Fortune

Today Figueira arrived exactly at six. Had I arrived five minutes late, he'd have to stay outside waiting at the gates of Corporal. I hate keepings keys of a house that's not mine. It can breed the kind of comment like the absurdity of Mr. Costa when he said I tried to get information from Corporal's varsity database.
As he usually did, he didn't greet me as he walked in, looked around the practice hall, tied his right shoe. I thought it would be nice to ask him a question: how it felt working with Panotti.
"Nice. Just don't tread on his toes."
Then he was quick to add he wasn't afraid of Panotti, but rather respected him. "He'd never teach me what he knows. But it makes no difference."
"I wonder if you can learn through observation."
He looked strangely at me and said certain techniques were too fast for his eyes to catch up with. I almost laughed and told him he shouldn't blink then. I didn't laugh because I thought I had better not laugh. Not at what he said but the way he said it.
"So he's the king of the chicken-pen".
"We are no chickens", Figueira was offended by what I said, scowled slightly at me, ready to growl. I calmed him down with a story of use of idioms to express feelings that was twice as stupid as the comment about the chicken-pen. I think about my stupid irony, once in a while telling my clients to get lost in an almost subliminal fashion. About my ability to extract more hate as if I needed samples from my clients that are usually violent by design. Because it's interesting on the street they are extremely polite and responsive. The times I saw him at the entrance of his building or at Palmares Square. I do make the kids angry sometimes. I can't help it.
"Can you see in the future?", inquired Figueira, shifting his focus, casting those beaming big onyx eyes on me.
"It's the future that can see me."
"I sometimes can't understand what you say", he shrugged and sniffed, looking away as if taken by surprise.
I explained there were lapses of time I sometimes had. I usually remembered things that had happened at places I had never been to. With people I'd never met. I would see things happening elsewhere at the very moment they were happening. He seemed convinced there was a meaning in it. I wasn't convinced at all. Never get to put things together before everything goes off.
"Why do you want to know the future, Figueira?"
"I'd like to know if I'm getting better results in tournaments in the near future. I've been training more than ever these days."
"Yes, this is really hard work, observation, being quick to put it into practice when you most need it, this is no fortune telling. I'm no fortune teller, Figueira. But I know you are beginning to practice much harder than you used to and this is very good sign to what you want."

Plight | The feeling begins


Radio Universal: The Making Of A Thousand Gods.