First Family could be cool too; celebrities in their own right. It’s not ideal, his mother always says, but it works.
They’re the White House Trio, but here, in the music room on the third floor of the Residence, they’re just Alex and June and Nora, naturally glued together since they were teenagers stunting their growth with espresso in the primaries. Alex pushes them. June steadies them. Nora keeps them honest.
They settle into their usual places: June, perched on her heels at the record collection, foraging for some Patsy Cline; Nora, cross-legged on the floor, uncorking a bottle of red wine; Alex, sitting upside down with his feet on the back of the couch, trying to figure out what he’s going to do next.
He flips the HRH PRINCE HENRY FACT SHEET over and squints at it. He can feel the blood rushing to his head.
June and Nora are ignoring him, caught in a bubble of intimacy he can never quite penetrate. Their relationship is something enormous and incomprehensible to most people, including Alex on occasion. He knows them both down to their split ends and nasty habits, but there’s a strange girl bond between them he can’t, and knows he isn’t supposed to, translate.
“I thought you were liking the Post gig?” Nora says. With a dull pop, she pulls the cork out of the wine and takes a swig directly from the bottle.
“I was,” June says. “I mean, I am. But, it’s not much of a gig. It’s, like, one op-ed a month, and half my pitches get shot down for being too close to Mom’s platform, and even then, the press team has to read anything political before I turn it in. So it’s like, email in these fluff pieces, and know that on the other side of the screen people are doing the most important journalism of their careers, and be okay with that.”
“So … you don’t like it, then.”
June sighs. She finds the record she’s looking for, slides it out of the sleeve. “I don’t know what else to do, is the thing.”
“They wouldn’t put you on a beat?” Nora asks her.
“You kidding? They wouldn’t even let me in the building,” June says. She puts the record on and sets the needle. “What would Reilly and Rebecca say?”
Nora tips her head and laughs. “My parents would say to do what they did: ditch journalism, get really into essential oils, buy a cabin in the Vermont wilderness, and own six hundred LL Bean vests that all smell like patchouli.”
“You left out the investing in Apple in the nineties and getting stupid-rich part,” June reminds her.
“Details.”
June walks over and places her palm on the top of Nora’s head, deep in her nest of curls, and leans down to kiss the back of her own fingers. “I’ll figure something out.”
Nora hands over the bottle, and June takes a pull. Alex heaves a dramatic sigh.
“I can’t believe I have to learn this garbage,” Alex says. “I just finished midterms.”
“Look, you’re the one who has to fight everything that moves,” June says, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand, a move she’d only do in front of the two of them. “Including the British monarchy. So, I don’t really feel bad for you. Anyway, he was totally fine when I danced with him. I don’t get why you hate him so much.”
“I think it’s amazing,” Nora says. “Sworn enemies forced to make peace to settle tensions between their countries? There’s something totally Shakespearean about it.”
“Shakespearean in that hopefully I’ll get stabbed to death,” Alex says. “This sheet says his favorite food is mutton pie. I literally cannot think of a more boring food. He’s like a cardboard cutout of a person.”
The sheet is filled with things Alex already knew, either from the royal siblings dominating the news cycle or hate-reading Henry’s Wikipedia page. He knows about Henry’s parentage, about his older siblings Philip and Beatrice, that he studied English literature at Oxford and plays classical piano. The rest is so trivial he can’t imagine it’ll come up in an interview, but there’s no way he’ll risk Henry being more prepared.
“Idea,” Nora says. “Let’s make it a drinking game.”
“Ooh, yes,” June agrees. “Drink every time Alex gets one right?”
“Drink every time the answer makes you want to puke?” Alex suggests.
“One drink for a correct answer, two drinks for a Prince Henry fact that is legitimately, objectively awful,” Nora says. June has already dug two glasses out of the cabinet, and she hands