Yuppies, Puppies and Dinkies

"Well if yer-wanted the bleedin' cheesebugger, why in blazes din'cher order the bleedin' cheesebugger?"

"Oh? An' since when d'you bloody-care what I bloody-wants!"

"Care? Care? Why yer-know yer all I care about, pet."

"Aw, bollocks I am. Y'don't care monkeys 'bout what I really needs t'be 'appy."

"Now---"

"Like ev'ry bloomin' time I tries t'talk t'you 'bout us havin'---"

"Oh please shu'tup. Just once? Please just this once, just shut y'north'n south 'bout all that rot y'silly moo!"

"Mmmmoooooo."

"Oh, shu'tup."

....A Saturday night, and the new restaurant on Knightsbridge is crowded. A late sun clings stubbornly to the hoods of passing cars. Stray tears of an infant rain seek the kindness of window panes. Foreigners and locals have been equally taken in by the novel decor, the restaurant is thick with both, pink and blue neon sputtering from an unfamiliar art deco sign having lured the ever-curious Hyde Park foot traffic like a porchlight gathering lost bugs. The biggest foreigner, an American, has just pushed his way through the swinging "saloon-style" doors. His shadow floods the entryway. No one steps forward to seat him. Shaking his head and upper body in the manner of a drenched collie, the water flies free of both his denim raiment and a foot-long shock of reddish-brown hair. Something isn't right....he is instantly a prisoner, momentarily hobbled by some distant, anonymous child of his memory. He looks around. Standing rigidly just inside the door, red eyes flashing, the frenetic strains of Duelin' Banjoes finally hit him, hit him from all sides, the quick, tireless notes seeming to bounce back and forth like tadpoles between the simulated log cabin walls. He laughs, then finds himself whistling along. Still, no one moves to seat him. A deep breath to relax....and the rejected miasma of far too many hot, sweatered bodies is allowed to invade his nose. He immediately drops the nose to his left armpit, then the right, and decides---with regard to his own personal contribution to the problem---that he is more or less satisfied. It is quite obviously up to him to seat himself....hard to see through the smoke, all the bodies....Moccasin soles accompany the music, scratching like sandpaper blocks along the sawdusted floor, as a crack team of waitresses, clad in buckskin miniskirts and authentic-looking coonskin caps, shuffle with careful enthusiasm from table to kitchen to table. He weaves his way carefully between them. There is only one table free, against the far wall, next to where the loud voices are coming from. The American must squeeze tip-toe between these two tables to reach his seat. His broad, heavily-muscled frame is ill-designed for this task....

"Oh! 'Scuse me, gov'nah!"

"Sorry. No room," the American said.

Finally he slumped down on the padded vinyl bench, and rested his broad back heavily against the counterfeit logs. He could far more easily have taken his seat in the wooden chair facing the wall, but his decision to squeeze into the other had long ago been made for him; the folklore of his native land teaches its children that when in a public place (especially a saloon) you should always sit with your back to the wall. It is the one time you deviate from this sound axiom (the legend goes on to say) that the bullet comes, the cold hand falls, the iron door slams shut.

"Well I only got'cher steak because its the only bloomin' thing on the menu worth git'n!" the Englishman went on with his explanation.

"An' who bloody-elected you me-lord'n master?"

"Well we are married, pet...."

"Aw, don't start."

"Why if it was up to you, yer-would've gone'n ordered that stupid beer with that phony Chicago label."

"I 'appens t'like that stupid label. I think it's cute."

"Cute? Cute! Ah, now that's bein' a right typical bird, idn't it. Sometimes I swear yer just as common a'thing as when I met'cher. That stupid label, poppet, is just an excuse t'wop on another fifty p---that's all i'tis. It's only 'bout money, like anything else. Chicago me-arse....They could've picked the name of any bloody-American city, 'long as it was American---ha! I 'appen to know they don't even brew beer in Chicago! The truth is you need me, pet. You bloody-well need me. Why without me around to watch out, we wouldn't 'ave a pocketful a'coppers left to pay the bloomin' mortgage! Ha-ha-ha-ho!"

"Well all I bloody-well knows is y'don't need me. Wot'ja need a common girl like me for, anyway? Wot'ja even marry me for? Y'don't need me t'do the things a wife is supposed t'bloody-do f'er husband. Laugh if y'likes, but I know y'don't care about me. All you cares about is 'ow much money y'got stashed away."

"Ssh! Y'want ev'ry bleedin' bloke in the place---"

"Don't you ssh me, you, you---"

The Englishman turned, finally, to the American. His slackened jaw and raised eyebrows pulled the thin white face into an even thinner line, a cartoon character's expression. This caricature of exasperation was clearly a supplicatory entreaty for support, one man appealing to the hereditary good sense of another: "Don't pay any attention to 'er, old man. Typical bird, she is. If she dint 'ave somethin' to complain 'bout she wouldn't talk a'toll."

"It's none uh my business," the American said. His eyes tangled with the girl's, then pulled away.

One of the buckskinned waitresses squeezed halfway between the two tables. Her back was to the Englishman. The wife's irresistible glare retrieved his eyes. The waitress handed the American a menu---a wooden plank---with the words THE OLD FRONTIER burned in black across the top.

"No need, darlin'...."

"Don'tcha want t'eat?"

"Yeah, but can I jus' get a mess uh spuds and some ketchup?"

"Sorry?"

The American smiled inside the aperture made by his reddish-brown beard and moustache.

"I would like to officially place an order for French fries, please."

"Y'mean frontier fries?"

"I suppose that's what I mean."

"An' t'drink then, love? We 'ave the Chicago beer 'ere, y'know...."

"A glass uh water'd do me jus' fine, Dan'l Boone."

"Chips'n water? That's all?

"Frontier fries."

"But---"

"I'm on a diet."

The waitress adjusted her cap to flatter her brief blonde curls, then made a motion as if she were trying to pull her buckskin skirt down a little in back. "Well if y'say so, love," she said, and went shuffling off to the kitchen, smiling.

"Good show, old man!" said the Englishman. "Yer-see that, pet---'e wasn't about to let 'er wop 'im with another fifty p if 'e dint want, 'cause 'e's a man! Good show, old man---ha!"

"Y'right, dearie," said the wife, her eyes frisking the American. "He's a man."

(....Something was gnawing at him. His right hand---all the way inside the pocket of his bleach-white bluejeans---closed around his last five-pound note. The job interview he had waiting for him at a Birmingham factory wasn't until seven Monday morning, 36 hours away. And his duffel had been stolen in the bathroom at Victoria Station, that very day, meaning that all that he was responsible for in the world was what he was wearing. But none of that was it. He'd always loved living on the edge. And this being not the first time he had fled his country in the pursuit of his inalienable right to personal liberty, he thought he knew what to expect. But the usual rush just wasn't there....just tired, maybe....or perhaps he just needed more time. Three months, after all, is hardly an eternity. He had lived his whole adult life according to a philosophy of avoidance, no entanglements, few risks, quick feet; it had always worked. No reason why it shouldn't work now. But he was so tired he didn't know....tired, old, feel so damn tired'n old....when, when would it come. He realized that the chase had always been the thing, the thrill that kept him going. So where was it? Where was that rush, that vague thrill? He'd never bargained on the actual achievement of his precious lifestyle leaving him so spent and tired and hollow. And now the uncheckered mobility that had always been the touchstone to that lifestyle wasn't enough anymore. He knew something was wrong....if only I didn't feel so goddam old and tired....but he was fresh out of ideas. Was it age? Was it really? When he was a kid he always assumed that life was supposed to get better as the years went by. The reward for survival. He never dreamed he would just merely go on living. In fact, it had been like this for several years now. Living life so long without the twin shackles of Worry and Responsibility, he had finally become a ship without a rudder. He was a machine. Simply, merely, finally a machine. A sweating, stinking, eating and defecating, drinking and pissing, screwing, sleeping, breathing machine. And without energy or motivation to repair itself, a machine doomed to wander and wait until such sweet, grateful time that it will be allowed to finally, simply, and quietly, break down....)

"It's jus' that I'm not that familiar with Chicago," the American lied. He looked out the window. It was still light.

The wife's eyes continued to investigate her imposing American neighbor. It was the way the "tables for two" were lined up along the far wall---this crowded row of wooden circles separating couples---that had thrown the two so close together. One seat of each table was accomplished by a long, padded vinyl bench running along the entire length of that wall. The American and the Englishman's wife shared part of that bench seat, her right shoulder threatening his left. The American didn't notice the wife's salacious glances. Having lost two nights' sleep due to lack of tender, he was busy trying to massage some blood back into his fiercely-tan face....He was so tired. The white-cheeked Englishman, grinning insanely, leaned forward in his wooden chair and concentrated his attentions on the remains of a New York cut steak, called "Texas beefsteak". One large napkin was tucked inside his collar and hung down like a bib, while the one that he had spread across his lap, to protect the silken pants of his navy blue three-piece suit, he had borrowed from his wife. The wife, her own meat barely touched and receiving no further attention, continued to fondle the American with her eyes.

"My, but yer a big one!"

The American looked at her, really for the first time, and smiled as if he liked what he saw. Not yet out of her twenties, her fragile white face still retained a fair measure of optimism. And there was something about her short red hair and the snugness of her lavender print dress that, if considered together, under ideal circumstances, could easily have roused him. She was only the fifth or sixth female in these three long months of wandering the island that he could have convinced himself was attractive, attractive by the standards he'd established in his native land, and all five or six had been married. But times being what they were, he couldn't have cared less.

"How would you know...."

"Sorry?"

"My old man was big," said the American, looking down at his reflection in the wood table and smiling as impishly as a 40-year-old man can smile. His blue denim shirt could barely contain the bulges of his upper arms, and as he smoothed back the foot-long, reddish-brown hair from his eyes the dance of his left biceps held the wife's eyes in a hammerlock. Something by Kenny Rogers had replaced the banjoes on the restaurant's music intercom.

"An' so duzzis remind youf 'ome---uh, of home?"

He loosed his powerful red-green eyes on her, and she recoiled back an inch or two, breathless. She was cute. And she was trying so hard....But as to her question he had always thought, up until now at least, that one restaurant was pretty much like any other....

"This dive don't remind me uh nowhere," he said softly.

"Sorry?"

"Young lady, I ain't never been in a place like---"

"Come on, Mags. Leave the nice American bloke alone, what."

"Gaw on! Y'know 'e don't mind, y'twit."

"Yeah. I don't mind."

The waitress brought the American's glass of water and sat it down en route to her next errand without slowing stride.

"Me-name's Margaret," smiled the Englishman's wife, "an' this ol' lout's me-ol' man 'arold....uh, with an h."

"Swell knowin' yuh."

"Y'must think we're a bit snotty," she said, "dressin' so fine in a place so....I mean we must look like we-puttin' on airs!"

"But it's our jobs, old man," said the Englishman, in the process of swallowing the last bite of an "Idaho deluxe" baked potato. "We got right good jobs we 'ave, an' at the same bloody-keen place, don't we. Yer-know Marks'n Spencer? No? Well, it's only the best store in the whole a-bloomin' London, all the best-dressed people shop there. That's why we're dressed up, old man---we just come from work! I say, sometimes I'd like to grow me-locks long like you, mate, but I'd lose me-bloomin' job quicker'n---"

"I get the picture," the American said. It occurred to him that the Englishman persisted in saying "bloomin'" in places where his brother Englishmen would typically use "blinkin'" or "bloody" or even "poxy". He thought it was a little funny. He didn't like him.

"Aw, don't mind Harold, guv. His muvvah---uh, that is t'say 'e's mum, neve' taught 'im t'stop talkin' 'bout 'imself," said the wife. She was watching her hands fidget with each other in her lap. The American watched too. She bit her lower lip. When she looked up again to meet his eyes she sat up a little straighter: "So what d'you do?...in the States, 'at is."

"I don't mind him much," the American said. He rubbed his face again. It had been a long time since he had even seen "the States", far longer since he had seen the particular southern state that sought to rob him of his freedom. Getting away was easy; he was an expert at it. In '67 he'd beat it up to Canada to escape the deadly embrace of his government. In '76 his flight was to California, escaping this time the ever-proliferating, no-win war of domesticity. Liberty had always been the only solution to Life. His precious, accursed freedom....And now he was running simply to get away from a small-time county sheriff who didn't like his looks. True, no trial had yet been staged, but he wasn't a gambler by nature: "I usta make cabinets," he said with his eyes closed. "Freelance," he tacked on from habit. He held the glass of water against his forehead.

"Cabinets!" said the wife, placing her right hand on top of the American's left at just the right moment, as if it were a necessary constituent of her exclamation, the way a woman does when she's flirting and she figures it's the appropriate time to establish physical contact. "J'ear that, 'arold? A cabinet maker! Wot'ja call that, guv---a woodsmith? Artisan? Joiner?"

"A cabinet maker," said the American.

"Don't you just love making....cabinets?"

He didn't answer, so she gave the hand a little squeeze.

"And 'e's got the perfect 'ands for....makin' things....don't 'e. I mean doesn't he? Harold?"

The Englishman was busy with his wallet. He looked long and hard, as if trying to find a bill so small it didn't exist. His narrow, folded-over face said that parting with any of the notes would be such sweet sorrow.

"An' such nice long....fingers!" the wife continued. "Y'ave children? I bets y'ave children. Y'ave children?"

(....He looked out the window, into the Knightsbridge traffic. Dusk and drizzle clouded the shapes of the westbound cars. He smiled. It occurred to him that she would probably be in high school by now....)

"I'll sell yuh a couple."

"Sell y'children?"

"Fingers."

"Sorry?"

"Don't apologize."

"I beg---"

"Just an old frontier joke."

"Yer-want something, pet?" the Englishman said suddenly.

"Yer girl wants to buy a couple uh my nice long fingers."

"Does she! Not surprised, old man. The way she spends it, I'm bloody-surprised we---"

"It's my money too, y'bleedin'---"

"An' besides, old man, she ain't me-girl she's me-wife! Been married goin' on eight years, now. Eight bloody years of trouble'n strife! Bloody-'ard to b'lieve, sometimes."

The wife at no time took her eyes off the American. She did, however, at the appropriate juncture, withdraw her lingering hand.

"Where are your children?"

The Englishman laughed. His wife looked away. The music intercom now discharged the crisp, intoxicating lyrics of Rocky Mountain High. The waitress arrived with the American's frontier fries and a bottle of genuine Heinz ketchup. It was a brand-new bottle. Spanking the butt end of the bottle a few times, he managed to coax out enough ketchup to form something similar to a large red pancake. It was a thoroughly authentic, Americanesque portion of fries, too many, but in this case each extra fry was for him a small measure of salvation. He dipped them carefully into the ketchup, one-by-one, and occasionally he would even bite one in two, swallow the first half, and then re-dip the severed end into the red before swallowing the second half whole. At no time did he eat two at once. In no instance did he put one into his mouth before completely swallowing its predecessor. He took sips of water in between.

"I said where's yer kids."

The Englishman beat his wife to the punch: "No kiddies, old man. Not yet, anyway. Just a couple dinkies, that's us. That's why I say yet, for the y you know."

The American looked at the Englishman with an expression of intentional blank incredulity, with a self-indulgent dash of indignation thrown in. The wife was not a contributor to the dialogue.

"Dinky, old man! Yer-mean yer-don't know what's a dinky? Why it's the initials, that is to say the letters---double, income, no, kids, yet! Yet for the y, get it now? Tell you the truth, old man, I'm not sure there is a yet. It's a question of money, idn't it. The little blighters cost a fortune. Maybe in a few years. I can tell yer-this---it's a good thing we don't 'ave 'em now, old man, 'else we'd soon be right well-skint an' we couldn't even rightly be called dinkies! Ha-ha-ha-ho-hee-hee!"

(....He remembered not being able to go out at night because he had to watch her while her mother was at work. He remembered how cute she was trying to stand up, on tiny bowed legs resembling a pair of fat white sausages, wobbling, falling, crying....)

The Englishman's wife excused herself to "find the loo". She took a napkin with her. The Englishman made a couple of disparaging remarks about the female bladder, smiling cockily at his fellow male. The American looked up at the ceiling when something by Madonna replaced Rocky Mountain High on the intercom....and he wondered who the hell is that, and what the hell does she have to do with the frontier....

"So what would you and yer wife be if you---I mean what would you do if all of uh sudden you weren't dinkies," the American said dryly.

"Oh, then we're just a couple of bloomin' yuppies I suppose---or i'sit mebbe we-only just puppies? Ha! I score that one for Mags, the ol' cow. Me-ol' trouble'n strife says we're just puppies an' not real yuppies a'toll, and considering our bank balance she may be spot-on, but I can't 'elp wishin' she'd button up 'er bleedin' north'n south 'bout all that rot---especially 'round the job. It's embarrassing, i'tis."

There were still about ten precious fries left to be savored, and he wanted one more look at the girl, and so he elected---against his will---to stay.

"By-the-by, old man, 'ow can a bloke as big as you bloody survive on a plate o'chips?"

"At least I talk like a normal human being."

"....Oh! Y'mean the slang? The cockney rhyming slang? My error, old chap. Just a bad 'abit I carried over from me-youth, my apologies. Now, what'd I say....trouble'n strife? Well, that's me-wife, old man---wife, trouble'n strife, mouth, north'n south. That's it. You grow up in the East End, an' it's as natural as scratchin' yer arse---which just 'appens to be bottle'n glarse! Ha! Ho! Ho-ho!"

Even the American had to laugh now, but his laughter went down a different road.

"Got any others?"

"Well," (his wife returned, face flushed, but he paid her little heed) "Well, 'ow 'bout fags? You smoke? No? Well anyway, take fags. Fags is smokes, aren't they. Personally I love me-fags, but I try not to smoke 'round me-wife---that is to say me-trouble---'cause she don't fancy it much. Now fer the rhyme---ready? Fags, oily rags! Oilies, fer short. Take 'em all back to the States, me-ol' china, we won't even charge yer for it."

"Don't mind him, guv---'e's just a dinky."

He looked over, and for once she wasn't looking back at him. She was staring across at her husband, with an expression---were not the face so delicate and fair---that might have passed for hate. He liked this girl. He liked this girl with the porcelain face and the moist green eyes and the short red hair. Not the way a man likes a woman, not that way, but the way he might appreciate a fine painting, or delight in the inexplicable living beauty of a bright firm flower. She deserved better than this dripping milksop of a man that undeservedly shared her bed....And he would be damned if he was going to ask him what "china" meant. He'd only come in to get something to eat and get out of the rain. And now, with his last fry gone, it was time to do what he did best; run....

"Fags? You said yuh like fags?"

"Fags, oily rags. 'Asta rhyme, old man."

"But you do like 'em...."

"Me-oilies? Oh, I love 'em. Like I said."

"Yer fags. You like yer fags. Say it."

"Righto. I like me-fags."

He looked intensely at the Englishman's short, slender fingers, the narrow, snow-white cheeks, the short black hair, the suit. That stupid suit....Glancing at the wife just long enough for his left eye to wink, he then smiled slowly and cleverly at the Englishman, and declared, "That's the first intelligent thing you've said since I sat down."

And the wife laughed.

The American, muffling his laughter only for effect, rose quickly to leave. He kissed the middle finger of his left hand and touched it to the wife's lips, lips which parted slightly upon contact. "Someday," he said, glancing briefly but clearly at her lavender mid-section, then back up into her moist green eyes, both pair unblinking.

He squeezed his way out between the two tables. It was just a sawdust fantasyland now, and he couldn't wait to leave it behind. Suddenly it even seemed like a good idea to go back and stand the trial, but that didn't mean that he had suddenly turned gambler. He hadn't entirely changed his philosophy, just amended it a little. But first he needed lodging, and so he resolved to go out into the world and commit some well-chosen crime, something just serious enough that they could not, in good conscience, deny him a few nights of free lodging in the local jail. He needed the rest. And it would give him a good opportunity to get used to worrying about the possibility of longer confinements. He was looking forward to it. One jail was probably no more objectionable than another, he figured, but a man's freedom, he had finally begun to learn, is no damn good without the man knowing there was somebody who would give a damn if he lost it. Or something like that. Anyway, he was honestly looking forward to that jail cot, to closing his eyes, to dreaming of slipping his wrists into the twin shackles of Worry and Responsibility. He was so tired.

(....And perhaps for his phone call, if they allowed phone calls, long distance phone calls, and if maybe he was especially polite and convincing enough that they might allow long long distance phone calls, perhaps maybe he might just ring up a certain sixteen-year-old girl in Chicago and ask her about a million questions. And if her mother answered the phone, so much the better....)

As he squeezed past, he dropped his check on the Englishman's plate. "Be a good host and get this for me, will yuh Arold with an h?"

"Now see 'ere---"

"Oh, and one more thing, Arold....that bleedin' bloody bloomin' stuff is strictly fer oily rags, know what I mean? You wouldn't wanna give your pretty little trouble here the wrong idea. If you want my advice, I really recommend teachin' yer poxy north'n south to speak some decent English."

As he pushed his way through the swinging doors and out into the dark rain he reached into his jeans, pulled out a rubber band, and made himself a pony tail.

YUPPIES, PUPPIES and DINKIES

by

C. Bradford Eastland