Chapter 14: A Day on the Town

“You’re really glowing today, Shannon,” the tanned young male at the counter said, handing the vampire a paper cup over the glass. His voice had an annoying, slurred, almost nasal sound, like someone who was half asleep. “I swear you’re not as pale. You finally get a boyfriend and get it on or something?” He gave a slow, drawling laugh, registering at the approximate mental equivalent of a defective horse. The green-eyed adolescent glanced to Masaaki and winked. “Am I right?” Masaaki felt like sticking his tantō up the kid’s nose, for speaking so casually to his daimyō.

Shannon, for her part, flushed crimson. “No,” she managed. “Not boyfriend. Exchange student. I’m supposed to show him around town.”

“Oh yeah?” the teenager said, combing a hundred tiny braids back behind his ear with his fingers. Then he learned forward against the counter, putting his pretty, peach-fuzzy face much too close to his daimyō’s for comfort. “So, uh, how about that date, then? I just bought a new Mustang. I’d love to drive you over to my place, maybe watch some Netflix and chill on the sofa?”

Masaaki had his sword out and touching the boy under the chin in an instant, forcing his head up and away. “The daimyō is not interested.”

“Holy shit, dude!” the boy cried, backing off, hands in the air. “That is like, so un-American.”

“He’s Japanese,” Shannon said.

“I figured. Christ. Dude.” The kid was peering at Masaaki like he’d just grown testicles on his face. “You should take those swords from him, Shannon. He’s gonna get his ass arrested.”

“She can take my swords from my corpse!” Masaaki snapped.

“Yeah, man, but the law—”

“The daimyō are the law,” Masaaki growled. “I protect the law.”

“Uh,” Shannon said, “Sorry Josh, I really gotta go.” She grabbed the first paper cup that the retarded barkeep had put on the counter and wrapped a dainty arm around Masaaki’s shoulder and steered him deeper into the small teahouse that she had called the ‘Sleepy Dog.’

“He should not be talking to a daimyō like that,” Masaaki growled, as she shoved him into a booth.

Shannon did not look pleased as she sat down in the seat across from him and set the paper cup on the table between them. Still scowling, she took a long sip from the drink in her hand, then continued to glare at him.

“What?” Masaaki finally demanded.

“That is unacceptable.”

Masaaki narrowed his eyes. “He was offering to bed you. Without marriage or contract of service. In public. You find that acceptable?”

She balked slightly. “Well, no, uh—”

“Then it will stop,” Masaaki said.

She set her cup down too hard, shooting a tiny jet of brown foam through the small hole in the lid. “Listen, you pain in the ass. I’m getting you a condo and you’re getting a girlfriend. End of story.”

Masaaki snorted. “I don’t think so.” He picked up the drink she had spent the whole car-drive to the ‘Sleepy Dog’ raving about and took a sip. Expecting tea, he immediately spat it out on the floor and peered into the cup, startled. “This tastes awful!”

Slowly, Shannon glanced down at the floor, where the brownish-white liquid was even then seeping into the green rug. “You’re cleaning that up.”

“No I’m not. The peasant who made this swill will clean it up.”

“That ‘peasant’ is a United States citizen, and that ‘swill’ is one of the best lattes ever made, jackass.”

“It tastes like the burned milk of mares.”

She blinked at him for several moments, then just got up and walked off. Masaaki had started to get out of his booth when she said over her shoulder, “Stay there.”

Masaaki stayed. He heard a door open and close, then she came back with a wad of paper, which she dropped onto the floor and started cleaning up the swill. Like a peasant.

Grimacing, Masaaki glanced around the room to make sure no one was looking, then leaned down and hissed, “You are humiliating yourself, daimyō.”

“What about being a good guest?” Shannon demanded. “That guy is our host.”

“He is an uneducated peasant who serves horrible tea when he could be working the fields or carrying a sword. He is beneath my notice.”

She glared up at him from where she squatted on the floor. Still scowling, she picked up the wads of brown-stained paper and dropped them in a bin on the far side of the room. “For your information, he’s an A student in the UAA Nursing Program. A Junior.”

Masaaki frowned. “Then he does carry a sword?” He hadn’t noticed a sword.

“In America, you don’t have to carry a sword to be a citizen.”

Masaaki stared at her, utterly uncomprehending. “Then he’s a scholar?” The Chinese had scholars who never touched a sword. The pussies. He liked that word. Pussy. Shannon had used it on him when he didn’t want to get into the car.

“Yeah, sort of. But no. You’re not getting it. Everyone here is a citizen.”

Masaaki scowled. “Not everyone can be a citizen. How did they earn it?”

She groaned and dropped her head to the table. “Okay. I’m really glad I decided to come here first before you went apeshit in the middle of the Wal-Mart men’s department.”

“Apeshit?”

“Imagine an angry ape, jumping up and down and flinging its own poo. That’s kinda what I think of when I think of apeshit.”

Masaaki tensed. “Did you just call me an ape, daimyō?”

“Look,” Shannon said, lifting her head and slapping a hand on the table. “You are going to shut up and listen for a minute. Just take the next few things I tell you as fact and stop fucking questioning me. First, everyone is a citizen. Second, you can’t threaten a citizen or you will go to jail. Third, this place doesn’t have daimyō, or whatever the hell you keep saying. Everyone is equal.”

Masaaki snorted. “Impossible.”

Shannon reached out and grabbed him by the cut-open neck of his ‘robe’ and yanked him forward, until they were eye-to-eye. “You are going to stop humiliating me or I am going to leave you behind. Capiche?”

Masaaki didn’t understand what ‘capiche’ meant, but he got the general idea. He reddened immediately and lowered his head in a rush of shame. “My apologies, daimyō.” He hadn’t realized he had been humiliating her. That, at least, he could understand.

She grunted and let go of him. “Okay. Now. You gotta learn the rules. Unless I’m being threatened with serious bodily harm, you can’t pull a sword on anyone. A sword is a deadly weapon, and they’ll take it from you and you’ll go to jail. This place gets a lot of cops in on their breaks. You really don’t want to keep waving that sword around in the presence of cops. They got all sorts of nasty little ways to subdue dumbshits like you, including tasers and pepper spray, as well as my personal favorite, the boomstick. Got it?”

Masaaki laughed at the idea that someone would take his swords from him. “Clearly you have no idea what you’re dealing with, little wan-ko.”

“Fine,” she said, getting up out of her booth. “Fine. I’ll just let you work things out with the boomsticks.”

Remembering the thunderous sound from her parents’ bedroom and the door splintering near his head, Masaaki reached and grabbed her hand before she could depart. “Teach me,” he muttered, feeling his face heating.

His daimyō glared down at him a moment, then reluctantly settled back into her booth. “Okay. So you can’t threaten anyone with swords. Got it?”

Masaaki said yes.

“I’m sorry. What was that? A grunt? I don’t know what a grunt means,” she said in a tone that told him she knew exactly what a grunt meant, but was making an issue out of it.

“It was a yes, wan-ko,” Masaaki growled.

“Then say yes. Don’t grunt.”

Masaaki glared, but before he could retort, she lifted her hand again. “Second, you treat everyone with respect. Doesn’t matter if they’re a pot-head at the local fast-food joint or a president at an awards banquet. Everyone gets your respect.”

Masaaki cringed inside. “How am I to respect an untrained chickenshit who carries no sword?”

“You will do it, or you will accept your condo and stop pestering me.”

A ‘condo,’ Masaaki had learned, on their ‘drive’ was a home attached to another home, for ease of construction. The home of peasants. He snorted. “Sorry to tell you this, daimyō, but you’re a queen, and you awakened this morning. You can’t abandon me in a condo because you will need to feed again, and soon. Queens need many times more sustenance than a regular vampire, especially those trapped in the First Lands.”

“Keep it down!” she cried, glancing at the room around them. She gave him a frustrated look. “Okay, aside from this being my day off and I should be doing my homework and I still need to sleep, we need to get you some history books. Can you read?”

“Not English.”

“Okay, eBay should have some history books in Japanese. After we go get you some real clothes, we could drop by the local library and pick up a Japanese-to-English dictionary. Shit, I need to make a list.” She pulled a piece of soft folded paper from the little rack and spread it out on the table, then pulled a pen from her ‘purse’ and started making the indecipherable alien scribbles of her homeland. “We also need to stop by the store and get you a bunch of orange juice.”

“Why?” Masaaki asked.

“Uh…” She swallowed and looked guilty. “‘Cause that’s what they give to people who give blood at blood-banks.” A ‘bank,’ he had learned, was a place where someone stored coin to keep it safe from raiders.

“Blood…banks.” Masaaki did not like the sound of that. Uncomfortable, he said, “Then the vampires have grown more powerful than I thought.”

“Uh, no,” Shannon said. “I don’t think anyone knows about vampires at all. Blood banks are to save people’s lives and put blood back into their body if they’re dying.”

Masaaki’s mouth fell open. The world had gone on without him. “They can do that?”

“We are off topic again,” Shannon growled. “Just listen, okay? You’re not gonna figure everything out the first day. Just shut up, stay quiet, follow where I go, and don’t shove swords at people.” Then she frowned. “Or in people.”

Masaaki grunted.

“Okay,” she muttered. “Now drink your latte. I’ll get you something to eat at a Chinese place or something.”

Masaaki tensed. “No. I will not join the disgusting meat-eaters in their needless killings of defenseless animals.”

Shannon stared at him for so long that he had to re-think what he had said, trying to figure out if he had misplaced a word in this wretched language.

“Did you just say ‘needless killings of defenseless animals?’” She was blinking at him as if he’d lost his mind.

“It is one of the core tenants of the follower of Buddha and a believer in Shinto.”

“You’re a vegetarian.” She said it like he had proclaimed a massive, virulent growth on his forehead.

Tensing, Masaaki said, “It is not necessary to eat meat and slaughter animals when one has alternatives. To knowingly cause such suffering is akin to what your parents did, with their harem, and will anger the kami.”

“Ooooh kaaay.” She kept blinking at him, staring. “You’re serious? You’re a vegetarian? Big badass samurai is a vegetarian.”

Masaaki glared at her. “I’m assuming you’re not?”

“Uh.” She cleared her throat. “No. It’s kind of a sissy-girl thing to be a vegetarian nowadays.”

Masaaki made a disgusted snort. “I once again find myself in a land of barbarians.”

She stared at him for much longer than necessary before she said, “Okay. I’ll keep that in mind. Anything else I should know about your eating habits?”

“I will try anything that is not gruel or made from the flesh of animals,” Masaaki said. “Your parents liked to feed me gruel and the flesh of animals.”

“How surprising.” She sighed. “I take it you won’t wear leather.”

“I’d rather not,” Masaaki said.

“Okay.” She wrote something on her little piece of paper. “Will you eat fish?”

“If there’s no other alternative.”

“No fish. Wow. A vegetarian. You eat eggs? Chicken?”

“Eggs, yes, if taken from the hen with respect. Chicken, no.”

“Cheese?”

Masaaki grimaced. “I find the fermented and coagulated milk of the cow to be vile.”

“Milk?”

He shuddered. “If I have to, and only if the animal has been raised in humane conditions, with plenty of sunlight, fresh water, and grass.”

“So the treehugger stuff.” She tapped her pen on her paper, looking at him. “So we head out, you follow me around like a quiet puppydog as we drop by a kendo dojo, get you a man-skirt, then go to Wal-Mart and get you some real clothes. Then we stop by the little used bookstore on the main drag, get you some history books, then go grab a Japanese-to-English dictionary. Then we go to the grocery store for some veggies. Then we head home and I totally crash. It’s way past my bedtime and I spent the night getting chased around by a naked dude with a sword. I feel like I’ve been run over. You can study while I sleep.”

Though he understood little of what she said, Masaaki had long ago learned that it was best to just nod and let the addlebrained woman rant.

She squinted at him. “You have no idea what I just said, do you?”

“I understand that you want me to be quiet and not shove my sword through someone for inviting you to their bed in public.”

“He wasn’t inviting me to his bed,” Shannon replied. “Netflix is a streaming movie service. He wanted me to watch some movies on the sofa.”

“I know the minds of young men,” Masaaki growled. “He was inviting you to his bed.”

Shannon sighed and dropped her head to the table again. “Oh man,” she said, rocking her forehead back and forth and thumping it on the oak a few times. “I can see this going so wrong.”

“You cannot have sexual escapades with young men in your condition,” Masaaki continued. “You need to at least wait until you can learn to control your orgasms before—” He frowned at the way she was looking at him. “What?”

Still scowling, she got to her feet. “We’re done talking. You’re done talking.” She snatched up the cup of swill. “Follow me. Puppy-dog style. Quietly. Or I swear to Odin’s hounds, I’ll drop your ass off at a gay strip club and tell them you need help getting out of your man-skirt.”

Masaaki didn’t know what that meant, but by the dark look in her eyes, he knew it wouldn’t be good. But then she was turning and stomping out of the room much too quickly, and he had to hurry to catch up.

Shannon hesitated only briefly at the two glass doors at the front of the ‘Sleepy Dog,’ then bit her lip and stepped out into the sunlight and the tiny stone-covered lot outside. Once she was at the ‘Mercedes,’ she yanked the door open, then glared at him over the top. “You didn’t bring your latte.”

“It’s swill,” Masaaki replied. “I want real tea.”

“It’s not tea, it’s a latte,” she snapped. “Coffee!”

“I want tea.”

“Oh for Chrissakes. Why do I want a samurai on a caffeine buzz, anyway.” She yanked the car door open and sat down inside, then slammed it behind her. Masaaki flinched as she started the ‘engine’ and quickly opened the door and slipped inside before she could drive off.

“Seatbelt,” she ordered.

The ‘seatbelt,’ he had found, was an uncomfortable strap that clicked into place across his chest, restraining his movement and hindering access to his swords. “I don’t want to wear a seatbelt,” he said.

“Well, I don’t want to get a ticket because you were too stubborn to wear it. Put it on, or I swear to God, I’ll hit the eject button on your seat.”

Masaaki froze. “Eject button?”

“Yeah,” she said. “You know, like the one they have on planes that shoots the passenger out the ceiling in case of an accident?” She pointed at the dash. “It’s that one right there. All I gotta do is push it and you go flying, buster. Put on the fucking seatbelt. You can’t get ejected if you have your seatbelt on.”

Staring at the little black button, Masaaki put on his seatbelt.

“Thank you.” She moved the little lever on the floor between them and the car was backing off of the slab of stone, then spinning around and driving out onto the even bigger slab of stone that was the roadway.

Kendo, he discovered between questions and piecing together what he already knew, was a form of kenjutsu, but with fake wooden swords, instead of real ones.

“Why would anyone base an entire school on fake swords?” Masaaki demanded, for the fourth or fifth time. The first four times she’d told him hadn’t really satisfied his urge to understand the uselessness of such a prospect.

She gave him an irritated look. “I told you. It’s about the spirit and the fun and the discipline and the physical workout. Nobody actually kills anyone with swords nowadays.”

“Why not?” he demanded.

“Because now there’s better, more effective ways to kill someone,” she said, pulling the Mercedes into another stone-covered courtyard with other cars all around it. “Stay in the car,” she said. “I don’t want to have to explain the blanket again, okay?”

Masaaki grunted.

She grunted back. Then she opened the door, pushed her way out, and slammed it behind her, popping his ears with the sudden pressure. Masaaki watched her go, then he got out his tantō and carefully pried at the button in the dash until it gave a little snap and fell to the floor. He grabbed it and, unbuckling his seatbelt, opened his door, got out, and hurled it across the courtyard. Then, since he was already outside, he shut the door and decided to go see what kind of a mockery present-day swordfighting really was.