Skipper was a nice kid but she was not nearly as glamorous as Barbie.

Okay, Skipper said, so who is this dude you’ve got me hooked up with anyway?

SKIPPER AND KEN VISIT BARBIE’S PAD BY STEVEN MCBREARTY 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 113

Skipper struck a model’s pose. “How do I look?” Barbie thought the mustard-colored culotte suit made Skipper look bloated. “You look wonderful,” she said. Skipper smiled and fussed with her hair. “Okay, so who is this dude you’ve got me hooked up with tonight anyway?”

“All I know is he’s some friend of Ken’s,” Barbie said. “From his softball team. He’s supposed to be athletic, good-looking.”

“God,” Skipper said, crossing her right leg deliberately over her left. “I hope he’s not like that guy Ken knew from work—the computer programmer. That guy really came on strong.”

“I didn’t think he was all that bad, really,” Barbie said. She didn’t like Ken’s friend selection impugned. “He seemed a little wild maybe. That’s all.”

“Well,” Skipper said, “you didn’t have to deal with him after we got back. He practically raped me.” She uncrossed her right leg and crossed the left. Sometimes Barbie made her feel so—inferior.

“You’re kidding,” Barbie said. “I didn’t know about that.” But she felt certain Skipper was exaggerating.

As befitting her exalted station in life, Barbie lived in an upscale apartment complex in Northwest Hills, with a panoramic view of the lowlanders in the city proper.

Skipper, wouldn’t you know it, lived in a not-quite-so opulent pad, no French doors to the patio, no deep-pile carpet, no Pfister-Price fixtures in the bathroom and kitchen. Skipper was a nice kid but her background was not nearly as glamorous as Barbie’s. There were no skiing vacations and there was even the hint she might have come from a broken home. Sure she dined on sushi and knew her wine list, of course, but still.

Ken lived but a few blocks away in a high-end complex with kidney-shaped swimming pools and tennis courts painted a rich forest green, in which upcoming young doctors and attorneys and your more presentable drug dealers were prominent. Mercedes and BMWs parked in the white-lined parking slots.

Barbie’s doorbell rang and she straightened her dress. “That must be them,” she said.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Ken said as he bustled inside, taking Barbie’s hand over his head like a swing dancer, then—while she stood tilted backward—giving her a big wet smack on the lips. “How’s my Party Girl?”

“Ken!” Barbie said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “You’ve been drinking!”

“What me drink?” Ken said, assuming an angelic posture. His lips formed an exaggerated pout and he held his thumb and index finger half a centimeter apart. “Maybe a little teeny nip but nothing I wouldn’t tell my own mother about.”

“You’re drunk,” Barbie said.

“Not a chance,” Ken blustered, standing now like Napoleon surveying his domain. “Not old Ken. Not me.”