Page 110 of Knocked Up

"I'm being accurate."

"Read it," he said. "Every page. Change anything you want. And if the answer's no, it's no."

"You can't do that."

"I can do that."

"That is not a thing that people…"

"Do you remember what you slid across an exam table in November?" Beckett said.

And I did not answer, because I did remember it exactly, with the light and the hum of the fridge and Bear's tail going on the lino.

"You couldn't say the soft thing out loud," he said, "so you put a piece of paper where I could see it and let the paper do it. That's what this is. I've done it in your language on purpose."

I put both hands over my face for a second.

"You absolute…"

"Read page one," he said, "and then argue with me. That's the order."

We did it for four hours, properly, the way we did the deed. The light was on and the coffee went cold. A nine-week-old was passed back and forth across the table like a document.

"Four years takes you to thirty-five."

"Thirty-five and a bit."

"That's the end of it."

"That's the end of it," he said. "There's no thirty-eight. I'd be lying if I said there was."

"So you'd finish here." I turned a page. "Page nine is a relocation clause and it contradicts the no-move."

"It's boilerplate. Fran's flagged it, they'll strike it."

"Then strike it before I initial anything, because I'm not signing a thing with a contradiction in it. I've had that year already." I turned another one. "What happens if you get hurt?"

"Page nineteen. It's the best part of the deal. Four years guaranteed."

"Say what that means."

"If I go through a knee in November they pay all four years," Beckett said. "It means the thing that happened to my father does not happen to us."

I sat back.

"And what do you want?"

"I want to play."

"Say the rest of it."

He put his hand flat on the table.

"I've been in this game since I was five and I've never once played it for fun. I played it for a number, and to make a man put my name on a wall. I've got about four years left in a body that's been good to me. This last one is the first time I've ever gone out there and enjoyed a single minute of it." He looked at me. "I want four years of the good kind. That's the whole want. And I'm not going to have it if the price is you doing a February on your own."

"That's not the price."

"It might be."