The White Man and the Pachinko Girl

by Vann Chow

  Then it occurred to him.

  “I will never be somebody in Misa's life,” he mused to his reflection. “but I can be her guardian angel.”

  “Yes, yes, yes...” his reflection murmured back. A stray lump of hair dripped over his eyes, making his reflection looked sinister. “You're out of luck, Sergey. I'm going to make this right for Misa.”

  Unfortunately for Smith, his memory failed him. The surname of this monster of a director had escaped him. Searching for a ‘Sergey, director’ online had proven useless. There were hundreds of them on imdb, and none of their profiles seemed to indicat that they had dabbled into pornography nor spent time in Japan.

  Smith could hardly ask Tatsu for the tape without inflicting unnecessary pain and embarrassment on the boy. The obvious candidate to obtain any information about Sergey would be Tanaka, the TVC commercial producer who had once confided in him his stint in the world of pornography. If this son-of-a-bitch Sergey person was anything as important as Tatsu had portrayed him to be, someone that the upright and efficient police of Tokyo could do nothing about, he was sure Tanaka might have heard of him.

  “I have something to speak to you about. See you tomorrow in the office.” Smith left a voicemail on Tanaka's cell.

  40. A Scandal

  “Hypocrite!”, “Are DaiKe's executive paid so little?”, “That's where DaiKe's money went...right into pockets of Yakuza.”

  The DaiKe commercial was on air since yesterday evening, on Channel 5, prime time. It was shown four times in a span of the half hour news Smith had caught while he was smoking a cigarette at the VIP lounge of Palatial, a new pachinko parlor that popped up in nishi-Ikebukuro. He thought the fact that no one in the lounge gave him a second look was a good indication of the amount of attention or lack of, he could elicit from others with the commercial, which he was glad about. Being in the center of attention was never his thing. For whatever reason, he had not worried about being famous, or at least recognizable in public, throughout the whole filming business until now. Not even after it was being played on repeat at the internal DaiKe TV. Not once had anybody from work come up to him to make a comment about the commercial. Not once.

  He had neglected the fact that he was sitting in the corner and had hidden himself in a veil of cigarette smoke. With all the recognizable signs of ‘I don't want to be disturbed’, the other patrons did not dare to bother him. It was his grave mistake to think that they did not recognize him, for they did. However, they would not approach him or speak to him on account of that. That was simply ‘not done’. Only the socially awkward would fuss about a celebrity in their presence. Any good Japanese person would follow the unspoken etiquette of reserving those exclamations for gossip when he was out of sights or take them online all together. And that was what happened. Someone had snapped a photograph of him in front of the machines in Palatial, filling coins after coins into the mouth of the pachinko machine and posted it on 2Chan, the largest forums in Japan. The caption was decidedly harmless: “Look who I saw in the new pachinko parlor? The gaijin in the DaiKe commercial!”

  What led to the downpour of negative comments on Smith's lone visit to the parlor after business hour, was beyond Smith's wildest guess.

  The netizens were reacting to the photographs like vultures circling a pile of dead bodies, materials to exploit in an attempt to publicly denounce the company.

  “Cars, you're famous.” Andy snapped as soon as Smith picked up his call. Smith stubbed out his cigarette on the tray.

  “Is it about the TV commercials?”

  “No. Where are you? You can't be still in palatial, right?” Andy asked, hearing the tell-tale jingles and recorded coin-dropping sounds in the background bleeding into his earpiece. “I think you better go home and look on the news now.”

  “Why? What's the matter?” Smith replied in confusion.

  “Okay, just leave. And I will send the stuff to you. Stay calm.” Andy urged, frustrated at the old man's cluelessness. He wouldn't know to run when the atomic bomb was dropped on this head.

  “Email?”

  “No, LINE.” Then Andy realized something. Smith was a dinosaur when it comes to technology. “Oh jeez, you don't have LINE, do you? I will send it to your email.” And he hung up, busy forwarding a news video clip which he considered to be of utmost importance.

  “I watched today's news at seven already. There was nothing special...” Smith muttered to the mouthpiece of his mobile phone. A beeping tone had already replaced Andy.

  “Darling!” Damien almost screamed. “Darling, Oh Darling! Come here! Ce n'est pas bien! ”

  “ Nan de? What?” Tanaka responded to his boyfriend's request with faint interest. He did not understand how two gay men could end up being so different. Damien was in a constant state of exasperation, a natural exaggerator in his response to the external world, a sensitive, delicate soul even the most dramatic of all women could not compete with him. Then there was himself, almost like his own father, a traditional Japanese man who considered composure the highest, most laudable trait of men who never raised his voice and exposed little of his mood, if there was any.

  It was with that thought in mind that he approached Damien and joined him on the couch, who was staring wild-eyed at the midnight news on the television. The report had run almost to its full length when he started watching, but he saw what he needed to see: The corruption scandal of his company had led the star of its corporate TV commercial to become the bud of a communal joke online that gripped the entirety of Japan in a matter of hours. Memes made by netizens with Smith's photo, analogizing him to DaiKe, the eager briber, feeding the greed machine were shared at a record speed across the country's social networks.

  Tanaka closed his eyes for a second to think as his heart started to swell with remorse. He had intended to use Smith to stay close to Misa, the protagonist of his private documentary. He ended up turning Smith into a public source of humiliation.

  The arrival of messages flashed across the screen of his cell phone, which was lying on the coffee table in front of them. Damien picked it up and started reading, as he customarily did since day one of moving in together. There was no privacy anymore once you started sharing a life with someone as obsessive as Damien.

  “You're part of a PR shit-storm, baby!” said Damien.

  Tanaka grunted.

  “At least now people pay attention to your work.”

  Damien had a point.

  41. News in Your Pocket

  There was not a single soul in the Design and Advertising Department at 8:30 AM. Smith decided to return later.

  On his way up to the 47 th floor, he checked his mobile as a front to cover his unease in the packed elevator. It appeared that almost everyone, except the two stern, expressionless managerial materials standing at the either corners of the steel-box, was aghast at seeing him at work. He recalled having checked his appearance before stepping out this morning. Apart from his swelling eye bags from restless sleep last night, having spent innumerable hours scheming how he could bring up Sergey in a conversation with Tanaka without raising his suspicion, he could not think of anything else that would afford him to be greeted with such an ill set of visages.

  This reminded him of Andy's agitation yesterday. The email, oh he had forgotten about the email.

  With one hand holding his phone, he thumbed to the inbox icon to check his email. There it was, Andy's email titled My Famous White Friend , still unopened. Smith crinkled his nose at the tasteless title that was very typical of Andy and clicked into it. A blast of Japanese by an excited female newscaster filled the elevator.

  “Damn auto-play videos...” Smith said apologetically to everyone and no one in particular in the elevator as he hurried to turn off the sound.

  “I like the commercial,” the man standing next to Smith said. Smith noticed that the man was giving him a more-than-kind smile. “Don't worry about it.”

  With the video still running, his hand dropped to the level
of his hip as he steered himself to look at the man who spoke. The man smiled again. He recognized a trace of apology in the man's grin.

  Smith felt confusion rising inside. What was there to worry about?

  “This can happen to anyone,” he supplemented again as if Smith had not heard his consolation right the first time.

  Before Smith could come up with a courteous reply to the man's seemingly genuine comments, someone else behind them decided to add his opinion. “Well, I think he ought to be ashamed of himself.”

  Just then, the elevator door opened on the 20 th floor. The person who had voiced the dissenting comment squeezed past Smith and the man to get out, leaving behind him a trail of disgruntlement that lingered in the air of the elevator.

  The short exchanges bothered Smith. He hardly knew any of these people. He did not recognize the man who was rooting for him even after scanning the name on his work badge, dangling freely in front of his chest for anyone who wished to read it. Ito Tadao, Brand Manager. Marine Logistics.

  Never worked with him.

  By the 43 rd floor, everybody had left the elevator, leaving the space to himself and the security camera. He glanced at the video still playing on his mobile phone on silent and found the source of confusion.

  DaiKe's Mura, the senior managing director of New Business Development, had been arrested yesterday by a team of anti-corruption force from the National Police Agency in the middle of an incriminating meeting at the Prince Hotel with Member of Parliament Shoichi Takeshita. 41 million yen was exchanged as they lavishly enjoyed companies of young scantily clad women over bottles of French Romanee-Conti the price of a junior clerk's full year's salary.

  The footage showed the two men and their entourage of bodyguards and escorts being handcuffs and led into a police van with dark tinted windows.

  Mura, albeit ineffective and incompetent, would never have the guts or the brains to bribe a government official. The news agency's speculations of Mura's plan on financially motivating Takeshita to support the motion to revoke the Voluntary Export Restraint of white goods exporting to Europe which would lift DaiKe's sales when its customers order more materials for production to catch up with the increased demand subsequently, was all too grand to be thought out by one single person, let alone someone who spent most of his time barking irrelevant orders to others under the banner of exploring new business opportunities.

  His Japanese boss was arrested. That would certainly be a reason of concern for him. Obviously, he had no part in whatever Mura was up to. But the police could have a different view. – Were there police on the 47 th floor waiting for him to step out and arrest him, too? Wouldn't they first need to find evidence of his connection of which there was none? He adjusted his tie to allow himself to breath a little better. – It was not that he had never imagined the scenario happening, for the amount of underdealings that were rumored to have happened in a corporation as big as DaiKe had sort of prepared him mentally for something like that. He knew DaiKe's business strategy was a mess, and its intricate hierarchy made clear decision making an impossible blackbox, even for someone who sat almost at the core of all the activities at nearly the top of the corporate ladder of its US branch. But being ‘near the core’ was not the same as being ‘in the core’. He would never be permitted to meddle with affairs at the executive level of the central office, which ran closed-door conference every month with people whose interests were self-promotion and preservation. New initiatives and demands were regularities that came back after these meetings, dreamt up by ancient executives who had either lost touch with the markets or were promoting opinions of whomever were the lucky recipients of their favoritism lately, and sons and daughters of wealthy executives that had inherited the posts from their parents, a common practice in Japan. The lucky few that never had anything to worry about in life except where to take their teas.

  He thought back to the scene when Mura called him ‘the Face of DaiKe’ just a few days ago. Both of them knew this could not be farther from the truth.

  Nonetheless, he had become, to the less discerning public, ‘the new Face of DaiKe’. Just when he had made the connection, the real news materialized in front of his eyes on the screen. The news report pulled up a screenshot of a popular forum post on 2Chan, the forum site, and it had a picture of him squandering his money at the Palatial just hours after the bribery scandal broke. The collective intelligence of the crowd had determined that they should make a full mockery of him, expressing their abhorrence for corruptions in the government one character at a time, with twenty thousand and growing commentators making a jab at his previously very private hobby of watching steel balls falling from one end to the other end of the vertical pinball machine in a raging storm of endless randomness.

  “Andy,” Smith was relieved to see Andy was the one welcoming him as his elevator doors swept open. Andy had been tracking the feed of the security cameras on his desktop as soon as he arrived.

  They skipped to the closest conference room, and Andy closed the door behind him.

  “Internal memo, we are invited to watch a press conference at the Hall of Thousand at eleven.”

  “We? The entire company?” Smith gasped.

  “Don't worry, you're just the scapegoat. Being on TV and all that.”

  “You don't point out that someone is the scapegoat and comfort them at the same time,” Smith snorted. “My public appearance at the Pachinko parlor at the most inopportune time aside, we are working in Mura's team. Did anyone say anything to you this morning? Haneda? Tanoguchi? Did they say anything? Are we gonna be invited for coffee at the station?” Smith asked nervously.

  “Oh, that you don't have to worry about either,” Andy said. “The business crime police were here at 7 AM, and they took almost everything with them. Computers and all. Must have been over a hundred boxes. I had to go borrow a spare laptop from the storage to watch the news, but no, they didn't take anyone with them. Just the files.”

  “The incriminating evidence,” Smith said ironically. To be honest, he had no clue what the police would find on their computers. Could it link them to Mura's bribe in some way? Where was the fund pulled from? Was it from one of the projects he oversaw? Just when he thought he could not have been bombarded with more questions, Andy threw him one.

  “Were you let in on this?” Andy asked, squinting his eyes.

  “Rest assured I would have taken the retirement package if I was.”

  “Make sense.”

  Outside, Smith caught the shadow of Cheryl walk pass. She knocked twice and shoved the door open. The glasses standing in the middle of the metal tray on the conference table rattled on her entry. She had never been the graceful kind of secretary.

  “What's the matter, Cheryl?” Smith asked with composure.

  “What's the matter?” Cheryl could not believe her ears. “Mr. Smith I told you to install a television at home! You oughta be the first one to know about what's the matter! They took everything this morning, the police. We have nothing to work with. I don't know what your next appointment is, and I don't have my contact list with me. Neither do any of the other secretaries I know! I don't know what to do!”

  “Calm down,” Smith offered her his hand. She took it and was led to a chair by the long wooden conference table. She sat down opposite to Andy, who offered a glass of sparkling water from the carafe standing on the table to calm her nerves. She sipped unusually loudly.

  “We must not panic,” Smith said.

  “ We muust knot pand-nic, ” Andy repeated with Smith's midwestern accent.

  “The big guys will want you to apologize. This is how it's done in Japan. You see it all the time on TV and stuff. Men in suits bowing in public at 90-degree angle and cry. Then all crimes are forgiven.”

  Smith was about to ask what crime had he committed, apart from the possibility of somehow being entangled into the dirty affair between Mura and Takeshita simply by being a member of Mura's New Business team but Cheryl seemed
to know, having the natural sensitivity of a Japanese.

  “You made them lose 'face',” Cheryl said. “Face, above everything else. Haven't I told you enough times?” She did indeed. Smith was tired of hearing about all the nonsense about 'face'. truth, honor and loyalty he could prescribe, but preservation of 'face'? That was a tough concept to grasp. He simply saw no point to it. At fifty-five years old, he could hardly afford to waste another day worrying about what other people thought of him. Moreover, who lost more 'face'? Him playing Pachinko after hours with money out of his own salary, or Mura, stuffing a bag of yen siphoned from God-knows-which project to Takeshito's greedy pocket?

  “I will not do anything until I must.”

  “You must be first,” Andy said. “It's like chess. You've gotta make the first move so they feel your sincerity. Fake it if you must. Offer to apologize in public at the same time they will give a corporate statement about Mura. This will divide the media's attention between your nighttime entertainment and the serious offense that Mura had got himself into. The executives will think you're a responsible guy, and the media are always more lenient with the white guy. It's a win-win.”