5:00 a.m.
The Mayflower Hotel
Washington, DC
Michael Kublai Khan from The House of Jeremiah Temples woke to the barks of spotted hyenas and the grunts of black wildebeests emanating from an electronic dreamscape machine that was programmed with the sounds of ocean waves, rainstorms, and animal noises. For the minister, this jungle symphony was a stirring way to command consciousness in a strange hotel room. In the seconds after waking—before he had the experience of knowing where he was in space and time—the screeching howls transported him to the Serengeti. After that brief second, the honorable minister was forced to remember what city he was in and which hotel he’d checked into the night before. But in that moment when the unreal trumps real life, Michael Kublai Khan felt at home in the Motherland.
After his morning prayers and meditation, Kublai Khan showered, shaved, and prepared himself for a day of long meetings in the nation’s capital. The man of God admired his image inside the ornate hotel bathroom mirror and then tuned the twelve-inch Seura LCD TV to CNN. The news reports gave him a sense of what was not happening in Washington. The politicians fought like single women attacking one another’s digital dating habits, with both adoration and disdain for a process where winning was losing. The bipartisan dance was more for effect than effectiveness, and the minister felt he could bring about more change for his people by being of the community and not in Congress.
He lathered his cheeks, chin, neck, and medial cleft with an aloe-vera-infused shaving cream and then carefully sharpened the straight razor on the rawhide strap he traveled with. Once the soothing cream conditioned his face against razor bumps, Khan pressed the sharpened tool against the tender skin of his neck. After a few precise upward strokes, he washed the straight razor in the sink under scalding water before continuing. His graceful cadence allowed the razor to dance between his skin and the flow of steaming hot water like his hand, body, and blade were one. After the shave, the pastor cradled his face in a frigid towel he had immersed in a bucket of ice water before the after-shave ritual began. Then he tenderly treated his skin with specialized creams and lotions until he was satisfied that his chiseled features were properly protected against the freezing temperature that accompanied a mid-January day in the capital. The image in the mirror showed the taut face of a man who defied age, and proclaimed the true meaning of the adage Black don’t crack.
Kublai Khan’s grooming routine would not be complete without ensuring that his hair was properly coiffed. He wore a modified natural, trimmed short enough to be combed with a two-inch Afro comb and softened with a strong bristled brush. Fifty strokes later, Khan used an olive-oil-infused pomade that he rubbed into his scalp, smoothing out the coarse texture of his hair before using the comb to finish off any stray kinks the brush had missed. To finish the job, the minister patted down the edges with his hands until he was pleased with the shape and look of his do.
Today there was no time for his usual military-style pushups and sit-ups. Skipping a day made him feel like he was slacking off, but it also gave him confidence that tomorrow would be a good day to suffer the punishment of rededication to his physical fitness. He took the freshly pressed white-on-white Indian cotton shirt from the plastic skin and felt the warmth of the press as he brought the shoulders of the shirt around his muscular guns and across his ample chest. It fit perfectly as he carefully applied each button to the specially tailored buttonholes. His red silk tie flowed into a perfect full Windsor knot on the first attempt. The final touch was the blue and gold presidential cufflinks he had received at the White House last January.
The minister reached for his suit jacket and brought it over his shoulders as he stretched his arms toward the ceiling. The blue polished silk jacket lining held snugly to his right arm.
RIP!
The jacket tore along the exterior sleeve of the perfectly tailored coat.
Disgusted, he reached for his cell phone. Wyman Jeffries would still be at home in Bethesda, having breakfast with his wife, Yolanda.
“Brother Jeffries. As-Asalamu Alaykum.”
“Good morning, Minister Kublai Khan. What can I do for you this blessed morning?” Wyman would know the answer to the question was only a breath away.
“I trust you can have that new worsted wool pinstripe suit you’re cutting me ready in about ninety minutes?”
“We were planning to have that one ready next week.”
“Need it this morning.”
“Then I will call my seamstresses in early to finish it, and will have it ready with a matching tie and shirt when you arrive. About noon?”
“Make it nine thirty sharp. Got to be at the Mayflower by ten.”
“Consider it done.”
Kublai Khan arrived at the DuPont Circle tailor shop on time and found Wyman hovering by the front door. The tailor didn’t keep his minister waiting as he hurriedly unlocked and opened the pane glass door with Wyman Jeffries Custom Tailor LLC painted on it.
“Good morning, pastor. How are you doing this day Yahweh has given us?”
“Blessed. Where’s my suit?”
Jeffries pointed to the naked mannequin centered in front of a four-way mirror near countless bolts of Arabian silks, Moroccan cashmere, and English worsted wool. Wyman deftly moved to the pedestal, where he motioned the minister to stand.
First they fitted the jacket. It fit fastidiously, except for the single vent in the back of the coat. As Wyman took the yellow measuring tape from around his neck to make sure the dimensions were correct, he said, “Minister Khan, the single vent back just doesn’t dramatize your athletic build. The double vent would look a thousand percent better.”
The minister scowled as if Wyman had pressed a double-edged switchblade against his tender flesh. Then he studied the tailor for a moment, and dipped his head.
“Whatever you think is right,” he said. “I count on you to help manage my image in the world. I don’t want people to see the pimp in me.” He laughed wryly.
Jeffries took two of the pins from his wrist cushion and placed them against the chalk markings he had made where the two vents should be. “Now the pants” was all he said.
Khan admired him grudgingly. Paris-trained, Wyman had been in the same location since the suits were Nehru style and his clients were mostly White. The minister stepped into a changing room as the tailor gave the jacket to the seamstress waiting just on the other side of the looming mirrors. When the minister came out again, Wyman was already sizing up the adjustments he had made to the pants, including a half-inch along the inseam, and finished off the one-inch cuffs. He looked pleased with himself.
“If you wait twenty minutes, I will have the suit finished and you will be on your way. Try on the candy-striped shirt with the white French cuffs, and before you select a couple of silk ties and cufflinks, your suit will be ready.”
Wyman slipped the minister into a beige changing robe while he waited for the Vietnamese seamstresses to finish his pants. Khan picked a pair of antique silver circle links trimmed in gold to go with the red silk tie that he’d worn into the tailoring shop, leaving the necktie choices of his tailor on the changing rack. When the suit was completed, Jeffries beamed with pride at the evidence of his grace under pressure.
Kublai Khan merely nodded. For him, the two-hour miracle was just another test—one that endeared the tailor to the pastor while leaving the minister uninspired by the two-hour miracle. It was a routine morning in an ordinary day in Kublai Khan’s demanding life. He left his dutiful subject behind as he strode out of the shop in a beautiful custom-tailored suit and exquisite cufflinks.
“As-Asalamu Alaykum, my brother.”
“Wa Barakatuh.”
Close by on Connecticut Avenue, four nonlethal response vehicles, equipped with high-density LED deterrent lighting, seven hundred rounds of tear gas, and beanbag pellets, headed to the site of a civil disturbance. On board the armor-plated three-wheeled transports were police officers from the Public Disturbance Division. They listened to the police radio for the status of the situation.
“A 10-15 reported at the Mayflower Renaissance Hotel on Connecticut at De Sales Street Northwest. Two hundred protesters are blocking the side entrance to the Hotel. Request ETA.”
“We’re three minutes out,” an officer reported into his shoulder microphone. “Will approach off Connecticut and Seventeenth Street. Two by two. Request patrol car for backup.”
“Copy that. Proceed with caution.”
Minutes later the vehicles arrived at the protest.
Standing at the side entrance of the prestigious hotel was a small, portly man with a big megaphone. It was the good Reverend Tucker Dalton of Chino, California who bought an assortment of bible toting and countrified White men and women that wanted to feel as if their words mattered. The underemployed and misunderstood had just dined on a breakfast of rancid baloney, molded cheese, and stale crackers from brown paper lunch bags before being taken to the luxury hotel of the politically oriented.
“Brothers and sisters, we are here against the power mongers. God blessed the White race with its dominion over this world. Can government say who is White and who isn’t?”
The crowd shouted back their rehearsed response, thrusting signs skyward: White Rules, God Made Us! White Makes Right.
“No!”
“Should a mixed-race mongrel be able to declare themselves black, brown, or yellow?”
“No!”
“Stand with me here at the doors of Babylon. Together we will not be moved.”
“We will not be moved. We will not be moved.”
The crowd stepped toward the revolving doors of the hotel, and the riot vehicles edged closer. The command officer shouted a warning to the protectors.
“You are in violation of the District’s Ordinance 22-1107 against incommoding, which carries a maximum penalty of a $250 fine and 90 days in jail. Please turn back and gather across the street to peaceably continue your gathering or you will be arrested.”
The police placed tear gas pellets into high-pressure air tanks for use against the thickening crowd. Pastor Dalton saw the arrival of a news crew and knew he had gained the advantage.
“Do as the officers have asked. I will stand here as a solitary soldier in Christ till Hell freezes over,” he said.
A man in a rush so preoccupied by his thoughts he ignored the commotion and cast his looming shadow on the hotel entrance. Dalton stepped contemptuously into his path.
“Pardon me, sir. I’m trying to make a meeting,” Kublai Khan said.
“I bet you are Mister Khan. And it’s got to do with how mixed-race bastards can call themselves any damn thing they’d like to,” Dalton said.
Now the portly white man was up in the grill of the strong black man towering over him. The cameras were clicking with excitement. The minister smiled politely, clearly recognizing the countrified play for attention, and stepped out of the doorway. He leaned into the bodacious preacher’s face and whispered.
“If you don’t get out of my way, fat man, I will kick your ass.”
Dalton went still.
In four gigantic strides, Kublai Khan headed to the VIP entrance of the hotel like he should have in the first place. Dalton remained where he was. The crowd retreated, and the pastor hurried across the street to his followers. A group of men emerged from the crowd and surrounded him.
“Pastor, what happened?” one of them demanded. “And who was that big black man?”
“Turn on the evening news tonight,” Dalton said in a conspiratorial whisper, “and you all will see the good news.”
