The night was empty of all terror for them, they had inside their circles an imaginary fire, and needed nothing but their own unpenetrated sense of community. They knew about the post horn, but nothing of the chalked game Oedipa had seen on the sidewalk. You used only one image and it was a jump-rope game, a little girl explained: you stepped alternately in the loop, the bell, and the mute, while your girlfriend sang: Tristoe, Tristoe, one, two, three, Turning taxi from across the sea . . .   'Thurn and Taxis, you mean?" They’d never heard it that way. Went on warming their hands at an invisible fire. Oedipa, to retaliate, stopped believing in them. "the crying of lot 49" thomas pynchon