Steam

[Dave Monroe]

"He stuck his head out of the shower.  The rest of his
body was wreathed in steam, giving his head an eerie,
balloon-like buoyancy...." (Lot 49, Ch. 3, p. 78)

"... a hand emerged from the veil of shower-steam to
indicate his suspended head--" (p. 79)

"At the word, Driblette's face abruptly vanished, back
into the steam.  As if switched off." (ibid.)

"'If I were to dissolve in here,' speculated the voice
out of the drifting steam ..." (ibid.)

"His face appeared briefly." (p. 80)

Okay, I can't find a single decent online picture of
the pre-curtain big screen Oz the Terrible (so if
anyone can be of assistance ...), but these can be
some pretty creepy images here, reminiscent not only
of the Wonderful Wizard ...

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/Web/People/rgs/oz-11.html

But also of yr old skool oracles ...

Connor, Steven.  Dumbstruck: A Cultural History of
   Ventriloquism.  New York: Oxford UP, 2000.

http://www.dumbstruck.org/

And maybe yr English Renaissance ghosts ...

Greenblatt, Stephen.  Hamlet in Purgatory.
   Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2001.

http://partners.nytimes.com/books/first/g/greenblatt-01purgatory.html

But I'm certainly open to suggestions here, so ...

"A girl removing fake blood from her face motioned
Oedipa on into a region of brightly-lit mirrors." (p.
77)

As in smoke and mirrors?  And note also ...

"She couldn't stop watching his eyes.  They were
bright black, surrounded by an incredible network of
lines, like a laboratory maze for studying
intelligence in tears.  They seemed to know what she
wanted, even if she didn't." (p. 77)

"'I'm the projector at the planetarium, all the closed
little universe visible in the circle of that stage is
coming out of my mouth, eyes, sometimes other orificis
also.'" (p. 79)

"His eyes waited, at the centres of their webs." (p.
80)

"radial aisles" (p. 73)

Briggs, Julia.  This Stage-Play World:
   Texts and Contexts, 1580-1625.  2nd ed.
   New York: Oxford UP, 1997.

Not only "webs," but "centres," note British (not to
mention French) spelling ...



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