I entered the smoke-filled bar room and immediately my eyes were drawn to her. She sat on a barstool, a Virginia Slims cigarette burning bright between the delicate first two fingers of her right hand, as a jazz quartet paid a bluesy homage to the oncoming wee, wee hours of the morning.
"Hi, the name's Frank," I offered, while motioning for the bartender to freshen up her gin and tonic. "So is the attitude," I added for good measure.
She gave me a sour look, the type that would have stopped a less-confident man dead in his tracks. She ran her doe-eyed baby blues up and down me and evidently found something that deemed me worthy of a response.
"They call me Cloe," she purred through lips so pouty that for the first time in my life I wished I was a sucker. "At least up until today they did. In case you haven't heard, mister, I've been declared a nobody."
Suddenly, it all was becoming clear. The almond-shaped eyes, the bee-stung lips, the mini-skirt and thigh-high boots -- she was one of the Bratz girls.
"Oh, you're one of them," I stammered. "One of the faded 40?"
"We use a different "F" adjective, but this joint's a little too Mayberryish for me to repeat it here."
The poor dame had had a really hard day, about as hard as they come. A federal judge ordered MGA Entertainment Inc., the maker of Cloe and 39 other dolls favored by preteen girls all across America, to cease the manufacture of the entire Bratz line. The ruling came on the heels of a jury ruling in August that found the doll's creator first conceived the revolutionary figurines while working for MGA rival Mattel.
"They're giving us through Christmas, then kkkkkkkk," she said while using her index finger to draw an imaginary knife across her slender neck. "Now I know how guys on death row must feel."
"Come on, kid. let's see a smile on that kisser of yours. You've had a pretty good run," I offered.
"A good run? Are you serious? Do you know how old I am? I'm 7 in doll years. Sure, that's like 21 in people years, but still I've barely had a chance to look around in the world."
"Listen, doll-face ... er, sorry ... I mean, I'm sure the judge knew what he was doing," I said as I contemplated the best way to get my foot out of my mouth without drawing stares from the other end of the bar.
"Knew what he was doing? It's plastic murder is what it is. Like a mob hit where the bodies can be taken to the recyclers. And I'll tell you who's behind the whole thing. Little Miss Priss -- that's who."
Now, have you ever had a moment when your brain knows well enough not to say a thing, but your mouth is operating as an independent contractor? I was living that nightmare, and before I could stop myself I uttered a duo of fateful words.
"Who, Barbie?"
"How dare you mention that tart's name in my presence?" she spat, before mockingly adding in a fair approximation of my deep-pitched speaking voice, "Who, Barbie?"
"Well, I don't see how you can blame ..." I began, before she cut me off in mid-sentence.
"Don't you dare, buddy. Don't you dare defend that time-warp fairy princess from the Eisenhower era. There's blood all over her nondescript hands and no amount of scrubbing will ever make it go away."
I held my breath in hopes that she was done with her rant and I could find an excuse to make like Ronnie Van Zandt and get three steps toward the door. Unfortunately, hell indeed hath no fury like a woman scorned, and my gumdrop-nosed nymph was just getting warmed up.
"She's always been jealous of me. First it was the fact that I was outselling her like two to one. Back then she started all the ruckus that I was a bad influence on young girls. Like she would know anything about today's youth. She's as relevant as a rotary-dial telephone or a black-and-white television."
She paused for a moment to down the rest of her drink and light up another smoke.
"Hey, are you old enough to even be doing that?" I asked.
"What's the difference -- I was just given the death sentence, remember? Besides, I'm made of plastic, stuff passes right through me. But don't get me off track. I was talking about that Sandra Dee-wannabe Barbie. What sort of girl can relate to her? With her perfect 34-24-34 figure and her Malibu playhouse? She's the reason so many girls have eating disorders, trying to live up to that.
"Plus, she goes on until you want to gag yourself about her precious Ken. We all know that he's just with her because he wants to get into her wardrobe closet while she's out tooling around in that convertible of hers."
"Well, all of that may be so, but you still can't deny the fact that you were created on Mattel's nickel," I said.
"In the words of the great Tyra Banks, 'So what!' I was created on Mattel's nickel -- well, Tesla created AC on Edison's nickel. Hendrix wrote 'Purple Haze' on James Brown's nickel, and Francis Scott Key laid down the words to the 'Star-Spangled Banner' on the British Navy's nickel. None of them were put to death, were they?"
She had a point, and I didn't have an answer, so I did what every good attorney I'd ever hired had done. I answered her question with one of my own.
"How will you spend your last few weeks?"
A shiver rippled through her body, and I thought she was going to break down, but she steadied herself and recovered quickly.
"I was going to pray for a Christmas miracle, but then the irony of the whole thing hit me. We lost our case on intellectual property law. No one ever loses those cases. Usually they settle long before it goes to a jury because the stakes are so high. But not us, we rolled the bones and we're staring at snake eyes.
"The irony is the fact that I was always painted as the antithesis of intellectual. 'Let your daughters near her,' they'd say, 'and you might as well be throwing their futures away.' Now the whole world knows that I was intellectual property after all. So what am I going to do with the time I have left? I'm going to be a brat until the end, that's what."
With that, she got up from the bar and walked over to the jukebox. She dropped in a dime and pushed D-1. "Bad Girl" by the New York Dolls filled the smoky bar room air as she began to sway her hips seductively in a solo dance that only bad girls can really do justice to.
I paid the tab and pulled the brim of my fedora down over my head. On my way out the door, I stopped and grabbed her by the hand.
"Listen, kid," I said. "The world won't be the same without you. They may have labeled you a brat, but you'll always be a doll to me."
The cynics among you won't believe it, but as I headed out into the crisp December air, I swear there was a real tear welling up in the corner of her eye.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | December 16 2008 |