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when I achieve her exalted state of enlightenment. She’s only participating in the Tommy Knutson Project—I mean, Project X—because it’s an opportunity to attempt “rebranding,” which is a concept she read about in British
Vogue.
She said that turning me into Lexie Oswell is like turning the Gap into Chanel. Then she apologized and bought me some expensive mint tea because I am
not
the Gap.
    When I get to Ramie’s house, she ushers me right upstairs.
    “What happened to Chubby Chic?” I ask her. “You’re wearing skinny jeans again.”
    She sits me down on her ancient lumpy brass bed and grabs her laptop, where she’s downloaded the Alexis Oswell footage. “Yeah,” she says, “I’ve had a rethink of Chubby Chic.” She sits cross-legged next to me on the thick down comforter and clicks her video software. “Turns out Chubby Chic is not as paradigm shifting as I thought, given the overall lardassification of the American public.”
    “Lardassification?”
    She adjusts the screen brightness. “Yeah. My new word of the week. What do you think?”
    I sit cross-legged on the bed. “It’s nice, Rames. Sensitive, you know, to fat people.”
    “Right,” she says. “Good point. Anyway, here is the lovely and talented Alexis Oswell.” She clicks Play with a flourish, and Lexie’s grainy butt and legs begin moving in and out of focus through the crowded hallway near the art room at Winterhead High. “It’s a little jerky,” Ramie says. “A cinematographer I am not.”
    We examine Lexie’s walk from a variety of angles and determine that there are exactly four main elements to her overall presentation:

    1. Shoulders erect
    2. Head tilted back
    3. Eyes focused on the distance
    4. Hips utterly stationary

    That last element is the biggest challenge. I’m sort of bowlegged and my hips tend to sway of their own accord. To achieve Lexie’s snooty, stick-up-the-butt walk, Ramie has to grab on to both of my hips and hold them steady while I shuffle back and forth in front of her bed.
    “Stop swaying!” she says.
    But my hips won’t obey.
    She lets go and says, “Watch me.”
    She stands by the ancient hissing radiator under the frosty window and tries the walk herself.
    “Ramie,” I say. “You walk like a trucker.”
    She stops in front of the antique beveled mirror above her white dresser, backs up and clomps toward it again. “Mal,” she says. “You’re right. I never realized how unfeminine I am.”
    “Yeah, well, your boobs make up for it. Anyway, let’s focus on me here.”
    After several tries, I manage to tame my wayward hips by clenching my buttocks and forcing my feet to point outward like a duck.
    Ramie sprawls on the bed with the laptop at eye level and checks my walk against the Lexie footage.
    “No, no, no,” she says. “You look like Frankenstein. Your upper body is too stiff.”
    I stop at her window and shake out my legs and arms. “I think I’m cramping up. Do I at least have the bottom half down?”
    “Do it again!” she says.
    I take a deep breath, clench my buttocks and duckwalk the three strides to her dresser, watching my reflection the whole way.
    “Actually,” she says, “that’s not bad. You look constipated, but if you loosen up your shoulders and relax your face, it won’t be so mal.”
    Mastering the upper body is much easier and comes with the discovery that “looking down your nose at people” is not a metaphor but an actual posture. With her cell phone, Ramie videos me walking a few short laps; then I join her on the bed and we compare it to the Lexie footage.
    “Pretty good,” she says. “I feel myself hating you.”
    “Yes,” I say. “But you respect me, don’t you? I intrigue.”
    Ramie raises an eyebrow.
    “What?” I say.
    “Nothing.” She closes the laptop and sits up.
    I sit up too. “Ramie!”
    She sighs. “You’re not exactly approachable like this.”
    “Do you have Alzheimer’s?” I say. “That’s the whole point. It’s