She’s good at her job, but the impulse to open her mouth and say something dreadful recurs and recurs. Not unlike the irrational desire to dash a contemplative silence to pieces or to climb to some high place and jump, so it seems a compulsion born less of intent than of the simple fact of its own possibility. The fact that she could do it is more than enough. She reels it in, always. Reels herself in tight. Any minute now, she thinks, any second, I could crash this whole day into the wall.
