“This is it,” she told me. “The baby will be born today.”

There were other things I had been planning to do that day. I had just gotten a check in the previous day’s mail, and I was going to go buy groceries and pay our overdue electric bill, for one thing. But all that would have to wait.

Phoebe’s mother arrived around noon. As with our previous births, Annette had one job to do: everything, except getting the baby out. Above all, she had to babysit our four extra-uterine kids. (Thanks, Annette.)

She brought a box of donuts, and a cell phone. The phone was not hers; she found it in the street in front of our house! Weird. I don’t have a cell phone, and I don’t really know exactly how to operate them, but by slapping buttons more or less at random, I managed to dial a number labeled “Work.” This, I deduced rightly, was where the phone’s owner was employed. A woman answered, reciting the name of some insurance company, and identifying herself as “Bridget.”

“Hi,” I said. “Did someone who works there lose a cell phone?”

“Why?”

“Ah, because I found a cell phone.”

“Where?”

“In the street. On 18th Street.”

“18th Street?”

“Yes.”

“Oh. It’s probably mine. Is it blue?”

It was. “Yes,” I answered.

“It’s mine. Where is it now?”

“Um, it’s, in my hand? I’m talking on it…”
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