LESS CALIFORNICATION, MORE CALIFORNIA DREAMING
HOME IS WHERE THE VOTES ARE?
ROCKY HAZE RETURNS TO CALIFORNIA,
KEEPING THE DREAM ALIVE
By Sky Vasquez, Staff Writer, The Queue
Alchemy, attired in yoga clothes, is finishing up a morning workout with daughter Harmony in their sprawling family home in Brentwood. Harmony sings along to the track, working on her impressive downward dog. Not everyone gets to do their morning sweat session to a Grammy winner’s highly anticipated new album, but this toddler already knows the words to daddy’s newest tunes. Something to the Imagination, the follow-up to the R&B star’s Magic, Billboard’s best-selling album of 2014 (Rocky Haze’s Hazy Shade of Summer was No. 1 a year later), was due to drop this week, reviews had already begun to post online (among them raves from Rolling Stone, the New York Times and, yes, NPR) until he pulled it at the last minute.
“Listen,” he says with a smile, feeding chunks of star fruit to Harmony in their bright and airy kitchen. “Our family is focused on Rocky right now. When Magic came out, she stopped everything for me, everything, to allow me to tour without being away. Because I didn’t want to have to leave her and our baby. We personally work better when we devote ourselves to each other’s dreams.” He says it easily, as though it were all obvious. “I want to be able to give my whole self to my music and right now I need to be here, part of this dream, her dream. What’s good for one of us is good for all of us.” Their secret to familial bliss is simple: “We just juggle. Like any family in America. We juggle. Some days better than others.” And when they do need to make those tough decisions? “We just play, ‘Rocky Paper Scissors,’” he jokes.
He and Harmony put on their Sunday best and pile into the awaiting Escalade to join Rocky downtown. The candidate has spent weeks canvassing the Golden State, visiting inner cities, churches, homeless shelters, prisons, meeting with young and old, big potential donors (from Hollywood producers to record label honchos) and those who have nothing. “I want to paint myself a full picture of what’s going on in every state in this great nation,” she says. “I want to know firsthand what people need to make their lives better. And then I want to gather the greatest minds to work with me and make those lives better.”
With the primary that will decide her fate just days away, Haze has allowed herself a more lighthearted day today: a rally on Santa Monica Pier. A stage is set as though for any other concert here as fans, voters and tourists alike crowd the strip, spilling into the sand, a sea of people forming. After riding the carousel and Ferris wheel together, posing for hundreds of selfies and ditching their shoes (and her heeled booties) to dip their toes in the ocean, the family of three is ready for showtime.
“I have the best fans in the world,” Haze greets the crowd. “And I have the best voters in the world! And if you’re still not sure about me, that’s okay too, come on up and tell me about it. I got all the time in the world.” She’s changed into her version of a suit: a slim, cropped blazer with jodhpurs. (“You know you’d never write what my male competitors are wearing,” she warns this reporter.) She takes a seat on the edge of the stage, legs dangling. The crowd hushes, the only sound on this entire pier the crashing waves and carousel music. For the next two hours, baking in the blazing June heat, she hosts an impromptu town hall. At the end, she raps a medley of her fight songs.
On stage left, Alchemy sways to the beat, snuggling a yawning Harmony in his arms. Is this family ready for the White House? “We just follow our passion. We’re ready for anything life has in store for us,” he answers, his Trinidadian accent coming through. He kisses the top of his daughter’s head. “Right now, we’re ready for a nap.”
* * *
Jay and Sky had always wished to be that thrilling couple who hopscotched the globe every few months. But both worked too hard to be away very long or very far. So what was so wrong with a splurge weekend in LA? He had always wanted to stay at Shutters on the Beach, after reading about it in a celebrity profile ages ago. He dreamed of rolling out of a fluffy bed with Sky, hitting the spa, lounging at the pool, then the beach, maybe going somewhere buzzy and sceney for dinner and drinks, because it’s LA after all.
Jay had arrived Friday, planning to stay through the primary, like Sky. But after thirty-six hours of sunning poolside alone while waiting for Sky to return from an endless array of Rocky events, then editing his story in their hotel suite, he’d decided to pack it in.
“I’m too tired to have any fun anyway, I’m sorry,” Sky apologized.
“Got it,” he said, trying not to sound hurt. “A little less Californication, a little more California dreaming?”
Sky smiled. “Something like that. This is a rock star schedule. I get why so many musicians are on drugs, I don’t know how more politicians aren’t. The running around city to city, so many people, and performing—because it really is all performing, even the ones who aren’t, you know, up there rapping. Anyway, so all I want to do is sleep when I’m not with Rocky. I’m not a natural at this, Jay,” he admitted. “It takes every ounce of energy to try to do this well. But weirdly I love it too.”
“I’m proud of you, Sky,” Jay said, poised outside the cab that would take him back to LAX. “So proud of you. Keep doing what you’re doing. The fun can wait until you’re home.”
They kissed curbside, and Sky put his forehead to Jay’s to look in his eyes.
“You know how much I miss you,” he whispered.
That was all Jay needed. That alone had been worth the cross-country trip.
* * *
Much to Madison’s disappointment, California didn’t even matter to the Hank Machine. They were a lock, everyone had dropped out, and plans were full steam ahead for the convention. At home in the Hamptons, Hank geared up for a coronation. “Why can’t we just skip the convention and hold the election tomorrow so I can win?” he kept saying, puffing on his cigars, and his advisers guffawed. Madison kept busy with Gemma, making a bright summer salad with tomatoes they’d picked from the garden. Her darling girl, in her favorite Lilly Pulitzer dress, sat on the kitchen island, kicking her legs, singing a Taylor Swift song and plucking chunks of tomato from the salad bowl when she thought Madison wasn’t looking. This was their game.
“Wait a minute, what happened here?” Madison tossed her salad, searching, pretending to be upset. “Who stole my tomatoes?!” Gemma smiled sneakily, her front tooth missing—Madison had been away when it had fallen out, the first one, she was tired of missing things. Gemma put her hand over her mouth, laughing and chewing as Madison kissed the girl’s button nose. “It’s a good thing we picked so many. But where are they?”
Gemma produced two new tomatoes from behind her back. “Surprise, Mommy!”
Madison would go to California. She didn’t want to but she had to. On top of everything, Hank’s team was playing the Lakers in the championships. They too were expected to win.
So much winning. She didn’t know how she was going to do this, talk to him. It certainly wasn’t going to happen right now. But it needed to be done.
* * *
Ted was apoplectic and overcaffeinated, among other things, not that Reagan was surprised. If he was calling her in the middle of the night, he had officially come unglued. She pretended that she had been sleeping and missed the California Primary results, even though she and the girls had been awake, together in the living room watching returns trickle in from every single precinct in the state. “All we needed was to fucking win this state, and we could have clinched it. The nomination. Now I don’t know what the fuck this is going to look like.”
That wasn’t actually mathematically true, but it wasn’t the time to correct him.
“How the fuck did Rocky Haze make it into this race?” he went on. “Thompson shouldn’t even be here. He’s way too green. Arnold is the only one on either side that actually seems even remotely presidential.”
“Maybe—” she started, then stopped herself just as fast, but it was too late.
“Maybe what?”
She sighed. “Maybe it’s changing, the idea of what is or isn’t ‘presidential,’ I don’t know.”
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this.”
“No, I just mean… I mean… I don’t know, Thompson and Haze are not bad. I don’t get the idea they would be reckless or stupid, they just might have more of a learning curve. I would be okay with them.”
The girls squealed in their pack-and-play, “Dadadada!” It was one of the anchors on CNN. Every time someone wearing a suit came on the screen, they thought it was Ted. They had been right once that night: early on when MSNBC interviewed him from the hotel ballroom. He had been so oddly optimistic then: “We think we’ll be celebrating tonight.” She cringed thinking about it now.
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this from you,” he said again.
“I just mean, this will be okay. As long as Goodfellow doesn’t win, it’s all okay, right? You know everybody in this town. You’ll get another position fast without a problem, won’t you?”
He was in no mood for practical matters. “It’s not about that. You don’t understand. Forget it.” He hung up.
* * *
Jay edited Sky’s story from the comfort of his U Street apartment:
ROCKY SHOCKER:
HAZE PULLS OFF CALIFORNIA WIN
RAPPER HEADED TO CONTESTED CONVENTION
He still couldn’t quite believe it, no matter how many times he read the news.
* * *
Cady had left work early and made a pilgrimage to the Air and Space Museum. Jackson was away again, so she stayed longer than planned, walking through the replicas of early airliners, standing on a metal plate on the ground and pressing the button so it would shake, shake, shake her up, simulating the bumpy rides on the first commercial jets. It wasn’t unlike the way she had felt since arriving here. Parts of her life—the professional parts—had been fairly smooth sailing, but the stuff she expected to have been easy, the personal part, had instead been shaky.
She ducked into the gift shop before leaving—the primary purpose for her visit—and found just what she needed. With Jackson away, she didn’t know when she’d get to the bar next and she didn’t want to make a big deal out of it so she mailed it from work the next day with a thank you note.
Parker emailed her a day later. Thanks for the awesome ice cream: they totally changed it, way better than it used to be. Apparently the space program doesn’t need me. Happy to have helped out the other night. Glad you survived that monsoon. Cheers, P
* * *
Rocky Haze had contacted Birdie months in advance, introducing herself as though Birdie might not have heard of her, which instantly won Birdie over. If she was still in the race by July 4, Rocky planned to throw “an epic fund-raiser” at the Kennedy Center. Her friends wanted to “help out,” as if pals throwing a bridal shower: Kanye, Beyonce, Jay-Z, John Legend, Alicia Keys, they’d all flown in to perform.
Even if it hadn’t brought in millions for Rocky Haze, Birdie’s fund-raiser still would have ranked as her personal best. They’d sold out the Kennedy Center’s Opera House with a special added perk of a rooftop afterparty for big donors. The rooftop of the Kennedy Center on a warm and sticky July 4 night watching the fireworks explode in the distance? It didn’t get much better, really. Even Buck couldn’t resist showing up to this one.
He sidled up to Birdie on the roof, fireworks bursting in a bright kaleidoscope of red, white and blue.
“Hello, stranger,” he said, watching the sky.
“Who let you up here? Clearly I need to fire someone,” she said, even though she had put his name on the list, just in case. She knew him well and suspected he would be too intrigued by the zeitgeist of it all to stay away.
He cut to the chase: “Listen, how about a temporary détente for an introduction to Haze?” he asked, tossing back his brandy.
With those words, she instantly, blissfully, felt she had the upperhand. And she loved it.