Yardsticks for Failure

I'm about halfway through the silent hole-punching and maybe I'm getting complacent. And my friend Alex Horne asks me a question, and I forget, just for a second, that he is not my friend, he is my opponent, a double agent, a bastard whose bank balance balloons with every brave boy he betrays on the box. He asks me a question, and a word or two in response escapes my mouth before I remember the brief and try to swallow them back. But it has happened, and it has happened on camera. I am disqualified.