“Great,” I say in the car on the way home from school, barely remembering what it was like to wake up without that sick the-world-as-we-knew-it-is-ending feeling in my stomach because every day it’s clear from the news that the world as we know it is ending. “I especially love the positive message in ‘Together We Rise’—how depending on others for support helps us survive difficult times.” I practically tear up, thinking about how I shouldn’t have to defend my sling ever again. Shouldn’t everyone be wearing a dog for improved mental health?

“That’s not exactly how Mr. Noah described it,” Teddy says with a dubious head-tilt. “You’re making it sound like a self-help book. He made it sound political. Like civil rights and stuff.”

“The personal is political,” I shoot back, as smug as a college freshman who did some but not all of the assigned reading. “Tell them to remember their history. It’s Feminism 101.” Fuck Mr. Noah and Ms. Grace, I think, moving beyond defending my dog to more pressing matters. Together we will rise and resist our awful new government and the Secret Pooper, whether they help us or not. No wonder Teddy barely tells me anything.

But the strangest thing about the People Puppets’ stay by far is how it has forced Gary and me back into the same room and the same bed, Gary’s clothes and toiletries brought up from the basement and piled in a corner of the room and in a heap on top of my dresser without any thought to acquiring permanent drawer or shelf space.

I text Glenn.

We’re like best friends sharing a motel-double on a longer-than-expected road trip. Side by side, absolutely no touching. Like we did that time we got snowed in in Rochester, after that huge “Bird” book signing.

Don’t tell me you’re making him sleep head-to-toe.

Good idea! Even safer!

Oh Judy . . .

* * *

Even Teddy is confused by the temporary arrangement. On the first night of the Puppets’ stay, he stops into our room with a made-up question about what time we’re leaving for school in the morning—we always leave at the exact same time every morning—late—and then stares at us suspiciously, as if the minute he turns his back to go to his room we’ll break character and dive into sleeping bags on the floor. The idea, frankly, is tempting, since I feel claustrophobic with Gary in the room and in the bed: he is so big and unwieldy, and noisy, with his anxiety-related constant throat-clearing—a sound that causes me such annoyance that I self-diagnosed myself with a mild case of misophonia (“Is marital misophonia an actual thing?” “Can marriage cause misophonia?”). I’ve grown so used to having the room all to myself that it’s become a “safe space,” a respite from the daily annoyances of normal marriage. Any infringement on it, however temporary, seems almost too much to bear. In the dark, very much on my side of the bed, I am already counting the days until the Puppets are gone.