Page 37 of Knocked Up

"I haven't heard the name in three weeks, which is how I know. Normally I'd hear it once, in a complaint or in a passing remark about a dog's hips. And I've heard nothing. So, either nothing happened, which I do not believe. Or something happened, which I very much do."

"Nothing happened."

"You said that with your whole chest and it was extremely convincing," Violet said, "which is the other reason I know."

I did fine so hard I think I strained something. Marisol said, in front of a witness, "You've been in a good mood." I said, "I've been in a normal mood." She said, "That's what I said."

And on a loop underneath it, all day, in whatever room I happened to be standing in… he chose the ice once. He would choose it again. He was on a one-year deal and he would be somewhere else by spring. This was the natural and correct outcome. I got out of it with a night and no damage.

I told myself that so many times it got a rhythm, like a song I didn't like.

The man from Apex came on a Tuesday at ten-thirty, which was the smartest thing he did all day. At ten-thirty in the morning I was between appointments and could not get away.

He wore a quarter zip and nice shoes for a building with a hose in it. He had a folder and a smile that came out of a training module.

"Dr. Reeves. Grant Fessler. I've left you a few notes."

"You've left me nine."

"That sounds about right," he said, cheerfully, like we were friends about it.

Margaret came down off the file cabinet and sat a few feet from him. He didn't notice.

"I'll be direct, because I've been told you appreciate that. Apex bought the land for this side of the block in September. That includes this lot."

I did not move my face. That was a skill and I had it.

"Congratulations."

"We're not in the business of pushing anybody out. That's the opposite of the business we're in." He turned the folder around so it faced me. "We'd like to bring Reeves into the group. You keep the name over the door and clinical autonomy. We take the billing, the purchasing and the HR. Those are all the parts of this that I'd guess are currently being done by you at eleven at night."

"And the number's inside."

"The number's inside."

I read it in seconds, because there were two lines that mattered and I knew where they lived.

It was a serious number for a building and a client list. It was a joke as a number for the ground my mother stood on in 1998. She signed a lease she could not afford, in front of a man she paid cash to hang letters crooked.

"That's forty percent low."

"It reflects the equipment financing," Fessler said, still perfectly pleasant, "and the state of the lease. And, candidly, that you're a single-doctor practice, which is a risk. If you're out for six weeks, the value of this is a building."

"And if I don't come into the group."

"Then the lease renews next August," he said, "and that's a conversation for next August."

Margaret got up on the counter, walked the length of it, and pushed his pen off the end.

He laughed. He thought it was funny.

"She doesn't like most people," I said.

"I've got two cats at home."

"She'd know."

I was tired in a way that did not track.