III.
This is the absurdity of my situation. I'm standing in the elevator foyer on the twenty-second story of Roppongi Hills staring at a door that's just been slammed, feeling a sort of rage. Of course I am contemptuous at Dominique, who cannot handle her drugs; and Shan, ridiculous coolie Shan, is not even worth contempt; but Soren, Soren who I have talked down from midnight alcoholic crises; Soren who I have supported on too-drunk-to-walk, taxis refusing to take us four a.m. treks home all the way from Shibuya; Soren, who in truth I have argued with a dozen times before, countless screamfests that break out by 3pm and are fully resolved by the third round of drinks that evening but this one feels entirely different, I know this one is really one that's completely different in character, about Soren I feel a genuine and explosive rage, a complete sense of betrayal and wrath. Yet, strangely, or maybe just because all intense emotions inspire their opposites, I experience simultaneously a curious feeling of guilt, almost that I have indeed done something wrong.
Three days later: "Soren, hey Soren are you there? This is Ritchie. I am not a freakin' FBI agent. If I were, I would have arrested your ass years ago. Besides, you have seen me do just about every controlled substance under the sun. How the hell is that going to hold up in court? I honestly don't care if you never talk to me again, but anyway this is the third message I'm leaving for you. My iPod is lying on your kitchen counter. It has an entire library of songs, fully paid for. I would like it back. You don't have to give it back to me in person. You don't have to drop it off in my workplace. Just leave it with your doorman and let me know, I will walk over and pick it up myself. Don't be a tool."
A few days later:
"Soren, it's been a week now. I need that iPod. A personal music player made by Apple, Inc., white metal about the size of a deck of cards lying just to the right of your kitchen sink, probably still plugged-in. Maybe you'd be so kind as to return it to me. Like today. Drop it off at your apartment front desk or just put it in the mail with a little bubble-wrap around it. I'm sure it'll get to me just fine. I'm asking very nicely."
Two weeks:
"Soren, this is the last time I'm going to call. You made me leave your apartment and you did not give me the opportunity to recover a valuable electronic device from your kitchen counter. To be specific, a three-hundred-dollar piece of equipment and one that costs a lot more to replace here in Tokyo. I don't even know if I can get an English-language one here. So come up with the goods or write me a nice fat check. I'm not going to back down from this, because what you're doing is called 'theft.' Got that? 'Theft.' This is Ritchie Ufuo, it's the twenty-third of August at 3pm, and I expect a response or I will pursue all legal means to recover my property."
Something finally clicks, though perhaps not necessarily because of my message. Soren emails me back finally to claim that he had put my iPod in my vestibule mailbox in my very apartment building, in fact the very next day after that crazy night, but I check that thing every day and it definitely wasn't there the day after the party nor is it there now. The mailbox is this little green metal thing, completely unsecured. Anybody could have taken the MP3 player. I kick up another fuss by text message and voicemail, insisting that he at least partially reimburse me, and finally he agrees to hand over 5000 yen, less than $50, and I am just so exhausted and weary of it all that I consent to the tiny, purely symbolic sum of money that really in truth is far less than is fair. And maybe I let a little hint of threat enter this dispute, knowing that rich partyboys living off family money have just a bit more to lose than university grads two years out of college. We meet at a coffeeshop, perhaps both motivated in part to size each other up. Neither of us have to acknowledge that our friendship is over, that now is the time for cold politeness.
"So have you heard anything?"
"Not really; there were some cop cars hanging around my apartment last week, but I'm not sure they were there for me."
Soren looks thoughtful. "I heard Shan got arrested. Seems he pulled a knife on Dominique later that night."
"Shan?" This is a completely unexpected development. "I told you that guy's a weirdo. You seem to keep a real high quality of friend around, don't you."
"OK; well here's your five thousand yen." He turns abruptly and leaves, his untouched coffee steaming away on the table.
My reference to the cop cars is not made up. On the evening of the fourth day after the party, I spent a quiet evening at the Lion's Head pub in Ebisu, eating fish and chips and watching a judo match on the big-screen television with the rest of the regulars. I turned in early, saying goodbye to Tom at the bar, and walk back up the short hill to the Yamanote-line station, my nerves perhaps eighty percent of the way to being calmed down after that strange, intense night.
Shinjuku is between Ebisu and Setagaya. At the main west Tokyo station, I needed to switch trains, and I stopped by a bookstore that I've stopped by a hundred times before to browse some of their English-language titles. I was examining a TIME magazine cover on mad cow disease when I noticed, of all people, Dominique walking in, this time accompanied by a grotesquely obese expat who we had mocked before together, a guy who is so fat that his ankle actually just broke—no fall down the stairs, no trip on an unseen crack in the sidewalk--just a failure of the ankle bones in protest of the four hundred pounds they weren't designed to carry around. There was this odd moment of silence as neither of us acknowledge each other's presence, but internally, I'm thinking, "Pathetic. Is this who you're associating with now? Especially after you're the one who led the round of insults against this guy?" Maybe I even had the slightest urge to just boldly walk forward, extending my hand and saying, "Hi, Dominique! Calmed down a bit now?" But some instinct of self-preservation restrained me, and they left, almost definitely after having noticed me, pausing a bit, and then making a decision, and I, after a few minutes deciding I'm not going to pick up a copy of "Charisma Man: the First Year," rejoined the crowds and the noise in the station proper.
It took me about another forty minutes to get home, counting a brief stop at my neighborhood grocer's for milk. Right when I make the final turn to my street, however, what I saw were two police cars, lights spinning, parked directly in front of my apartment building. I couldn't help but wonder if for some bizarre reason, they're there for me. Without really making it a conscious decision, I decided I'll visit the neighborhood bar, a tiny little Japanese 'izakaya' pub run by the "Chief," an old Japanese man who used to run a bar in Yokosuka and who thus manages a surprising English. Two or three hours later, after having downed a trio of Kirins and my little plastic shopping bag of milk now room temperature, I decide to call it a night for the second time that evening, and this time, when I turn the corner to my apartment, the street is deserted.
This mysterious little incident leaves me once more hyped up, paranoid, and unresolved, so it's almost a relief to get a message on my answering machine a few days after I meet up with Soren:
"Hi Richard Ufuo. This is Tom Fannet from the U.S. Embassy Tokyo. I'm the chief of security here, and my job is to ensure the safety of all U.S. nationals in a foreign country, including you. I was hoping you might be willing to come in and have a little chat. This is purely, 100% voluntary. We've heard there's been some sort of incident involving threats to a U.S. national, and we hope you might help us tell us what you know. Again, you certainly don't have to come in if you don't want…. "
I don't remember the exact wording Fannet uses. But despite his repeated bland assurances that my cooperation is completely voluntarily, he and I both know perfectly well that I don't really have a choice in the thing, not after police cars, not after rumors of Chinese boyfriends pulling out knives. So the next day in the afternoon I get permission from my boss to run some errands, and I hop over to Akasaka.
Receptionist: "Hi, can I help you?"
"Yes, my name is Ritchie Ufuo, I received a call from Tom Fannet to come in and speak."
The woman looks bored. "Uh, yes, let me see if he's available."
Hurried talking and back and forth, hand over the handset despite the two inches of plexiglass. Then the little panel in the window slides open.
"Mr. Ufuo? Mr. Ufuo did you say? He'll be right out."
"Now aren't you impressed that I can just walk in and get Tom Fannet."
"You wouldn't believe it."
Fannet comes out and welcomes me inside the secured area of the embassy in a big, generous cop-like sort of way. He turns out to be a balding middle-aged man with a mustache and a New York accent. We go down the hallway to his office, a fairly decent sized one, piled high with paperwork, and with the walls covered in various certificates and accolades. There's a picture of him shaking hands with President Clinton and a window that looks out into the embassy parking-lot. With a noncommittal expression, he begins.
"So, Ritchie, thanks so much for stopping by. Some tea or coffee maybe?"
"Coffee would be great."
The security chief presses a button on his phone and has some coffee sent in. We make some small talk, and when I describe my job at the company as involving a constant brokering of relationships between the risk-averse Japanese management and the revolutionary possibilities opened by new IT coding, he does seem genuinely interested. But there's also this detectable moment when he switches over to talk business; his entire posture in his chair changes.
"So Ritchie, our meeting today is in many ways completely unnecessary, but I wanted there to be open and honest communication. I don't want you to feel that you aren't a part of the process."
"Okay."
"If you're feeling uncomfortable about certain developments, I do want you to know that your rights and prerogative are respected, and nobody is being allowed to just make claims that are accepted without due consideration for your assessment about things."
"Sir, is this about the police cars in my neighborhood a few days ago?"
Fannet raises an eyebrow, keeping his cards very close.
"You saw police cars?"
"Japanese police vehicles right in front of my apartment."
"But nothing happened, right? Nobody's booked you or accused you for anything."
"I don't need even blue lights."
Fannet continues to look me in the eye. Maybe just because I don't really have any aces up my sleeve, I accept the gambit.
"Look, Mr. Fannet, let's skip the bluffing: I live in Kita-Shinjuku. To get there, I need to pass through Shinjuku Station. I stop into the station bookstore almost every week. The bookstore owner will back me up. I mean, go get the station camera if you don't believe me, because she's not saying that I actually approached her, is she?"
Fannet looks out the window. His heaps and heaps of papers on his desk each topped by dark binders. The New York accent now seem to intensify ever so slightly.
"Ritchie, there are relationships involved which bring their own agendas… "
"But you need to rely on actual evidence. If I run into Dominique by complete coincidence and I don't touch a hair on her head, then how does that all add up to bringing the cavalry out?"
A slightly mollifiying voice: "You may have heard that a Chinese national has been arrested…"
"So I've heard. But if he pulled out a knife out on somebody, of course he needs to be charged on those charges."
Fannet nods his head. "Look here, there's no need to worry. Anyway, we understand Mr. Le is of foreign citizenship, so we can't really comment on the situation. We are in full communication with the Chinese embassy about the situation…"
I look Fannet in the eye as he launches into his bureaucratic newspeak and catch a glimmer of an unspoken message in the way his eyes don't leave my face. Do not associate with Shan, for if you do so, you do so at your own peril. Our conversation resumes, and Fannet stonewalls as before, but for my part, and I believe I am not calculating in doing so, merely one individual backed up in a corner, I believe I communicate in return that I will not be a patsy for unfounded charges and that even if I am not wealthy or infinitely connected, I am not helpless, there is not nobody back home who would back me up. I will not be subject to charges and false accusations.
"So what happened, dude? I heard Shan went psycho at Soren's party and pulled out a knife, people were terrified and running out of the place. I've always said that dude is bad news."
It's Herrera who's the first to get to me, and though he's gleeful and laughing and demanding to know What Happened, I make him tell me about his night first, that wild party of Latinos who filled up an entire limousine, laughing and calling out and waving taken-off t-shirts at the uptight Japanese populace. "Well, we hit up Vanilla and we totally partied out all day. Good times. Now as for Shan? He really pull out a knife?"
"Dude, I don't know anything about Shan. From what I saw, I thought he was already gone. If he did pull a knife out, though, I agree he does need to go to jail. That's totally uncool—you can't do that."
Herrera cocks his eyebrow. "And you know Soren's completely disappeared."
"Disappeared? Like he's missing? I just saw him a week ago!"
"Well you're one of the few. He left a message on his voicemail saying he needed to take a little vacation, and then later, it was just changed to saying he needs to focus on work and thanks everyone for turning out. People tried to call his company but the operator won't let them through, and you know, you can't just bother somebody at work for personal life stuff. So nobody can reach him."
"Wow that's weird," I say, thinking it so. "How about the girl? Any news on Dominique?"
Herrera almost looks scared. "Nothing, man. You know her father's the senior trade commissioner for US-Japan relations? He's a big shot in the Republican Party, some guy who's going to actually run the whole thing one day. And Dominique's a psycho girl. Basically if she came up to you putting a gun to her own head, crying she's going to kill herself, you're the one who's going to end up shot somehow, god knows how."
Later, it seems to no small part Soren's over-reaction to things, or perhaps what is really a not unsignalled premeditated life decision to withdraw from the social scene and get serious about work, has its part in exacerbating events as they unfold. When I first met him, he was in some sort of disgrace. My entry into his life inspires one last run in the sun, but he had always been planning to buckle down. It just had to happen this way. His abrupt departure from the social scene, which throws certain comments and tones of voice of especially the last six months in new perspective, turns what might be a private affair into some important, secretive Big Thing that becomes the primary subject matter for all young Tokyo. I don't even in good faith hold the end of our friendship against him, as it was grounded in a superficiality and spontaneity that would have eventually doomed it if not that year, then quite possibly the next. But if Soren doesn't go completely hermit, if he doesn't completely undergo a 180 degree reversal from life-of-the-party to far-off-seen individual, if Soren simply throws a small dinner party or something just to show his face, maybe people are far less likely to get excited, maybe people won't be saying things like "did you hear about the murder?" "Isn't it true there's some crazy stalker Chinese guy who's targeting all Americans?" "Have you heard of some twisted sex game going on in Roppongi Hills and the girl nailed three guys?"
Unfortunately for Shan, he's picked perhaps the worst possible time for getting charged with flashing a knife at an American girl. Only nine months prior, an American girl by the name of Dolores Blair who worked at a hostess bar was killed by her old boyfriend from back home, her body discovered in an alley by trash collectors the next day. The resulting uproar was covered in the international press. So, Dominique on arrival at the embassy that night, we are only months later to discover, is not saying, "Oh, I hung out with this lowlife Chinese dude and he pulled a knife on me," but crying and repeating hysterically "This is another Blair, This is another Blair, This is another Blair, he's trying to kill me, he's trying to kill me, he's trying to kill me, somebody protect me from the crazy stalker" in her statements to the embassy security staff. Lurid news coverage carried by the foreign press had been putting pressure on Japan for six months to reform its "soapland" culture, and no matter what the local police do, they find themselves under criticism, making them a bit more jumpy and sensitive to foreign demands than usual. And third, but I feel real, the suicide of Blair's killer, the weird army drop-out social-recluse, has left a strange feeling of a lack of resolution, a sort of challenge to our collective foreigner's society. We want our criminals to grovel on the stand, begging for mercy and striving their hardest for one sweet more moment of life, only to be ruthlessly punished by the collective judgment of the community. This gives you closure: this makes you say, it's true--criminals are all cowards in the end, this lets you sleep comfortably at night. But for Blair's killer to kill himself too? Somehow this lacks closure. Closure I tell you.
"So, Oh My God, What the Hell Happened at the Party?"
By the fourth time I go over the story, I'm beginning to slightly feel the absurdity of the situation, but this time, it's a big crowd, the first really general audience since Soren's birthday, a random encounter on the street that turns out to be running into a bunch of people out for Italian food. All eyes are on me.
"So there's this Chinese dude, Shan, right? Apparently he pulled out a knife out on Dominique after some kind of argument. But it must have happened a few days after the party."
The girl who first queries me gets a sort of puzzled look.
"But what happened to Soren? Why did he suddenly disappear? Is he even still in Japan?"
"So I hear. Still going to work everyday, not like it's hard since it's all in the same building. But I think he just decided that he's had enough of partying."
"Wow, that's so sudden. Weird. Really weird."
It's here and events similar to these that I begin to get my first lessons in what really defines a human being. I watch, unreacting but burning in cynicism, as people who have drunk deeply at Soren's parties, girls who have fluttered about him cooing and tossing their hair, guys who have knocked beer steins with him and called him "mate," now deprived of the free and flowing alcohol, the apartment open at all hours of the day and night, are the quickest to turn on the missing party-boy, competing to see who could come up with the cleverest put-downs on the absent figure. Old Soren would have been all over the scene like a starving bulldog on a meaty bone, ripping out the one-liners and setting up the one-two kills of anyone stupid enough to challenge the existing order. But instead, radiating out of the Hills Residence is just…silence. So it's fashionable now to go on the offensive, secure in the knowledge there won't be payback.
"Hey do you guys remember when he crashed his brand new car just two miles out of the showroom? Talk about a dork, can't even drive straight."
"Yeah I heard he was telling everybody he was sleeping with Shannon, but she says it was him who tried to hit on her when he was drunk, and it wasn't even sexy, just annoying."
"And jeez wasn't it weird how he kept that Chinese dude around, like stuffed in his closet just for when he needed him…"
"Yeah, like some below-the-stairs retard cousin he's pull out when he wanted to offend people. I can totally see that dude pulling a knife on somebody." And then the conversation turns to all sorts of stories from the era before I knew him; weird moments everyone now begins to recall. “So Soren's father had contributed great sums to a school and Soren went to a banquet they threw as a representative. Shan is there as one of the beneficiaries of the scholarships that are funded by the donated cash, dressed up and wheeled out for the night to explain in awkward English how grateful they are for the support. At the dinner table, the two hit it off.”
"No way, you guys got it all wrong. It's three a.m. on a late Friday night, and Soren has just slept with some flaky little Paris Hilton-wannabe who has starred in a number of low-budget Hollywood flicks and has come to Tokyo in some misguided belief that if she's at least somebody in Hollywood, in Tokyo she's a goddess from the heavens. The girl is passed-out drunk, completely zonked-out high on cocaine, and barely coherent if awoken. When Soren orders some Chinese food and the delivery boy arrives, the possibility of a ridiculously amusing prank occurs to him. For 50000 yen cash, the delivery boy is convinced to undress and spend the night in that bed. When the starlet awakes the next morning, what she discovers is that her vaguely-remembered night of a handsome young finance playboy was apparently in reality involved a barely-literate Chinese food delivery boy and of course she's so mortified and so terrified Soren will tell everyone that now she's his slave. And that delivery boy is Shan!”
The most likely story is just the simplest. Shan and Soren just met. It could have been on the street, in some park, or some random casual acquaintance. Soren did have kind of a thing for China; I sometimes saw him with a study book practicing the strange-sounding language. And you might wonder what could a buck-toothed Chinese Waseda scholarship boy from a literally stench-ridden village have in common with a spoiled American playboy? But that was exactly it: they were entirely compatible. When Soren went just a little too far, when he had some girl ready to be completely outraged at who he was, he could always bring Shan out of whatever little box he stored him in, and be like, "Look, this is the alternative. Do you notice the complete lack of desire to please or attract women? The 100% lack of fashion sense or taste in music, ability in clever conversation? Be grateful you're in the company of a guy who at least opens doors for you!" And that would be usually enough; that would shut up most girls.
So maybe it might be said Shan is outside his league. He's hanging out with people a bit more socially sophisticated than him. He's a first generation Chinese guy studying science at a prestigious Japanese university trying to handle an American girl most guys would have trouble trying to keep on an even keel. You can't skip generations like that--it's you who goes to the West on a scholarship, your son who goes to medical school, and the third generation, the Americanized generation, that finally dates American girls, smokes pot, and complains cleverly about society. Maybe Shan is just trying to skip ahead too much time too quickly. In any case, one day we hear about the police finally coming for him, formal charges have been filed by the U.S. Embassy. Another day my cell phone rings, and its some new girl demanding to know the latest news. And I'm like, “Not entirely sure, but I'll do my best to update; something's just so strange about the whole thing...”
“You think? I think everyone just thinks that guy is a psycho.”
“Shan wanted to play the Game, he wanted to go straight from the rice paddy to being a big city player. A guy like that has got to be intense to begin with, but when he can't just seem to grasp the strategy of doing absolutely nothing at all...”
“If you're going to visit him in jail, just don't forget to invite me. I've never been to a jail.”
And separately: “Shan, you need to understand this. This is far more at stake here than just getting a criminal record. If you're convicted of a felony, you lose your visa, you lose your scholarship, you lose everything you and your parents have been working for for years. Just admit you had a knife, trust the police will let you off with a warning, and get on with your life already, it's not a serious crime.”
“Ritchie, I did not pull knife on Dominique ReyFoorve. I did not pull knife on Dominique. She is crazy girl.”
Yet throughout these strange unsettled three weeks, the biggest engine of my cynicism is one of the smallest girls, Lydia, a little chipmunk-faced girl who comes over to join us, and who I watch literally switch positions in mid-sentence as she realizes which way the wind is blowing after spending a week out of town and being out of t