“Alright. Action!”
The clapper snapped and the buzzer rang. Silence rippled through the set.
When I cradled Aiko in my arms, she flung my hands away and threw herself decisively against the wall, whipping back her pale jaw. The shock made her nod mechanically, like a doll someone had tossed. Her teeth clacked like ceramic.
“No, no! Stay away from me!”
I was sitting with my feet free, ready to stand, before she’d even spoken. I sprang up flawlessly and towered over her. The camera shot us from the side, filming Aiko’s trembling face as she watched me with an expression that the script described as “full of fear and anticipation.”
I turned toward the camera and dropped my hands onto her shoulders, to push her down. Aiko was too stiff and didn’t understand how to go down gracefully. It felt like I was yanking on the handle of a creaky pump that badly needed greasing. But I had to make my movements fluid, effortless, and strong.
Once Aiko had fallen to the bed and started crying (though in a way that left much to be desired), I took center stage. Finally, I was able to move without resistance.
I looked down at the crying woman at my feet and smirked. She arched her back, pushing her chest out just enough to accentuate her breasts. I twisted up my lips, shiny with lip balm, ran my fingers through my hair, and tugged apart the tie, in the rakish way I’d worked out during the test run. I took care not to rush, loosening the knot in three deliberate motions, each gesture dripping with my readiness to enjoy this woman’s body.
But I had to keep from appearing to be a villain. A heartthrob must always be supple; his face must never lose its natural innocence. I ripped open my shirt, nearly popping off the buttons. The amber muscles of my chest, prepped earlier with body makeup, gleamed lustrously before the camera.
I freed my arms from my sleeves and delivered my line: “Quit crying. You know I’m gonna treat you right.”
“Cut!”
Takahama took a sharp breath. In the usual sulking way, he let out his reluctant signal of approval.
“OK.”
4
It’s become a tradition for me to pin up the life-size poster from my current project right inside the front door. Every night, when I get home, I’m the first one there to greet me.
As we neared the end of filming, the posters kept coming. That night, I found the life-size color poster of me waiting in the mail. The format was always the same: I stood alone against a white background. Theaters everywhere would paste these onto sheets of plywood, cut around my body with a jigsaw, and stand me up outside the entrance. On windy days, there was nothing worse than passing a movie theater on the edge of town and seeing myself knocked facedown on the pavement.
On this particular poster, I wore the standard suit, but with a crimson polo shirt under the jacket. The neck of the shirt was open, and a solid gold pendant of a skull was glinting from my chest. This composition was yet another masterpiece from our set photographer. He’d really made it come alive by shooting from a low angle, to make me taller. The PR Office had been picky about the face I made and asked for subtle adjustments until finally giving this one their approval. My cheeks were rosy, my smile sober.
Coming home exhausted late at night to find this cheery character waiting gave me a boost of energy, because I knew that when we took that photograph I was equally exhausted◦— my carefree grin a total lie.
The next morning, the house was blanketed in fog. I was standing out front, annoyed that my taxi was running late, when a group of schoolgirls emerged from the fog and started pinching at my thighs. I heard myself shriek, and in that instant the white trim on the backflaps of their sailor suits vanished into the mist.
That day we were supposed to shoot the final scene at Shinobazu Pond in Ueno Park, but the foul weather made us stay on set for two more days, until it cleared and we could finally head out on location. Here, Neriko, in a last-ditch effort to convince me to leave the yakuza, drags me to a bench by the edge of the pond and confesses her deepest secret, which I never saw coming: her brother was the reason I wound up in jail. He was my role model, my idol◦— and the one who talked. The guys who killed him had their own agenda, but unbeknownst to them, they’d settled my score.
I shake my head at the stupidity of this world of crime. Taken by Neriko’s emotional sincerity, I help her into a rowboat and paddle us out into the pond. She offers me a piece of gum, which I refuse; she insists, and finally I accept it and proceed to chew the gum with a huge grin on my face. “the end” floats up from the surface of the water and begins to grow, but in the foreground, back at the water’s edge, you see the figure of a plainclothes cop cupping the photo of me that the precinct circulated when they billed me as a pimp. As he sizes up our little boat, the black back of his jacket swells like a thundercloud to fill the screen as “the end” peaks in size, and the movie ends. I thought this philosophical comment on the fleeting nature of contentment wasn’t such a bad way to wind things up. It was a message that appealed to the lucky and the unlucky alike.
At lunchtime on the day we shot the pond scene, a film columnist from a classy women’s magazine met us at a sushi bar in Ueno to hold an interview. Squeezing through the throngs of fans peeking through the windows, she joined us at the counter, taking her seat with an obvious air of education. When she was finished with her questions, she peered at me through her glasses, sighed, and said, “I feel bad for you. I really do.”
Plenty of stars would fall for this sort of line◦— they’re tired of being simply adored or envied and are quick to take a sign of sympathy as proof of being understood. Not me. All she would get from me was a naive young celebrity, complacent with his fame. When she stood up to go, Kayo, who’d been eating sushi beside me, started coughing in the most believable way, and sent two or three beads of rice flying at the woman’s back.
The studio kept things moving and was already abuzz with preparations for the next production. As soon as things are wrapping up, you dive right in again.
The next movie was a romantic tragedy set in high society. Once we were finished shooting at the pond that evening, the producer, thinking I could learn a thing or two about the upper crust, took me along to a fancy party. The gathering was hosted by a former prince at his former palace, now a hotel, where once a month he held gatherings for the families of the former nobility and those of solid pedigree.
When we arrived, the producer carted me around making introductions and schmoozing with everyone we met. I’d never had so many people fail to recognize me◦— somehow no one knew my name, and the elegant young ladies claimed they’d never seen my films. The second we were introduced, they resumed their conversations.
On the ride home, the producer was suddenly a champion for the common man.
“Oh how the mighty have fallen! On a normal night at home those assholes are probably roasting herring on sticks around a fire pit. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Movies are about the make-believe. Forget about imitating anyone or anything. Just give us a pure, gallant young gentleman, okay?”
As I sat through his pep talk, my mind drifted back to a moment at the party when the producer had introduced me to one of the beautiful young women without mentioning my profession. She’d tilted her neck ever so slightly as she looked me over. This was a breach of manners, no matter how you saw it. If she really didn’t know my name, custom would have kept her from betraying it with such a gesture. Tilting her neck like that, so elegantly you could almost miss it. She knew what she was doing. Her features were chilly and refined; she had the trim nose and flat brow of an antique doll, and her little red lips looked like a spot of red ink left by a dropper.