(co-written by Byrd) --------------------------------------------- [u][b]May 21st: Washington DC, USA[/b][/u] --------------------------------------------- [i]Le'elt[/i] Taytu Yohannes loved living in the capital of the United States. It had an energy she'd never seen before coming here. The Western world wasn't new to her; she'd earned a Law Degree while studying in Turin, though her program had been sped up for diplomatic reasons. Europe was old, venerable; a shinier version of what she knew growing up in Ethiopia. But the United States was [i]alive[/i]. Vital. Living here irked her of course, she knew it was essentially an exile, but she couldn't help but love most of the experience. She watched the city pass by from a taxi-cab window, the lights glaring on the glass. Men in herringbone suits walked arm in arm with their wives, women in fashionable dresses and hats, cozy underneath the lights of stately old buildings. She dreamed of the day Addis Ababa would shed its humble origins entirely and become like this place. She was let out in front of Second-Empire building, stepping onto a cross-brick sidewalk, in view of a set of stairs leading to a fountain. Though she was not from here, she did her best to join American society, wearing their styles and having her hair relaxed with lye so that it looked straight and smooth like a European woman's. She straightened her green silk dress and walked toward a golden doorway, the English word "Occidental" above it. She made sure her embassy ID was on top in her purse before going in. There was one thing she didn't like about America; their racial caste system placed her with the negros, a situation that grated on her dignity. She was the brother of the Emperor, not a [i]shanqella[/i] at work on a coffee plantation, or some naked barbarian on the border of Swahililand. She saw how some of the whites gave her a wide berth when she mingled with them in public. She would have turned against America if it weren't for her Embassy ID, a talisman that got her out of the worst indignities. The clink of glass and buzz of conversation surrounded her as she walked into the [i]Occidental Grill[/i]. A waiter approached her nervously. "Black patrons need to use..." She took out her ID and handed it to the waiter before he had time to finish. He studied it and smiled. "I'm apologize, your excellency. "I'm here to see Congressman Rawlings" she said, taking back her card. "Right this way." She received ugly looks as she followed the man through the gauntlet between white-cloth topped tables and the bar. A person of her skin tone entering through the front was a minor scandal to some. Thankfully nobody spoke up, sparing her the humiliation. Even the Presidents of the United States seemed to silently judge her. The walls in this restaurant were covered with a gallery of Presidential faces; dozens of old men who had held the reigns of this young country in its short life. Like most Ethiopian aristocrats, she combated the hurt of western pretensions by remembering that even Rome was a baby compared to her country: the oldest civilization in the world still on its feet. She arrived at the table and saw the man she was meeting. Jack Rawlins was a negro. This was true by American standards, but it was also true by Ethiopian standards. He stood up when he saw her. Neither noticed the waiter scuttle away. "Your excellency," Jack said with a large grin and slight bow. "I'm glad you could make it." He pulled out a chair for Taytu and pushed it in to the table once she sat. He took his place across from her and couldn't help but smile again. She was so beautiful. Jack had met and worked with her a few times since she had arrived in Washington. As the only negro member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, he had been declared the expert on African diplomacy by his peers. They thought that it gave Jack and advantage to be the same skin color as the diplomats, but to almost all of them he was an outsider, one of the countless members of the African diaspora that existed outside the continent. He held as much kinship to them as the president did to a random Frenchman. "I see you came through the front door," he said as he glanced down at the menu. "This place is good about letting us through the front, those of us that have enough influence at least. That, along with the way they cook lamb chops, is why I chose it." "I'll follow your lead." Taytu smiled. She never liked the part of eating in public where she had to chose something. It was an art she hadn't mastered yet. What a person ate said something about them, she was sure of that, and she didn't want to order something with a subtext she didn't want to communicate. Her eyes went down to the wine selection, where she practiced having fashionable opinions. "You come here often?" she felt obligated to make small talk, so she did. "Not really," Jack said as he scanned the menu. "There's a little shack in Anacostia I like to go to. They do South Carolina barbecue." He looked up and grinned at Tatyu. "It's the best damn barbecue in DC, or anywhere this far from the South." Like almost all negroes in America, Jack had roots in the South. His grandfather had come up from North Carolina to work in Illinois right after Reconstruction. He had distant relatives down there that he had never met, but knew of. He encouraged them and all the black people down there to head north. It wasn't ideal; the fact that a congressman and an honest to god princess were grudgingly given a table at a restaurant in the nation's capital was proof. Jack ordered lamb chops for both of them when the waiter came. He let her order the wine as a compromise. He looked out the side of his eye at her as she ordered. She was very beautiful, probably the most beautiful woman he had ever met that wasn't an American. Jack had a reputation in DC as something of a tomcat. If the woman was attractive and lived in the area, then he had bedded or tried to bed them regardless of their race. "So," he said with a smile. "You said that you had something you wished to discuss." Taytu reached into her purse and pulled out a newspaper clipping. "Have you seen this? He's the son of immigrants from my homeland. He passed away last month and his collection was put in the storehouse of the National Gallery" "Issak Ibsa." Jack read from the article. "I would like the collection to go to my country. Since you are on the Foreign Affairs Committee..." Jack looked up from the article and tried to hide his embarrassment. When she had said she wanted to meet over dinner to discuss some things, he thought it was a thinly-veiled attempt at a date. As royalty, it wouldn't be unexpected for Taytu to ignore usual male-female decorum and ask him out. He thought there was legitimate chemistry between them, and she had always been interested in him every time they had met? Or was that simple cordiality that Jack mistook as being something more? "I don't know, your excellency," he said, feeling the warmth on his face and praying that he was not blushing. "Ibsa's parents may have been from your homeland, but he was born and raised here in America. That would be like England requesting the Wheeler Presidential Library be built in London instead of Montana. As much as I admire your nation, I also admire positive role models for young negro Americans and Ibsa is very much that." "I understand the sentiment" Taytu said. "And Ethiopia is willing to pay a price. Whatever overcomes that sentiment." she poured the wine. The conversation made her forget about the dishonors of American life. When she saw Jack's expression slacken ever so little, she read it as the career deal-maker recognizing an exceptional bargainer; the hunter becoming the hunted. "I'll see what I can do," he said sheepishly. There was a pause as the waiter and a busboy brought them the meal. Each plate had a lamb chop on it with a vegetable medley of green beans, carrots, and peas along with a helping of mashed potatoes. Jack looked down at it. His appetite was suddenly gone. He felt embarrassed that he thought this was something more than an informal business meeting. Taytu had probably betrothed to some sheikh since birth. "It would be beneficial and more expedient if you went through State instead of congress. When it comes to something like negotiating and selling artwork, they have leeway and I can give you some names of people to speak to." He didn't want the artwork to leave the country and would fight against it, but right now he was eager to get off the issue and pass her along to someone else. "How's your lamb?" he asked politely. "Very good." she said. She didn't actually take a bite until after she'd complimented it, but her mind wasn't on dinner now. "Those names would be useful. You will put in a good word, of course." There was something wrong. She couldn't tell what, but the conversation was falling... flatter than she expected. "Do you have something on your mind?" She asked. As soon as she said it, she didn't know why she had, and she wished she could unsay it, but it was too late. Jack finished the piece of food he was chewing. It was still as good as he remembered it. When he was done, he sat his knife and fork on his plate. "I... got the wrong idea about what this was. I thought this was going to be more than business... I thought." He looked away, not wanting to make eye contact. "This was like a date." "My English isn't perfect. I'm confused by your meaning." Taytu said. She thought she knew his meaning, and a sort of pre-revulsion was curdling in her blood, but she didn't want to believe it. Perhaps she was confused. She hoped that was it. Jack put his hand on his face. If he wasn't blushing before, he sure was now. She was really going to make him spell it out. He looked down at the table and cleared his throat. "Uhh... I thought you wanted to meet for... romantic purposes." "Ro..." she pursed her lips, "That would be inappropriate, congressman." "Yes," he said, clearing his throat. "Yes... it would. But... I mean, we're consenting adults. Plus, all the signals have been there, your excellency. You cannot fault me for making an assumption based on how you've been conducting yourself." "Conducting." her hackles were properly raised now, and she poised her head like a cobra ready to strike, "I do not appreciate your tone." "Well I don't appreciate being embarrassed" Jack cut into his lamb chop aggressively, "I know you're still new to this country, but even you have to have know when a man's interested in you." "Even..." it was too much. Taytu didn't like being talked down to; her station in life was supposed to be above it. But to be talked to this way by a negro? Her hand wrapped around the stem of her glass, and she threw wine in the face of the impetuous congressman from Illinois. He looked stunned, his face and shirt collar stained red, and seeing him made her feel a tinge of regret. But done is done. She held onto her dignity like a life-preserver and marched out on her own, leaving the congressman behind.