Blogagaard Still Likes Cormac McCarthy

Your friend is in the grip of an irrational passion. Nothing you say to him will matter. He has in his head a certain story. Of how things will be in that world. The world may be many different ways for them but there is one world that will never be and that is the world they dream of. Do you believe that?
Billy put his hat on. I thank you for your time, he said.
You are welcome.
He turned to go.
You didn't answer my question, said Eduardo.
He turned back. He looked at the pimp. His cigar in his gracefully cupped fingers, his expensive boots. The windowless room. The furniture in it that looked as if it had been brought in and set in place solely for the purpose of this scene. I don't know, he said. I guess I probably do. I just don't like to say it.
Why is that?
It seems like a betrayal of some kind.
Can the truth be a betrayal?
Maybe. Anyway, some men get what they want.
No man. Or perhaps only briefly so as to lose it. Or perhaps only to prove to the dreamer that the world of his longing made real in no longer that world at all.
Yeah.
Do you believe that?
I'll tell you what.
Tell me.
Let me sleep on it.
The pimp nodded. Andale pues, he said. The door opened by no visible means or signal. Tiburcio stood waiting. Billy turned and looked back. You didn't answer mine, he said.
No?
No.
Ask it again.
Let me ask you this instead.
All right.
He's in trouble, ain't he?
Eduardo smiled. He blew cigar smoke across the glass top of his desk. That is not a question, he said.

- From McCarthy's Cities of the Plain