Country of Origin

by Don Lee

  “My back?”

  “The last time you were here, you were afflicted with back pain.”

  “That was months ago,” he said, astonished she would remember.

  “Has it been that long since your last visit?” she said. “No wonder I’ve felt this vague yearning, as though I were missing something vital to me.”

  Clearly Midori knew the exact date of Kimura’s last visit, and she and Emi were ensuring that there would not be another lapse of comparable length. Midori remembered everything, Lisa would learn—each customer’s name, his job, his likes and dislikes—and she molded all interactions according to her customers’ preferences. Nothing happened at her club without her explicit choreography.

  Emi summarized what they had been talking about thus far, and when Midori heard that Kimura’s worthiness as a lover and a patron had been questioned, Midori threw in her own endorsement. “He is so sweet and thoughtful,” she said. “Such a gentleman toward his many girlfriends, but a fierce business competitor. He is a man of great integrity. In addition to being virile, he is aristocratic and wise. He will be loyal to you, as long as you are equally loyal to him. I would be honored to have him as my patron.”

  Kimura beamed, and the parts suppliers were duly impressed.

  Midori leaned closer to Kimura to chat with him privately. When Lisa next glanced over to them, they were still huddled together, Kimura appearing as invigorated and enraptured as if he were back in high school, on a date.

  He must have known that he was being manipulated, that nothing Midori said or did was sincere, yet he allowed himself to be seduced, to fall under her spell. He looked like he would do anything for her. That kind of power fascinated Lisa, and, at that moment, she became determined to possess it.

  DURING THE day, Lisa did her research. She went to the library, she took Japanese classes, she conducted interviews. Trying to narrow down her dissertation topic further, she talked to a dozen or so women—housewives, OLs, a doctor, a schoolteacher, a sopurando girl—about their ambitions and desires, their thoughts on work and love and motherhood, the Japanese educational system, company life, sexism, conformity, arranged marriages, that awful Christmas cake designation for women over twenty-five. She approached them mostly in coffee shops, saying she was writing an article for Time magazine. No one ever asked for credentials, and they seemed quite pleased to be participating in yet another Nihonjin-ron, an analysis of what it meant to be Japanese. The Japanese, she had discovered, were endlessly enamored with themselves as a people, with what they saw as their collective uniqueness.

  She was busy, and, as the new girl at Rendezvous, she didn’t have many nights off, and Omar was getting frustrated. Things were not going well. He was demanding more and more of her, even though she had warned him not to from the beginning. “I’m not good in relationships,” she had said. “We’re fundamentally incompatible,” she had said. “Stop being so nice to me. It’ll only drive me away,” she had said.

  He was too normal for her. He had been born and raised in a little coastal town called Rosarita Bay, just south of San Francisco. Same town, same house, his entire childhood. He came from a big family, five brothers and sisters, both parents loving and attentive, holidays crowded with relatives. He had gone to San Jose State University for his bachelor’s in public relations, and he was now earning his master’s in management at Yokosuka through Troy State’s extension program. He was an Ensign—a commissioned officer. Lisa’s father, after thirty-eight years in the Navy, had retired as a Master Chief Petty Officer—an enlisted man.

  After Omar fulfilled his Navy ROTC commitment, he planned to return to the Bay Area and work in the personal computer industry, which he predicted would boom. He didn’t have a care in the world. Nothing made him doubt himself or kept him up nights. Except for Lisa, that is. Lisa, whom he hardly had a chance to see. Lisa, whose appearance had changed dramatically of late. Lisa, who was so hard to figure, so aloof, who never seemed able to relax or have any fun, who had so much buried hostility, who drank too much, who wasn’t neat enough, who didn’t seem to care about him one way or another.

  It ended soon after she began working at Rendezvous. They were eating lunch at a sushi restaurant near her apartment, and Omar’s curiosity was getting the better of him. He kept asking her what happened at these hostess clubs. “Why are you being so secretive?”

  “I’m not,” she said.

  “So tell me.”

  “I’ve told you. I’ve told you everything.”

  “They pay all that money just to talk?”

  “What is it that you’re thinking? Why don’t you just come out and say it?”

  He shook his head. “It’s your hours, more than anything. We’re never together anymore.”

  “You don’t trust me.”

  “I trust you.”

  “It’s just as well you don’t,” she said. “You should never trust anyone. You’ll end up getting betrayed.”

  “Are you going to betray me?”

  “It’s a general comment about the state of the world as we know it.”

  They settled the bill and walked out to the street. “You’re deeply cynical,” Omar said. “It’s not a very attractive quality.”

  She stepped off the curb without looking and was almost mowed down by a taxicab. The driver honked and swerved, and Omar yanked her back.

  “Jesus,” he said, “you have a death wish?”

  “You ripped my shirt.”

  “What’s the matter with you? I don’t understand you at all. Why won’t you let anyone get close to you? Don’t you feel anything?”

  “I’m not a good person,” she said.

  “Why do you say that? Of course you are.”

  “I only bring bad luck to people.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “You’re angry with me.”

  “No.”

  She could tell that he was. “Go ahead,” she said. “Be angry. I can take it.”

  “Lisa, I don’t know what you want from me,” Omar said. “You want me to treat you bad? Sometimes I think you do. The way you just lie there when we make love. Sometimes I think you want me to degrade you.”

  “Oh, I see. Is that what you’re into?”

  “What?”

  “Are those your predilections?”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I can’t give you what you want. You want the girl next door. The white girl.”

  “So it’s jungle fever now? Make up your mind. I can’t keep up with you. I don’t even know what we’re arguing about.”

  Her relationships always ended like this, with vague misunderstandings and hurt feelings. She had never been able to sustain anything longer than a few months. She had a special gift, which was the ability to turn nice guys into assholes. On the surface, it seemed she had yet to learn anything about manipulating men, but perversely this was what she wanted, to sabotage things before they got too far, before she became too attached, before she was seen for who she really was. She recognized this about herself. Recognizing it didn’t prevent her from doing it. She was tempted to lie to Omar and tell him that she was a prostitute, just to ensure that he would not return, but she had a feeling it wouldn’t be necessary, and she was right. He went back to the base that day, and she didn’t hear from him again.

  THE THREE men were telling Lisa that their boss was lazy, ugly, and incompetent. Their boss, Murayama, sat at the table, smiling, soaking up the camaraderie.

  “Oh, you guys are so hard on me,” he said.

  “He doesn’t get into the office until eleven-thirty,” Uchida said, “and the first thing he does after setting down his briefcase is say, ‘Oh, it’s lunchtime.’ ”

  “He’s always chasing after the OLs,” Shimaki said. “He thinks he’s a real ladies’ man, but the girls are repulsed by him.”

  “And his golf game!” Ogata said. “I tell you, I’ve never seen a worse golfer. I’m shocked he’s allowed on the course, he’s
so dangerous. He sprays balls left and right. He has absolutely no control over his shots. Once, I saw him try to hit a tee shot, and the ball went backwards!”

  They all guffawed, the boss, Murayama, most of all. This was his doing, the ragging and ribbing. After they had been ensconced in the booth, after the waiter had brought over the boss’s bottle-keep of whiskey, a crystal ice bucket, mineral water, oshibori, and tiny dishes of soybeans, peanuts, and grapes, after a toast and some nervous chitchat, after Lisa had come to their booth and introductions had been made, Murayama had said, “Bureiko shimashoka?”—Shall we take a break?—signaling that the corny, good-natured insults, the nonsensical derision and mockery, the insipid jokes and non sequiturs, the pathetic attempts at wit, the childish shoves and bumps, the drunken giggles and near-pee-in-the-pants convulsions and hysterics over the most unamusing comments, the silly boasts and one-upmanship about who had the biggest dick and was the biggest sukebei—lecher—could begin. This was all about male bonding, solidifying group cohesion. They tore into each other and then built themselves back up. For every putdown, there was an equal and opposite homage.

  The talk inevitably turned to sex, but these evenings out weren’t really about sex. They could have gone to a Pink Salon or a Soapland for that. Hostesses weren’t for sale. The better and tonier the club, the more difficult the hostesses were to date outside the club, and of course their unattainability was part of their allure. The hostesses made the customers believe there was a tiny chance they might sleep with them, and, tantalized, the men kept coming back to the club, spending more and more money. The point was to keep them on a string, keep them spending for as long as possible. A hostess might say no tonight, but if she was good at her job, the man felt charmed, not frustrated, and would go home thinking he might get lucky on another night.

  True, the men could become saccharine and obsessive, proclaiming devotion and heartache, but Lisa suspected they secretly enjoyed the teasing, the torture of unrequited love. It was in line with mono no aware, the Japanese penchant for poignancy and sadness. It also corresponded to the generally accepted notion that if a hostess—after being plied with gifts and adoration, or after getting a financial offer she couldn’t refuse ($10,000 for one night seemed to be the going rate, but a Porsche was not unheard of)—if she succumbed and finally consented to sex, the game would be over. Almost certainly, the man would no longer be interested in the hostess and would stop coming to the club. That was why Midori forbade her hostesses from going on dohan with customers. She would fire them if she found out, she said.

  Lisa proved to be a good hostess, much to her own surprise, given her distaste for small talk, her unwillingness to suffer fools. She would never admit it, but she began to like the attention she was receiving from the men, as well as their money (she was making three times more at Rendezvous than she had at Musky Club). It was intoxicating, the use of her femininity, the art of flirting, being told she was beautiful. She developed a persona—a club Lisa that was much different from the real Lisa, a livelier, sexier Lisa. She was playing a role outside of herself—in service of her fieldwork, she told herself—and she changed the role to suit the circumstance. If they wanted boisterous, she could be boisterous. If they wanted demure, she could be demure. A large part of being a good hostess was the ability to evaluate within a matter of minutes what men wanted from her, listening and watching and picking up subtle cues, and adapting to them. It was very much like being a spy, she thought.

  Usually her role was to dole out breathless, vapid, hyperbolic compliments. Oh, you’re suteki—fantastic. Iroppoi—sexy. Hansumu—handsome. You’re so strong. You’re very smart. I love your tie—it’s Pierre Cardin? What a beautiful Rolex. You’re very fashionable. You look like a Parisian man. She reinforced whatever image the customer wanted to appropriate for himself, and never doubted or challenged his authority. No matter how bored or tired she was, she never appeared less than completely enthralled.

  At all costs, she had to keep the conversation going. If there was an awkward pause, any sort of dead air, it would create great anxiety among the men, and she had to do whatever was necessary to avert it. This sometimes meant allowing herself to be humiliated, reminded in no uncertain terms that she was inferior to the men. If need be, she let them belittle her, criticize her appearance, order her around, paw her. Such wanton behavior wasn’t as forceful or frequent as it had been at Musky Club, but it still existed at Rendezvous. She knew how to handle it better now. Instead of slapping away groping hands, she took them in her own. “Let’s hold hands, okay?” Or she laughed and gently scolded them, “You bad boy, you,” and moved away to reach for the ice, or excused herself to go to the bathroom.

  After two weeks at Rendezvous, Lisa thought she understood everything there was to understand at the club, but then a trio of men came in who immediately baffled her. Two of them were in their sixties and entirely forgettable in their looks, but one was in his early thirties and almost beautiful.

  He was slender, with long, thin limbs, and long, thin fingers, and a long, thin neck. He seemed almost sickly, he was so delicate and languid, but on closer examination, Lisa could see that the impression was false. He was watchful and alert to everything that was happening around him. He had thick hair brushed back from his forehead, angular cheekbones, and obtrusive lips. He looked like a Japanese movie star. Perhaps Midori or another hostess would recognize him and tell her later who he was. Obviously, he was someone special, because the expected hierarchy among the men was inverted. By seniority, he should have been the others’ subordinate, but he seemed to be the one in charge, the one who commanded deference. Lisa couldn’t figure it out. He didn’t appear to be a rich entrepreneur, a wunderkind whose business the older men were trying to court, and there was too much of an age gap for the men to be friends.

  The dynamics were further confused by two other factors. First, the younger man didn’t talk. He hardly said two words the entire hour they were in the club. Second, the men identified themselves with pseudonyms: Moe, Larry, and Curly.

  “The Three Stooges,” Moe said in hesitant English. “You understand Three Stooges?”

  “Yes,” Lisa said. “Nyuk, nyuk, nyuckleheads.”

  Apparently this allusion was too far beyond Moe’s capacity, for he stared at her as if she were foaming at the mouth.

  “Is there a reason why you’re using an alias?” she asked Curly, the other older gentleman.

  “Nani?”

  “Why Three Stooges?” she asked a little slower.

  “Ah, secret,” he said, and tittered.

  “We not here,” Moe said, and the two of them cackled.

  Another of the qualities for which Midori was renowned was her discretion. There were certain customers who, for whatever reason, wanted to maintain their anonymity. Perhaps their dealings with their guests were not wholly aboveboard. Perhaps they were engaging in bribes, back-door deals, kickbacks. Midori accommodated them with accounts that remained nameless, identified only by bottle-keep number—in the case of Moe, Larry, and Curly, No. 397. Tabs were settled at the end of the month in cash, with no paper trails.

  “So, Moe and Curly,” Lisa said, “you two are brothers?”

  “Yes, brothers,” Moe said. “Twins!”

  It was an unimaginative icebreaker, but it always worked. “I see. And where are you from?”

  “Sweden,” Curly said. “Stockholm.”

  “What do you all do for a living?”

  “I am sumo wrestler,” Moe said. “Curly is Olympic skier. Larry is . . .” They looked at the younger man. “Larry is garbage man.”

  They laughed, but they hardly got a rise from the silent Larry. He didn’t seem irritated. He wasn’t sulking. In fact he might have been slightly bemused. Yet he was inexplicably mute, a detached, impassive observer.

  “Really we are”—Curly checked and made sure no one was within earshot—“yakuza, gangsters.”

  “So desu ka?” Lisa whispered.


  “Honto-ni,” Curly asserted. “Can you know how old are we?”

  This was one of the customers’ favorite games at the club. “You are thirty-three,” she said to Moe. “And you are twenty-seven,” she said to Curly. “And you,” she said to Larry, “you can’t be a day younger than seventy-one.”

  Moe and Curly chuckled, pleased by the profoundly clever repartee. They asked all the perfunctory, predictable questions of her: where was she from, what was she (French-Italian, she told them, as she told everyone at the club), why was she in Japan (“Ah, insei,” they said—graduate student—nodding), how long had she been here, did she like it, did she like Japanese men, had she ever had any Japanese boyfriends.

  By now Lisa had learned that customers weren’t really interested in her answers. They didn’t want her life story. They wanted entertainment—a peculiar brand of Japanese entertainment that celebrated the baldest, most transparent exaggerations. “I’ve had one hundred ninety-three Japanese boyfriends,” Lisa said, “and I’ve slept with them all!”

  “Wa, sugoi!” the two men exclaimed—Incredible!—and hooted.

  Midori, dressed in another sparkling kimono, shuffle-stepped to the grand piano at the head of the room and, after a smattering of applause and a short speech of welcome, began singing a famous enka song, “Namida-goi.”

  Enka was a traditional Japanese style of folk ballads that featured drawn-out notes and swelling vibratos. To Lisa, it sounded like warbling, atonal screeching, like an animal dying. The songs were always tragic, nostalgic, melodramatic tributes to love, death, and abandonment, to women, sake, and rain. In other words, enka was the Japanese equivalent of country-and-western.

  Midori did a lovely job with “Namida-goi,” and then she invited the customers in the club to come take a turn at the microphone. A few did. One man from the adjoining booth, where Harper Boyd and Emi sat, gave a very accomplished rendition of Don Ho’s “Tiny Bubbles,” but evidently this was a song he performed repeatedly. He had even come prepared with costume: an aloha shirt. While he sang, his coworkers jokingly stuffed napkins into their ears and held their noses as if he were emanating a stink and dismissed him as “wan patan”—one pattern. Some people took voice lessons, Lisa knew, and practiced for these occasions. They urged another man in the group to sing, but he protested vociferously, saying he was hazukashii (ashamed), heta (bad), hidoi (awful). Finally he trudged up to the piano and blinked in the glare of the spotlight. He adjusted the music stand and flipped through the songbooks, and at last launched into Glen Campbell’s “Galveston.”