Nicholson Baker - The Fermata

Here is how I asked her out the next day. Around eleven-thirty, she came by to drop off a tape and waved. I whipped off my phones. “How were things here last week?” I asked. Joyce was wearing a green dress I’d never seen before; her black hair was loosely tied in back with the Cyrillic scarf. I took this as a good omen.

“I’m swamped with various disasters,” she said. “We missed you. The person they sent to fill in for you was none too speedy.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” I held out my hand and Joyce gave me the microcassette. “I’ll have this done in no time,” I said. “I’ve missed these tapes, you know. I like being in the middle of typing something you’ve just said into my ear and looking up and seeing you walk across the floor.”

This took Joyce a tiny bit by surprise. “How was your vacation?”

“It was good, quite good. Long , though.”

“What have you been up to?”

“I’ve been — this sounds insane — but I’ve been writing my autobiography,” I said.

“Have you led an interesting life?” Joyce asked.

I leaned forward. “Well, you know — I have! I have. What about you?”

“No.”

“That’s unfortunate,” I said. “What can I do to help?”

“Find someone to sweep me away somewhere. The problem is that I have no time to do interesting stuff, because I’m so busy doing stuff that’s uninteresting. Actually, on Saturdays I go to a botanical drawing class at the Arnold Arboretum.”

“Oh, well there , that’s a positive step,” I said. “I haven’t drawn a plant in years. Is it fun?”

“Yes,” said Joyce. “Plants sit still. It’s like meditation, but it’s better, because you’re thinking about the plant, and not about yourself.”

I shook my head sadly. “I wish I had more art in my life right now. I did allow some medical researchers to paint reflective paint on several parts of my body a few months ago. Does that count as an artistic experience?”

“I should think so,” said Joyce. She asked what the researchers were trying to find out.

I told her it had to do with my carpal-tunnel problem. “They were trying to figure out how much of my problem was due to typing and how much was due to other factors.”

“Like what other factors? You know I have a touch of carpal, too,” she confided.

“I’m sorry. The other main factor was — well — it’s this hobby of mine, something I do in my spare time.”

“Oh?” she said.

“In fact,” I said, “I have to talk to you about it.”

“About—?”

It was definitely time to ask Joyce out. Her expression had identifiable elements of puzzled, provoked interest. Her eyes were — I think this is the only word for what they were doing — they were shining. Yet what would the look on her face be when she learned that I had already Dropped in on her apartment?I needed a moment to collect my thoughts. Without blinking, I softly snapped my fingers. I relaxed. The easy thing to do would be to undress her now: if I undressed her now and stood on the desk and touched the tip of her nose with my erect stain-stick or stroked her cheek with it in a friendly way, I knew that I would phrase my request for a date more confidently. But I didn’t want to cheat and do that. I could go back to her apartment and lie on her bed and gain strength and confidence from having been there again. But no — the whole point of this date was for me not to trespass unasked. I needed a distraction.

Still enFolded, I walked briskly all the way to the Gap clothing store in the Copley Place Mall and took off the shirt of every woman in it (there were eleven women), singing the country-western Gap jingle from the seventies: “Fall — in — to — the — Gap.” I draped their bras over their shoulders. With no pants on, I walked around the racks of braided belts and along the walls of folded shorts and overdyed jeans. I knew from previous experience that there would be sand in some of the pants pockets — not because that particular pair had been worn to the beach and then returned, as I had once thought, but because the pants were sand-washed before they were sold. They came pre-supplied with their own memories of the Cape. I twirled slowly like a compass needle in the middle of the store, both hands on my tiller. I let my eye be surprised by each topless woman in turn, saying, “And you! And you! I’d forgotten about you! Wow, those are nice! Hi, how are you?” Having filled my brain with a multiplicity of naked Jamaicas (without coming, however), I redressed my wrongs, putting everything back where it had been, and made my way back to the MassBank building. At my desk, I snapped and emerged from my personal Gap full of self-assurance, fortified by secret acts of vulgarity, looking at Joyce, who, needless to say, hadn’t moved during my absence.

“Would you like to have a snack with me sometime?” I asked her.

“What kind of a snack do you mean?” she asked.

“A dinner sort of snack.”

“Oh.” She smiled sideways.

“I need to talk to you. I’ve done you a wrong, and I need to unburden myself.”

“I see,” she said.

“Tonight?”

“Hm.” She almost went for it. But then she said: “No, tonight is bad. I wish I could, but I’m probably going to have to stay late. I’m going to have to go over the stuff in that tape when you get it back to me. Thomas needs to look at it tomorrow morning.”

“If I have it back to you in ten short minutes,” I said, “will you go out with me tonight?”

“There’s an hour of stuff on that tape!”

“I know that. I’m just saying, if I get it back to you in ten minutes, will you go out with me tonight? I know it’s a little strange, but it has to do with what I want to talk to you about.”

“Okay, yes, sure,” she said.

I took her to the restaurant at the Meridien. As we walked there, we followed some deep unwritten law adapted from business practice, a law that enjoins against any discussion of the main subject until a certain number of random-seeming conversational topics have arisen and been dealt with and a context of cool detachment thereby established. We talked about the rise and fall of shoe-store chains and the merits of various kinds of women’s shoes and whether women’s shoe salesmen were invariably fetishists. (Joyce’s own shoes were great-looking gray flats with sexy side-buckles.) But as soon as we got some wine, Joyce said. “Now: I want you to explain to me in detail how you did that tape so fast.”

“If I tell you, will you tell anyone?” I asked.

“You can’t know this about me,” Joyce said, “but I never, ever tell anyone anything that was revealed to me in confidence.”

“Good — I want to believe you. I’ve listened to your voice so much transcribing your tapes that I think I have unusual insights into your character.”

“You should believe me,” said Joyce.

“I do. No — I think the problem really is whether you will believe me.”

“The only way to find out is to try me,” said Joyce.

So I told her that at various periods in my life, starting way back in fourth grade, I’d been able to disengage myself from time. I told her briefly about the race-track transformer, the thread going through my callus into the washing machine, about the rubber-band stretcher and the mechanical pencil, and about pushing up my glasses.

Joyce laughed. “And this morning? How did you do it this morning?”

“I just snapped my fingers. I won’t do it now, but whenever I snap my fingers, the entire universe immediately pauses for me, like a stretch limo waiting for me on the street while I run some errand. I spent probably, oh, an hour and a half doing your tape, with the universe in pause-mode, and then I snapped my fingers to turn it back on again and I went over to your desk and delivered the work. And before that I’d snapped and taken over an hour to go for a walk. I went down to the Gap and browsed a little. So it’s really around ten o’clock at night for me.”