“An apple corer?”
“Yeah, but it also made Christmas tree ornaments,” Tepper said. “Mittgin always specialized in things that had two uses. He used to sell a candlesnuffer that also cut out melon chunks. Now he’s got an attaché case that turns into a foldout computer table. Maybe the apple corer didn’t make Christmas tree ornaments, now that I think of it. Maybe it made decorative fudge. A lot of the things Mittgin sells make things that are described as decorative. Anyway, it was one of the first things we worked on. So Barney Mittgin has been trying to drive Howard and me crazy for forty years. And here we are, despite his best efforts. Maybe we’re not at the top of the charts for mental health, but we’re not crazy. And don’t forget: all that time there have been other things to drive us crazy: mechanical breakdowns in the fulfillment houses, lost mail, other irritating clients. Barney Mittgin has not been working alone. So forty years from now—thirty-seven and a half, really, because he’s already been at you for two and a half years—it’s unlikely that you’re going to have to be institutionalized, at least not from the effects of prolonged contact with Barney Mittgin. That should be a source of comfort to you.”
“I never thought of it that way,” Arnie said. He actually looked a little bit relieved. Tepper had found that Arnie was easily upset but just as easily calmed—someone who grasped a phrase of encouragement and nodded in relief, like a nervous traveler who has been reassured that he’s on the right train after all.
“Unless you think Howard and I actually are a little crazy,” Tepper said, after some consideration. “Then I suppose it wouldn’t be a source of comfort.”
“I thought maybe Barney got to be more of a pain in the ass over the years,” Arnie said.
“Nope, he started out as a pain in the ass, and he’s still a pain in the ass,” Tepper said. “What’s the item he’s selling?”
“It’s a sort of little balloon you wear around your neck, for sleeping on airplanes,” Arnie said.
“You put it around your neck and supposedly you sleep better because your head doesn’t loll over and when you wake up you don’t have a stiff neck? Is that the one?”
“That’s it,” Arnie said.
“I’ve seen it in a million catalogs,” Tepper said. “Also, it’s in every airport gift shop. Also, some airline—I think it was El Al—used to give them away free to everyone in Business Class.”
“Well, this one—”
“Don’t tell me,” Tepper said. “It has another function.”
Arnie nodded his head. “It’s got the layouts of six major airports on it,” he said. “O’Hare, LAX, JFK, La Guardia, Dallas- Fort Worth, and Atlanta. It shows which airlines are in which terminals, where the gates are—at least it does when it’s completely blown up. If it isn’t blown up perfectly, you can get a crease that’ll hide a few gates, or maybe even an entire airline.”
Tepper shook his head. “The thing is around your neck and the airport maps are on the thing and you’re supposed to read the thing?” He pretended he was wearing a balloon around his neck and he was trying to read a map on the side of the balloon. Over the years, despite all evidence to the contrary, he had persisted in thinking that he might discover how Barney Mittgin’s mind worked if he understood how the product worked.
Arnie shrugged. “I guess you read it before or after it’s on your neck,” he said. “When it’s on your neck, you’re supposed to be asleep.”
Tepper nodded. “I didn’t think of that,” he said. “Well, it sounds like one of Barney’s items all right. And the creases aren’t our problem. So what’s the problem?”
Arnie started going through the pile of rate cards he was holding. “Well, I started him out by testing a list we call ‘65,000 High-Income Individuals Who Have Joined a Frequent Flyer Program.’”
“Sounds fine so far.”
“Then we also have a membership list of a couple of those airline clubs that have the special lounges in airports. I tested them.”
“Good, good.”
“Then we’ve got that list of people who have baggage late or lost or something at O’Hare and have to give their name and address and have it sent to them.”
“I would have never thought of that. I suppose a lot of them may still be too mad to respond to anything, but maybe not. I don’t suppose Barney’s maps are detailed enough to show where you go to look for your lost baggage?”
Arnie shook his head. “Creases,” he said. “But that lost luggage list was okay. Just okay. Not great. So far, none of these lists are testing great.”
“Arnie, you’ve done just right,” Tepper said. “You’ve done exactly what I would have done under the circumstances. If they’re not testing well, it’s because nobody wants to break his neck reading a map while he’s supposed to be asleep.”
“That’s not what Barney said. He said I don’t have any imagination.” Arnie looked truly dejected again.
“Arnie,” Tepper said. “May I ask you how old you are?”
“I’m thirty-one years old,” Arnie said.
“Well, let an older man tell you one of the lessons of life,” Tepper said. “Barney Mittgin is a schmuck. None of this has to do with you, none of it has to do with me, none of it has to do with Worldwide Lists, Inc. It may not even have anything to do with the creases. What it has to do with is the fact that Barney is a schmuck. He can’t admit that what he’s trying to sell is not so great, so he finds someone else to blame. Schmuck-like behavior. When there’s a schmuck involved, you can’t analyze a situation as if there weren’t a schmuck involved. For you, the important life lesson is this: when there’s a schmuck involved, don’t take it personally.”
Tepper could see Arnie brighten. “He’s trying to drive me crazy,” Arnie repeated, as if offering another piece of evidence for Tepper’s theory.
“You tried luggage—right?” Tepper said. “I don’t mean lost luggage. I mean luggage buyers.”
“Oh, sure,” Arnie said. “A list of people who had sent away for one of those under-the-seat suitcases. Also earplugs. A list of people who had ordered earplugs from a catalog. The customer list of one of those car services that mainly take people to the airport. Barney says it’s all obvious.”
“It’s the way we work,” Tepper said. “We start with the obvious. We make a little universe around this imaginary customer of whatever Mittgin’s selling—in this case, someone trying to sleep on an airplane. So people who belong to frequent flyer programs are obviously in this universe. If there aren’t enough people in the center of the universe, we just reach a little farther—where the population is thinner. Barney likes it when we find a little clot of people we didn’t expect—maybe subscribers to the most sophisticated trade magazine for mainframe computer repair people, because those people are always traveling and they’re usually tired and because of their technical bent they might actually be able to figure out Barney’s maps. It gives him a thrill.”
“He says you would have thought of something special,” Arnie said. “Maybe people who have bought sleeping pills through the mail, or compasses.”
“Compasses?”
“Barney says you make connections like that—maps, compasses.”
“This is an interesting notion,” Tepper said. “I like the idea of some software drummer who comes into O’Hare on United with twenty minutes to catch his connecting flight to Eau Claire, and he gets out his compass to find the gate. If it’s a compass he bought from Barney, of course, it also doubles as an olive pitter or something, so even if the salesman misses the plane he’s got something to do.”
“Barney says you’ve got a sixth sense.”
“If I had any sense at all, I’d have told Barney Mittgin to get lost years ago,” Tepper said. “And I would be in another business.”
“He calls you Magic Touch Tepper.”
“I call him a schmuck,” Tepper said.
Howard Gordon was standing at the door. “Am I interrupting?” he said.
“Come in, How
ard,” Tepper said. “We were just talking about your old friend Barney Mittgin.”
“A schmuck,” Howard said.
“That’s the conclusion we came to,” Tepper said.
“He sometimes refers to Murray as Magic Touch Tepper,” Howard said to Arnie. “Or just Touch when he’s feeling particularly friendly. He’s even worse when he’s feeling particularly friendly. What’s he selling now?”
“One of those doodads you put around your neck to help you sleep on the plane,” Tepper said.
“What else does it do?”
“Well, it’s a very good thing to sit on for an extremely tiny person who’s just had a hemorrhoid operation,” Tepper said. “But Barney isn’t pushing that use.”
“I better get back to it,” Arnie said. He gathered up his rate cards and got up.
“Arnie,” Tepper said, as Sarnow reached the door. “Why don’t you give a mainframe-computer-repair trade magazine list a shot?”
Arnie nodded. “Thanks, Murray,” he said, as he left. “I’ll try that.”
Howard took his chair. “How’s it going, Murray?” he said.
“Fine,” Tepper said. “How about you?”
“It could be worse,” Howard said.
“I found a couple of nice clean bird-book lists that seem to work for Murphy’s binoculars,” Tepper said. “Frankly, I think most of the names are from the time we used the list of people who had bought Murphy’s binoculars to sell bird books, but Murphy seems happy. You probably ought to try billing him before he gets sad again.”
Howard nodded. He looked sad himself. On the other hand, he usually looked sad. He was a mostly bald man—thin, except for a comfortable little spare tire that had gradually accumulated around his hips over the years. He often had a pair of reading glasses perched on the end of his nose. He had a wide mouth that turned downward at the edges, giving it the shape of a child’s drawing of a very low mountain. Tepper assumed that Howard smiled occasionally, but he couldn’t remember what one of Howard’s smiles looked like. Tepper had seen Howard laugh once. It was when someone told them that the best list for selling subscriptions to Kiplinger’s newsletter, an expensive Washington newsletter published for businessmen, was a list of people who had sent away for a device used to clip nose hair. Murray Tepper had laughed at that one himself. “There’s a great life secret in there somewhere,” Tepper had said at the time. “If only we knew what it was.” But that had been decades ago. Murray knew Howard to be a reasonably contented man, but strangers were likely to respond to meeting him by saying that they hoped he got some good news soon.
Howard was silent for a while. He was looking down at the floor. Then, without looking up, he said, “Murray, I talked to Ruth about this parking business.”
Tepper just nodded. Howard looked sadder than ever.
“You know I don’t want to butt in,” Howard continued. “That’s how we’ve been partners all these years. Even here we don’t interfere. You don’t tell me how to do the money part. I don’t tell you how to do the . . . the . . .”
“Magic?” Murray said.
Howard almost smiled. “Yeah, the magic,” he said.
Tepper knew that what he did every day at Worldwide Lists was to Howard Gordon, if not magic, at least puzzling. Howard ran the financial and administrative side of the business with competence, but he had no understanding of mailing lists. He simply couldn’t see the connections—even the obvious ones, like the one between binoculars and lists of people who’d bought bird books through the mail.
“So you and Ruth had a talk?”
“Yes, we had a little talk,” Howard said. “I told her that I don’t like to butt in. You do what you want, Murray. If you want to park, park. People do funny things at our age. If you wanted to start riding a motorcycle, I wouldn’t say a word. Maybe I’d say, ‘Wear a helmet, Murray.’ Otherwise, nothing. If you got yourself a popsie on the side, I’d probably say a little something—out of respect to Ruth. I’d make my opinion clear one time, and then you’d do what you wanted. With this, I’m not even going to say anything once. If you want to park, park.”
“Thank you, Howard,” Tepper said, rather formally. “If you want to get a popsie, wear a helmet.”
Howard looked up at Tepper, obviously puzzled.
“A little joke,” Tepper explained.
Howard nodded. “The thing is, Murray,” he went on, “I just want to know if there’s any problem in the business that has to do with this parking. I mean, is there anything that’s troubling you here? If there’s anything I can do, any change . . .”
“No, there’s nothing,” Tepper said. “You’re doing fine, Howard.”
“I know this business hasn’t been everything you hoped it would be when we started,” Howard said. “I know you had big plans then: Worldwide Lists. The name you chose says it.”
“Howard, we got that name because it was already on the door, from the ribbon company—Worldwide Ribbons and Bands. The ‘Ribbons and Bands’ part was in much smaller letters, and we just had them rubbed off. Remember? I wanted to call it T & G Lists. In fact, this name turned out to be much better. T & G Lists sounds like something dirty: ‘They were involved in T & G and other lewd pursuits.’”
The former ribbons office had offered mainly the advantage of cheapness. It was in the West Twenties, then a nondescript area of small office buildings. Now the neighborhood was prospering, having somehow become attractive to publishers and graphics companies and advertising firms. It had occurred to Tepper more than once that had Worldwide Lists scraped up the money to put a down payment on the building all those years ago, it would have made more money in real estate than it had made in forty years or so of dealing in mailing lists. The cafés and coffee shops where Tepper and his partner would sometimes get a tuna-fish sandwich or a plate of lasagna for lunch were gradually being replaced by restaurants much talked about for offering, say, Korean fusion or neo-Latin American. Howard sometimes said that he had to walk six blocks now to find a restaurant where he could understand the menu.
Howard was silent for a while. Then he said, “My God, how much could we have saved by not having to redo one word on the door?”
“There were ashtrays, too,” Tepper reminded him.
Howard nodded his head, somehow made to look sadder by the thought of ashtrays with worldwide on them.
“Believe me, Howard,” Tepper said. “It has nothing to do with the business.”
“I had sort of hoped that by now we’d be set if we wanted to quit working,” Howard went on. “We’re not quite there. We’re not doing badly, considering everything, but we’re not quite there. It might have been different if those huge computers the big guys have hadn’t gotten so sophisticated. Now they’ve got these Internet sites hooked up so they can tell what someone orders and try to sell them something like it the next time they come on. It’s not the same business it was, Murray. Fewer people interested in dealing with a small outfit that works a lot on instinct. The young people are now looking to the Internet altogether; they figure there’s no future for direct mail.”
“It’s a living,” Tepper said.
“It could be worse,” Howard said.
He sat there for a while, saying nothing. Then he said, “So what was the other function of the thing Barney’s selling?”
“It’s got floor plans of six major airports on it,” Tepper said.
Howard shook his head as he got up from the chair. “What a schmuck,” he said.
6. Jack
AT EIGHT-THIRTY THAT EVENING, TEPPER WAS PARKED on East Seventy-eighth Street. Although he hadn’t required a spot that was legal for the following day, a sign next to his car said NO PARKING 11AM-2PM MON & THURS. The spot, in other words, could be legally occupied for more than sixty hours. It was the sort of spot that would have excited him in the days when he was keeping the car on the street instead of in a garage. Although Ruth had almost from the start described his nightly search for a good-for-tomorrow spot a
s “more aggravation that you don’t need,” there were moments of it that he’d loved. On evenings when he wasn’t in any hurry, he had actually found it relaxing, in an odd way. Inside the cocoon of his car, he would sort of tune out—shut himself off from other thoughts as he began to circle the blocks around his apartment, repeating the day he needed not to see mentioned on the sign. He was always reminded of the state of mind he’d been in during those searches when he heard a marathoner who was being interviewed on television talk about having an out-of-body experience.
He still grew nostalgic every year when, on one of the first days of January, The New York Times published a list of national and religious holidays for which alternate-side parking regulations would be suspended. He was never quite clear on exactly why the rules were suspended for, say, All Saints’ Day or Shemini Atzeret, but he preferred to take it as a gesture of respect. The city was saying, “We know that a certain number of our citizens will be celebrating Id al-Adha today, and we want them to do so without the burden of worrying about which side of the street their cars are parked on.” When Tepper kept his car on the street, he always clipped out the list and put it in his glove compartment, part of the information base he carried with him while looking for a spot. He had taken a certain amount of pride in knowing where the fire hydrants were and what the signs on each block said. His sweetest memories were the times when, having confidently passed up some outsider who had slowed up approaching a space that Tepper knew to be next to a fire hydrant, he’d found a spot just down the street—a spot the stranger would have captured if he had been familiar with the territory.
In those days, if Tepper had found a spot that was good for sixty hours, he would have taken particular care backing in close to the curb. If the spot were long enough, he might even go back and forth a bit after he got in, like a quarter-miler taking a victory lap around the track. Then he would have locked the car, giving the doors an extra try just to make sure, and gone back to the apartment, eager to tell Ruth and Linda the good news. “Beautiful spot!” he’d say, as soon as he got in the door. “Guess when I next have to move the car?”
Tepper Isn't Going Out: A Novel Page 4