Page 76 of Knocked Up

"No."

The smile stayed exactly where it was, which is the thing about him.

"Son, I've been fielding calls since Friday from people who want to put you and me in a room for eleven minutes. I've said no to all of them, because I wanted to talk to you first. That is a courtesy I did not have to extend."

"Okay."

"Don't say okay to me."

"Dad." I put my hands in my pockets, because otherwise they were going to do something. "I'm going to say a thing once and then I'd like you to go. Tessa and the baby aren't material."

He waited. He does that. He is extremely good at the silence and I grew up in it. I've spent eleven years in a job where I do not move first.

"They're not a story. They're not a segment. They're not a mention. They're not a look, I'm not going to speculate." I kept my voice flat, because up is where he lives. "You will not say her name on air. You will not say the baby on air. You will not stand on this street. If somebody asks you, you say, that's my son's family and I don't talk about it. Then you talk about a hip injury in Nashville."

"You've thought about this."

"Yeah."

"Is this her?"

"Don't."

"I'm asking a question."

"It's me," I said. "It's the first thing I've ever asked you for."

The furnace came on inside the house and I could hear it through the wall. Somewhere in the back a dog said something to another dog about nothing.

My father put his coat over his other arm.

"Forty years I've been in this business," he said. His voice had come down out of the register he uses. "You know what I've got out of it?"

"I know what you've got out of it."

"You don't, actually." He looked at the snowmen a while. "All right. That's your line. You've never had one before. I'd have remembered."

"I've got one now."

"Yeah," Roy said. "I hear you."

And then he did a thing he does not do. He went off the porch without the last word and got in the car. He sat in it about twenty seconds before he started it. I watched him go up Federal.

I turned around and the front door was open eight inches, which it does. The strike plate is an $8 part I've not fixed.

She was inside it with her hand still on the edge.

"How long?" I said.

"Since this is the house. Beckett."

"I didn't want you out here."

"I know you didn't," Tessa said. She came out of that door and got both hands in my collar and pulled. I went down to her, because I always do.

It was cold and she was in a T-shirt. She did not seem to care. She kissed me the way she does when she has decided something, which is with no runway at all. My hands went into her hair. One of the snowmen's fans cut out on the timer and it started to go down slowly behind her in the dark.

When she stopped she kept her fists where they were.