[Oedipa Maas] awoke at last to find herself getting laid. - Thomas Pynchon

"And one cried wee, wee, wee, all the way — " Jessica breaking down in a giggle as he reaches for the spot along her sweatered flank he knows she can't bear to be tickled in. She hunches, squirming, out of the way as he rolls past, bouncing off the back of the sofa but making a nice recovery, and by now she's ticklish all over, he can grab an ankle, elbow — But a rocket has suddenly struck. A terrific blast quite close beyond the village: the entire fabric of the air, the time, is changed — the casement window blown inward, rebounding with a wood squeak to slam again as all the house still shudders.
Their hearts pound. Eardrums brushed taut by the overpressure ring in pain. The invisible train rushes away close over the rooftop....
They sit still as the painted dogs now, silent, oddly unable to touch. Death has come in the pantry door: stands watching them, iron and patient, with a look that says try to tickle me.

I am the twentieth century. I am the ragtime and the tango; sans-serif, clean geometry. I am the virgin's-hair whip and the cunningly detailed shackles of decadent passion. I am every lonely railway station in every capital of Europe. I am the Street, the fanciless buildings of government. the cafe-dansant, the clockwork figure, the jazz saxophone, the tourist-lady's hairpiece, the fairy's rubber breasts, the travelling clock which always tells the wrong time and chimes in different keys. I am the dead palm tree, the Negro's dancing pumps, the dried fountain after tourist season. I am all the appurtenances of night.

Is it just this miserable fucking city, too many faces, making us crazy? Are we seeing some wholesale return of the dead?”
“You’d prefer retail?