“These are, like, real reporters, you know? Not even reporters but legit journalists. What am I doing here? I can’t do this.” As Jay listened on speaker, he ordered an Uber, only one minute away.
“She’s a different kind of candidate, so she requires a different kind of writer. You got this, Sky. We’ll do it together.” Jay, already outside Birdie’s house, jumped in a black sedan as a woman wearing a dime-sized congressional pin on her black dress stepped out—he wished he could’ve remembered the congresswoman’s name, but Sky’s anxiety had now gotten him flustered too. He took the car straight home, grilling Sky about everything he’d seen and heard, the quotes he’d gotten. He hardly ever saw Sky this unsure of himself, but he seemed to be in the throes of some sort of block. Helena had spooked him, was all.
Once home, Jay loosened his tie, sat down at his laptop and punched out an outline so complete it’d practically be just a game of Mad Libs for Sky, filling in the anecdotes and quotes.
“She’s the life of the party, said it herself, so just show that and it’ll write itself,” he coached. It was kind of nice to feel needed; it energized him and made his heart swell for Sky even more.
And so Jay settled in for a long night, firing up the beloved espresso machine they’d bought together for the holidays, which, luckily, lived at Jay’s apartment since it was where the duo spent the vast majority of their time. (“The Ferrari of espresso machines,” Jay had called it, while Sky declared it “so much better than getting, like, a puppy or something.”) Jay even stayed on FaceTime to write the story with Sky. They sent the text back and forth to each other at least a dozen times—smoothing the language, checking with Haze’s people for permission to publish her lyrics—until 3:00 a.m. when Jay, after much prodding from Helena (who actually made Sky ask about Rocky’s hair extensions, despite the pushback), finally sent in the edited version. A half hour later it went live.
When the story posted, Jay again FaceTimed Sky, who wearily asked if Jay could read the piece to him instead. As Jay began, Sky closed his eyes, as though it were a bedtime story, “‘Life of the Party: Rocky Haze Wants to Be Your Next President. By Sky Vasquez, Staff Writer, The Queue.’”
On a blustery January night with caucuses in full swing in Iowa, primary season at last under way, Rocky Haze steps up to the podium outside the dilapidated Sound Inc recording studio in Manchester, New Hampshire. “Man-chest-er! How y’all feelin’ tonight?” she shouts to the near-empty parking lot. It was here that Haze worked through high school and cut her first demo, and she has now come back to rehearse. But not for any concert tour. In less than twenty-four hours the multiplatinum rapper will do the unthinkable: she will enter a presidential race already littered with more than two dozen candidates.
It’s okay, she expects to not be taken seriously. She’s almost looking forward to it—after all, she won a Grammy for her ode to underdogs, “The Quiet Ones.”
And though her timing may not be ideal—her home state’s primary is less than a week away—she’s always been game for a challenge. “Yeah, sure, it’s crazy!” she admits. “But you say I’m late to the party? I say, I’m the LIFE of this party!” Which party might that be? “Look, man, I define my party affiliation same as my sexuality—fluid.” (She’s on the ballot in NH as a Democrat but an insider says she isn’t above a switch depending on “how things shake out.” “You’d be surprised at how fiscally conservative she is,” says the source.) It’s that kind of open-mindedness and rejection of labels that she’s hoping will swing voters ready for serious change this November. That’s exactly what she’ll be telling supporters at her announcement rally, where she’s slated to be introduced—and formally endorsed—by New Hampshire Governor Frank Fisher.
“I don’t like what I’m seeing out there,” Haze says. “I don’t like what I’m seeing HERE—Manchester with the drugs and the crime. Our nation living in fear of what terror might be around the corner. The differences between us dividing us, instead of enriching us and uniting us. Our lawmakers in gridlock in DC. We’ve got work. To. Do. Let’s do it. Together. Yeah?” Indeed, as she orders in her latest No. 1 hit “Constitutional Rite”: “Shut up and listen, we the people got something to say/From our Founding Fathers’ time to the day of Rocky Haze.”
She’s certainly got the right backstory—one of bootstraps and pluck—ripe for political myth-making. Born Raquel Richard to drug-addicted parents, she was orphaned at age three and grew up in foster families until she was adopted at age eight. She credits the Hayes family (dad Harold, mom Nancy and brother Tom) of Portsmouth—who would enroll her in one of the area’s finest prep schools while also nurturing her love of music—with turning her life around. “Rocky has always been a force of nature, so dedicated to what she throws herself into,” Nancy says. “We just made sure that force kept steady on the right path.” Dad agrees. “She has always had that deep, strong voice, that demands that you listen. She makes you believe that she is powerful and in control. She’s a born leader.”
Speculation began when she got political while accepting last year’s Grammy for best rap album soon after attacks rocked Paris. “This record was about love. This place needs love, it needs change, it needs fresh ideas and shaking up. We got to care about the future of this world. My daughter and yours and your sons and your friends and families can’t all be inheriting this fucked up place. Join me and start caring.” She followed it up with...a haircut: much was made of her shearing her trademark waist-length wavy locks for the pixie she sports now. She laughs off any suggestion the style change was meant to make her appear more serious.
“Did I cut it off to look like a president? You know what I’m going to say to that?” she says, her tone cutting enough to shut it down but a smile still on her face.
We would never be talking about a man that way.
“Thank you,” she says.
The Hayes clan—along with a dozen members of their extended family, an entourage of handlers and, of course, Rocky’s husband, R&B powerhouse Alchemy, and their three-year-old daughter, Harmony, who’s up past her bedtime—are on hand outside the recording studio, cheering through the cold at the many applause lines in her speech. After delivering her passionate remarks, which feel winningly off-the-cuff—not a teleprompter in sight—she breaks into song. It’s a new single she’s penned just for the occasion called “All In,” which will serve as her campaign anthem. (Proceeds from its purchase go directly to her Super PAC.) The music track cues up—her pal DJ Downbeat will do the honors at the official event—and Rocky pulls the mic from the podium, strutting as she raps:
“They’re all droppin’ the ball, so I’m droppin’ the mic,
This country ain’t going down without a fight,
The system was there for me, came through when I needed it,
Now I’m giving back my heart and soul, not sitting out, talkin’ shit,
Got my one-way ticket booked nonstop to Washington,
Gonna stay, play nice, pray, work night and day, till the job is done...”
At the very least, she is sure to have the best rally song of any candidate running. Shut up and listen, indeed.
* * *
By the time Jay made it into the office, the story was already No. 1 on The Queue, four networks had requested interviews with Sky and he had done his first hit, ever, for The Today Show.
The story was so good, in fact, that even Helena had summoned Jay to her office to ask: “Why did we get this exclusive?”
“Remember when Rocky Haze dropped her last album two years ago with no advance warning in the middle of the night? And it became one of the top five biggest selling records of all-time?” Jay had recounted. “That had been Sky’s idea. He said it as a joke during their first interview together. Haze tried it before anyone else, and she always felt like she owed Sky.”
* * *
The last of Birdie’s party guests—the form
er ambassador to Sweden and her husband, dear old friends—left at dawn, and Birdie walked to the kitchen, ignoring the mess: the occasional overturned armchair, pile of broken glass, hunks of star-spangled cupcake on the floor, abandoned drinks lurking behind sofa cushions like Easter eggs, and who knew what had happened inside one of her rare nineteenth-century Imari porcelain urns—like it was all just wallpaper. She had given Abbie the morning off, but thankfully the cleanup crew would be arriving soon. She sliced two thick wheels of cucumber, returned to her bedroom and lay down, still in her gown. Cucumbers on her eyes, she drifted off to sleep amid CNN’s commentary on the Iowa results, a snarky aside about Madison Goodfellow headlined “WTF with the RBF?” (as in the resting bitch face, which Birdie too, had noticed and been fascinated by) and some tease about Rocky Haze that she was too exhausted to make sense of.
When her alarm went off, she pulled the cucumbers from her eyes and switched the channel to that local show just in time. The house, the gown, the interview: all perfection. She couldn’t help but smile.
* * *
Cady barely made it to work in time to finish editing the segment on Birdie. She had dozed off at Reagan’s house, a three-bedroom, one-and-a-half bath bungalow just over the Maryland line. Despite the fact that it was literally across the street—somewhere called Western Avenue, to be exact—from the District, it felt So Far Away and so oddly suburban. Not in the way of her childhood home in Johnstown, New York, but still. She was surprised at how peaceful it was, none of the street traffic she was so used to, the buzz at the center of the city. She knew Reagan must’ve been pretty sick to ask a stranger (her) to stay the night, and she had secretly been dreading going back to Jackson’s empty apartment anyway.
She’d stayed awake for a while, flipping through news channels for more Carter Thompson victory party footage—he had actually won the Iowa caucus; she called and texted obsessively but had yet to reach Jackson—and Googling some of the people she had met, these other “widows.”
Before dawn, awakened by Reagan’s screaming twin girls, she cabbed home and then raced to work, where the segment on Birdie’s party came together in record time, because it had to. A message popped up in her email inbox immediately after the show wrapped, as though timed to a T.
Cady,
Nice meeting you, thanks again for the save.
Here’s some lowdown on our place, opening soon. Come by anytime!
Your humble star reporter,
Parker (and Melanie)
She opened the first attachment, a press release, and skimmed.
Preamble aims to become the ultimate after-work haunt. The first place you go when you leave the office. The gathering place for a drink before dinner. The start to your night. And the start of great things. It’s a place for people of all political ideologies to meet, harkening back to the time when camaraderie reigned supreme in our branches of government. When progress was made, deals struck and common ground found over distilled spirits and spirited conversation. To that end, we even have private rooms for elected officials to talk it out. Neutral territory. Think of it as an extension of your office wet bar, your liquor cabinet away from the workplace.
It did have a catchy gimmick. She read further.
Co-owners Parker Appleton, a former Senate staffer, and Melanie Harper, a former House legislative director, are from different sides of the aisle (and chambers in the Capitol) but share a belief in bipartisan imbibing...
And then: The co-owners are also engaged to be married in November.
The second attachment included a collection of photos of the bar itself—more “of the people” and divey than she expected, complete with vibrant splashes of graffiti on the walls, and finally a shot of Parker on a bar stool with a pretty brunette on his lap, playful and sweetly smiling. It looked as if it could double as an engagement photo. Cady stopped reading, feeling jittery all of a sudden, her heart beating faster. She tapped out a text.
Hi! Me again! Should we be doing engagement photos???
The extra question marks were manic and aggressive, but she couldn’t hold back. She had actually begun making a list of wedding-related things to tend to, but had gotten quickly overwhelmed: she had actual work to do, new job, a move, their lease would be up soon and they hoped to buy. She couldn’t flip through eight hundred pictures of gowns on brides.com right now. She couldn’t even string together the minutes to research wedding planners to do it for her. And she wanted to enjoy doing that stuff. She just didn’t know when she could clear the decks enough to focus on it.
Jackson would probably be at the airport now, and she shouldn’t annoy him about the wedding at a time like this. But her phone began flashing a response in process and then this appeared: Coming up for air. Thanks! Exciting here. Heading to New Hampshire with Carter for a couple days now! More speeches. See you on the other side.
She began typing but her phone buzzed again with yet another text: photos? today? what?
no, in general, should we do them? she typed, feeling bad for bringing it up now.
i don’t know cady I don’t even know what time zone i’m in
you’re in central. Then she wrote again, never mind. go, enjoy, congratulations, tell me when you arrive. good luck in the granite state! She’d had to Google that one; she wasn’t so up on her New Hampshire trivia.
* * *
Reagan woke up late and had to wait until the twins’ morning nap before sequestering herself in the dank, dungeon-like storage room in their basement. The musty space, illuminated with a lone yellow light bulb, teemed with boxes of stuff they never used, didn’t need, forgot existed, but hadn’t had time to officially get rid of. It was scary. The box she needed was, naturally, beneath the one she least wanted to see—a banker’s box crammed with Ted Campion for Congress lawn placards, “Campion Is Your Champion” bumper stickers and matching buttons, detritus from Ted’s failed run just before the twins were born. It felt like a lifetime ago. She had still been working at the firm and moonlighting as Ted’s speechwriter too. Such hope and passion and adrenaline, enough to propel her to do two jobs—and do them well—while growing two human beings in her belly, a feat of multitasking she was still proud of. Now she barely had the brainpower to construct a cogent text message.
As if on cue, her phone buzzed. She expected it to be Ted, whom she had tried to comfort earlier: Iowa doesn’t always predict the nom, it was wrong at least 6 times for GOP and twice for Dems, she had typed, but she could picture him brooding nonetheless.
Instead, it was Cady, short and very sweet: Hope you’re feeling better!
She vowed to send along a thank-you gift of some sort. It was so unlike Reagan to feel like she needed someone with her, but she had sent Stacy home too hastily, experienced another bout of sickness and worried that the twins might wake up and that she’d be too depleted to handle them.
Reagan tucked her phone in her pocket, then shoved the box—and its memories—out of the way too. It hadn’t quite occurred to either of them then that Ted might not win. She burrowed through a box of maternity clothes and “What to Expect” books until she found it. Only a true pack rat like her would have saved the package. It had been a five-pack and, shockingly, the expiration date was still a month away. Just staring at the three remaining pregnancy tests, she felt like she might be sick again.
9
DEMOCRACY AT WORK IS A BEAUTIFUL THING
Birdie hadn’t seen Buck for a week. He had remained on the road after Iowa, needing to “soak in as much color as I can for the book before class starts,” or so he’d claimed in his messages to Birdie. As a special guest star for a class at Georgetown this semester called “The Modern American Campaign,” he would be rooted in town more than usual this campaign season, which, theoretically, she should have been excited about. But the class didn’t begin for another two weeks, and she could tell Buck was really just avoiding her.<
br />
So when she heard his twang, her ears so conditioned as to pick it out even on a TV on very low volume, even with Rocky Haze’s “All In” playing on a loop in her airy Lucite, teal and zebra-printed office suite, even with Abbie in the adjacent room chattering on the phone, she perked up. It was the morning of the New Hampshire Primary, and Buck sat at a roundtable on MSNBC in a sport coat, no tie.
“Look,” Buck said. “Haze is someone who already knows how to connect with an audience, that’s eighty percent of this job. We could all be very surprised come tomorrow mornin’.”
This morning he had informed Birdie in a terse text that he would be home the following afternoon. Only 10:00 a.m. and she already needed her painkillers.
It was some sort of interplanetary law, something about inverse and opposite reactions, that a truly dire head-under-the-covers, don’t-bother-getting-out-of-bed day came so soon after a stellar one. In the past week she had hosted two congressional fund-raisers that raked in over a million dollars each and had taken daily meetings lining up more events. And, of course, her Iowa party had been one for the record books: Abbie collected the hundreds of glowing press mentions, everywhere from the Times and Vanity Fair to hoards of blogs she’d never heard of that posted photos of all the charming details from chocolates in the shape of four of the front-runners to the starred-and-striped Georgetown Cupcakes adorned with tiny pennants reading “Happy Primary Season! Patriotically yours, Birdie & Buck Brandywine.” (She always gave Buck near-equal billing on party favors.)
But now the universe was evening things out: Bob Bronson, the former senator, was proving to be more prickly and micromanaging than she had anticipated when she signed on to plan his fund-raiser for Vice President Arnold. She had dodged Bronson’s gorgeous associate Cole all week, no use seeing him if Buck wasn’t around to notice. (Though she still didn’t understand how Cole had been the one to end up in the koi pond at her Iowa party. The incident gave the fish—who had settled at the bottom for winter, plenty snuggly thanks to her aeration system—quite the scare.) At any rate, it was Bronson himself who called her regarding the upcoming Arnold fete:
Campaign Widows Page 6
