The White Man and the Pachinko Girl

by Vann Chow

  “Don't you think the Head of Public Relations would be figuring all this out by herself?”

  “The Head of Public Relations also put you on TV in the first place,” Andy pointed out sarcastically. “She's a nitwit to use an actual employee for the commercial. Someone who actually works in Mura's team. That's just brilliant.”

  “That was a mere coincidence. She could hardly predict this...” Despite what he said, Smith could not help but be amazed at the coincidence himself.

  “Darn. What a mess!” Andy remarked.

  “You're the highest ranked executive on the floor, Mr. Smith,” Cheryl said. “You must do something.” She implored.

  “Says who?” There were at least five other people on his level on this floor. The Director of Marketing, the Director of Finance, the Director of Core Business and the Director of Strategic Business Analysis.

  “They all took sick leave today. Mr. Smith. They are not like you. Japanese salarymen hide when they see danger. ”

  “Jeez, then it's gotta be you, Cars.”

  “What?”

  “Go talk to the big bosses,” Andy said, “Figure out how to deal with the situation. We can ignore the scandal here in the office, but we cannot ignore our clients overseas and our stockholders. They could send our stock to hell if they think we are operating on fairy dust. – I have Mr. Yamato's number on my cell phone. We played golf together once at the Yomiuri Golf Club. Let me send you his phone number.” Yomiuri Golf Club was one of the most exclusive golf clubs in the Tokyo prefecture. It had been Andy's habit to sprinkle tidbits of his wide and deep spans of connections in the company into his conversations. He just did it again.

  “The guy barely speaks English.” Smith found the most convincing excuse he could come up with to avoid the responsibility. “Plus they probably already have a plan. Just be patient and wait for the orders.”

  “Since when did you start 'waiting for orders'? I'll go with you. If not, take Cheryl!”

  “No! I am not going to sacrifice myself.”

  “Nobody is going to sacrifice you, babe. But just in case our Mr. American here made a social boo-boo, you can cover up for him with your charms and grace.”

  “You!” Cheryl pushed herself up with her elbows on the table and snapped at Andy. “Not every problem can be solved with feministic charms!”

  “I never mentioned anything about your gender. Don't be so sensitive, feminist! Cars would have to be incarcerated already for what he did. He is just going to apologize, the Japanese way, and make his brilliant proposal, and you can translate for him.”

  “What nonsense are you two talking about?” Smith felt like he needed to stop this meaningless conversation. “Both of you are going with me. NOW.”

  The pair looked at each other like grumpy children who had just been reprimanded by their parents.

  “I have received a text from Aileen. She needs our help.”

  “The press conference is at eleven!” Andy protested. “Should I be calling the Head of Public Relations directly instead? Damn, I wish I have gotten her phone number at the company Christmas dinner last year. I got her a martini and...”

  “Who's Aileen?” Cheryl asked as her boss stormed out of the room towards the elevator, not even ten minutes in the office and now he was leaving again, with Andy trailing closely after him. She hated turbulence in her life.

  42. The Protest

  “Stay back! Everybody stand back!” The young police officer bellowed at the curious onlookers and aggressive journalists, piling over one another in a semi-circle to capture the protesting women with their cameras.

  A dozen of other officers were trying to push the crowd back by cutting them off with the steel barricades in their hands. They formed jagged polygons around the group of women from InterHRLA, who were still screaming at the top of their lungs the same series of chants they had been saying since the morning. – “Video chat website degrades women! End discrimination now! Take down Mokoko Chat! Join us and fight! Don't let big corporations control our society!”

  One of the women took her trench coat off without warning. She was wearing nothing but a fuchsia bikini and stilettos. A few other protestors followed suit.

  There were camera flashes everywhere from female and male onlookers alike. People were trying to capture the spectacle.

  “Sluts!”

  “What a disgraceful sight!”

  “If it wasn’t for promiscuous women like you, there wouldn’t be any business like Mokoko Chat!”

  The situation had gone out of control. Instead of inciting sympathy from the public, they had gotten on the ill side of them. Some onlookers shouted poisonous words back at the women from InterHRLA.

  At some point, someone threw a ball of tissue at the girl in the front, and the crowd went mad. Boos were heard and the increasingly impolite words were hurled. What was intended to be a peaceful headline-grabbing protest had descended into a shaming tribunal where these women who spoke up about evil corporations that abused unsuspecting young women using their online chat services were being punished.

  The crowd grew and it pressed closer and closer to the demonstration, straining the barricades.

  Over on the far right, a man pushed through the gap between two barricades and reached his arms out to the women.

  “I warned you! Stay back!” The officer grabbed the arm of the man and was about to twist it behind his back. But the man was stronger than him. Their tangled arms strained against each other and made them look like they were frozen there as if time had stood still for a moment.

  A second police officer planted himself firmly behind a barricade and freed the grip of his right arm. From his belt, he produced a baton, which he bashed with no mercy towards the back of the intruder.

  The man merely looked at him as if he had been stung by a mosquito. His maddening squint made the police officer cringe.

  The smallest of the women in the middle started to sob. She could not handle the pressure of being in the center of attention. But the more she could not remain her calm countenance, the more the crowd focused on her.

  Strength filled her body suddenly. She sprung from the spot she was crouching only a moment ago, and started to wave her arms hysterically in the air at the crowd, a faceless mass of vile and hatred, grabbing the arms, hairs and loose flap of clothing of everybody and nobody in particular with her sharp, unforgiving nails. She was fighting like an irritated cat for her dignity.

  “Let me through! I know them!” The man shouted, wriggling his arm out of the police officer's grip. Behind him the crowd had groped randomly at him as they tried to push through the barricade following his example, wishing to sneak through when the two officers in front of them were busy tackling him.

  “He's my friend!” Aileen, who was leading the group, told the officer. “Watashitachi tomotachi desu! Tomotachi!” She enunciated every word of the Japanese sentence she hacked together clearly over the noise of the crowd to the officer. “I know him!”

  The police officer finally got the signal and let the man through, with considerable annoyance.

  “Them too! Please let them through!” Aileen pointed at Andy and the woman in a business suit that came up right behind Smith.

  When Aileen turned back around to look, she saw Misa, in her fuchsia bikini, a team asset, squatted on the floor in agony. Her arms braced her head as if the noise around them were hurting her.

  Smith took off his suit and lunged at Misa, wrapping her in a cocoon of fabric.

  “What kind of nonsense is this?” He barked at Aileen, who was utterly shocked at his reaction, and carried Misa in his arms to a bench behind where the group of demonstrators stood. Misa did not stop sobbing.

  Andy came up after him and handed Misa's trenchcoat to Smith. He had picked it up on the spot where Misa had dropped it just a moment ago.

  “Shhh....shh...” Smith hushed the girl in his arms as if she was merely a child. His child. “Everything is going to be alright. Everyt
hing is going to be alright.” He patted her back lightly and rocked her softly back and forth.

  “What is going on?” Cheryl finally came through. Her hair was a mess as if a thousand hands had brushed through them at a random angle. In fact, that was what literally happened as she fumbled her way toward her boss. “Does she need medical attention?” she asked, commenting on Misa's condition.

  “What happened? Doushitano? Misa?” Andy kneeled besides her and asked in Japanese.

  Misa only shook her head and cried even more violently than before.

  “I know.” Smith patted her lightly again, using the skills of an experienced father with a sobbing child. “I know. Shh....shh...We will take you home now. It's safe, and no one will be able to take photos of you there, okay? Let's do that together, okay?”

  She nodded.

  “Can you walk?”

  She nodded again, trying to wriggle her arms into the trench coat that Cheryl had held up behind her back for her. She buttoned the coat in one swift motion and begun to stand up, finding her balance on the pair of heels as she did it.

  The crowd had begun to recognize who the oldest of the two white men that had burst through the police's blockade was. It was none other than the Gaijin in the trending forum post! They praised their good fortunes to see the internet celebrity firsthand. His picture at the Palatial had, by now, been viewed four million times. There were only twelve million Tokyians, which meant almost every four people had viewed the post. That was a good reason to be enthusiastic in the modern day society.

  'Fans' of Smith drove themselves behind the group of protesters and surrounded him and Misa, who they also instantly recognized as the girl in the same commercial and started fussing, snapping photographs or making selfies with them!

  For the second time in less than twenty-four hours, there were fresh materials sent all over Japan with him in it.

  This was the least of his concern.

  “Look! I spotted the DaiKe pair!”, “What a heroic act! The white man saved the girl in the commercial, in real life!”, “He's not too bad!”, “We should give them a break.”, “Support DaiKe man!”

  “Hey! It looks like the internet likes you even more than before.” Andy rattled the comments off of the latest BBS post on 2Chan about Smith as Cheryl drove the corporate car back to the office. She now realized what her use was in all of this. The designated driver for her heroic boss, the poor girl, and an idiot.

  They had dropped off Misa at her home, and Cheryl had seen to it that the girl went to bed to sleep after tiring herself out from tears as the men waited in the living room, discussing what had happened.

  “Thanks, Cheryl,” Smith turned to look at her from the front passenger seat. “I am so glad you're with us. It's always better to have a woman around in these kinds of situation.”

  Cheryl smiled. She had to do something that was completely outside of her realm of responsibility but being appreciated made it all worthwhile. If the department would still be there after the tumult of the bribery scandal, she would like to continue working there, for Smith, who had proven himself a real man today. As a matter of fact, she could not say she was not a little bit moved by what she saw. The old Gaijin , who had been abandoned by his wife and children in America, who spent his lonely hours in the pachinko parlor gambling away the sadness of his waking hours when he was not at work, had a good heart.

  Nonetheless, she was curious. “Do you know why she reacted that way? It's a bit racy to protest in bikinis, but wouldn't her boss, this Aileen woman from Australia, have already warned her about it when they prepare for the day?” Cheryl asked curiously.

  “Exactly my thought,” Andy echoed from the back seat. “She had seen it all. She worked in an escort bar before, and as a waitress in entertainment centers. I couldn't believe that she was so timid.”

  Smith merely smiled back, not wanting to reveal the real reason behind her sudden onset of distress.

  “Bullocks! We missed the press conference!” Cheryl checked the clock on her dashboard. It was a quarter past twelve.

  “No, babe. We were in the center of it all. We missed nothing,” Andy said, referring to the content pulled up on his cell phone. “The media went crazy over what you just did.”

  Smith felt his cell vibrate incessantly in the pocket of his pants. He had felt it before and ignored it. Now he had settled down in the car back to the office, he fished it out to see who was looking so feverishly for him.

  It was the Helen Choi, the Head of Public Relations. He rejected the call, and that revealed the two missed calls from Tanaka.

  43. The Insider

  “Yes, I knew about it. I saw the demonstration on the way to work. I have an inkling of what happened, but I didn't see everything with my own eyes because there were so many people. I saw them on the online newspaper afterward,” Tanaka said, not telling the whole truth.

  He and Arai had camped themselves on the best vantage point, a sloped outdoor terrace that belonged to a row of shops nearby, to watch the event unfold through the lens of his professional video camera since early in the morning. Arai had recorded everything under his supervision. He still had the tapes in his leather laptop bag, perched by the leg of his swivel chair in the study. From where he sat in the living room, he could see it in the corner of his eyes through the gap between the half shut door and its frame.

  Was it his hearing? Or was there really a soft moaning noise coming out of his room? No, he had flipped the power of the hub off. Nothing was powered up.

  He shuddered.

  “It's a disorder. It's what regular people called 'camera-shy' in English.” Smith explained, which brought Tanaka's attention back to the discussion. “What Misa had yesterday was a manifestation of a kind of post-traumatic disorder. Have you ever seen or met anyone like this?”

  “Why do you ask me?” Tanaka said. “Are you asking me if I knew anyone who became stressed in front of cameras after filming my movies?”

  “You are the only person I know who had anything to do with the Adult Video industry.” Smith opened the bottle of sherry sitting on the bar and poured himself a drink without so much as asking for permission from the owner. He took a swig of the sherry and waited for an answer.

  “No, Smith, I am asking why you choose to ask me, and not someone else, like Misa's family doctor, or a psychiatrist. Did you ask me because you think it was always traumatic to have sex in front of the camera?”

  “Well, these movies. How shall I put it? Some of these movies are quite obviously...If you see the faces of the victim in a forced intercourse...” He trailed off. “Not that I know anything about them. Andy likes to share his DVD collection with the other colleagues. I admit I glanced through the covers on various occasions.” Smith cleared his throat. This was an uneasy topic for him.

  Romans 13:13, Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. In his faith, pornography was insidious and watching them destroy the purity of the mind, corrupted one's conscience and sent one straight to hell. He felt guilty.

  “Smith, I know the industry inside out. It's all make-believe. If it was a film released by a proper, registered distributor, everything you see was make-believe. Doesn't matter what you think you are watching. It's all part of the script. Every actor and actress need to sign a consent form and liability waiver before the filming can begin.”

  “Is that so?” Smith said, looking disappointed somehow for he might have made the wrong assumption starting out. He pressed on nonetheless. “But did you meet any?”

  “No, not personally,” Tanaka answered curtly. “What exactly are you looking for?”

  “I need some information.” Smith wiped his face with the palm of his hand and continued, “what I am about to tell you, you have to keep it a secret. Tell no one else about it. Not your assistant, not your wife, and not even Misa herself. Fine?”

  Tanaka nodded. Neglecting to
correct what Smith said about his wife.

  “Misa had been raped,” he paused. It was hard to talk about it even when it was in third-person perspective. Taking a deep breath, he continued. “And I was made aware by her brother that someone, I don't know whether that someone was the perpetrator himself or an accomplice, had filmed it and made it into a movie. An adult movie for sale. Possibly a hundred people could have watched it, possibly couple hundred thousand. We don't know. And because of that, my guess is Misa's problem with cameras came from her abuse. And this was more than just a regular post-traumatic disorder. This is a continuous mental assault. It's not something bad that just happened once and could be forgotten easily. It's something that she is confronted with over and over again by having people watching her suffer on this damned video tape as if it is just some mid-night entertainment for one. It has led her to fear cameras, to fear being recorded on tape.”

  “You're not a psychologist, Smith. She was fine when we filmed the TV commercial.” Little did he know Smith had firsthand interest into his research. But before Tanaka could reveal it, he had to test him.

  “It did happen a few years ago. There could be some adaptations of her behaviors along the way. Moreover, I have also seen her take pictures of herself. A selfie, as the lingo goes. The difference between then and now was she felt exposed in public at the ridiculous InterHRL demonstration having been asked to wear a bikini to attract media attention. And when the attention comes, with flashes and all, that triggered her painful memories, and she broke down.”

  “Reasonable analysis,” Tanaka rubbed the stubble on his chin. This conversation was getting interesting but on the nape of his neck, he felt a cold chill, coming from his study. He scanned Smith's demeanor to see whether he had felt it too.