“Oh, you know. Maybe some project at the office, or maybe Howard wants to take off in September, or some activity or something?”
“Some activity?” Tepper asked.
Ruth didn’t say anything for a while. Then she said, “Murray”—it was the serious “Murray”—“if we go to England, would you still want to . . . you know . . . read the paper in the car?”
“You mean go out parking in the evenings?” Tepper asked.
“Well, yes,” Ruth said.
“The parking situation might be completely different over there,” Tepper said. “I didn’t really study it when we were there before. Especially in a little seaside town in Devon or Cornwall it might be different. I can’t believe they have alternate-side parking, the way we do, for instance. Although, I don’t know. It’s for street cleaning, alternate-side parking, and the English are very interested in being tidy. You’ve got to do that when it’s a little country. Otherwise, the stuff really piles up.”
“You mean you do it here because of something about the parking situation?” she asked.
“Not exactly,” Tepper said.
Ruth continued eating her chicken in silence. Finally, she said, “Murray, I’m not sure whether all that meant you would want to go parking in the evenings in England or you wouldn’t.”
“Oh, I would never leave you alone in a hotel in a foreign country, Ruth,” Tepper said.
Ruth smiled. “That’s a nice thing to say, Murray,” she said.
“I suppose you could come along,” Tepper said, “if you weren’t busy with your watercolors.”
Ruth put down her fork. “Then, Murray, going out parking in the evenings doesn’t have anything to do with me,” she said. It was partly a question, partly a statement. “I mean, you didn’t feel you just had to get out of the house, or anything like that.”
“Of course not, Ruth,” Tepper said. “I told you that before. It’s just something I do.”
Ruth nodded, as if reassuring herself. “I guess it’s sort of a hobby. That’s what I told Harriet. A hobby. An unusual hobby, but a hobby. Everybody’s entitled to a hobby. And you never had a hobby, Murray. All these other men were doing carpentry and golf and coin collecting. Remember when Milt started building birdhouses? He filled their apartment with birdhouses. As if birds are going to go to an apartment building on West End Avenue and go up in the elevator and into the Davidsons’ apartment and settle down in a birdhouse. So now you have a hobby, if that’s what it is. You know what I thought at first, Murray—when you first started going?”
“What?”
“I thought: Maybe he’s got a girl. Then I thought: Murray? Never! Then I thought: People at this age do funny things.”
“That’s what Howard Gordon was saying,” Murray said. “At this age, people do funny things.”
“Howard never did anything funny,” Ruth said.
“He laughed once, but it was a long time ago.”
“I don’t think I ever thought it seriously—that you had a girlfriend. I don’t think I would have thought it at all except for that word: parking. In Springfield, when I was a teenager, when girls talked over a date one of them had been on, the other one would ask, ‘Did he try to park?’ and that meant did he want to go someplace dark and lonely in a car and neck, or whatever.”
“That’s interesting,” Tepper said. “You never told me about that. ‘Did he try to park?’ What kind of rules did you have?”
Ruth smiled. “Goodness. I haven’t thought of that in years,” she said. “Well, when the boy headed for one of those parking places—they were all well-known—and the girl didn’t say something about having to get home, it was assumed that she was at least willing to do a little necking. And then, if the boy started in that direction and the girl really didn’t want—”
“No, I mean the parking rules,” Tepper said.
“Parking rules?”
“Yeah, you know: alternate-side parking? Meters?”
“I can’t remember, Murray,” Ruth said. “I really can’t remember. That was a long time ago. Is it important?”
Murray shrugged. “I suppose I could write and ask,” he said.
15. Office Hours
IN FRONT OF RUSS & DAUGHTERS THAT SUNDAY, TEPPER hardly had time to begin his customary perusal of the Sunday News when the knocks on the passenger-side window began. What they interrupted was Tepper reading about himself. The News had run a short item on Tepper early in the week—apparently, the editors had been alerted by Jeffrey Green’s story in the East Village Rag—and the Sunday newspaper carried a few letters on the subject. One of them concluded that Tepper was a New Yorker who had been driven over the edge by the stresses in the city, particularly the sales tax—a tax that the writer described, in some detail, as putting an unconstitutionally disproportionate burden on both the poor and the materialistic. Another maintained that Tepper’s parking was a form of political theater: Murray Tepper was obviously protesting Mayor Ducavelli’s insane insistence on enforcing obscure and petty laws, the form of protest being what labor people would call a work to rules action. There was a letter saying that this episode made you yearn for a mayor like Bill Carmody, and there was a letter saying that Tepper was obviously an agent of former mayor Bill Carmody, trying to undermine by deceitful means an effective mayor whom Carmody had not been able to defeat in a fair election. There was a letter explaining that Murray Tepper was simply trying to find inner peace but never would until he embraced Buddhism.
Around nine-thirty Irving Saper, the counterman, came out of the store to say hello and to report that, inspired by his conversation with Tepper, he had begun inventing again—a device for slicing salmon, actually, that made it possible even for an amateur at home to achieve slices so thin that someone looking through them could discern light and dark shapes. “Being able to read the Times I don’t guarantee,” Saper said. “I’m not kidding myself.” By that time there were four people standing on the sidewalk next to the Chevrolet, waiting for an opportunity to slip into the passenger seat for a chat with Tepper, and Saper had to assure them that he was not trying to jump the line. “Just a little progress report,” he assured a woman who stood holding the door handle, the way New Yorkers sometimes do to claim possession of a taxi while the previous passenger is paying.
Occasionally, someone would just stop for a moment at the driver’s side to congratulate Tepper and wish him luck. “Listen, there’s nobody can force you to get out of this spot,” Tepper was told by a tough-looking man who identified himself as a cabdriver. “You know why?”
“It’s one-hour meter parking from nine to seven, Sunday included, and I’ve got fifty-five minutes to go on the meter,” Tepper said.
“Well, that too. But the real reason is that this is America. You’re an American! Never forget that: you’re an American.” The cabdriver paused for a short inspection of Tepper, studying his face carefully. Then he said, “You are an American, aren’t you? You look like an American.”
“Yes, I’m an American,” Tepper said.
“You’ve got to ask these days,” the cabdriver said. “Half the cabbies in town can’t speak enough English to get through the Midtown Tunnel. These foreign bastards are taking over. You were born here?”
Tepper nodded, and the cabdriver, after giving that some consideration, said he was going to do some shopping and then he’d join the line on the sidewalk.
Some of the people who sat in the passenger’s seat of Tepper’s Chevy Malibu had come to tell him about complaints they had against the city. They told tales of corrupt officials and obdurate bureaucrats. “So, after eight or ten telephone calls, I finally found the right person in the Pension Department,” one man said. “And I explained to him what I needed. My late uncle worked part-time for the Weights and Measures Department years ago, and before I could get my aunt on Medicaid, I had to produce a letter from somebody in authority saying that my uncle did not have a pension from the city. And this person on the telephone said that the first step
would be for me to give him my uncle’s pension number. And I told him that the point of this call was that my uncle didn’t have a pension, so how could he have a pension number? And he said that, whatever the point of the call, he’d need a pension number before he could look it up. Then, I’m afraid I used some harsh language, and he hung up.”
“There’s always something,” Tepper said.
Many of the people who stepped into Tepper’s car wanted to tell him about something in their lives that they found irritating or even infuriating. They said that they wanted to be able to respond in the way Tepper seemed to be responding to whatever it was that had driven him to park his car in a legal spot and refuse to leave. They often remarked on how calm he appeared despite how angry he must be. Like Edwin Milledge, the man who loved music and hated the music in elevators, they seemed to gain confidence as they told their stories to Tepper. Occasionally, he would nod, or say, “There’s always something,” or answer their questions about his own activities by saying that he was in a legal spot or that he wasn’t going out. Tepper was amazed that a couple of newspaper articles could produce a stream of people seeking help and guidance and advice. He was also amazed that, even though he didn’t say much at all to his visitors, almost all of the people who sat in the front seat of his Chevy seemed certain that he had been of great help to them.
At times, people would list the pros and cons of a decision they were faced with at work, while Tepper nodded or put in a few words about how he’d made his own decisions at Worldwide Lists—how he’d come up with the lists he’d tested on the way to establishing the link between left-wing politics and gourmet cooking, for instance, or the link between cosmetics for men and sports-car ownership.
Several people had problems with their bosses. One of the first people to join Tepper in the front seat that morning, an actuary in a large insurance company, said that he’d served the company loyally for many years but had the feeling he wasn’t satisfying his boss, who never seemed to look him in the eye. Fifteen minutes later, a man who described himself as an insurance executive said that he was increasingly suspicious of a certain employee whose work was satisfactory but who didn’t seem capable of looking him in the eye. Tepper couldn’t help wondering whether the employee in question was the very man who’d been in his car. If so, was there some way to find the man, whose name Tepper didn’t even know? He could see himself bringing the two of them together and saying, “All right. Get ready. One. Two. Three. Look!” What he said out loud, though, was “A lot of people are shy.”
One man wanted to talk about his immediate superior in an import-export firm downtown. “He has the attention span of a flea,” the man said. “When you talk to him, he’s always saying, ‘yeah, yeah, yeah,’ as if he’s taking in what you’re saying, but he doesn’t hear anything. And here’s what’s amazing about it: he’s always talking about people who don’t pay attention. He has these awful little aphorisms on the subject—‘The wise man listens while the fool talks on’ and things like that. He’s such a hypocrite. Now that I think of it, maybe that’s why he’s always saying things like ‘Some hear while others only listen’ or ‘Some listen while others only hear’ or whatever it is. Because he knows he doesn’t hear or listen. He just says ‘yeah, yeah.’ That’s what we call him around the office—Yeah-yeah. I don’t know if he’s aware of that. How would he know? Even if you called him that to his face he wouldn’t know because he doesn’t hear a word you say. I guess you must have a boss something like that—maybe that’s why you’re out here.”
“No,” Tepper said. “I have a partner, and he’s a nice man. I can’t say that he’s a lot of laughs, but he’s a nice man.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” the man said. “They’re all like that. Hypocrites! Listen, let me tell you something else this guy does. He’s always talking about people with beady eyes. He’ll say, ‘He’s one of those beady-eyed guys.’ That’s his whole way of describing somebody who’s got to be watched, somebody untrustworthy—that the guy has beady eyes. And you ought to see his eyes! He’s the beadiest-eyed guy I’ve ever seen in my entire life. He’s got these little bitty beady eyes. Talk about beady eyes! Can you imagine! Here’s this guy with eyes that look like something Indians’ll sell you at a roadside stand—these little beads—and he’s talking about beady-eyed guys! Can you imagine!”
“There’s always something,” Tepper said.
“Exactly,” the man said. “That’s why I admire you—not just because you have the guts to be out here parking, sticking it to that boss of yours, but because you understand.”
“I don’t actually have a boss. You’re the one with the boss.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know. You’re an inspiration to us all.”
Occasionally, Tepper found that his experience in the mailing-list business had given him some means to answer people’s questions. One man came to complain about the little subscription cards that fall out of magazines. He was an older man, courteous in an almost old-fashioned way. He introduced himself formally—his name was Ralph M. Lockwood—and apologized a couple of times for intruding on Tepper.
“For a while I just fumed about those cards,” he said. “I found them exceedingly irritating. Mrs. Lockwood and I are both neat—we can’t abide clutter—and I found that anytime we spent an evening reading magazines the parlor was simply littered with these dreadful little cards. Why must they pester us with those cards?”
“Well, I happen to be in a similar trade, and the answer is that if the publisher of a magazine were looking for subscribers he would be looking for people who have demonstrated in some way that they’re the sort of people who might read his magazine and there’s no way to demonstrate that better than to actually be reading the magazine. So he has his perfect customer pool right there, and I suppose he just can’t resist the temptation.”
“I must confess something to you, Mr. Tepper,” Lockwood said. “I heard a man on television talking about how, since the cards say that postage will be paid by the magazine, he simply sends in the cards to the people in charge of processing them—he said they’re called circulation fulfillment departments and they’re very dreary places to work—and puts cheerful little notes on them, like ‘Keep up the good work, circulation fulfillment people.’ Well, that gave me an idea, and now I send in hundreds of those cards. Actually, thousands. I collect them in the dentist’s office and on airplanes and sometimes right there on the floor in front of magazine racks, where they’ve fallen out of the magazines while people were browsing. But I don’t put cheerful little messages in them. I say, ‘Littering is wicked.’ I had one of those stamps made—the kind you don’t even need an ink pad for. Mrs. Lockwood and I sit down after dinner every night and do about fifty. Then we sit in the parlor and read magazines.”
Tepper spoke with one woman who wanted to explain to him that the only pure pleasure she got out of life was playing the lottery. From his selling of the No list, Tepper was quite familiar with the various state lotteries, and the lottery fan was delighted to be talking to someone with such broad knowledge. As she was comparing the lotteries of the New England states, he heard a commotion outside the car. Apparently, a man in a Pontiac had pulled alongside and asked if Tepper was going out. Lost in the lottery story, Tepper hadn’t heard the question or the honk that preceded it. The man had grown angry, and the sight of a line waiting to talk to Tepper made him angrier still.
“Whadaya, holding office hours in there or something?” the man in the Pontiac shouted. “You handing out safe-sex kits or something?”
Tepper, without looking over, gave the man a backhand flick. The man began to shout, “Ya jerky bastard, ya! Ya jerky bastard, ya!” Tepper turned and looked at the man in the Pontiac. It was the same fat, red-faced man who had yelled at him a few weeks before from a sport-utility vehicle on West Fifty-seventh Street. He had changed cars, but he was still yelling the same thing: “Ya jerky bastard, ya.”
“Hey, watch your mouth, fella,�
� the cabdriver who had come to tell Tepper about being an American said. “You looking for a fat lip, or what?”
“Mind your own business, you spic bastard!” the fat man said.
“Spic! Who you calling a spic! I’m an American, you dago scumbag!”
The cabdriver, after asking the woman in front of him to hold his place in line, moved closer to the Pontiac. The fat man seemed about ready to get out and confront the cabdriver. Several other people who had been standing on Houston gathered around the Pontiac. “Don’t you dare talk to Mr. Tepper that way,” an elderly woman shouted at the fat man. She shook her walking stick at him. Somebody else kicked a front fender. A crowd had now gathered, and a couple of people in the crowd started rocking the fat man’s car.
“. . . then I moved to Kansas, because they don’t have a lottery there,” the woman who sat in Tepper’s Chevy was saying. “That’s what this psychologist I was seeing told my husband we should do, even though I told him I thought what I should do is just keep playing the lottery, because that’s the only thing that really gives me pure pleasure. Not that he’d care. He struck me as the sort of person who didn’t get any pure pleasure out of anything. Anyway, he told us to move to Kansas, but I guess he didn’t know that Missouri has a lottery, and Missouri was real close to where we lived in Kansas, so I’d just go over and play the Missouri lottery. I was in heaven. I love the Missouri lottery . . .”
The fat man was revving his engine, as if he was going to drive into the people standing in front of his car, but nobody moved. Several more people had joined in the rocking. Somebody shouted, “Turn the bastard upside down!” Somebody shouted, “Call the cops!” The elderly woman, who was now banging on the Pontiac’s windshield with her walking stick, still shouted, “Don’t you dare talk to Mr. Tepper that way!”
The fat man was shouting, “Goddamned spics! I’m going to run you down, you goddamn spics!” His face was a bright red.
Shoppers from Orchard Street, around the corner, gathered to watch the argument. A number of them were still in contentious moods from arguing prices or elbowing each other aside to snatch discount designer dresses off the rack, and most of those who began as onlookers remained to become participants. They argued with each other about Tepper’s right to tie up a spot on Sunday on the Lower East Side. Some of them took the fat man’s side, so there were half a dozen arguments going on at once between them and Tepper’s supporters. “It’s a free country,” one man kept shouting. “You wouldn’t know it sometimes, but it’s a free country!” In Tepper’s car, the woman in the front seat was saying, “I’d drive into St. Joseph, Missouri, every day. It wasn’t far. How I loved St. Joseph, Missouri. It’s an older city for that part of the country, the place where the Pony Express . . .” The police arrived almost simultaneously with a camera crew from Channel Five.
Tepper Isn't Going Out: A Novel Page 9