Tepper Isn't Going Out: A Novel

by Calvin Trillin

  “Your Honor—” Jeremy Thornton began.

  “It would be my pleasure, Your Honor,” Tepper said.

  “Thank you, Mr. Tepper,” the judge said. “I appreciate that. The restraining order is granted. The motion on the permanent injunction will be held four weeks from today, gentlemen. Nine o’clock. See you then.”

  27. Family Decision

  “MURRAY,” RUTH SAID. IT WAS NOT ONE OF THE MURRAYS she used for “Murray, pass the salt.” Tepper had just returned to the dinner table after taking a telephone call from Sy Lambert, who was phoning daily now with details about his plans for what he liked to call the Murray Tepper Money Machine. Lambert had just called to report on a conversation he’d had with Jeffrey Green, the young man who first interviewed Tepper, about the possibility of being the ghostwriter for the book of advice that would launch Tepper as an author. Tepper had said that for a young man who dreamt of being a political reporter, ghosting an advice book—or, really, a series of advice books if Lambert’s plans worked out—might represent a serious career deflection. “That’s just what he said,” Lambert had replied. “But after the figure I mentioned, he asked for some time to think about it.” Then Lambert had launched into a speech on the glories of subsidiary rights.

  “Murray,” Ruth repeated, and Tepper realized he hadn’t replied.

  “Yes, Ruth,” he said.

  “Murray, you’re not very comfortable with this Lambert, are you?” Ruth said.

  “Well, he’s what my father would have called a big shot, or a k’nocker,” Tepper said. “He likes to boast about his art collection and his house in East Hampton. He likes to drop the names of the important people he knows. Tonight, he told me a story so he could mention his latest visit with a famous bullfighter. He seemed disappointed that I hadn’t heard of the bullfighter, although I tried to explain to him that I don’t follow bullfighting closely. It’s true that Sy Lambert is not the sort of person I would ordinarily know. But I feel that our acquaintanceship will be only temporary.”

  “Even if there’s a series of books?” Ruth asked.

  “Oh, he seemed amused that I thought my participation would be necessary for the series of books,” Murray said. “He said, ‘Murray, I told you: that’s just content and the author doesn’t have to worry about content.’”

  “Murray,” Ruth said, in a tone that told him they hadn’t arrived at the real subject of the conversation yet. “I feel that you’re getting involved in some of these things—some things with this Lambert, for instance—for my sake.”

  “For your sake?”

  “Because you want to make sure we have enough for retirement, and maybe because you’re thinking that if it all happens we’ll be able to get the cottage in the West of England after all, so I can paint.”

  Tepper was pondering how to answer that when the telephone rang again.

  “Touch?” a voice said, when Tepper picked up the receiver and said hello. “It’s me, Touch—Barney Mittgin.”

  “I know,” Tepper said. Nobody else in the world called him Touch.

  “Sorry to bother you at home,” Mittgin said, “but I wanted to alert you that I’m going to be on the eleven o’clock news tonight. Channel Seven. They already interviewed me. On tape.”

  “Are you declaring for Congress?” Tepper said.

  “Declaring for Congress?” Mittgin said, puzzled. “No, I’m talking about you. With the hearing coming up, they’re doing a piece about what they call the Tepper Affair. You’re an affair now. Like the Dreyfus Affair. The Tepper Affair. Of course, the Tepper Affair is partly the Mittgin Affair, because I’m moving some of my airplane pillows. They taped a pretty long interview with me. I don’t know how much they’ll use. I hope they use the part where I say that you’re a symbol of the alienation of our times.”

  “I am?” Tepper said.

  “Well, it’s more like a metaphor,” Mittgin said. “It doesn’t mean you personally. I heard a lecture about it. It turns out that almost everything is a symbol of the alienation of our times. You’ll like what I said. Also, it might sell a few pillows.”

  Tepper told Mittgin that he and Ruth were in the middle of dinner but that they’d certainly watch Channel Seven at eleven, if they were still awake.

  “Murray,” Ruth said, when he’d returned. “I just want you to know that it’s not important to me. I mean, I’d love to have the cottage and to have enough now for our retirement so we don’t have to worry, but I think we’re fine. You still enjoy work. Linda’s taken care of, from whatever those things are that Richard sells. The cottage would be nice, but I’m not sure that I want to be that far from Maxie anyway, even for part of the year. I don’t want you to get involved in something you’re not comfortable with, just for my sake.”

  Tepper nodded. “I think everything will work out,” he said.

  28. Options

  “MISS GOLDHURST REALLY SAID THAT ABOUT MY MARK in deportment?” Jack said. “What a fine memory that old bird has. She must have been thinking of the unfortunate incident concerning Stanley Gershevsky’s galoshes, where I believe I was only performing a public service. As you may remember, when the last bell rang, Stanley would go into the cloakroom, step right into his galoshes, and walk away, without even breaking stride—his only cool move.”

  They were at their usual table at the Japanese restaurant for lunch. “I was having trouble remembering that,” Tepper said, pouring them both a cup of tea. “You glued them to the floor?”

  “I believe that gluing would have produced what our shop teacher, Mr. Inman, of blessed memory, called a halfway job,” Jack said. “I nailed them. How did I manage to swing the hammer inside the galosh, you may ask. I didn’t. I utilized a piece of lead pipe filled with concrete, which I’d fortuitously come across in the vacant lot next to Stinky Weinberg’s building. I placed one end on the nails and I hammered on the other end from above Stanley Gershevsky’s galoshes. The result was what Mr. Inman would have called a good, clean job. I hated Stanley Gershevsky.” At last, the scene flashed into Tepper’s head: the vile Stanley Gershevsky, doing his one cool move by stepping into his galoshes without breaking stride and falling on his face in the boys’ cloakroom.

  The waitress approached to take their orders. “Two regular sushi specials,” Jack said. “And two beers.”

  The waitress wrote that down, and continued to stand in front of the table. Jack said nothing more. Finally, she said, “Mee-dyum wher-ah?” and burst into a giggle.

  “No. Raw, please,” Jack said. “And, by the way, can you get gefilte fish on the regular sushi special, or would that be an extra charge?”

  The waitress looked puzzled.

  “Just two regular sushi specials and two beers,” Tepper said.

  When the waitress left, Jack said, “So let me get this straight. When you were in court a few weeks ago, the judge said she would hear the arguments on the injunction in a month.”

  “Right,” Tepper said. “Next Thursday, at nine o’clock.”

  “And meanwhile you have suspended your front-seat therapy sessions and outdoor newspaper reading, as a courtesy to the judge, who’s a sort of soul mate of yours since she used to do alternate-side parking in the East Seventies.”

  “That’s right,” Tepper said. “Now she has a garage.”

  “And this guy Shanahan has hinted that if you decided sitting in a parked car in a legal spot wasn’t that exciting after all, somebody in City Hall could see to it that you get a zoning variance in case you want to run an auto-body-repair shop in your apartment or something like that.”

  “Right.”

  “But if, instead, you do continue to park around in the evenings and the mayor attempts to crush you like a bug,” Jack went on, “you become famous, so that Sy Lambert can market you like a folk hero, a sort of stationary Charles Lindbergh.”

  “That’s right, too,” Tepper said. “According to this proposal he’s sent me, it would start with a book—From the Front Seat he wants to call i
t. The format would be like an advice column in the newspapers.”

  “I take it Murray Tepper would offer simple but profound advice on a wide array of problems,” Jack said. “Personal problems, philosophical problems, dermatological problems.”

  “You’ve got it,” Tepper said.

  “There’s enough advice for a book?”

  “I asked him that,” Tepper said. “He says there’s always enough anything for a book. With a book, he says, what counts is that it’s about or by somebody famous. In fact, he sees From the Front Seat being followed by More From the Front Seat, then Still More From the Front Seat. Apparently, an advice book by a famous person is like a cookbook by a famous person. You can always find advice, the way you can always find recipes. Anyway, he says that once the book series gets going, you expand with speaking tours, plus what they call ancillary products.”

  “I have a great idea for a product,” Jack said. “A Murray Tepper windup toy. It’s a Chevy with a guy at the wheel, and when you wind it up it doesn’t go anywhere.”

  “I think that audiotapes are more the sort of thing he had in mind,” Tepper said. “Plus the movie, of course. He talks a lot about the movie.”

  “And then, according to the plan, you would have enough money to retire, and maybe even live part of the year in a nice little cottage, near some nice little English fishing shacks.”

  “Did I already tell you about the cottage?” Tepper asked.

  “Ruth told me,” Jack said. “We were having a little chat about dream retirements.”

  “Well, that would be nice,” Tepper said.

  The waiter arrived with their sushi, and, almost right behind her, Alan Harris suddenly stood, somewhat awkwardly, in front of the table. He had apparently just finished lunch and had spotted Tepper on the way out. “Hello, Mr. Tepper,” he said. “I don’t want to bother you in the middle of your lunch. I just want you to know that your advice about my little situation was wonderful advice. I think my wife is confident now about how much I truly value what she does, and I just wanted to thank you for your help.”

  “My pleasure,” Tepper said.

  “I’ve been having some nightmares about serpents,” Harris said. “But I’m sure that’s just temporary.”

  “I would think so,” Tepper said.

  “And, if you’ve got just another second,” Harris said. “I wonder if you’re going to be at Seventy-eighth Street again anytime soon. A couple of the people I work with would really like to meet you.”

  “It’s a little up in the air now,” Tepper said.

  “I understand, I understand,” Harris said. “Well, I’ll just wait to see. Thanks again for your help.”

  Tepper nodded, and Harris left.

  “What were we saying?” Tepper said.

  “You were about to tell me about the astonishingly drafty English retirement cottage you’re thinking you could buy if the mayor continues to play his role as bully to a folk hero and Sy Lambert arranges for you to cash in,” Jack said. “And I was about to guess that you have mixed feelings about signing on with Sy Lambert, only partly because he’s a blowhard. Mainly it’s because you find all that stuff a little embarrassing and you’re afraid that Linda and her husband, the derivatives man, would find it even more embarrassing. And maybe even Ruth would find it embarrassing. And then your only friend in the family would be Max, who will remain your friend as long as you have your extendable fork, or he grows up.”

  “Actually,” Tepper said, “that’s a very good analysis of the situation.”

  “You forget, Murray: I was always a good student. It was only deportment that was my problem.”

  29. Day in Court

  THIS TIME THE COURTHOUSE HAD BEEN SURROUNDED with the blue wooden sawhorse barriers used by the New York Police Department for keeping onlookers in their place. Policemen were stationed every fifteen or twenty feet behind the barriers, and three or four mounted policemen, wearing blue helmets and long riding boots, patrolled slowly up and down the street on horseback. Although it was an hour before the hearing, the crowd was already large. The people in the crowd seemed relatively good-humored, although the chant that started up now and then had a strong, almost militant beat: “Tepper isn’t going out, Tepper isn’t going out, Tepper isn’t going out.” Vendors with carts were taking advantage of the occasion to do a steady business in soft drinks and Italian sausage sandwiches and Sno-Kones. Tepper thought he recognized the fruit vendor he used to see on Forty-third Street, but he couldn’t be sure.

  Ruth had insisted on accompanying her husband to the hearing. She was holding Tepper’s arm as they approached the courthouse in the middle of a tight little group that also included Jeremy Thornton and Eleanor Brown, who was pushing her grocery cart full of documents. As the crowd began to chant, Tepper could feel Ruth’s hand tighten on his arm, and he patted it. “They’re on our side, dear,” he said.

  At a break in the barriers, a policeman was checking all those who wanted to enter, making certain that they had business in the courthouse. He waved their party through, directing Eleanor Brown to the ramp for the disabled, where she’d be able to take in her grocery cart without trying to bump it up the stairs. As they passed, Tepper was certain that he heard the policeman mutter, “Give ’em hell, Murray.”

  After waiting for a while in an attorneys’ conference room, Tepper’s party was escorted to the courtroom by a court officer. In the hall they passed a long line of people waiting for whatever seats might become available. A seat in the front row had been reserved for Ruth; otherwise there wouldn’t have been room for her. The courtroom was jammed. Victor Hessbaugh and two assistants sat at the table for opposing counsel. As Tepper and Thornton and Eleanor Brown passed, Hessbaugh nodded politely.

  Thornton and Hessbaugh had both submitted thick briefs to Judge Bernardi, and she announced from the bench that she didn’t need to hear every argument repeated in detail. Thornton presented a sort of summary of his brief, stressing the undisputed fact that Murray Tepper, a law-abiding citizen, had been given a summons while specifically obeying the law—parking in an alternate-side spot while parking was permitted, parking at a metered spot while the meter showed parking time had been duly paid for. “Thornton was being uncharacteristically restrained,” Ray Fannon later wrote. “It took him a full ten minutes to get to the Magna Carta, although he had made stops at the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution of the United States, and the European Charter of Rights along the way. There was some betting in the press gallery that Thornton might make it all the way through his speech without comparing Murray Tepper’s being told to move from Houston Street with Rosa Parks’s being told to move from the front of the bus in Montgomery. Those betting that way, of course, eventually lost their money.”

  Hessbaugh reminded the court that his brief contained statistics showing that several hundred jurisdictions had ordinances similar to or even precisely the same as the one Murray Tepper was cited under. He spoke at length about the duty of the mayor and the police department to keep order in the city for the protection of citizens. He called to the stand an elderly woman who recounted how frightened she had been when she emerged from her weekly trip to Russ & Daughters, clutching a quarter of a pound of Nova Scotia and a quarter of a pound of cream cheese with chives and two sesame bagels, only to find herself in the midst of what she kept referring to as “a big tsimiss.” He also put on the stand a police officer named Abel Becker who said he’d injured his back in the Seventy-eighth Street altercation—although the testimony was undercut in cross-examination when Thornton, reaching back now and then to be handed a document from the grocery cart by Eleanor Brown, demonstrated that Officer Becker tended to hurt his back with remarkable regularity and was known by some in the department as Bum Back Becker.

  Murray Tepper took the stand to testify briefly on direct examination about exactly where and when he had parked his Chevrolet. During Hessbaugh’s cross-examination, the questions those in the courtroom were most
interested in hearing the witness answer—the questions having to do with why he chose to read the newspaper in a parked car rather than in an easy chair in his own living room—were consistently blocked by objections. Thornton would rise and give some variation of the same speech: “Your Honor, I must object. In this country, under this constitution, it is none of Mr. Hessbaugh’s business where Mr. Tepper reads the newspaper or which newspaper he reads or how he spends the rest of his leisure time, as long as Mr. Tepper is within the law. Neither is it the business of the mayor or of the police department or—and I say this with great respect—of this court.”

  Hessbaugh was reduced to probing for minor parking violations. “Mr. Tepper,” he asked at one point, “did you ever—if you were in the middle of an interesting story in the paper or perhaps an interesting conversation with somebody who dropped in to talk to you while you were parking—notice that the meter had run out and therefore go out and put more money in the meter?”

  “You mean that, for example, it’s a one-hour meter and I’ve already put enough money in for one hour but the hour is up, do I go put in more money to get maybe another hour?”

  “Exactly.”

  “But Mr. Hessbaugh,” Tepper said, in a voice that everyone in the courtroom took as expressing genuine shock. “Feeding the meter past the allotted time is against the law.”

  Judge Bernardi did not have to go to her chambers to consider the decision. She granted the permanent injunction. Hessbaugh, to no one’s surprise, said he would appeal. Judge Bernardi turned to Murray Tepper. “Mr. Tepper,” she said. “Again we have a situation where you’re perfectly within your rights to resume the activity that brought us all here today, and I will not enjoin you from doing so. However, given the circumstances, I wonder if I could ask you once more to wait to resume parking, purely voluntarily. If so, I would, for my part, do everything I could to see to it that the appeal process is expedited, which could mean a delay in your activity of as little as two or three weeks.”