Chapter 13
“Ifyoucouldgo anywhere in the world,” Mr. Takatani, the president of Atsukatta Real Estate, asked his employees through a plume of cigarette smoke, “where would it be? It has to be outside of Japan!”
“That depends, shachou,” said Mr. Ishida, who sat to the right of the president and oversaw the delivery and ordering of more beer at the monthly company party. “Are we going there for business or pleasure?”
Aya didn’t hear the president’s response. It’s so damn hard to hear anything in an izakaya.That went double for when everyone started getting drunk and puffed on an entire carton of cigarettes among the small lot of them. Aya, always the only woman at these things, had put in enough time to no longer be the designated Pour Girl. Instead, the honor was now split between whatever waitress was assigned to their table and whoever was at the bottom of the proverbial food chain at Atsukatta. Currently, that was a new hire by the name of Kenji. He has a family name, of course, but even I can’t remember it. Everyone called him Kenji. A wonderful rite of passage at Atsukatta demanded that all new hires be known as their given name until someone usurped them as being the baby. That included Aya when she was new. Aya-chan was an identity she’d rather leave behind, although as far as hazing went in these male-dominated fields, she judged she got off easy.
“How about you, Sugiya-san?”
Mr. Ishida had prompted Aya to answer the question. She drank more beer and turned down a free cigarette from Kenji, who currently went around the table, deferentially offering tobacco from a Seven Stars package. The poor kid had probably bought them from a vending machine outside of the izakaya. They’d be gone by the end of the night. Especially if Mr. Takatani kept smoking like a chimney.
“Where would I go?” Aya repeated.
“Un.” Both her supervisor and the president of the company stared her down for an answer. “Anywhere in the world,” Takatani continued. “Outside of Japan. Kenji here already tried saying Okinawa. He doesn’t follow rules very well.”
“I am so, so sorry, sir,” Kenji apologized with multiple bows of the head. “I will do better to come up with a good answer next time.”
“You hear this kid?” the president whispered when Kenji ran to the other end of the table to offer everyone down there more cigarettes. “Superstar in the making. Now, we only gotta teach him how to sell a manshon.”
Aya was still thinking about her answer. “Singapore,” she eventually said.
“Ahhhh!” Both of the men she answered to were satisfied with that unique answer. “I’ve been there,” Takatani said. “My wife’s distant cousins are from there, and we went to a wedding a few years ago. Cleanest place I’ve ever been in my life! Cleaner than Tokyo, if you can believe it!”
Based on how much trash Aya always saw around the public bins of an izakaya, she actually could.
“Why Singapore?” Mr. Ishida asked.
“Well…”
“I bet it was Ms. Liu who inspired you to want to visit Singapore,” Takatani said through his haze of cigarette smoke and beer. “Have you boys ever met a woman like that before? We’ve had some fancy clients before, but never in my life have I seen a woman who oozes sophistication like that. I thought she had stumbled into the wrong office the first time she called us!”
Aya maintained her poker face while using her disposable chopsticks to pluck half-cooled gyoza off its plate. If her mouth was too busy masticating, then nobody could expect her to answer a question that could possibly incriminate her.
“She really was something else, huh?” Mr. Ishida shot Aya a look. Not the jolly-old-uncle kind, either. The kind that makes me think he’s on to something. Aya stared straight ahead, eating her pork gyoza. “She really took to our Sugiya-san. Like two peas in a pod.”
Damnit, Ishida.
“Eh? That so! Good work, Sugiya-san. Good to know that you’re the reason we got that nice commission off that old building in Shinjuku. I honestly didn’t think anybody would move that thing anytime soon. Every time they try to gentrify Shinjuku Ni-chome a bit, there’s all that pushback from the community. You know the one. Assless chaps and nipple piercings!”
Aya almost spat out her gyoza. Takatani really let his thoughts fly when he was drunk.
“Uh-huh…” Mr. Ishida was more reserved, although he had almost drunk as much as the president. “Now she’s come back for some return business, as you may know, shachou. Ms. Liu wants us to find her a suitable apartment to purchase to use when she’s in town, overseeing her other real estate dealings.”
“That’s what I like to see. Repeat business!” Takatani slammed his fist on the table, startling the waitress coming in with another pitcher of beer. Everyone else at the table, from Kenji the Supreme Junior to the other agents whom Aya occasionally worked with, looked up in curiosity. “Our goal for the next quarter,” Takatani continued, elbow on the table and finger shaking in the air, “is to increase our repeat business. The more Ms. Lius we have on our roster, the more successful we will be in the long term. Time. I mean… term.” He burped.
Aya placed her chopsticks across her small plate. “I hear Singapore is beautiful all year round. Perfect weather, if you like it hot.”
Mr. Ishida picked up on what she was attempting to accomplish. “Sou, sou. I’ve heard the same thing. You can show up at New Year’s and work on your tan.”
“Fantastic street food!” Takatani exclaimed. “If you ever have the chance to go, I definitely recommend walking around and sampling the local wares. You’ve never had squid like you have in Singapore.”
You’ve also never known a beautiful woman until you go there, too, apparently. Aya couldn’t believe she was still thinking about Genevieve, a woman she hadn’t seen in over a week. Nudes notwithstanding. Somewhere, deep in the memory card of her phone, was a scandalous video of one of Singapore’s wealthiest women touching herself to thoughts of Aya, a random real estate agent in the far-flung reaches of Western Tokyo.
This time, when Kenji came around with cigarettes, Aya was tempted to take one. Thinking about Genevieve, in all her HD glory, bringing herself to orgasm in nothing but a silk robe, was the pinnacle of a woman’s existence right now. Her face may not be in the video, but I know who she is. Aya had a feeling that most of her associates would know, too.
“Sugiya-san!”
“Ara?” Aya was caught daydreaming while the president asked her a question. “I’m so sorry, shachou. What was it?”