Damn them, they are wrong. They are insane. Jeremy will take her like the Angel itself, in his joyless weasel-worded come-along, and Roger will be forgotten, an amusing maniac, but with no place in the rationalized power-ritual that will be the coming peace. She will take her husband’s orders, she will become a domestic bureaucrat, a junior partner, and remember Roger, if at all, as a mistake thank God she didn’t make….

—-Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

Downtown Dallas, Texas

It is sunset. You are fighting your way through traffic in the cold dark heart of a gigantic metropolis… cut off from the sky at the bottom of a crystal canyon up farther than you can see. Tired as an old cold bowl of leftover soup staring at brakelights in the wet cold of winter, ozone and gas fumes, the wheel gritty and the seats sprung under your aching back. There are untold miles to go and unknown blocks of jam between the never-ending red light and your warm, soft bed.

And there she is, the Angel of Neiman Marcus forever striding in elegant grace behind glass, out of place on these mean streets, A thing of beauty where no beauty should be expected. Quarter granted where no quarter was expected. You might make it home, yet.