I thought he was the only snackologist, but no, he explains, there’s a few of them, a small team—team being the new term for department. There is a lot of explaining going on. Including how crazy everyone went for the new flavor of the snack bar, which was apparently a big deal: having such a positive reaction to a new snack, right out of the gate like that, increases the visibility and the buying power of the person who ordered it because the risk of making a mistake is so high. Lots of explaining and lots of words. We still haven’t gotten to the main story.

“You have to understand: I was the one who purchased this item, I was on the hook for that decision—I took a real flier—these people are serious about their nut bars, and if they don’t like what we order, the snack just sits there and doesn’t go away, while all the other snacks disappear quickly, requiring near-constant replenishment. There’s nowhere to hide when you make a purchasing error like that—they’re an everyday reminder of your failure to correctly assess the collective tastes of the companies we work for—and it gets factored into your job performance rating: lesser snackologists have been fired or replaced for misjudgments like that. So there was a lot on the line for me. It was impulsive, putting it out there like that, without any planning. Prematurely. But I have to say, it turned out great.”

I watch a smile spread across his face at the memory, and I start to realize that this is the part of the story that stops being about energy bars. “You slept with someone,” I say. A statement, not a question.

“I kissed someone. Yes.”

I feel the room—the bookshelves, the walls, the dog—recede. Even though we’ve talked openly about this possibility for a while now, it feels incredibly strange and unpleasant to actually be here now. Gary, who has always seemed like a completely open book, now has a secret life. He tells me that he didn’t plan to do it, that it just happened, that he’s sure he’ll never see her again. That he’s just some older dude who put out a great snack on an otherwise excruciatingly boring day.

“But of course you’ll see her again,” I say. “She’s on your team.”

“She isn’t a fellow snackologist. She’s the CEO of the startup.”

“The CEO?”

“I know, right?” He shrugs, then laughs. “How crazy is that? She’s thirty—maybe—and she probably mistook me for some dude from MIT. Little does she know who I really am.”

“And who are you really?”

A long slow breath comes from deep inside his chest, like he’s blowing out a candle in slow motion. “A guy who loves his wife and his son but sleeps in the basement because he’s too anxious and underemployed to find a place of his own.”

Escape

There’s no easy way out—I can’t make Gary sleep in the snoring room now, because the People Puppets are there—and as much as I want to, pulling my bedding into the living room and sleeping there—with strangers in the house—doesn’t seem like a good idea, either. If Teddy were three or four I could bunk in with him, but now I’m trapped sharing a bed with someone I’m separated from who has just told me he’s met—and kissed—someone else—something I thought I’d wanted; something I thought would free me. And maybe it eventually will. But right now, while his sudden confession has exhausted him—he’s already asleep on the other side of the bed—I’m wide awake and rigid on my side, struggling with the sadness at the failure of our union and the strange guilt of relief: that he has moved a step away from me; that he will eventually end up with someone new who is far better suited for him than I have become; that one day we will both be happy again in our own way, together or apart.