Page 75 of Knocked Up

That was three words, from a woman standing in a clinic on Federal Boulevard with a television on a shelf. She was eighteen weeks pregnant.

I typed are you sure and looked at it. Then I deleted it. I've asked that woman are you sure about six things in my life. Every one of them was me asking permission to be a coward.

Media availability is Friday at eleven with eleven guys from three outlets and a woman from the radio who has been kind to me since October.

They asked about the road trip. They asked about the back end of the schedule. Then Fenner from the paper, who is not a bad man, did the thing where they leave a door open and stand back from it.

"Beckett, there's been a lot of chatter this week, some of it involving family. Anything you want to say about where your head's at?"

I've answered questions in this business for eleven years. I say we're focused on Tuesday.

"Yeah," I said. "We're expecting a baby in the summer."

The room did not do anything for about a second and a half.

"Her name's Tessa Reeves. She's the veterinarian who saved my dog's life in October. She runs Reeves Rescue on Federal. She's the best person I've ever met." I looked into the camera in the middle. If it was going to exist I wanted it to exist all the way. "That's my family. Anything about them comes from me and not from anybody else. There won't be much of it. It isn't anybody's business. Next question."

Somebody timed it at eleven seconds and put the number on it. That is what everybody called it after.

There was a noise in that room like a bus letting off air. Fenner said, "Congratulations," which is not a question. Then a kid from the digital side asked me about the back end again because he had nothing else. It was over.

Auggie was against the wall by the door with a towel around his neck and he was crying openly, not a little.

"Allergies," he said.

"It's January."

"There's a thing in the carpet, Beckett," he said. He hugged me hard enough to lift me off the floor. Nobody has done that since I was twelve.

In the room they did the stick thing on the floor. They do that for a first goal and for a guy coming back from an injury and for one other kind of thing. Wheeler stood on a bench and yelled something about a car seat. Baranov came through, looked at the ceiling, said, "Tuesday," and walked out. That is Baranov weeping in the street.

The clip went where the other clip went, and faster. In November there was a hole in a floor for a third of a second and forty-one thousand people filled it in with whatever they had. In January there was a man saying eleven seconds of plain sentences.

My father called at one-forty and again at one fifty-two. I did not pick up either one.

He came to the house on the Sunday at four in the afternoon.

I knew the car before it stopped. He has driven a black one with tinted rear glass since 2011 and he parks it out from the curb. He came up that path past two eight-foot inflatable snowmen with his coat over his arm like a man arriving at a hotel.

I got to the porch before he got to the steps and shut the front door behind me.

"There he is," Roy said.

"Dad."

"This is the house?"

He looked at it. He looked at the runs behind the fence and the sign with a dead woman's name on it.

"You didn't call me back."

"No."

"Twice."

"I know how many times it was," I said.

He smiled. He has a very good one and it is on a poster in a bar in Wheat Ridge. "Beck. That was a hell of a thing you did Friday. Frankly it was better television than anything I've done in four years." He put a hand out toward the door. "Am I coming in? I'd like to meet her."