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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 ROOM, 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 fromhell 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?”
