepting that she was never any good at it anyway.

“Why aren’t we staying in that sick skyscraper?” James said, pressing his forehead against the room’s eight-inch window.

Jake pulled his brother away and smacked his own forehead against the glass. “That’s where rich pimps live,” he said, admiring the 60-story all-glass tower, the contents of its luxury rooms tauntingly visible to everyone below. “Losers like mom stay down here in the gutters.”

“Let’s get out of this shithole,” James said.

“Where are you going?” Susanne said. “I have tickets for us to go to the botanical garden in an hour.”

Jake burst out laughing. “We’re going to the augmented reality strip club. Hand-drawn digital babes strut their jugs and asses. And you only have to be sixteen to get in, so you can’t say shit to stop us.”

The twins raced out of the room. Susanne opened her wallet, looked at the three botanical garden tickets — $80 each — and set them aside. She didn’t want to go to the garden alone. She didn’t want to do much of anything anymore.

But she needed to get out of the small room, and so she trudged down the cramped hallway and into the hotel bar.

*

“Sweet tea, please?” Susanne asked the perky waitress. After a confusing back and forth, the waitress served a steaming pot of something green. Susanne forced a smile and a thank you, then sniffed the steam and winced. All around her sat groups of laughing friends and snuggling couples. She’d grown used to dining alone after Greg had left her for his waif of a secretary seven years ago, but that night she sensed she was on display. Susanne had always felt bigger than she wished she was, but here — the only American — she felt monstrously large.

The small waitress returned with a gymnastic smile, like a yoga pose Susanne knew not to try. “Salad?” Susanne said. “Plain?”

A woman sitting behind the waitress stared at Susanne, and she feared she’d accidentally said something embarrassing in Japanese. She shook her head. “Never mind. I’m okay. Nothing for me.” She waved the waitress away, wanting to be left alone.

But the other woman whispered into her friend’s ear, staring at Susanne. The friend’s eyes lit up.

Susanne turned away from them, imagining they were comparing her arms to those of some creature from one of the scary cartoons James and Jake watched. But a group of three sitting in a booth looked at Susanne as well. So did four at another table, and five waitresses clustered together to whisper and watch.

She couldn’t take it anymore, and so she left several Japanese bills on the table, assuming it was far more than the price of the tea, but knowing she wasn’t going to be spending the money anyway. Head down, she rushed towards the exit. But four large bodyguards in black suits blocked the door, and behind them a tall, handsome man entered the bar.

The other patrons gasped, recognizing the man. The bar’s hostess sensed Susanne’s confusion and whispered into her ear, “Movie star.”

Feeling even more out of place, Susanne looked down at her big sneakers, waiting for the man to clear the doorway and let her leave. But the tall man stared at Susanne. His eyes widened and a smile curled over his face.

“Please just let me go,” Susanne said, feeling like a circus freak show.

“Susanne,” the tall man said. “Susanne?” He reached into his jacket and withdrew a felted cocker spaniel.

Susanne tilted her head, confused.

The tall man reached into a second pocket and pulled out a cloth square on which Susanne had embroidered SWEET TEA, Y’ALL.

Susanne turned to the hostess. “Why does he have those?”

The hostess held out her phone, showing a pink-and-purple Japanese fan website dedicated to Susanne. Her crafts on Etsy had won over tastemakers there, who found her authentic American style charming, sassy, and fun. Hundreds of internet groups had formed trying to uncover more information about the mysterious American artist known only as Susanne R, but after she’d closed all of her accounts, they’d been unable to find more than the one photograph of her face she’d used on her Etsy profile. Her disappearance had only fueled her legendary status, and made the value of her items skyrocket on the secondary market.

“Susanne?” the tall man said again. He held the felted cocker spaniel to his heart, and then reached one hand around the small of Susanne’s back. It had been nearly a decade since she’d been touched, and the contact shocked her, like static. But she gave in to the feeling — warm and safe and sure, more of a man’s hold on her than she’d ever felt from Greg. The man was gorgeous, and Susanne’s heart raced as he leaned in to kiss her. His lips were timid and respectful at first, but passion grew as his right hand massaged the back of Susanne’s head.

*

“Why the fuck did you want to go there?” Jake barked at his brother as they left the augmented reality strip club late that night. “That was disgusting.”

“You’re the pervert who wanted to go,” James said, feeling frightened and out of place on the busy city sidewalk.

Jake called his mother, but she didn’t answer. He tried again, and still nothing.

“Dude,” James said. “Check out the top floor of the pimp skyscraper. People are fucking.”

Jake’s face lit up as he scanned the windows, locating the two nude figures in the penthouse bouncing madly up and down, unashamed.

James held up his phone and zoomed in for a better look, but his glee soured. “Wait, what the fuck, that can’t–“

The twins didn’t have to say a word, as they both knew that was their mother up there, mounting a muscular Japanese movie star. Fully nude and free, Susanne had the tall man pinned on the bed and she rode him with abandon, savoring that the whole city was watching her broad bottom and full thighs at work, pounding one of the wealthiest and most attractive men in Japan. She smiled wide and screamed in ecstasy, hoping that everyone down there on the street would hear.

On the bedside table sat two VIP tickets to the botanical gardens, which she and the tall man would enjoy, all by themselves, the next day.

You delivered them one of the best-selling fantasy novels of the decade and your small-brained publishing company has the gall to question your creative integrity? These spineless bean-counters and unimaginative squares think they have the authority to drag you into their big glass conference room and sit you in front of everyone from accounting and distribution and marketing, and then your cowardly editor who’s never written so much as a paragraph has the nerve to say they all love the sequel you wrote, that it was worth the eight-year wait, that fans will adore it, and that they only have one single question about the entire airtight manuscript: “Can you help us wrap our heads around the names of the new family of dragon-hunters from the west introduced in this volume, characters who are prominently featured throughout and are named Swiffer Sweeper Dry, Swiffer WetJet, and Swiffer Duster Heavy Duty?” You roll your eyes and moan and say that, like all the other fan-favorite names in the book including Grumslug, Thorain, and Gwendowyre, these new names emerged from the depths of your unparalleled imagination. You tell these uncreative bores that the mind of a writer is a mysterious place they, non-writers, could never dream of understanding. Your editor says, “That’s fantastic and you know we all have immense respect for you and your work, but these names in particular feel like paid product placement, and we wanted to know if you’d arranged some kind of deal with Procter & Gamble to mention these products in exchange for a payment made directly to you?” You stand and pound your big fist on the table three times, the way King Swiffer Sweeper Pet Heavy Duty does on his long oak table in chapter ninety-eight. “How dare you cast these ugly allegations at me,” you bark at those mice, all of them staring into the floor, petrified. “How dare you bland, orthodox rubes put me on trial in your kangaroo court for the alleged crime of using my imagination. Commerce disgusts me, and each morning as I sit down to write I batten the hatches to keep such nastiness at bay. My creativity is pure and it is sacred and it is as foreign and inexplicable to you milksop yokels as King Lear to a roach. I am an artist pulling wine from thin air for the benefit of you rapacious, predatory, covetous leeches. I am ashamed to know any of you, and you sicken me to no end. My novel will be published as-is.”

You turn and exit the conference room, take the long elevator ride down, step out of the building onto Broadway, and bump against a man in Procter & Gamble baseball cap. He slides a check for seven million dollars into your pocket as you disappear into the crowd while your immense brain stumbles into a vision for the third book, of a family of serpent-slayers from the east, a family led by the mighty Queen Febreze.

“It would be nice to have a nice ass,” William Wickers said to his wife, Wendy, and seventeen-year-old daughter, Willow, at their dining room table as they ate Papa John’s pizza. “A sweet seat with a pleasing heart shape; two huge cheeks and a well-defined crack that accepts ruches with ease. A real apple-bottom rear that will catch the eyes of the executives upstairs and encourage them to finally give me a promotion.”

Wendy set her crust down. “I’m confused. You’ve never mentioned anything like this before.”

“It’s a desire I’ve harbored for months, but only now have I built the courage to express it,” William said. “An undeniable can men can’t help but ogle. A good, thick keister that wags from side to side when I walk past the executive offices, attracting perverse leers from the vice presidents. It’s the only way to get the salary and job title I deserve.”

Willow’s eyes ping-ponged between her father and her perturbed mother.

Wendy pat her mouth with a paper towel, then pursed her lips. “Is this the example you want to set for our daughter? That success in life isn’t based on hard work and merit, but on sexualized physical attributes? I think it’s disgusting that you would suggest this in front of Willow.”

William nodded, having expected this reaction. “Sometimes to get what one is owed, he has to drain his retirement accounts, take out a second mortgage on the house, and schedule a dangerous surgery in Arkansas.”

Wendy gasped. “You’re not serious.”

William nodded. “I’m doing what’s right for our family,” he said.

“Don’t listen to him,” Wendy said to Willow. “He’s speaking from an outdated point of view. Your generation has evolved past these crude obsessions.”

“This is going to work,” William said to Willow. “Men love huge asses.”

Wendy wailed and ran upstairs.

William smiled at Willow, and then stood to clean up.

Willow watched her father walk from the dining room to the kitchen, for the first time in her life taking note of the flat ass in his khaki pants.

*

William returned from Arkansas wearing nothing but blood-caked bandages on his massive ass. Wendy couldn’t look at her husband as they sat surrounding Willow at the dinner table — William sitting up two inches taller than he had before. He winced and moaned and grunted from the pain.

Wendy set her pizza slice down. She took in a deep breath and gagged. “I can smell the scabs,” she said. “You made a life-ruining mistake that’s going to cost you your job, and then our house. I can’t be a part of this depraved scheme.”

“It’s going to work,” William said. “My ass is finally fat and the vice presidents will notice me and give me the promotion I deserve, showering our family with riches.”

“I want a divorce,” Wendy said. “Willow can’t grow up in this amoral environment. The example you’re setting is backwards and wrong.”

“Give me one day,” William said. “One work day to prove to you that the only thing that held me back from success was my pancake ass.”

A tear fell out of Wendy’s eye while Willow looked up at her father, trying to understand the adult world.

*

William wept at the dining table. Painful, loud moans as he ignored his pizza. He sat crumpled over, burying his red face in his hands as he choked words at his wife and daughter through the sobs. “They laughed at me,” he said. “The men at work leered and ogled and stared down my big, inviting ass, just like I wanted them to. I strutted this dumptruck back and forth past their offices all day long, wiggling it and shaking it and trying to make the cheeks clap together. I thought they loved it, but after a minute they started laughing, pointing at me, calling me names. They’re not sexually attracted to what I have to offer at all. This has been a horrible mistake. You were right, sweetie. I ruined my career and all of our lives. I’m going to go to the garage and kill myself.”

William stood from the table and his wife didn’t stop him. He turned towards the kitchen, whipping his enormous bottom over the table — knocking the pizza box to the floor — when Willow noticed something.

“Wait, dad,” she said.

“Don’t try to stop me,” he wailed. “The world may be rotten, but I’m rotten-er.”

“No, dad, I think I know what it is,” she said. “You got this stunning ass installed but you haven’t learned to operate it yet. See, right here? Visible panty lines. Your big cheeks press hard against your khaki pants now, and you didn’t factor in how distinct the edges of your briefs would become. They’re impossible to deny, these hard outlines crisscrossing your cheeks. That’s what they were laughing at.”

William sniffled, began to smile. “What am I supposed to do?”

“A thong,” she said.

William scoffed. “I’m no strip-man, sweetie. I may want to attract attention from men, but I have to draw a line at sexy outfits. That’s inappropriate and unprofessional.”

“No, dad,” Willow said. “Men may associate thongs with eroticism, but they’re often functional, used to avoid embarrassing panty lines under tight-fitting clothing. Women can wear them to look classy and elegant, not just to look like strippers.”

William slowly turned, his gigantic ass knocking fine china off the kitchen counter. “Is this true, Wendy?”

Wendy rolled her eyes, then nodded.

A wide smile stretched over William’s face. “I won’t kill myself for one more day if you give me twenty-four more hours before filing for divorce?”

Wendy shrugged.

“Also,” William added, “I’ll need to borrow your largest thong.”

*

Wendy spent the day packing her things and arranging for her and Willow to stay with Wendy’s sister for a little while.

But William kicked open the door and twerked ass-first through the kitchen holding two pizza boxes and wearing a brand-new designer suit. As he danced, he flipped up his jacket to show off the black waistband of Wendy’s thong pulled up high on his lower back above his pants. “It worked!” he screamed. “Girls, it worked!”

Wendy and Willow joined William in the kitchen, where he shook his giant ass while he told them the thong had solved everything. He was no longer the office laughing-stock; instead, he was its prize. He’d paced in front of the vice presidents’ offices all day long, tempting the men with his hefty ass, and by five o’clock they’d huddled together and unanimously agreed to make William a vice president.

William hugged Willow tight and thanked her.

Willow smiled. “I may not like that this is how the world works, but as I mature I’m beginning to understand the rules of our repugnant society. While some may call it unfair, I believe it’s in everyone’s best interest to strategically navigate the unjust system to their advantage. So if dad needs to have this big ass and wear mom’s thong to be properly valued by his employer and make enough money to send me to fashion school, then so be it. We’re all just doing the best we can in a rigged game ruled by perverts.”

William and Wendy wiped tears from their eyes and the family sat down to enjoy their pizza. William ate two extra slices to keep his ass nice and big.