“I think his wife has been taking him to some of these adult education lectures at the Ninety-second Street Y,” Arnie said.
“Apparently, this reporter came over here Monday or Tuesday and we were both gone,” Gordon said. “And he got to talking to Mittgin in the outer office—not realizing he was interviewing a schmuck.”
There was silence. Gordon and Arnie seemed to be waiting for Murray Tepper to say something about the Rag article beyond his observation about Barney Mittgin’s language, but Tepper didn’t speak. Finally, Gordon said, “Well, I suppose this sort of thing could bring in some business.”
“I suppose,” Tepper said.
There was more silence. Then, as Gordon and Arnie were about to leave, Tepper said, “Howard?”
“Yes, Murray,” Gordon said.
“I wouldn’t have thought you were a reader of the East Village Rag,” Tepper said. “Is there something I’ve missed about you all these years?”
“My niece sent it to me,” Gordon said. “She lives on Rivington Street. I don’t know if that’s included in what they call the East Village. We still call it the Lower East Side. You don’t even want to know what she paid for her apartment. A co-op. A co-op on Rivington Street! I told her that her great-grandparents worked sixteen hours a day just to get out of Rivington Street. What was cooperative about those buildings when they lived in them was the bathroom. Now whatever miserable cold-water flat my grandparents lived in has probably been made into a co-op. For all we know, that may be her co-op. She may be paying thousands to live in the place her great-grandparents worked themselves to death so their children wouldn’t have to live in. What a city.”
10. Sushi
THE JAPANESE WAITRESS, DRESSED IN KIMONO AND SANDALS, shuffled over, put a pot of tea on their table, and asked, in heavily accented English, if they were ready to order.
“The regular sushi special,” Jack said to the waitress. “And make that medium well.”
“Mee-dyum wher-ah?” the waitress said, looking puzzled.
“That means no pink showing in the center,” Jack said.
Tepper waved his index finger in Jack’s direction—not far from the gesture he used sometimes when people asked him if he was going out—and shook his head, indicating to the waitress that she needn’t pay any attention to what Jack was saying. “Just bring us two regular sushi specials and two Kirin beers, please,” Tepper said.
Jack shrugged. “Okay, get trichinosis, see if I care,” he said.
“She must be new,” Tepper said, after the waitress had left the table. “The manager told me that the waitresses call you the medium well man.”
“So, you found any decent spots lately or are you still spending a lot of time circling around the block?” Jack said.
“Oh no, I’m finding some spots,” Tepper said. “I really can’t complain.”
Jack was silent for some time, as he busied himself pouring both of them some tea. The restaurant was just about full, and at most tables the conversation was animated. At three tables, one of the customers in a group of three or four was talking on a cell phone, and gradually it dawned on Tepper that, judging from their expressions and precisely when they spoke, two of them seemed to be talking to each other. Could that be? Wouldn’t the one who called just walk over to the table of the person he wanted to talk to rather than place a call? But maybe he didn’t realize the person he had called was eating at the same restaurant, just twenty feet away.
Finally, Jack said, “Do you remember when we ran into those two Vassar girls wandering around Washington Square, and we didn’t think they’d be very impressed if we said we were just two schlemiels going to NYU on the ass end of the G.I. Bill so we told them we went to West Point? I called you Captain, and you kept saying, ‘As you were, Sergeant Major.’ Remember that? You couldn’t get enough of that phrase: ‘As you were, Sergeant Major.’”
“No, I don’t remember that, Jack,” Tepper said. “We kept hoping we’d find two Vassar girls wandering around Washington Square, but we never did.”
“That’s right,” Jack said. “I was just testing you, in case you were an impostor. If you turned out to be an impostor, then when people said to me, ‘Hey, what’s this I hear about your friend Murray Tepper parking his car for pleasure? He used to be such a levelheaded guy. What does he have—some trouble with his hormones, or something?’ I’d say, ‘That’s not Murray Tepper—that’s a man who claims to be Murray Tepper. Murray Tepper has better things to do than park in someone else’s parking spot. No, that man is an impostor: I tripped him up with a shrewd question on Vassar girls. I figure he’s a Russian spy—an agent in place, a mole. The Russians want a capitalist economy over there, and they’re trying to steal some of our business secrets. So they sent someone to pretend to be Murray Tepper long enough to steal a lot of inside dope on how to sell people tchotchkes through the mail.’ But I didn’t trip you up, because you correctly pointed out that the Vassar girls existed only in the fevered, lustful imagination of my youth. So what now?”
“Now we’ll have some sushi, and you’ll go back to your office and I’ll go back to my office,” Tepper said. “And every now and then you’ll still think of the Vassar girls.”
“No, I mean what do I tell them?” Jack said. “When people ask me about it, and I can’t claim that you’re an impostor, what do I tell them?”
“I sort of like the Russian spy explanation,” Tepper said. “Maybe you could forget that you didn’t trip me up with the Vassar girls story.”
“Do you know what your son-in-law now thinks this is all about?”
“I don’t, but you do,” Tepper said.
“That’s right. He tells Linda and Linda tells Ruth and Ruth doesn’t tell you, because she’s giving you some space. She tells me. It doesn’t affect my space. Richard’s latest theory, you might be pleased to hear, is that you’re acting out your anger.”
“What am I angry about?” Tepper asked. “Am I angry that my daughter married someone who talks like that?”
“He’s not sure,” Jack said. “He’s working on it. He thinks you may be angry because you’re getting on in years and you haven’t made a real pile. Or, he tells Ruth, you may be angry because you realize that it’s really not very important how many people buy which tchotchke through the mail—he apparently doesn’t realize that information about this business is something the Russians would kill to get their hands on—and you therefore think that your life has been meaningless. Or you may be angry because of all the injustice and suffering and hypocrisy in the world. He thought for a while that you may be angry because they moved the Dodgers to Los Angeles, but after our little chat on Seventy-eighth Street I reminded Ruth that I was the one who was angry when they moved the Dodgers to Los Angeles. The bastards!”
Tepper just nodded. The waitress brought their sushi—pausing to gesture toward Jack and giggle and say, “you mee-dyum wher-ah man”—and they began eating.
“Or you’re trying to prove something to yourself,” Jack went on. “That’s another one of his theories. You feel you sort of caved in when you put your car in a parking garage and quit looking for a spot that was good for tomorrow, like some nut looking for buried treasure in the desert. So you park, to prove to yourself that you can find a spot.”
“That was alternate-side parking,” Tepper said. “This is mostly meters.”
“Listen, Murray,” Jack said, after a while. “I know you think your son-in-law has some mushy ideas, but all this isn’t that you’re angry about something, is it? I mean, you don’t act angry. But he’s right that there are a lot of serious things in the world that could get a person pissed off.”
Tepper just nodded, as he dipped a piece of tuna sushi into the soy sauce.
“Murray,” Jack said. “Ruth and I talked about whether maybe you should see somebody about this. A doctor or something. Some counseling. I mean, sure, everybody needs a hobby, but this. . . . Well, anyway, I actually know a guy, if you decided you m
ight want to do that. He’s more like a counselor. No couch or anything like that. He’s got an office on East Sixty-eighth Street.”
Tepper finished his tuna sushi, and reached for a piece of shrimp sushi. He started on the shrimp without saying anything.
“So, what do you think?” Jack finally said.
“About Sixty-eighth Street?”
“Well, yes.”
“Mostly No Parking Eight-to-Six Monday through Friday there,” Tepper said.
“What?”
“East Sixty-eighth Street. Mostly No Parking Eight-to-Six Monday through Friday. Or even No Standing Seven A.M. to Seven P.M.”
“You’re just putting me on, right?” Jack said.
“You could go look at the signs,” Tepper said. “It’s always been a hard street to park on. Because of the crosstown buses, I think. Or at least that’s what they’d claim. I mean, the alternate-side regulations are supposedly for street cleaning, or at least that’s what they claim. But who really knows?”
“No, that’s not what I mean,” Jack said. “I mean you’re just trying to string me along when you answer the question about counseling by telling me what the parking situation is in front of the office. The way you told me the other night that Times Square was No Parking Anytime when I said I might go park there. That’s a joke, right?”
“Some people take parking very seriously, Jack,” Tepper said.
11. Elevator Music
TEPPER WAS PARKED IN FRONT OF RUSS & DAUGHTERS, eating a herring-salad-on-bagel sandwich that Irving Saper had been kind enough to bring along when he came out with a copy of the article in the East Village Rag for Tepper to autograph. It was about ten-thirty, Sunday morning. Tepper had just had a small scene with a man who was driving a Dodge station wagon with New Jersey plates. When Tepper waved the Dodge on, employing the sort of motion someone might use to help along the water in a bathtub that had a slow drain, the driver hadn’t moved. Instead, he had rolled down the window and shouted, “This isn’t the public reading room, buddy. This is a street!” Then he’d turned to a woman sitting in the passenger seat next to him and said, still shouting, “He thinks this is a public reading room. This guy thinks this is a public reading room. This is not a public reading room.” Tepper had ignored him, and, finally, the Dodge station wagon had pulled away.
Tepper was involved in reading a long story about someone who had become rich and famous in California by preaching that he was a mere container for an eleven-thousand-year-old spirit named Kravoo. The container’s followers had bought him many cars. He was a regular on television talk shows. His book was on the bestseller list. Now he was being challenged by a former disciple who claimed that she was inhabited by a spirit who was fourteen thousand years old, three thousand years older than Kravoo—that her spirit, in other words, had the wisdom that comes with more life experience. The man who was Kravoo’s container was fighting back. He said that he knew the spirit inhabiting his former disciple and that it was a spirit who was only four thousand years old. “In effect, we’re talking about a kid here,” he had said. “Just a kid.”
There was a knock on the passenger-side window. A man was at the window saying, “Mr. Tepper? Murray Tepper?” He formed the words in an exaggerated way, presumably in case Tepper could not hear him through the glass and might want to read his lips. Tepper had never seen the man before. He was a thin man, with rimless glasses. He was dressed in a suit and tie, an unusual outfit on Houston Street on Sunday morning. Even though he had approached a complete stranger, his looks and manner were rather diffident. Tepper rolled the window down, so he could hear the man better.
“My name is Edwin Milledge,” the man said. “Are you the Mr. Tepper who goes and parks sometimes?”
“My name is Tepper, and I’m parked here. It’s metered parking nine to seven, including Sundays.”
Milledge smiled. “You’re the right Mr. Tepper, all right,” he said.
“How do you know me?” Tepper asked, although he thought he already knew the answer.
“I read about you in the East Village Rag, and it said you might be back here today—if you could find a spot. I wonder if I could talk to you for a few minutes.”
“Why not?” Tepper said, swinging open the passenger-side door. “Have a seat.”
Edwin Milledge came in and settled in the front seat and didn’t say anything for a while. Then he said, “You see, I really hate the canned music in the elevators. I truly hate it.”
“There’s always something,” Tepper said.
“It’s not that I don’t like music. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. I love music. That’s why I subscribe to the East Village Rag: They often have notices of New Music concerts that other papers don’t mention. My whole life is music, really, except for my job and my family. I’ve played the cello since I was a child. At one time I actually thought of trying for a career as a classical cellist, although in my heart I knew I wasn’t that good. But I love it. I play in a string quartet. I practice every evening.”
“Do you mind if I ask you a question?” Tepper said.
“No, of course not.”
“Are you also interested in mathematics?”
“Why, yes. Yes I am. My job actually has to do with mathematics. I work for a firm that does research and development, mostly for telephone companies. My degree is in mathematics.”
“Interesting, interesting,” Tepper said. “There’s a theory, as you may know, that there’s a connection between music and mathematics—the same part of the brain, or something like that. Apparently, people who are good at music are often good at mathematics, and vice versa. I’ve been testing the theory a little—trying to sell Brahms CDs to people who’d sent away for books on mathematics, that sort of thing. How about chess?”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Milledge said.
“Do you play chess?”
“Yes, I’m a fairly serious player.”
“Interesting, interesting. I don’t suppose you’re interested in exotic sorts of foods, too?”
“No, I’m afraid not,” Milledge said. “I’m afraid I’m what they used to call strictly a meat-and-potatoes man.”
“Well, that doesn’t fit,” Tepper said. “There was a theory that math and music and exotic eating often all went together.”
“Well, I might be an exception,” Milledge said helpfully. “I do like sardines now and then, but I don’t suppose that would be considered strictly exotic.”
“Oh, that’s all right. Don’t eat sardines on my account,” Tepper said. “I was just curious. I assume you do not own a lettuce dryer.”
“No, no lettuce dryer.”
“Well, I didn’t mean to interrupt you,” Tepper said. “You were talking about the music in elevators.”
“The building I work in has music in the elevators,” Milledge said. “I’ve complained to my boss, but he says, quite correctly, that our company doesn’t own the building. We only have one floor. I’ve talked to the people who manage the building, but they don’t seem interested. I tried circulating a petition among the people who work in the building, but they don’t seem interested either. I try to explain to them that it’s not the music that’s played that offends me, although it’s not the sort of music I like, of course. It’s the idea of music as background, what someone once called aural wallpaper. I hate that.”
“Well, as I said, there’s always something.”
“The thing is,” Milledge went on, “I’m thinking very seriously about taking extreme steps.” As he said that, Milledge seemed to square his shoulders and sit more erectly in the front seat.
Tepper nodded his head slowly. “What sort of extreme steps?” he asked.
“Oh, there wouldn’t be any violence, of course,” Milledge said. “I once heard that some years ago some people who worked for a magazine objected to canned music in the elevator. A group of them would wait until they got to their floor, and then simply stand in the door, refusing to leave until the pi
ece they were listening to was over.”
“But I take it you don’t have a group of people.”
“No, there’s just me. Oh, possibly Miss Murtaugh, from collating.”
“Another musician?”
Milledge nodded. “She plays the viola. She’s quite good, really. But Miss Murtaugh and I alone obviously couldn’t make an impact by refusing to leave, like those magazine people. So I was thinking about shorting out the system. Not the entire elevator system—just the part that controls the music. I think I can make the distinction easily enough. I’m quite good at electrical things.”
Tepper nodded. “If I may ask, Mr. Milledge,” he said. “Do you find that other musicians of your acquaintance are also good at electrical things?”
Milledge considered the question for a moment. “Not that I’ve noticed,” he said.
“If I may ask one other question,” Tepper said. “Why, exactly, are you telling me this? I don’t mean that it isn’t interesting. I do find it interesting. But why particularly me?”
“Because reading about you in that article has given me courage,” Milledge said. “You’ve inspired me. You face questions head-on. Why are you parked here today?”
“Because it’s a legal spot—as long as you’ve put a quarter in the meter, of course,” Tepper said.
“Exactly!” Milledge said. “And do you intend to leave?”
“No, I’m not going out,” Tepper said.
“Exactly!” Milledge reached over and shook Tepper’s hand vigorously. “Exactly!” he nearly shouted. “Exactly!”
There was a knock on the window. During his conversation with Milledge, Tepper suddenly realized, two or three other people had gathered on the sidewalk next to the car. In other words, people were waiting in line to talk to him.
12. Survey Results
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN, ‘SIT DOWN THERE?’” SHANAHAN said to Teresa. He was standing in the outer office of the mayor’s suite, holding his laptop computer. He had already successfully completed the iris check.
Tepper Isn't Going Out: A Novel Page 7