New Projects in the Works
New Projects in the Works
Ruth and Elliot have just purchased a new home in Holmby Hills, an ultra-exclusive area where they can wave to Lauren Bacall, Lloyd Bridges and their other famous neighbors. It’s while they’re getting the Beverlywood house ready to go on the market that Ruth has an idea for Barbie and calls a meeting.
Jack, per usual, is the last to arrive in the conference room and takes the only empty seat at the table, which happens to be next to Stevie. This is the first meeting they’ve been in together since she ended their affair a week and a half ago. They used to always sit next to each other, sometimes letting their feet mingle beneath the table, their thighs secretly pressed against each other’s. Now the proximity is too much, for both of them. It’s like a vapor swelling up that only they can see. Stevie hasn’t heard a word anyone’s said since Jack walked in. She has no idea how she’s supposed to act around him now. Without looking at him, she’s aware of his every move as she nervously taps her pencil against her legal pad, stops and then starts tapping again.
Jack’s been avoiding Stevie as best he can. It all feels very juvenile and out of character for him. He’s always made it a point t o stay friends with his ex-girlfriends and mistresses; otherwise he couldn’t walk down the street without getting pelted. But this is different. Stevie’s the one who ended it, and usually that’s what he does. Other than his wife, he can’t remember the last time a woman rejected him, and he can’t get past it just yet.
He feels self-conscious and a little desperate. Sitting this close to Stevie in this meeting, stealing glances at her lips, her blue eyes and Jesus Christ, those legs—it’s torture. It’s like he’s back at the beginning with her, when she started working here. But now he knows what he’s missing, what’s there, waiting for someone else.
“If Barbie’s truly going to be an independent, modern girl,” Ruth is saying now, “then I think she should have her own house. She can’t go on living at home with her invisible parents forever.”
“I like that idea,” says Charlotte. “Barbie needs a home of her own. She deserves a spiffy Barbie bachelorette pad.”
Stevie nods, hoping it looks like she’s tracking everything being said.
“C’mon, now,” says Loomis, scratching at his heavy jowls, “the whole idea sounds a little far-fetched. A woman could never even qualify for a mortgage. Barbie having her own home isn’t realistic.”
“Yeah,” says Twist, already cracking himself up, “Ken would have to cosign her loan.”
Jack is the only man in the room who doesn’t find this funny, because he’s reminded of the time he cosigned for Stevie’s car loan. She’s remembering this, too. For a split second they dare to look at each other and immediately turn away.
“Whenever you’re done laughing,” says Ruth, “I’d like to remind you that Barbie is not going to be limited by what society—a society controlled by men—thinks is achievable. And if that makes you nervous, too bad. Now open a goddamn job ticket and get working on Barbie’s fucking dream house.”
And going forward that’s how they refer to it: Barbie’s Dream House—minus the expletive.
—
Dr.Klemes, Jack’s new psychiatrist, consults his notes while Jack reclines on his couch. “Are you still taking the Obetrol?” he asks.
“Can’t you tell?” Jack pats his flat stomach. A month ago, right after he lost Stevie, he gained five pounds and had his doctor prescribe some diet pills. They kill his appetite but also his need for sleep. “I could use a refill.”
“Already?” Dr.Klemes makes a notation in Jack’s file and moves on. “Now, in our last session you said things at work were awkward?” Though it’s a statement, he phrases it as a question, hoping Jack will elaborate.
“Everything’s peachy. Never better,” he lies, realizing that lying to his psychiatrist negates the reason for going to him in the first place. But Jack doesn’t feel like getting into it. The truth is, he’s obsessing about Stevie. Fits of jealousy fire off inside him when he sees her talking to one of the guys. Suddenly Jack is acutely aware of just how many young, handsome men work at Mattel. Twist is a good-looking dude, tall and muscular, and Jack wonders what Stevie was doing in his office the day before. There’s Gary in shipping with his chiseled chin, and Marcus in sales with the thick wavy hair. If Jack’s noticed these guys, no doubt Stevie has, too. And holy hell, just that morning Jack felt his blood pressure rise when he saw her talking to Loomis in the kitchen. How can he possibly be jealous of Loomis?
“You said last time that you were feeling restless?” Again, the doctor is making this a question, hoping Jack will provide some insights.
He shrugs but says nothing. He’s working on the Dream House project but it’s not going very well. He’s stuck. Frankly, he could use Stevie’s help, but he’s not ready to pretend that everything’s normal between them. They’ve barely said five words to each other since she dumped him.
And suddenly it occurs to Jack that this restlessness, this void in his life left by Stevie, might explain his growing interest in Ginger. Or, more specifically, his interest in helping Ginger. He knows she’s in love with him, or she thinks she is, but Jack’s never had the slightest romantic feelings toward her. Just as he’s drawn to beautiful women, he’s also drawn to exceptional intelligence. He seeks out women who can challenge him, stimulate his mind as much as his loins. The ones who hold his interest are the creative ones, intuitive and curious about the world around them.
Poor Ginger possesses few of those qualities. She’s kind and overly solicitous of him, which he doesn’t mind. Not in the least. But aside from that, she’s not a great conversationalist, not terribly witty or clever. Many of his jokes go over her head, and oftentimes he has to point out when he’s being sarcastic. She has no interesting hobbies or passions besides Jack, and that gets tiresome, even for him.
Right after Stevie ended things with them, Jack caught Ginger sobbing at her desk, and it touched him. Maybe it’s because he’s suffered with his own demons that he cannot stand to see anyone unhappy. Anger is different. He can handle his daughters’ temper tantrums, Ruth’s tirades, even his father’s rants. But when someone is hurting and in distress, he wants to fix whatever ails them. Maybe this is why he likes making toys. They make children happy, and Jack therefore considers himself to be the happiness maker and will go to great lengths to instigate smiles and laughter. And so that day when he found Ginger weeping into her soggy fisted tissue, he brought her into his office for what turned out to be a lengthy confessional.
“My younger sister is getting married in two weeks,” she said. “And I’m terrified that I won’t be able to fit into my bridesmaid’s dress.”
Well, that was an easy fix. “If you want to lose weight fast, get off those stupid caramels and try some of these.” He gave her a dozen or so Obetrols, with the promise to get her a prescription.
“And I don’t have a boyfriend, or even a date for the wedding,” Ginger went on to say, spilling more tears. “Everyone’s going to pity me. I’ll have no one to dance with. I’ll be the unmarried older sister, the spinster.”
Seeing her cry like that was too much. He had to do something to make it better, make her stop. “How about if I take you to your sister’s wedding?”
“Oh, Jack.” She looked up, blinking, a smile forming through her tears, a rainbow after a storm. “Would you?” She dried her eyes, thanked him and hugged him a little too tight and a little too long.
Since then and with the help of Obetrol, Ginger’s lost some weight, and it turns out, the girl has potential. Another fifteen or twenty pounds and she’d have a decent figure. And a helluva pair of legs. She’s lightened her hair again, too, which is an improvement. Now he just needs to work on her wardrobe. It’s not like he’s a fashion expert, but he does have good taste and a sense of style. Even Barbara seeks his advice when she goes shopping. Frankly, Ginger dresses like an old maid. Honestly, with just a few tweaks—lighten her hair even more, maybe fix that bump in her nose—he knows he could turn her into something truly spectacular and…He stops himself, lifts his hands and squeezes both sides of his head.
“Something wrong, Jack?” asks Dr.Klemes.
Jack shakes his head, reminding himself that Ginger is a woman, not his new design project.
—
On a Sunday afternoon, in between having coffee with her mother and meeting Vivian for a matinee showing of Splendor in the Grass with Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty, Stevie stops by the office. She’s just started working on a new project, Barbie’s new best friend—Madge or Midge; they haven’t finalized the name yet. They’re still in the early stages, but between this new doll and Ken, on top of everything needed to keep expanding Barbie’s wardrobe, she wants to get a jump start on the week ahead.
As she pulls into the parking lot, she can tell by the cars that the usual suspects are there: Ruth, Charlotte, Loomis, Lewis, Twist, Sid and, of course, Jack. She used to be so happy to see him and now she dreads it. Now it’s all awkward and strained. It’s like she’s back in high school. He walks past her in the hallway, refusing to look at her or say hello. Still, she has work to do, so she figures she’ll just slip inside, head to her desk, do what she needs to do before she ducks out to meet Vivian at the theater.
That’s her plan, but as she steps inside the building, she hears Jack clowning around with Eddie, the weekend security guard. They’re laughing, joking about the illustration of Alfred E. Neuman and John F. Kennedy on the cover of Mad magazine. Stevie draws a deep breath as she turns the corner. Jack sees her and clams up, pressing his lips together in a tight, rigid line.
“Hey, Miss Stevie,” says Eddie. “Looks like we’re gonna have us a full house in here today.”
“Hi, Eddie,” she says, robotically opening her pocketbook for inspection. She looks at Jack; his eyes are puppy-dog sad and heavy-lidded. “Hi,” she says.
“Catch you later, Eddie.” Jack’s already turned his back to her and is moving toward the turnstile.
“Jack. Jack? Hel-lo?” Stevie watches him walking quickly, practically sprinting to get away from her, and she snaps. She pushes through the turnstile and goes after him. “Hey, Jack, wait up—”
But he keeps walking. When he closes his office door, she barges in behind him.
“What do you want, Stevie?”
“I want us to get past this. This is ridiculous. We have to find a way to work together. My God, you’re able to still work just fine with Patsy. And Wendy, too. Why not me?”
“Because—because you broke my heart,” he says, realizing this sounds completely melodramatic. They were lovers, but they were not in love. Even after momentarily declaring themselves soulmates, they knew it wasn’t true love.
“Oh, please, I did not break your heart,” she says, calling him on this. “Your ego is what’s broken, not your heart.”
His eyebrows scrunch together tightly and ease apart as he squeezes his eyes shut and his shoulders start to shake. Uh-oh, she went too far. She’s made him cry. This is what she’s thinking until she sees that he’s not crying at all. He’s laughing.
“You are such a smart-ass,” he says, mopping tears from his eyes. “God, I’ve missed you.”
She chortles. “I’ve missed you, too, you big jerk.”
And this is what it takes to get them to the other side of their affair. There they are, both of them laughing, even hugging, confessing how nervous they’ve been around each other, sharing all the stupid, silly things that have happened over the past few weeks that they’ve wanted to tell each other. They hug some more and laugh in a way that leaves them gasping for air.
After they’ve recovered, she asks how things are going with the Dream House project.
“Not well,” he says. “I’m so behind schedule on this. I got nothing.”
“Maybe I can help?” She does a little shoulder roll. “I have a few ideas. That is, if you want to hear them?”
—
Several weeks later, Jack and Stevie are holed up in his office late one night, just like old times, working on Barbie’s Dream House. Stevie brings a unique sense of fashion and style that Jack needs and he brings the energy and his sheer genius. He’s constructed the house and the furniture out of sturdy cardboard, thinking through every fold as if it were origami, already seeing the completed assembly inside his head. He doesn’t even need to create a pattern first. He has pictured in his mind how the entire dollhouse will fold up into a lightweight carrying case. Meanwhile, Stevie’s working out more color schemes and sleek designs for the furniture, basing the sofa on a Herman Miller design; the thin-edge bed is also a nod to Herman Miller. Jack’s office floor is covered in color swatches, sketches and home decorating magazines.
Somehow it gets to be ten o’clock. They haven’t eaten, too caught up in their work to realize they’re both starving. Jack orders a pizza topped with pineapple—because it’s her favorite and he can pick it off. He also opens a bottle of wine stored in his credenza.
“Want my crust?” she offers, knowing he likes that better than the fixings on top.
“Trade you for my pineapple.”
“Deal.”
Now that the breakup is behind them, they’ve learned to become friends. Just friends. In many ways they make better friends than lovers. After having ravished each other’s bodies, hurt each other deeply and cried in each other’s arms, they’ve come out the other side with something stronger, even sweeter, and certainly more honest. He even tells her about the other women he’s seeing. Maybe he does this to get a rise out of her, but Stevie’s not fazed by Sheri with one r , one i , or Kimberly or Monica, or any of the others. Every Saturday she and Jack have a ten o’clock court time at his ritzy L.A. Country Club. Last week they saw Lenny Bruce at the Troubadour, and Jack gave Stevie two front-row tickets to a Frank Sinatra concert that he couldn’t use. Things between them are clean, simple, easier now.
After they finish the pizza, Jack can see that he’s pushed Stevie long past exhaustion. She’s lying on his couch, her heels kicked off, her legs crossed at the ankles, her eyes heavy-lidded. He brings the wine over to her. She waves him off, but he refills her glass anyway. She’s fighting to stay awake, while Jack, on the other hand, is just getting started. He’s invigorated.
“C’mon,” he says. “Get up, get up!” He grabs a bottle of pills from his desk and shakes out two tablets, washing one down with a gulp of wine.
“What’s that you’re taking?” she asks.
“Just some diet pills. They’re great energy boosters. Here—” He hands her the other pill.
“Are you saying I’m fat?”
“I’m saying you’re tired. These will give you some pep.”
“No, thanks.” She’s tried pep pills before, and they made her queasy and edgy. Instead, she gets up and fixes a cup of coffee.
Forty-five minutes later, Jack is pacing. “What about crown molding? In white? Or maybe gold?”
She shakes her head. “Too formal.”
“What about beams?”
“Too masculine,” she says. “This isn’t your castle, remember?”
“Good point.” He pivots on his heel and walks the length of his office again.
“So here’s a question,” she says. “We have a double closet for Barbie’s wardrobe, we have a hi-fi, a TV console, a bed—we gave her everything but a kitchen. Who has a house without a kitchen?”
“Ah, Barbie does.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Do you cook?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“Well, neither does Barbie.”