It was, after all, one way to get laid in Japan. And in a nation where a small cup of coffee cost ten dollars, no method for generating revenue was unthinkable.
But as there was more to his story, there was more to hers as well, which made it all very complex. Not long before meeting Manning, she had been “scouted” by a “movie producer” who was interested in Ryoko’s natural good looks…and trim, breasty body, of which she was rightfully proud. The “movie producer” was of course a pornographer who promised her fame and riches. At the time, Ryoko was intensely interested in both, especially since most of her friends were content to spend their time shopping while sponging off their parents. Ryoko’s family had raised her with an understanding of personal accountability, and while they would most certainly have disagreed with her potential career choice, they would have no problems with her making her own money.
Ryoko took the job, and was reborn in Japan’s adult video industry as Sugimoto Ai. She had finished her first production the day before meeting Manning, and while aspects of it disgusted her, there was a part of the process which interested her deeply-namely, the production and distribution of filmed entertainment. And the?550,000 she made for seven hours work was something she deemed worthwhile, as well.
She kept this secret from Manning for two weeks, though as a healthy gaijin with a stronger-than-average sex drive and a genuine curiosity about all things Japanese, it would be only a matter of time until he found out. Thinking he was truly the consultant he claimed to be, Ryoko agonized over how to break the news to him. When she finally did tell him, he laughed after a moment.
“Believe me, you could be doing a lot worse,” he had told her. Ryoko was happy to discover how open-minded he was. And was even more thrilled when he continued the financial end of their arrangement; apparently, he was happy with her as well.
But she had known there was more to him than he was admitting to her. Patience was one of her better virtues, so she merely waited. And continued to work. And continued to see him.
He finally confessed his other life to her when he returned from a week at his home in San Francisco. But it actually hadn’t been San Francisco at all; it had been first Taiwan, and then Xiamen, across the strait in China. He had been given a contract by his employers, and that meant four men died. They were criminals one and all, foul, dirty men who robbed and cheated and lied and had done killing of their own. It was then that he told her he was a repairman, someone who “fixed” problems for which there was no legal recourse. And his method of fixing required that blood be spilled.
This revelation had, of course, terrified her. She fled, and did not speak to him again for six months.
Over the course of this time, however, two things became very apparent to her. As a girl with no real job skills and currently employed in an industry where she was the merchandise, there was very little chance of her altering the current status quo. As long as she kept her looks and her body and showed up for work, she would be paid well-the DVDs she starred in and the picture books she posed for were becoming famous in Japan and even abroad, and she had something of a growing fan base. She toured various nightclubs in Japan and other parts of Asia, and had even been to the UK and Los Angeles and Rome once for a photo shoot. But her attempts to get into more legitimate productions and artistic endeavors continued to fail; she was known as an AV actress, and was considered dirty in Japanese society. The fact of the matter was, she was a lousy performer when it came to acting with her clothes on. That coupled with the expected stigmas rampant in Japanese society meant that more doors would forever remain closed to her than those that would be open, and those open doors merely led to more opportunities to “merchandise” herself.
The worst part was, of course, when her family found out. She was shamed when her father, of all people, brought a contingent of overseas foreign executives working for Matsushita to one of the clubs where she was performing. While he said nothing to her about that night, she could only imagine the blackness that settled around his heart when he watched his daughter perform and expose herself for men. It had hurt her terribly, as she knew it had hurt him. When she was a child, her father had doted on her, but at the same time had done everything he could to raise her up to be a respectable woman, a woman of means. His expectations for her were dated and unexciting, but they were the things most fathers wished for their daughters, and on that night, he knew that they would never be hers.
The despondence he felt only exacerbated the problems between him and Ryoko’s mother, problems they had taken great pains to hide from her. They were beginning the formal process of divorce, and in the end, it proved to be too much for Ryoko’s father. Apparently unable to bear the weight of these things, he committed suicide by walking out in front of a bus. He was killed instantly, his body dragged for dozens of yards before the horrified bus driver could stop.
For Ryoko, those were the blackest of days. She discovered she had endless tolerance for abuse, and could absorb the ravages of alcohol, of drugs, of rough-handed men who only wanted to use her, from low-level Yakuza henchmen to the captains of Japanese industry for whom she prostituted herself at the rate of?1,000,000 per night. She descended into a spiritual darkness she had never before known, never taking pleasure from the couplings, never able to maintain any kind of relationship, not able to buy enough things with all her money to fulfill her. But her fate was firmly established; no matter how bleak things got, no matter how utterly decimated she was on the inside, she was unable to summon the courage her father had. Where he had the steel in him to know what to do when life’s punishments far exceeded its rewards, she lacked that strength. So while she was sexing and drinking and drugging, she was also slowly going insane. Trapped in a life where there was no way out.
Until the day she called Manning. She was intending to hire him-after all, he was a killer, right? — her only sole desire at that point was to beg him to make the pain stop. To end her miserable existence, and take from her the shame that always threatened to drown her, but never quite did.
“I need to talk with you,” she had said when she called him. Hot tears burned down her lovely face, leaving trails of fire, her misery a black hole that threatened to consume every last bit of sanity, leaving behind only a mindless animal cowering in a beautiful package.