Knock-out Stage

 Knock-out Stage 

Uncle Albert says he’s hired a “car service.” He means he’s paying Maggie Paul (See here.), one of the young women he lives with, $15/day to bring him here half an hour before the day’s first knock-out stage game. She picks him up when the second game is over.
     He doesn't say anything about hiring a “caterer” because he's not paying me $5 to fix his lunch. But he's not paying me either to tell him what he's missed when he mishears one of the announcers or analysts. Finally, he's not paying me to listen to his analysis.

Sergio Agüero

     It was right this (Saturday) morning, I have to admit when he said confidently that Argentina would lose if Sampaoli didn’t start Sergio Agüero, whatever Messi’s position on that was.

I’m not sure what I would have charged him for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a glass of milk, which is what I gave him. Not much of a lunch. But enough of a lunch that after he fell asleep in his chair.

     There are two long hours between games. He managed to sleep through most of one of them.

     He came to slowly. Then, he began with a matter unrelated to “football,” as he always calls it.

There are things you know you’re going to have to talk about sooner or later; still, you hope you won’t, that they won’t come up. It’s like putting off to tomorrow what you ought to - but definitely do not want to - do today. Perhaps circumstances will have so changed that your neglecting the task will turn out to have been a good thing. Perhaps what you are leaving undone will fall out of everyone’s ken. You might die in the night. Tomorrow itself might die before morning: The Apocalypse was not fiction after all. The possibilities aren’t endless, but there are a lot of them, you’re pretty sure of that.

“Do I hear rightly that you are getting letters from your dead sister?” Uncle Albert asked.

     I shrugged. He chose not to listen to it (the shrug). He looked at me as if I’d said nothing at all. So,

     “Where did you hear that?” I said.

     “Roz,” he said.

     “Oh.”

     “She’s worried about you.”

     “I know.”

“Have you told Feight about them?” Uncle Albert said.

     “About what?”

     “The letters. Don’t act like you don’t know.”

     “No,” I said. “Not yet.”

“How do you get them? - I’ve been wondering,” he said after a minute or two.

     “I guess you could say that I find them,” I said.

     “Where?”

     “Where they are.”

     “That’s it?” he sounded testy.

     “That’s it,” I said, glad if he was upset. He knew as well as I did that I wrote them, just as I wrote my letters to her. But it wasn’t the same: I composed my letters; hers I just wrote down.

“I still think,” Uncle Albert started to say, but he stopped. Then,

     “No,” he said. “Let me put it this way: Don’t you think you ought to talk to Feight?”

     “No,” I said. “I don’t.” Then: “Maybe,” I said.

07.02.18