“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.

“Alex,” Henry says firmly.

“What?”

“The turkeys are not going to Jurassic Park you,” he says. “You’re not the bloke from Seinfeld. You’re Jeff Goldblum. Go to sleep.”

Alex bites down a smile that feels bigger than the sentence has truly earned. “You go to sleep.”

“I will,” Henry says, and Alex thinks he hears the weird smile returned in Henry’s voice, and honestly, this whole night is really, really weird, “as soon as you get off the phone, won’t I?”

“Okay,” Alex says, “but, like, what if they gobble again?”

“Go sleep in June’s room, you numpty.”

“Okay,” Alex says.

“Okay,” Henry agrees.

“Okay,” Alex says again. He’s suddenly very aware they’ve never spoken on the phone before, and so he’s never had to figure out how to hang up the phone with Henry before. He’s at a loss. But he’s still smiling. Cornbread is staring at him like he doesn’t get it. Me fuckin’ too, buddy.

“Okay,” Henry repeats. “So. Good night.”

“Cool,” Alex says lamely. “Good night.”

He hangs up and stares at the phone in his hand, as if it should explain the static electricity in the air around him.

He shakes it off, gathers up his pillow and a bundle of clothes, and crosses the hall to June’s room, climbing up into her tall bed. But he can’t stop thinking there’s some end left loose.