Pachinko

by Min Jin Lee

  “Why won’t you let your mother help you? I’m in New York. You won’t even tell me your number. How can I help—”

  “I know, I know, you are studying and becoming an international businessman of the world! This is what your rich papa wants, and Solomon is a good boy and he will make his pachinko papa proud!”

  “Hana, you have to be careful with the drinking, nee?” He tried to sound calm. She would disappear if he sounded cross.

  The door opened, and it was Phoebe, looking happy at first, then puzzled because he was on the phone. Solomon smiled and gestured for her to sit down beside him. The dorm room had only a narrow bed and a serviceable desk, but he was lucky to have a single. He put his finger to his lips, and Phoebe mouthed to ask if she should go. He paused, then shook his head no.

  “Will you cancel with your girlfriend-o and help me sleep?” Hana asked. “If you were here, you’d fuck me, and I would sleep in your arms. We never got a chance to sleep in the same bed, because you were still a boy. Now you are twenty. I want to suck on your man cock.”

  “What do you want me to do, Hana? How can I help you?”

  “So-lo-mon-Ul-tra-man. You should sing. You should sing to me. You know, the song about sunshine. I like that baby song about sunshine.”

  “I will sing if you will give me your phone number.”

  “You have to promise me that you will not give it to my mother.”

  “Okay. What is it?” Solomon wrote down the numbers on the backflap of his macroeconomics textbook. “I’m going to hang up, and then I will call you in a few seconds, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said weakly. She had finished the second bottle already. She felt awake but heavy, like her limbs were soaked through. “I’ll hang up now. Call me. I want to hear you sing.”

  When he hung up, Phoebe asked, “Hey, what’s going on?”

  “One minute. Just one minute. I’ll explain.”

  He dialed his father, and Mozasu picked up.

  “Papa, this is Hana’s number. I think she’s really sick. Can you find out where she is just from this number? Can you ask Haruki or Etsuko’s investigator? I better go. I have to call her back now. She sounds like she’s drunk or drugged out.”

  Solomon dialed the number. It was for a Chinese restaurant in Roppongi.

  Phoebe took off her overcoat and stripped down and got into bed. Her dark hair hung loosely around her pale collarbone.

  “Who was that?”

  “Hana. My stepmother’s daughter.”

  “Which makes her your stepsister? The one who’s working as a hooker.”

  “She’s not a hooker. She’s a hostess.”

  “They have sex for money, right?”

  “No. Not always. Sometimes. Depends.”

  “Well, gosh, that’s a major distinction. Once again, you’ve enlightened me on the finer points of Japanese culture. Thank you.”

  The phone rang, and Solomon rushed to pick up. It was Etsuko this time.

  “Solomon. The number. It was for a Chinese restaurant.”

  “Yes, I’m sorry. But I did speak to her, Etsuko. She was very drunk. She said she’s working at a different club now. Didn’t her former mama-san say anything about where she is now?”

  “We couldn’t find anything. She’d been fired from two other places. Every time we get closer, she gets fired for drinking too much.”

  “If I hear anything, I’ll let you know right away, okay?”

  “It is night there, nee?”

  “Hai. Hana said she couldn’t sleep. I was worried she was taking speed while drinking. I heard girls do that at clubs.”

  “You should go to sleep, Solomon. Mozasu said you’re doing well in school. We’re proud of you,” she said. “Night-night, Solomon-chan.”

  Phoebe smiled.

  “So you lost your cherry to your hooker half sister, and now she’s in trouble.”

  “Compassionate of you.”

  “Quite liberal and tolerant of me not to be upset that your ex is calling you drunk when she’s a professional sex worker. Either I’m confident in my value, or I’m confident in our relationship, or I’m just ignorant of the fact that you’re going to hurt my feelings when you return to a troubled young damsel whom I know you’re interested in rescuing.”

  “I can’t rescue her.”

  “You just tried and failed, because she does not want your help. She wants to die.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, Solomon. This young woman wants to die.” She pushed back his forelocks and looked at him kindly. She kissed him on the mouth. “There are a lot of troubled young women in this world. We can’t save them all.”

  Hana didn’t phone him again. Months later, Etsuko learned that she was working in a Kabukicho toruko-buro where she bathed men for money. The investigator told her what time Hana would finish her shift, and Etsuko waited outside the building. Several girls came out, and Hana was the last to leave. Etsuko couldn’t believe how much she’d aged. The investigator had explained that Etsuko might not recognize her because she would look much older. Hana’s face was withered and dry. She wore no makeup, and her clothes didn’t look clean.

  “Hana,” Etsuko said.

  Hana saw her, then walked in the other direction.

  “Leave me alone.”

  “Hana, oh, please, Hana.”

  “Go away.”

  “Hana, we can forget all this. Start again. I shouldn’t have tried to make you go to school. I’m sorry.”

  “No.”

  “You don’t have to work here. I have money.”

  “I don’t want your money. I don’t want the pachinko man’s money. I can earn my own.”

  “Where do you live? Can we go to your place to talk?”

  “No.”

  “I’m not going to go away.”

  “Yes, yes, you will. You’re selfish.”

  Etsuko stood there, believing that if she could just listen and suffer, then maybe her daughter could be saved.

  “I am terrible. Soo desu. Forgive me, Hana. Anything but this.”

  Hana dropped her large tote bag from her shoulder, and the two wine bottles wrapped in a towel made a muffled clinking sound on the pavement. She wept openly, her arms hanging by her side, and Etsuko knelt on the ground and held her daughter’s knees, refusing to let her go.

  16

  Tokyo, 1989

  Solomon was glad to be back home. The job at Travis Brothers was turning out better than expected. The pay was more than he deserved for a job a year out of college, and he enjoyed the numerous benefits of being hired as an expat rather than as a local. The HR people at Travis got him a fancy rental broker who found him a decent one-bedroom in Minami-Azabu, which Phoebe didn’t think was too awful. As his corporate employer, Travis was named guarantor on the lease, since Solomon was legally a foreigner in Japan. Solomon, who had grown up in Yokohama in his father’s house, had never rented an apartment before. For non-Japanese renters, requiring a guarantor was common practice, which, of course, incensed Phoebe.

  After some cajoling, Phoebe had decided to follow him to Tokyo. They were thinking of getting married, and moving together to Japan was the first step. Now that she was here, he felt bad for her. Solomon was employed at the Japanese subsidiary of a British investment bank, so he worked alongside Brits, Americans, Aussies, Kiwis, and the occasional South African among the Western-educated locals, who were less parochial than the natives. As a Korean Japanese educated in the States, Solomon was both a local and a foreigner, with the useful knowledge of the native and the financial privileges of an expatriate. Phoebe, however, did not enjoy his status and privileges. Rather, she spent her days at home reading or wandering around Tokyo, not sure why she was here at all since Solomon was rarely home. It was impossible for her to get a work visa, as they weren’t married; she was thinking of teaching English, but she didn’t know how to get a tutoring job. Now and then, when a Japanese person asked her an innocent question like if she was South Korean, P
hoebe tended to overreact.

  “In America, there is no such thing as a Kankokujin or Chosenjin. Why the hell would I be a South Korean or a North Korean? That makes no sense! I was born in Seattle, and my parents came to the States when there was only one Korea,” she’d shout, relating one of the bigotry anecdotes of her day. “Why does Japan still distinguish the two countries for its Korean residents who’ve been here for four fucking generations? You were born here. You’re not a foreigner! That’s insane. Your father was born here. Why are you two carrying South Korean passports? It’s bizarre.”

  She knew as well as he did that after the peninsula was divided, the Koreans in Japan ended up choosing sides, often more than once, affecting their residency status. It was still hard for a Korean to become a Japanese citizen, and there were many who considered such a thing shameful—for a Korean to try to become a citizen of its former oppressor. When she told her friends in New York about this curious historical anomaly and the pervasive ethnic bias, they were incredulous at the thought that the friendly, well-mannered Japanese they knew could ever think she was somehow criminal, lazy, filthy, or aggressive—the negative stereotypical traits of Koreans in Japan. “Well, everyone knows that the Koreans don’t get along with the Japanese,” her friends would say innocently, as if all things were equal. Soon, Phoebe stopped talking about it with her friends back home.

  Solomon found it peculiar that Phoebe got so angry about the history of Koreans in Japan. After three months of living in Tokyo and reading a few history books, she’d concluded that the Japanese would never change. “The government still refuses to acknowledge its war crimes!” Strangely, in these conversations, Solomon found himself defending the Japanese.

  They planned on visiting Seoul together for a week when the deal season ended and work slowed down. He hoped Seoul would be some sort of neutral territory for them—a place to feel normal since they were both Korean immigrants of a kind. And it didn’t hurt that Phoebe spoke very good Korean; his Korean was pathetic at best. He had visited South Korea with his father several times, and everyone there always treated them like they were Japanese. It was no homecoming; however, it was great to visit. After a while, it had been easier just to play along as Japanese tourists who had come to enjoy the good barbecue rather than to try to explain to the chest-beating, self-righteous Koreans why their first language was Japanese.

  Solomon was in love with Phoebe. They had been together since sophomore year. He couldn’t imagine life without her, and yet, seeing her discomfort here made him realize how different they were. They were both ethnically Korean and had grown up outside Korea, but they weren’t the same. Back home, on the ground in Japan, their differences seemed that much more pronounced. They hadn’t had sex in two weeks. Would it be that way when they married? Would it get worse? Solomon thought about these things as he headed to the game.

  Tonight was his fourth poker night with the guys at work. Solomon and one other junior associate, Louis, a hapa M & A guy from Paris, had been asked to join; the rest of the players were managing directors and executive directors. The cast changed a little, but there were usually six or seven guys. Never any girls. Solomon was a brilliant poker player. In the first game, he had played it easy and come out neutral; in the second game, when he felt more comfortable, he came second, and after the third game, Solomon walked out with most of the 350,000-yen pot. The others were annoyed, but he thought it was worth making a point—when he wanted to win, he could.

  This evening, he planned to pay up a little. The guys were a good bunch—no sore losers; Solomon hoped to keep playing with them. No doubt, they had invited him thinking he was more or less a fish; they didn’t know that he was an econ major at Columbia who had double minored in poker and pool.

  They played Anaconda, also called “Pass the Trash” because you could get rid of your bad cards to the guy on your left—first three cards, then two cards, and then one more, betting all the while. A moron could have won the game, because there was so much luck involved, but what Solomon enjoyed was the betting. He liked watching others bet or go out.

  The players met in the paneled basement of a no-name izakaya in Roppongi. The owner was a friend of Kazu-san, Solomon’s boss and the most senior managing director at Travis, and he let them use the room once a month as long as they drank enough and ordered plenty of food. Each month, one guy hosted and picked up the tab. Initially, the managing directors thought it wasn’t fair to make the associates pay, since they earned much less, but after Solomon won on the third game, enough of them said “The kid can buy dinner.” Solomon was hosting this one.

  Six guys were playing, and the pot was 300,000 yen. Three hands in, Solomon kept it safe: He won nothing and lost nothing.

  “Hey, Solly,” Kazu said, “what’s going on? Did luck leave you, buddy?”

  His boss, Kazu, was a Japanese national who was educated in California and Texas, and despite his bespoke suits and elegant Tokyo dialect, his English speech pattern was pure American frat boy. His family tree was filled with dukes and counts who had been stripped of their titles after the war, and his mother’s side came from connected branches of shogun families. At Travis, Kazu made lots of rain. Five of the six most important banking deals last year took place because Kazu had made them happen. It was also Kazu who had brought Solomon into the game. The older guys grumbled about losing to the kid, but Kazu shut them up, saying that competition was good for everyone.

  Solomon liked his boss; everyone did. He was lucky to be one of Kazu’s boys and to be invited to the famous monthly poker games. There were guys in Kazu’s team who had worked for Travis for ten years and had never been asked. Whenever Phoebe said Japanese people were racist, Solomon would bring up Etsuko and Kazu as personal evidence for his argument to the contrary. Etsuko was the obvious example of a Japanese person who was kindhearted and ethnically unbiased, but Phoebe barely understood her, since Etsuko’s English was terrible. Kazu was Japanese, and he had been far kinder to Solomon than most Koreans in Japan, who had occasionally eyed him with suspicion as a wealthy man’s son or as competition at school. Yes, some Japanese thought Koreans were scum, but some Koreans were scum, he told Phoebe. Some Japanese were scum, too. There was no need to keep rehashing the past; he hoped Phoebe would get over it eventually.

  It was time to discard, take new cards, and place bets. Solomon threw away a useless nine of diamonds and a two of hearts, then picked up the jack and a three he needed for a full house. Luck had never left him. Whenever Solomon played cards, he felt strong and smooth, like he couldn’t lose; he wondered if he felt this way because he didn’t care about the money. He liked being at the table; he liked the bullshit guy talk. With this hand, he had a solid chance at the current pot, which was easily over a hundred thousand yen. Solomon bet thirty thousand. Louis and Yamada-san, the Japanese Aussie, folded, leaving Solomon, Ono, Giancarlo, and Kazu. Ono’s face was blank and Giancarlo scratched his ear.

  Ono bet another twenty thousand, and immediately, Kazu and Giancarlo folded. Giancarlo said, laughing, “You two are assholes.” He took a long sip of his whiskey. “Are there any more of those chicken things on sticks?”

  “Yakitori,” Kazu said, “You live in Japan; dude, learn what to call chicken on a stick.”

  Giancarlo gave him the finger, smiling and revealing his short, even teeth.

  Kazu signaled to the waiter and ordered for everyone.

  It was time to show hands, and Ono only had two pairs. He’d been bluffing.

  Solomon fanned out his cards.

  “You son of a bitch,” Ono said.

  “Sorry, sir,” Solomon said, sweeping the money toward him in an easy, practiced manner.

  “Never apologize for winning, Solly,” Kazu said.

  “He can apologize a little for taking my money,” Giancarlo retorted, and the others laughed.

  “Man, I can’t wait until I put you on one of my deals. You will be hanging out with boxes of due diligence all fucking weekend,
and I will make sure you only get ugly girls to work with,” Ono said. He had a doctorate in economics from MIT and was on his fourth marriage. Each successive wife was even more gorgeous than the prior one. As a very senior electronics banker during the Japan boom, he had made obscene money and still worked without stopping. Ono said that the purpose of hard work was simple: Sex with pretty women was worth whatever it took.

  “I will find the worst deal with the maximum diligence. Just for you, my little friend.” Ono rubbed his hands together.

  “He’s taller than you,” Giancarlo said.

  “Status trumps size,” Ono replied.

  “Gomen nasai, Ono-san, gomen nasai.” Solomon bowed theatrically.

  “Don’t worry about it, Solly,” Kazu said. “Ono’s got a heart of gold.”

  “Not true. I’m capable of holding a grudge and taking vengeance at the most opportune moment,” Ono said.

  Solomon raised his eyebrows and shivered. “I’m just a boy, sir,” he pleaded. “Have mercy.” He proceeded to make neat stacks of cash in front of him. “A rich boy who deserves some mercy.”

  “I heard you were filthy rich,” Giancarlo said. “Your dad’s a pachinko guy, right?”

  Solomon nodded, not sure how he knew.

  “I used to date a hot Japanese hapa who played a lot of pachinko. She was an expensive habit. Figures you know how to gamble. It must be that clever Korean blood,” Giancarlo said. “Man, that girl used to go on and on about the tricky and smart Koreans who owned all the parlors and made fools out of the Japanese—but, man, she used to do this crazy thing with her tits when—”

  “Impossible,” Kazu said. “You never dated a hot girl.”

  “Yeah, you got me, sensei. I dated your wife, and she’s not very hot. She’s just a real—”

  Kazu laughed. “Hey, how ’bout if we play poker?” He poured soda into his whiskey, lightening the color considerably. “Solly won fair and square.”