At approximately 7 p.m. yesterday the lights went out in my room at the Little Rooming House on Foothill Avenue in our lovely city. “Oh great,” I said, “I’ve got too many devices working–R.C. (the manager of the property) is going to pitch a fit.” But when I left my room, I found the hallway dark; I proceeded to the front door to see if the street lights were out; they weren’t–but no lights were on anywhere in the house, and several of the upstairs residents had come down to see what the problem was. Since Giorgio, the resident assistant was nowhere to be found, we called R.C., who screamed, “Don’t nobody touch nothing! I’ll be there in an hour!” Dusk was falling; since I didn’t want to hang out on the porch shooting the bull with the other inmates, I crossed the street to sit on the park wall under a street lamp and read Nicholson Baker’s brilliant novel, The Mezzanine.