Page 81 of Knocked Up

And when I took them down I looked at the chair, because I have learned to look at the chair.

Beckett had his right hand flat against the middle of his own chest, palm open, the way he does going out of the tunnel. He was not looking at me. He was looking at the screen with his jaw set and his eyes shining. His hand was pressed against his sternum like he was holding something in place. He stayed like that after she took the probe away.

"That's the good one," he said.

He put his hand down on his knee. Nobody said anything about it. That is a thing I have noticed. Everybody around that man is always politely not saying something.

In the parking garage I got a fist in his shirt and pulled him down and kissed him. He put both hands on the sides of my face and kissed me back. A man a few cars over set off his own alarm getting into his vehicle in a hurry.

"Mateo's other list," Beckett said, against my mouth.

"Mateo's other list is still Mateo's other list."

"One thirty-eight over ninety on Sunday."

"Are you doing the cuff at me in a garage?"

"I'm reporting."

"It has been one thirty-eight for four weeks, Beckett. It is not moving, it is sitting. Mateo has seen every single number because I write them on the paper like a child doing homework."

"One forty-one on the ninth."

"That was after the thing with the dog on Sheridan."

"I know what it was after," he said. "I'm not making an argument. I'm saying I know all of them."

"Why?"

"Because you'd tell me the good ones," he said, "and I want the other ones too."

And I stood there with my hands still in his shirt and could not think of one thing to say back to that.

He got us home at half past twelve and Sofia had the clinic until four. I said, "Come here," in the kitchen, in daylight. He said, "Say it in words," which he has said every single time since January. I said the words. He shut the door from the hall, which does not latch, and put a chair against it.

I had built the whole thing up into an event. It was not an event. It was better than that, because it was slow.

He would not be hurried. I told him twice to stop being careful. He said, "I'm not being careful, I'm looking at you." I said something with no words in it. He got a hand under my knee and moved me where he wanted me, then stopped and looked at me some more.

At twenty-eight weeks I did not fit anywhere the way I used to and I had a whole speech about it. I got a few words in before he put his mouth on my collarbone and said, "Don't." Then he said my name, low and spaced out, the way he says a thing he cannot get to the end of.

He kept one hand flat and low across the front of me the whole time.

Afterward I lay across his chest at two in the afternoon and listened to a dryer running with nothing in it. I put my hand where it goes, on the scar. I thought, with total clarity, I am going to have to do something about the fifth clause.

Then I slept for an hour and a half, which I have not done in the daytime since veterinary school.

The mail came on the Thursday. It was certified, which means Marisol had to sign for it. Then she stood in my office doorway holding it out from her body like it was warm.

It was Apex Veterinary Partners, a renewal packet for the ground lease at 1440 Federal, forty-one pages long.

Page three is a sixty-eight percent increase. Page four is a personal guarantee. Page five says any building on the rented land that people live in is no longer allowed and must stop within ninety days of renewal. That is my mother's house. That is where the fosters are. That is where I live.

Nobody writes that to be paid. They wrote it so I would call Grant Fessler and ask what the alternative was. Grant Fessler would say, well, Doctor Reeves, our offer is still on the table.

I read the whole thing twice.

And then, because I am my mother's daughter and I read the appendices, I got to page thirty-three. It was the list where the landlord has to set out every claim against the land. The item was in tiny type, ninth of eleven.