You discovered yourself and what really mattered only after you passed through the lens of the fairy tale, imposed on every human female and male ali… - Jonathan Lethem

This kiss would be with me, invisible badge or scar, when I went back to the apartment.

Wheels within wheels was another of Minna's phrases, used exclusively to sneer at our notions of coincidence or conspiracy. If we boys ever dabbled in astonishment at, say, his running into three girls he knew from high school in a row on Court Street, two of whom he'd dated behind each other's backs, he'd bug his eyes and intone, wheels within wheels. No met had ever pitched a no-hitter, but Tom Seaver and Nolan Ryan both pitched them after being traded away — -wheels within wheels.

I was playing it existential, and maybe a bit stupid, but it was the only way I knew how to play it.