I respond that I’ll check when I’m back. Meanwhile, I find the nice boutique owner and ask her about the leggings.

“Excuse me. Do you have these in a size medium?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. We don’t do sizes here.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“We don’t believe women should be classified by smalls, mediums, and larges. So instead, we color code all of our inventory. You look like you’d be a purple. Look for things with purple tags. Those will fit you well. Or you could go for a tighter fit with a red tag, and a looser fit with a green tag.”

Aside from this being one of the most LA things I have ever heard, I can’t quite wrap my head around the system.

“Why don’t you just make three different sections of the store and put all the same-sized clothes in each section. You can call them sections one, two, and three.”

“We don’t do sizes,” she reminds me. “And we wouldn’t want anyone to feel self-conscious about shopping in a section ‘three.’ The colors are neutral. They’re arbitrary,” she explains.

“Well, they’re not arbitrary. Nothing is arbitrary if it’s a system used over time. I know a purple fits me today. But if in six months I come back and all of a sudden I’m a green, I’ll know what that means just the same: I gained ten pounds over the holidays.”

The associate takes the leggings from my hands and reracks them.

“With all due respect, I’m not sure Be Yourself is the right store for you. We tend to be a little more...free-thinking over here. But good luck with your search. I hope you find the fit you’re looking for.”

Not worrying about whether I’ll have to fit my thighs into a green, purple, or red, I grab lunch at a honey-butter fried chicken place, splurging the extra dollar for a biscuit instead of a bun. The nice cashier with the septum piercing talked me into it, but I’m fine with the upsell because I can’t remember the last time I had a flaky biscuit.

I find a spot for one at a communal picnic table on their patio. The whimsical red-and-white-striped umbrella doesn’t have the breadth to go up against the midday sun and I can’t wait to see the resulting suntan. I tuck Leno under the table like it’s a makeshift doghouse. He lies down on the cool, shady cement.

A few minutes later, my tray arrives and I sink my teeth into the sandwich. I chew that first, dense bite slowly and wash it down with a sip of an ice-cold fountain drink. The warm, tangy buttermilk biscuit tastes like nostalgia. Even though I don’t plan on telling the sous chef that his fifteen-dollar gourmet sandwich reminds me of McDonald’s breakfast, I promise I mean it in the best of ways. I take another bite. It brings me back to simpler times—a drive-through, a combo meal, a thin wax paper wrapper with melted cheese stuck to it on the inside. I know this isn’t that, but it doesn’t stop me from heading back to the counter, pulling out another dollar, and hoping that’s enough to cover an extra biscuit on the side.