Red, White & Royal Blue Read online

  So, when he’s bored or stressed or between coffee refills, he’ll check for a text bubble popping up. Henry with a dig at some weird quote from his latest interview, Henry with a random thought about English beer versus American beer, a picture of Henry’s dog wearing a Slytherin scarf. (i don’t know WHO you think you’re kidding, you hufflepuff-ass bitch, Alex texts back, before Henry clarifies his dog, not him, is a Slytherin.)

  He learns about Henry’s life through a weird osmosis of text messages and social media. It’s meticulously scheduled by Shaan, with whom Alex is slightly obsessed, especially when Henry texts him things like, Did I tell you Shaan has a motorbike? or Shaan is on the phone with Portugal.

  It’s quickly becoming apparent the HRH Prince Henry Fact Sheet either omitted the most interesting stuff or was outright fabricated. Henry’s favorite food isn’t mutton pie but a cheap falafel stand ten minutes from the palace, and he’s spent most of his gap year thus far working on charities around the world, half of them owned by his best friend, Pez.

  Alex learns Henry’s super into classical mythology and can rattle off the configurations of a few dozen constellations if you let him get going. Alex hears more about the tedious details of operating a sailboat than he would ever care to know and sends back nothing but: cool. Eight hours later. Henry hardly ever swears, but at least he doesn’t seem to mind Alex’s filthy fucking mouth.

  Henry’s sister, Beatrice—she goes by Bea, Alex finds out—pops up often, since she lives in Kensington Palace as well. From what he gathers, the two of them are closer than either are to their brother. They compare notes on the trials and tribulations of having older sisters.

  did bea force you into dresses as a child too?

  Has June also got a fondness for sneaking your leftover curry out of the refrigerator in the dead of night like a Dickensian street urchin?

  More common are cameos by Pez, a man who cuts such an intriguing and bizarre figure that Alex wonders how someone like him ever became best friends with someone like Henry, who can drone on about Lord Byron until you threaten to block his number. He’s always either doing something insane—BASE jumping in Malaysia, eating plantains with someone who might be Jay-Z, showing up to lunch wearing a studded, hot-pink Gucci jacket—or launching a new nonprofit. It’s kind of incredible.

  He realizes that he’s shared June and Nora too, when Henry remembers June’s Secret Service codename is Bluebonnet or jokes about how eerie Nora’s photographic memory is. It’s weird, considering how fiercely protective Alex is of them, that he never even noticed until Henry’s Twitter exchange with June about their mutual love of the 2005 Pride & Prejudice movie goes viral.

  “That’s not your emails-from-Zahra face,” Nora says, nosing her way over his shoulder. He elbows her away. “You keep doing that stupid smile every time you look at your phone. Who are you texting?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, and literally no one,” Alex tells her. From the screen in his hand, Henry’s message reads, In world’s most boring meeting with Philip. Don’t let the papers print lies about me after I’ve garroted myself with my tie.

  “Wait,” she says, reaching for his phone again, “are you watching videos of Justin Trudeau speaking French again?”

  “That’s not a thing I do!”

  “That is a thing I have caught you doing at least twice since you met him at the state dinner last year, so yeah, it is,” she says. Alex flips her off. “Wait, oh my God, is it fan fiction about yourself? And you didn’t invite me? Who do they have you boning now? Did you read the one I sent you with Macron? I died.”

  “If you don’t stop, I’m gonna call Taylor Swift and tell her you changed your mind and want to go to her Fourth of July party after all.”

  “That is not a proportional response.”

  Later that night, once he’s alone at his desk, he replies: was it a meeting about which of your cousins have to marry each other to take back casterly rock?

  Ha. It was about royal finances. I’ll be hearing Philip’s voice saying the words “return on investment” in my nightmares for the rest of time.

  Alex rolls his eyes and sends back, the harrowing struggle of managing the empire’s blood money.

  Henry’s response comes a minute later.

  That was actually the crux of the meeting—I’ve tried to refuse my share of the crown’s money. Dad left us each more than enough, and I’d rather cover my expenses with that than the spoils of, you know, centuries of genocide. Philip thinks I’m being ridiculous.

  Alex scans the message twice to make sure he’s read it correctly.

  i am low-key impressed.

  He stares at the screen, at his own message, for a few seconds too long, suddenly afraid it was a stupid thing to say. He shakes his head, puts the phone down. Locks it. Changes his mind, picks it up again. Unlocks it. Sees the little typing bubble on Henry’s side of the conversation. Puts the phone down. Looks away. Looks back.

  One does not foster a lifelong love of Star Wars without knowing an “empire” isn’t a good thing.

  He would really appreciate it if Henry would stop proving him wrong.

  * * *

  HRH Prince Dickhead

  Oct 30, 2019, 1:07 PM

  i hate that tie

  HRH Prince Dickhead

  What tie?

  the one in that instagram you just posted

  HRH Prince Dickhead

  What’s wrong with it? It’s only grey.

  exactly. try patterns sometime, and stop frowning at your phone like i know you’re doing rn

  HRH Prince Dickhead

  Patterns are considered a “statement.” Royals aren’t supposed to make statements with what we wear.

  do it for the gram

  HRH Prince Dickhead

  You are the thistle in the tender and sensitive arse crack of my life.

  thanks!

  Nov 17, 2019, 11:04 AM

  HRH Prince Dickhead

  I’ve just received a 5-kilo parcel of Ellen Claremont campaign buttons with your face on them. Is this your idea of a prank?

  just trying to brighten up that wardrobe, sunshine

  HRH Prince Dickhead

  I hope this gross miscarriage of campaign funds is worth it to you. My security thought it was a bomb. Shaan almost called in the sniffer dogs.

  oh, definitely worth it. even more worth it now. tell shaan i say hi and i miss that sweet sweet ass xoxoxo

  HRH Prince Dickhead

  I will not.

  FOUR

  “It’s public knowledge. It’s not my problem you just found out,” his mother is saying, pacing double-time down a West Wing corridor.

  “You mean to tell me,” Alex half shouts, jogging to keep up, “every Thanksgiving, those stupid turkeys have been staying in a luxury suite at the Willard on the taxpayers’ dime?”

  “Yes, Alex, they do—”

  “Gross government waste!”

  “—and there are two forty-pound turkeys named Cornbread and Stuffing in a motorcade on Pennsylvania Avenue right now. There is no time to reallocate the turkeys.”

  Without missing a beat, he blurts out, “Bring them to the house.”

  “Where? Are you hiding a turkey habitat up your ass, son? Where, in our historically protected house, am I going to put a couple of turkeys until I pardon them tomorrow?”

  “Put them in my room. I don’t care.”

  She outright laughs. “No.”

  “How is it different from a hotel room? Put the turkeys in my room, Mom.”

  “I’m not putting the turkeys in your room.”

  “Put the turkeys in my room.”

  “No.”

  “Put them in my room, put them in my room, put them in my room—”

  That night, as Alex stares into the cold, pitiless eyes of a prehistoric beast of prey, he has a few regrets.

  THEY KNOW, he texts Henry. THEY KNOW I HAVE ROBBED THEM OF FIVE-STAR ACCOMMODATIONS TO SIT IN A CAGE IN MY ROO
M, AND THE MINUTE I TURN MY BACK THEY ARE GOING TO FEAST ON MY FLESH.

  Cornbread stares emptily back at him from inside a huge crate next to Alex’s couch. A farm vet comes by once every few hours to check on them. Alex keeps asking if she can detect a lust for blood.

  From the en suite, Stuffing releases another ominous gobble.

  Alex was going to get things accomplished tonight. He really was. Before he learned of exorbitant turkey expenditures from CNN, he was watching the highlights of last night’s Republican primary debate. He was going to finish an outline for an exam, then study the demographic engagement binder he convinced his mother to give him for the campaign job.

  Instead, he is in a prison of his own creation, sworn to babysit these turkeys until the pardoning ceremony, and is just now realizing his deep-seated fear of large birds. He considers finding a couch to sleep on, but what if these demons from hell break out of their cages and murder each other during the night when he’s supposed to be watching them? BREAKING: BOTH TURKEYS FOUND DEAD IN BEDROOM OF FSOTUS, TURKEY PARDON CANCELED IN DISGRACE, FSOTUS A SATANIC TURKEY RITUAL KILLER.

  Please send photos, is Henry’s idea of a comforting response.

  He drops onto the edge of his bed. He’s grown accustomed to texting with Henry almost every day; the time difference doesn’t matter, since they’re both awake at all ungodly hours of the day and night. Henry will send a snap from a seven a.m. polo practice and promptly receive one of Alex at two a.m., glasses on and coffee in hand, in bed with a pile of notes. Alex doesn’t know why Henry never responds to his selfies from bed. His selfies from bed are always hilarious.

  He snaps a shot of Cornbread and presses send, flinching when the bird flaps at him threateningly.

  I think he’s cute, Henry responds.

  that’s because you can’t hear all the menacing gobbling

  Yes, famously the most sinister of all animal sounds, the gobble.

  “You know what, you little shit,” Alex says the second the call connects, “you can hear it for yourself and then tell me how you would handle this—”

  “Alex?” Henry’s voice sounds scratchy and bewildered across the line. “Have you really rung me at three o’clock in the morning to make me listen to a turkey?”

  “Yes, obviously,” Alex says. He glances at Cornbread and cringes. “Jesus Christ, it’s like they can see into your soul. Cornbread knows my sins, Henry. Cornbread knows what I have done, and he is here to make me atone.”

  He hears a rustling over the phone, and he pictures Henry in his heather-gray pajama shirt, rolling over in bed and maybe switching on a lamp. “Let’s hear the cursed gobble, then.”

  “Okay, brace yourself,” he says, and he switches to speaker and gravely holds out the phone.

  Nothing. Ten long seconds of nothing.

  “Truly harrowing,” Henry’s voice says tinnily over the speaker.

  “It—okay, this is not representative,” Alex says hotly. “They’ve been gobbling all fucking night, I swear.”

  “Sure they were,” Henry says, mock-gently.

  “No, hang on,” Alex says. “I’m gonna … I’m gonna get one to gobble.”

  He hops off the bed and edges up to Cornbread’s cage, feeling very much like he is taking his life into his own hands and also very much like he has a point to prove, which is an intersection at which he finds himself often.

  “Um,” he says. “How do you get a turkey to gobble?”

  “Try gobbling,” Henry says, “and see if he gobbles back.”

  Alex blinks. “Are you serious?”

  “We hunt loads of wild turkeys in the spring,” Henry says sagely. “The trick is to get into the mind of the turkey.”

  “How the hell do I do that?”

  “So,” Henry instructs. “Do as I say. You have to get quite close to the turkey, like, physically.”

  Carefully, still cradling the phone close, Alex leans toward the wire bars. “Okay.”

  “Make eye contact with the turkey. Do you have it?”

  Alex follows Henry’s instructions in his ear, planting his feet and bending his knees so he’s at Cornbread’s eye level, a chill running down his spine when his own eyes lock on the beady, black little murder eyes. “Yeah.”

  “Right, now hold it,” Henry says. “Connect with the turkey, earn the turkey’s trust … befriend the turkey…”

  “Okay…”

  “Buy a summer home in Majorca with the turkey…”

  “Oh, I fucking hate you!” Alex shouts as Henry laughs at his own idiotic prank, and his indignant flailing startles a loud gobble out of Cornbread, which in turn startles a very unmanly scream out of Alex. “Goddammit! Did you hear that?”

  “Sorry, what?” Henry says. “I’ve been stricken deaf.”

  “You’re such a dick,” Alex says. “Have you ever even been turkey hunting?”

  “Alex, you can’t even hunt them in Britain.”

  Alex returns to his bed and face-plants into a pillow. “I hope Cornbread does kill me.”

  “No, all right, I did hear it, and it was … proper frightening,” Henry says. “So, I understand. Where’s June for all this?”

  “She’s having some kind of girls’ night with Nora, and when I texted them for backup, they sent back,” he reads out in a monotone, “‘hahahahahahahaha good luck with that,’ and then a turkey emoji and a poop emoji.”

  “That’s fair,” Henry says. Alex can picture him nodding solemnly. “So what are you going to do now? Are you going to stay up all night with them?”

  “I don’t know! I guess! I don’t know what else to do!”

  “You couldn’t just go sleep somewhere else? Aren’t there a thousand rooms in that house?”

  “Okay, but, uh, what if they escape? I’ve seen Jurassic Park. Did you know birds are directly descended from raptors? That’s a scientific fact. Raptors in my bedroom, Henry. And you want me to go to sleep like they’re not gonna bust out of their enclosures and take over the island the minute I close my eyes? Okay. Maybe your white ass.”

  “I’m really going to have you offed,” Henry tells him. “You’ll never see it coming. Our assassins are trained in discretion. They will come in the night, and it will look like a humiliating accident.”

  “Autoerotic asphyxiation?”

  “Toilet heart attack.”

  “Jesus.”

  “You’ve been warned.”

  “I thought you’d kill me in a more personal way. Silk pillow over my face, slow and gentle suffocation. Just you and me. Sensual.”

  “Ha. Well.” Henry coughs.

  “Anyway,” Alex says, climbing fully up onto the bed now. “It doesn’t matter because one of these goddamn turkeys is gonna kill me first.”

  “I really don’t think— Oh, hello there.” There’s rustling over the phone, the crinkling of a wrapper, and some heavy snuffling that sounds distinctly doglike. “Who’za good lad, then? David says hello.”

  “Hi, David.”

  “He— Oi! Not for you, Mr. Wobbles! Those are mine!” More rustling, a distant, offended meow. “No, Mr. Wobbles, you bastard!”

  “What in the fuck is a Mr. Wobbles?”

  “My sister’s idiot cat,” Henry tells him. “The thing weighs a ton and is still trying to steal my Jaffa Cakes. He and David are mates.”

  “What are you even doing right now?”

  “What am I doing? I was trying to sleep.”

  “Okay, but you’re eating Jabba Cakes, so.”

  “Jaffa Cakes, my God,” Henry says. “I’m having my entire life haunted by a deranged American Neanderthal and a pair of turkeys, apparently.”

  “And?”

  Henry heaves another almighty sigh. He’s always sighing when Alex is involved. It’s amazing he has any air left. “And … don’t laugh.”

  “Oh, yay,” Alex says readily.

  “I was watching Great British Bake Off.”

  “Cute. Not embarrassing, though. What else?”

 
“I, er, might be … wearing one of those peely face masks,” he says in a rush.

  “Oh my God, I knew it!”

  “Instant regret.”

  “I knew you had one of those crazy expensive Scandinavian skin care regimens. Do you have that, like, eye cream with diamonds in it?”

  “No!” Henry pouts, and Alex has to press the back of his hand against his lips to stifle his laugh. “Look, I have an appearance tomorrow, all right? I didn’t know I’d be scrutinized.”

  “I’m not scrutinizing. We all gotta keep those pores in check,” Alex says. “So you like Bake Off, huh?”

  “It’s just so soothing,” Henry says. “Everything’s all pastel-colored and the music is so relaxing and everyone’s so lovely to one another. And you learn so much about different types of biscuits, Alex. So much. When the world seems awful, such as when you’re trapped in a Great Turkey Calamity, you can put it on and vanish into biscuit land.”

  “American cooking competition shows are nothing like that. They’re all sweaty and, like, dramatic death music and intense camera cuts,” Alex says. “Bake Off makes Chopped look like the fucking Manson tapes.”

  “I feel like this explains loads about our differences,” Henry says, and Alex gives a small laugh.

  “You know,” Alex says. “You’re kind of surprising.”

  Henry pauses. “In what way?”

  “In that you’re not a totally boring asshole.”

  “Wow,” Henry says with a laugh. “I’m honored.”

  “I guess you have your depths.”

  “You thought I was a dumb blond, didn’t you?”

  “Not exactly, just, boring,” Alex says. “I mean, your dog is named David, which is pretty boring.”

  “After Bowie.”

  “I—” Alex’s head spins, recalibrating. “Are you serious? What the hell? Why not call him Bowie, then?”

  “Bit on the nose, isn’t it?” Henry says. “A man should have some element of mystery.”

  “I guess,” Alex says. Then, because he can’t stop it in time, lets out a tremendous yawn. He’s been up since seven for a run before class. If these turkeys don’t end him, exhaustion will.