Shadow Ticket

by Thomas Pynchon

Otto’s Oasis, the only place in town willing to assemble for him a Doc Holliday—Old Overholt, Doc’s preferred brand, plus Nehi peach soda, in recognition of his native Georgia, plus maybe a half jigger of absinthe if available, to put an edge on it, over ice.

one of these couples hitchhiking together through the Depression,

Turns out to be the ocean liner Stupendica, by now someplace well out to sea.

smooth as a ten-cent panatela,

Vienna solemn and psychoanalytic, while just down the river in Budapest carouses a psychical Mardi Gras

A familiar mental prowl car now begins to drive back and forth across Hicks’s brain, gonging high-low-high-low, signaling trouble for somebody, which Hicks would prefer to be anybody but him.

Talk about meeting cute.

“The future of flirtation…here they call it Gesichtsröhre, or ‘Face-Tube.’ ” He