The Borders of the World

     She made the noise again.  A long wet whinnying letter k.  And I found the more she talked, the more she owed me.  But I didn't say a word.  It was in my heart to speak, to make a breach in her self-absorption, in the solid stuff of her hometown and dying brother.  I wanted to reduce these things to rubble.  It was just a passing mood, a thing that erupts out of the formed core of one's middle-minded resolve.
     I let her talk.  And the more I listened and the more unappealing she became, the more I wanted to get inside her pants, for reasons no one comprehends under heaven.
     But I didn't say word one.  It was in my heart to talk her into spending the night in my room, or half of the night, or an hour and ten minutes.  I didn't know why I wanted her but I knew why I didn't want her.  It would have been disloyal to Klara, to our shared memory, our own brief time in that small room back there in the narrow streets that were the borders of the world.

- Don DeLillo, Underworld, p. 81.