The floor of ice cream parlor bothered me. It was black-and-white checkboard tile, bigger than supermarket checkboard. If I looked only at a white square, I would be all right, but it was hard to ignore the black squares that surrounded the white ones. The contrast got under my skin. The floor meant yes, no, this, that, up, down, day, night -all the indecisions and opposites that were bad enough in life without having them spelled out for you on the floor.