The Mezzanine

by Nicholson Baker

Apparently my shoe-tying routine was so unvarying and robotic that over those hundreds of mornings I had inflicted identical levels of wear on both laces. The near simultaneity was very exciting—it made the variables of private life seem suddenly graspable and law-abiding.

I found that the act of sweeping around the legs of the chair and the casters of the stereo cabinet and the corners of the bookcase, outlining them with my curving broom-strokes, as if I were putting each chair leg and caster and doorjamb in quotation marks, made me see these familiar features of my room with freshened receptivity.

She said that for her the best moment was sweeping the dust into the dustpan, and getting those ruler-edged gray lines of superfine residue, one after another, diminishing in thickness toward invisibility, but never completely disappearing, as you backed the dustpan up.

I had already half pulled out my shirt-pocket pen, but not wanting to refuse her offer, I hesitated; at the same time, she saw that I already had a pen, and with an “Oh” began to retract hers from the proffering position; meanwhile I had decided to accept hers and had let go of the one in my pocket, not registering until it was too late that she had withdrawn the offer; she, seeing that I was now beginning to reach for her pen, canceled her retraction, but meanwhile I, processing her earlier corrective movement, had gone back to reaching for my own pen—so we went through a little foilwork that was like the mutual bobbings you exchange with an oncoming pedestrian, as both of you lurch to indicate whether you are going to pass to the right or to the left.

the hanger-management systems at the dry cleaner’s—sinuous circuits of rustling plastics (NOT A TOY! NOT A TOY! NOT A TOY!) and dimly visible clothing that looped from the customer counter way back to the pressing machines in the rear of the store, fanning sideways as they slalomed around old men at antique sewing machines who were making sense of the heap of random pairs of pants pinned with little notes;

Why should we need lots of nostalgia to license any pleasure taken in the discoveries that we carry over from childhood, when it is now so clearly an adult pleasure? I decided that from now on I wouldn’t get that faraway look when describing things that excited me now, regardless of whether they had first been childhood enthusiasms or not.

while I did draw some large percentage of joy from the continuities that the adult escalator ride established with childhood escalators, I will try not to glide on the reminiscential tone, as if only children had the capacity for wonderment at this great contrivance.