Chapter 2 Summary

Oedipa leaves Kinneret, heading for San Narciso to confer with Metzger, the co-executor of Inverarity's will. At their farewell, Mucho whistles the song "I Want to Kiss Your Feet" by Sick Dick and the Volkswagons. San Narciso proves to be more a name than a place, a designation for a part of the massive sprawl which constitutes Los Angeles. Viewing it from a hilltop, the houses and streets remind Oedipa of a circuit card she once saw in a transistor radio when changing the battery. This moment has a religious quality, for both the circuit and the street plan of San Narciso seem to her like hieroglyphics containing a concealed meaning which is just outside her grasp. Oedipa wonders if Mucho feels something similar when, at his job, he looks through the soundproof glass at a colleague cuing up a record with movements...