Dinks: Double Income, No Kids

Penelope was in a rage when I arrived at the store.

“Miguel left me for one of the secretaries in Arthur Stuart’s office,” she sobbed. “He’s already moved in with her, the son of a bitch! I starved myself for him. I ate carrot sticks and yogurt for him. I should have listened to my father.”

​She stopped for a moment.

​“I didn’t mean that. I’ll get through this even though Miguel spent all our money on his stupid lawsuits. I just wanted health
insurance. Was that asking too much?”

​At the moment, she hated him and me. I represented the tribe of male offenders. As a measure of her personal turmoil, instead of wearing a letter or a sign like Hester Prynne, she cut her beautiful, long black hair unattractively short.

“You did something to your hair,” I said.

“What about it?” Penelope challenged.

​”Nothing,” I replied.

​A salesman from a country music station strolled into the back room. He had curly, black hair. He flopped down next to me.

“Why a country music station?” Penelope snapped at Dave. “We need a different audience. We need to advertise to people between twenty-five and forty who listen to rock music. Not country music!”

​Dave puffed on his pipe, unmoved by her protest. She stared at me.

“Country music?” she whispered. “That’s insane! It’s a waste of money. What’s he trying to do, lose money? This place is going to fold like Margo’s other businesses.”

The frantic look returned to her face.

“I need this job. Miguel is gone. I have to pay the whole rent. All I wanted was a nice home and a job with benefits,” she said.

​Like the idyllic world of dinks where a couple with a double income and no kids lived an upscale version of the life Penelope envisioned with Miguel. This was the second time I had been there. I visited the Jackson’s house the previous week to deliver an unfinished Econo King frame and two sets of bureau drawers. Donald and Barbara Jackson were in their early thirties.
The first visit. I waited in front of their house in a cul-de-sac of the new subdivision. A tall, wrought iron gate with a golden keyhole protected the entrance. The barking of a large dog echoed inside.

A white station wagon and a purple Fiat pulled into the driveway. The garage doors automatically opened, revealing a huge cavern with shelving and cupboards. The Jacksons emerged from their cars wearing dark blue jogging suits with a white stripe like a lightning bolt down the sides. Mr. Jackson had a white towel curled around his throat and reminded me of something from a Cary Grant movie. He had a quiet, intense face. His eyebrows pinched together.

Jackson, old boy, planned to stain the unfinished pine during the upcoming week, and then I was supposed to return and assemble it.

“I hesitate putting a waterbed up now though,” he admitted, pausing. “Our new house will be finished in six weeks.”

​Did I say dinks? They were triple-income no-kids.

“We bought this house two years ago,” Mr. Jackson explained. “The market price has doubled so we’re selling it and putting the profit into another house.”

​I placed the unfinished wood inside the garage.

“Want something to drink?” he asked.

“Sure.”

“What do we have, honey? Fresh squeezed orange and apple juice?” he asked.

“Orange juice,” Barbara Jackson said and led the way to the still life, magazine-like kitchen with walls highlighted by light yellow and red flowered wallpaper. I sat in a padded, yellow chair at the glass-topped table that looked out to a patio surrounded by citrus trees.

​The second visit. I returned a week later to assemble the bed that Donald Jackson stained and lacquered so perfectly. Barbara Jackson let me in through the black, wrought iron gate in the front. The sunken living room had light green walls, and the hallway to the bedrooms was painted an oblique orange. The entire place was spotless, immaculate, and I could hardly breathe. Insecticide.

I carried in the plywood, tools, mattress, liner and the heater. Each trip outside I took deep breaths to counteract the insecticide. It didn’t faze Barbara Jackson at all. Mr. Jackson had laid out the stained wood meticulously in the back bedroom. Several of his jogging suits were draped over a chair.

I centered the waterbed platform made of bureau drawers carefully against the wall. I placed three pieces of plywood on top of the drawers. Next went the headboard, end board and side pieces, the heater, liner and finally the mattress. Each step taken with care and foresight. I was dealing with professionals. I hooked up the hose in the adjoining bathroom.

The bed filled with water. Barbara Jackson invited me to sit on the couch with her and watch the Newlywed Game. All I could think of while sitting there was Penelope would have flipped. Her and Miguel sitting on the couch watching the Newlywed game. And the Jacksons were going to sell it in a few months. Market price. It didn’t make sense to stay there. In the background, a fireplace with fieldstones reached to the ceiling braced with large, exposed rafters.

Donald Jackson returned during a downpour. The rain drenched his black hair and beard. He dried himself off, then the three of us walked to the bedroom to marvel at the exquisite job he had done in staining and lacquering the wood and the crowning achievement: the assembly, a testament to my evolution as a dream mechanic from the vast confluence of down river, white water rapids of genes coursing through nameless generations of my faceless forebears, then knotting into my being.

​”I don’t know,” she said, looking at the waterbed.

​”What’s wrong, honey?” Mr. Jackson asked.

​A concerned look covered Barbara Jackson’s tanned, oval face.

​”How come the end part of the drawers isn’t one solid piece? It looks like six separate pieces of wood,” she complained.

​I walked over to the end of the bed and squeezed the drawers together. She wrinkled her nose.

“That’s what it is. Six different pieces of wood. Probably not even from the same state. That’s the way they make these drawers,” I said.

“It looks awful,” she said.

“Honey…”

“It should look like one piece of wood. That’s what I’m used to,” she said.

​”Take it down?” I asked.

​Donald Jackson nodded. He helped load everything back on the van.

“What do those people want?” Dave asked when I returned to store.

​“They need some kids to mess the place up,” I said. “And they better hurry. Barbara Jackson’s egg timer is going off in a few years.”

​”He’s gonna eat that merchandise,” Dave said. “I’m not gonna try to flip something he’s stained and lacquered. What does he think, I’m in business to lose money?”

​Penelope glanced at me and nodded. Yeah. We were working for one of Dave and Margo’s businesses with built-in obsolescence
and pre-programmed to disassemble itself.

“My egg timer is ticking too,” Penelope said. “And my rooster, Miguel, has flown the coop.”

There was no rooster here either, but there were several cats lounging near the driveway when I pulled in. It was another couple of dinks, but both had egg timers. Probably if I looked around their house I’d find battery-operated egg beaters, loud as bi-planes.

I delivered the wood a week before just like on the Jackson job. One of the lesbians who lived there stained and lacquered the bed frame. She was the husband type – without the plumbing parts – and sat in an easy chair, like good ol’ Dave, sipping a Budweiser when I arrived. Dressed in a blue work uniform, hair cut like Buster Brown, white socks and black, thick-soled, work shoes, she was one tough broad, a Klondike.

“I’m shift supervisor,” Jennifer Winfield said. “I’m bucking for another raise too.”

​She lifted the can of beer and drained the contents. The other woman, Alice Edwards, had long, dark hair and black-rimmed glasses. She was much thinner than her partner, Jennifer Winfield, and was fidgety, making sure everything was all right.

“The room’s big enough, isn’t it?” she asked, showing me to their bedroom.

“Yeah,” I answered, but I was really thinking, this is where they do it. This is where they lick and suck on each other like house cats, and do all those lesbian things.

​They led me to another bedroom that they used for storage, where the wood that Jennifer Winfield stained and lacquered lay. There were boxes stacked in several corners.

“Please excuse the mess,” Alice Edwards said, embarrassed about the room’s clutter.

​I examined the wood spread out on the floor.

“Good job on the finish. You shoulda seen the last guy’s job on the same project,” I said about Donald Jackson’s attempt.

“Oh, did you hear that? He says you did a good job on the bed,” Alice Edwards said.

“Well, I probably could have done a better job, but I was in a hurry when I did it,” Jennifer Winfield replied.

​It didn’t take long to assemble the Econo King for them. A friend of theirs showed up, curious to see the new sleep and lovemaking phenomenon that they could curl up on like one of Monet’s water lilies.

Her name was Janet, and she was a big, tough-looking diesel dyke with short hair and strapping arms and neck. When she rested her large arms on her hips her hands stuck out the back. Her shoulders projected farther than her potato-sized breasts.

“Let’s jump in!!” Janet bellowed, laughing a barrel-chested laugh.

​The mattress filled with water. I sat on the couch in the living room and watched the Gong Show with Jennifer, Alice, and Janet. I couldn’t explain it. All of a sudden I felt sad – for all of us. I felt like I transcended my body like Shiszu had done. I looked down from the ceiling at all of us sitting there. None of us were beautiful like Celeste Stuart, Shiszu, Lourdes, Penelope, or Rana. There was an Eleanor Rigby loneliness about us, all the lonely people, perched on the couch watching the Gong Show. We were all like Eleanor Rigby, the person and the song, waiting to be buried. The song was so beautiful, but you couldn’t dance to it.

“Want a brew?” Jennifer asked.

“Yeah, sure,” I answered.

“Get him a brew,” she said to Alice.

“You wouldn’t ever get me on the Gong Show,” Janet said when Alice returned with my beer. “I wouldn’t get up there and make a fool of myself like that. I can’t believe the way people behave.”

​”I like the unknown comic,” I said. “The guy with the brown paper bag on his head. I wonder who he really is?”

​When the waterbed was filled I loaded the tools and the hose into the van.

“Good luck with the bed,” I said. “Stay out of the deep end.”

All three of them, Jennifer, Alice, and Janet stood on the front porch. Itwas like a bon voyage party. Their genuineness surprised me. ​I re-entered the world of the happily remarried.

“Well ol’ Wilbur,” Dave began. “I see you’re still in one piece.”

“It was kind of boring. Just your average American family. Mom, Dad and Junior. We watched the Gong Show. I thought we were going to sing We are Family, All my sisters and me.”

“They paid in full when they bought it. There ain’t many people doing that lately. They can screw donkeys on the waterbeds as long as they pay for ‘em,” Dave said.

​I smiled. Their payment barely kept the store afloat. We were the ones in the deep end.