“Gotta call one night, woman said to me, obviously not the same persuasion as I was politically, called me and said, ‘I’VE GOT A DEAD DOG ON MY LAWN!’ and I said, ‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said, ‘Have you called the county?’ and she said, ‘Yes! They’re not here!’ and I said, ‘Well, I’ll get ‘em in the morning,’ and she said ‘I want it removed NOW! I pay your salary!’ so I went over, I picked it up, and she said ‘I want it out of my front yard!’ and I put it on her doorstep.”

Joe froze for a second and wandered off the stage, turning right instead of left, and Strawberry had to run across the dais before he could begin to mingle with the members of the captive press.

“It’s back this way, Mr. President,” she said.

Joe tried to turn and staggered into her. She wrapped her arm around his and kept him upright.

“What, is it back this way?” he asked, stiff-legged and tremor-ridden.

“Yes, sir. Right this way,” Jen said. When reporters began to photograph them and their slow progress, Jen glared until they stopped. She watched them until it at least looked like they were deleting the digital files.

“You know you told the dead dog story again,” she said quietly.

“What? It’s funny,” Joe insisted. “Dead dogs are funny.”

“Most Americans don’t feel that way, sir,” Jen replied.

“How, how, how’s that thing in Canada going?” Joe asked.

“Very good, sir! You remembered most of a current event.” Jen pulled a treat out of her pocket and surreptitiously popped it into his mouth.

“Yummy,” he said, chewing, drooling a bit.

“The trucker protest in Ottawa is not going well. Prime Minister Trudeau has enacted emergency wartime powers to deal with them.”

“I wish I had wartime powers,” Joe said, bringing his hands together as if he was firing a Tommy gun, nearly jerking Jen off her feet and saying, “Rat-tat-tat! Die, Chinaman!”

“That’s nice, sir,” she said.

Joe poked a finger right into her Spanx-stiffened mid-section, “You need to lighten up, honeypie.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Does Canada need our help? We could send a carrier group, Top Gun, pew-pew, bomb BOOM!”

“No, sir,” Jen said as they did a Sorkin stroll back to the Oval Office. “That would probably only make things worse.”

“It’s a coop! A damn coop, I tells ya.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Which of these doors is the White bathroom? I need to take a shit.”