The two most awkward silences:
When no one gets the joke
and when his manhood refuses to rise.
---Lady Suzume Murasaki, 1766-1790.
As a psychologist, I have few peers. Even those colleagues who don't like me personally admit that. As a social being, however, when interacting with others on a personal basis—honesty forces me to admit I have certain shortcomings. For example, calling the police that night was one of the most unintelligent decisions I had ever made, eclipsed only by the night I dressed up as a scarecrow to confront Sherry and Bo after the prom.
I had naively believed the police would listen politely to my tale of finding things misplaced and food missing for several days, which led me to put a sleeping pill in some apricots in a successful effort to catch the person responsible, and then discreetly cart my uninvited guest off to wherever they took such criminals. Instead…
"Uh-huh," said the female police officer. She was moderately tall and about my age, with short reddish hair and hazel green eyes. Under other circumstances I might have found her attractive, but not when she was eyeing me with such hard skepticism. "That's what you say. What I see here is a girl who looks way underage, drugged and unconscious in the living room of a man who, I have to say, pushes my 'creep' buttons."
The male officer, who was of mixed race and had a lot of dark brown freckles on his light brown face, was checking the girl's vital signs. "Her pulse is okay, but I don't like her breathing. You want I should call a bus for her?" He looked to his partner.
"A bus?" I snapped, unwisely. "Why on earth would you call for a bus for her?"
"By 'bus', we mean an ambulance," explained the female officer as if I were dimwitted.
At that moment even I had my doubts about my mental capacity—or at least my common sense. If she were underage—and she certainly looked it—she could claim I had done practically anything to her, and it wouldn't matter that the charges were false and unprovable. I knew how these things went. Filth sticks. My teaching career would be over, and possibly my future in medicine as well.
I felt dizzy. What had I done?
"How bad is her breathing?" the female police officer asked her partner.
"Marginal," he said.
"What'd you give her?" She shifted her attention back to me.
"Five milligrams of Ambien. It's a small dose!" I defended myself.
"Small for you, maybe, but you weigh about fifty pounds more than she does. Don't call the bus yet, Mike. You got any ice?"
It took me a split second to realize she was addressing me again. "Of course. In the freezer. I'll get—."
"Uh-uh," she said, "I'll get it and you'll stay here where Mike can keep an eye on you." She disappeared in the direction of my kitchen, and I was left alone with Mike and the slumbering girl.
Mike straightened up and rose to his feet. "So," he said, neutrally, "you say you've never seen her before and you don't know how she got here and you don't know who she is." It was a statement, but there was an implicit question in it.
"That's correct." I replied stiffly, covering my panic with the coldest formality I could muster. I heard ice chink into a glass container out in the kitchen.
"Then where's her shoes?" He pointed to the girl's soft, callous-free bare feet. "Because she didn't just, like, beam down from off some spaceship into your living room, and she couldn't have walked far with bare feet like that. Her hair's damp, too, like she took a shower an hour or two ago. You still want to tell me she doesn't live here?"
I was saved from making any number of unfortunate remarks by the return of the female officer, who had a bowl of ice cubes. "Nice goldfish," she commented. "Okay, if this doesn't bring her out of it, we call the bus. If it does, she rides down with us in the patrol car. Either way, you earned yourself a trip to the precinct house, Doc-tor Crane." She drew out my name contemptuously.
Perhaps they would let me go upstairs alone for a moment before they hauled me away. If I could only cut my throat with Suzume's kaiken...
It would be much quicker and less painful than facing the consequences.
Kneeling down by the girl's side, she took a couple of pieces of ice from the bowl in one hand while she lifted the girl's arm with the other. The sleeve of the girl's white garment slid down her arm, leaving it bare, and the officer dropped the ice into the hollow of her armpit, immediately dropping the arm.
The effect was instantaneous. Her eyes flew open and she reared up with an ear-splitting shriek of protest. "Works like a charm," said the female officer with satisfaction. "Looks like it's the car for both of you."
The girl, meanwhile was cowering in abject terror while trying to shake the cubes out of her sleeve. She whispered something incomprehensible as she shot apprehensive glances from one face to another.
"She's sure scared of you." said the male officer, sounding cheerful about it. "What's your name, honey? How'd you get here?"
I won't attempt to reproduce what she said in reply, but the basic gist of it was perfectly clear. She understood him no better than we understood her, and she was frightened.
"I think that's Japanese she's speaking," speculated the female officer. "It sure sounds like what they toss around behind the counter of this sushi bar I know. Ummm—Boyer Susannah-san," she said, pointing to her own chest. Pointing to her partner, she enunciated clearly, "Ogilvy Michael-san." Then she pointed to the girl, nodding and giving her an encouraging look.
"Murasaki O-Suzume-sama," said the girl. She had been coached and prompted in her role, of course. Amazing that she was staying in character, even under these circumstances.
"Why'd you put our last names first?" asked her partner, as the girl let out a long spate of questions in Japanese.
"Cause that's how they do it there. Her name's Suzume Murasaki. Sorry, kid, that's about all the Japanese I know. Now, who is he?" Officer Susannah Boyer pointed at me.
"Eh?" asked the girl.
"Boyer-san, Ogilvy-san, Murasaki-san—." The officer pointed at each of us in turn.
"Murasaki-sama," the girl corrected her. Awake, she did not look quite as young and vulnerable as she did while she was sleeping, but she did not look old enough to be Suzume.
"Okay, Boyer-san, Ogilvy-san, Murasaki-sama, and—." She pointed at me.
"Sensei?" the girl ventured.
"And that's one of the few other words I know. Sensei means 'teacher' or 'master', and you're a professor here, aren't you? You're coming with us."
"Wait a moment!" I protested. "She could be putting on an act—for all you know, she speaks perfect English."
"That's true." The officer nodded, and looked at her partner. "Hey, Mike. You ever heard the one about the Japanese girl who—." She proceeded to tell the most flagrantly racist and bigoted anti-Asian joke I had ever heard, encompassing coprophagia, incest, and bestiality in the crudest possible terms. It passed so far beyond the boundaries of good taste and social acceptability that it went below the horizon. Moreover, she told it as calmly and coolly as if she were reading the instructions on a tube of caulking aloud.
I recoiled, appalled. Her partner burst into whoops of laughter, and the girl did not react at all. She did not even flinch, and not a flicker of comprehension or outrage showed in her eyes.
"Nope, she's not faking." said the Officer Boyer. "Doctor Crane, how'd you like to run through your story of how she came to be unconcious on your living room floor for me once more while Mike here has a look around for her shoes or her purse or whatever she might have come here with?"
In the end, since they found nothing, they brought her along in a pair of my socks.
A/N: I have a brand new poll concerning Lady Suzume and her abilities on my profile page. Go check it out and make your opinion known!