“Honey,” I call out to Mimi, who is probably still on the bed but who could have slipped into a tub of cold water, “we have company.”

Our room has a slightly awkward arrangement. The door to the room opens into a short hall that leads to the sleeping area on the left and to the bathroom on the right. The hallway is a dead space more or less, and this is where the air conditioner is.

In the hallway, above the door to the room.

The woman flips a switch on the wall that looks like a light switch but isn’t. As she does, I can hear the whirl of something that might just be an air conditioner.

“There,” says the woman, and she points at the grill above the door.

I feel like a fool, of course, but I don’t see how an air conditioner stuck in a hallway above a door is going to cool a bedroom that is fifteen feet away and around a corner.

“It feels cooler already,” Mimi shouts to me.

I hold my hand up to the grill, and yes, I can feel air coming out. It’s the same temperature as the room, but I withhold my comments. It might well cool down in a few minutes.

“Thank you,” I tell the woman, who is already heading back down the stairs to unlock the front door.

“Let’s not make it too cold,” says Mimi.

I hold my hand up to the grill again. There doesn’t seem to be much chance of that happening.

“What about the spiders?” says Mimi. “Did you ask her about the spiders?”

OUR TRIP TO THE humane society was a disaster. I was better off not knowing about Muffy.

“It’s not your fault,” Mimi told me.

It was quite clear that Muffy would die in that cage. She would never see the people who had been her family for all those years. She would die alone.

“And Muffy has nothing to do with residential schools.”

“What?”

“I know the way your mind works,” said Mimi. “You see an animal in a cage, and you think of residential schools.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Remember that story you did when the prime minister officially apologized for the damage the residential-school system had caused? Remember what you said?”

“I said such apologies were worthless.”

“You also said that Canadians treated their pets better than school personnel treated the children in those schools.” Mimi gave me a hug and held it longer than necessary. “Okay,” she said, “what kind of dog do you want?”

SO WE’RE IN PRAGUE. We’ve wrapped up our first day in the city and are tucked in our hotel room with an air conditioner in name only and a family of spiders on the ceiling.

“There are sixteen,” Mimi tells me. “Eight large, five medium, three small.”