Solomon found it peculiar that Phoebe got so angry about the history of Koreans in Japan. After three months of living in Tokyo and reading a few history books, she’d concluded that the Japanese would never change. “The government still refuses to acknowledge its war crimes!” Strangely, in these conversations, Solomon found himself defending the Japanese.
They planned on visiting Seoul together for a week when the deal season ended and work slowed down. He hoped Seoul would be some sort of neutral territory for them—a place to feel normal since they were both Korean immigrants of a kind. And it didn’t hurt that Phoebe spoke very good Korean; his Korean was pathetic at best. He had visited South Korea with his father several times, and everyone there always treated them like they were Japanese. It was no homecoming; however, it was great to visit. After a while, it had been easier just to play along as Japanese tourists who had come to enjoy the good barbecue rather than to try to explain to the chest-beating, self-righteous Koreans why their first language was Japanese.
Solomon was in love with Phoebe. They had been together since sophomore year. He couldn’t imagine life without her, and yet, seeing her discomfort here made him realize how different they were. They were both ethnically Korean and had grown up outside Korea, but they weren’t the same. Back home, on the ground in Japan, their differences seemed that much more pronounced. They hadn’t had sex in two weeks. Would it be that way when they married? Would it get worse? Solomon thought about these things as he headed to the game.
Tonight was his fourth poker night with the guys at work. Solomon and one other junior associate, Louis, a hapa M & A guy from Paris, had been asked to join; the rest of the players were managing directors and executive directors. The cast changed a little, but there were usually six or seven guys. Never any girls. Solomon was a brilliant poker player. In the first game, he had played it easy and come out neutral; in the second game, when he felt more comfortable, he came second, and after the third game, Solomon walked out with most of the 350,000-yen pot. The others were annoyed, but he thought it was worth making a point—when he wanted to win, he could.
This evening, he planned to pay up a little. The guys were a good bunch—no sore losers; Solomon hoped to keep playing with them. No doubt, they had invited him thinking he was more or less a fish; they didn’t know that he was an econ major at Columbia who had double minored in poker and pool.
They played Anaconda, also called “Pass the Trash” because you could get rid of your bad cards to the guy on your left—first three cards, then two cards, and then one more, betting all the while. A moron could have won the game, because there was so much luck involved, but what Solomon enjoyed was the betting. He liked watching others bet or go out.
The players met in the paneled basement of a no-name izakaya in Roppongi. The owner was a friend of Kazu-san, Solomon’s boss and the most senior managing director at Travis, and he let them use the room once a month as long as they drank enough and ordered plenty of food. Each month, one guy hosted and picked up the tab. Initially, the managing directors thought it wasn’t fair to make the associates pay, since they earned much less, but after Solomon won on the third game, enough of them said “The kid can buy dinner.” Solomon was hosting this one.
Six guys were playing, and the pot was 300,000 yen. Three hands in, Solomon kept it safe: He won nothing and lost nothing.
“Hey, Solly,” Kazu said, “what’s going on? Did luck leave you, buddy?”
His boss, Kazu, was a Japanese national who was educated in California and Texas, and despite his bespoke suits and elegant Tokyo dialect, his English speech pattern was pure American frat boy. His family tree was filled with dukes and counts who had been stripped of their titles after the war, and his mother’s side came from connected branches of shogun families. At Travis, Kazu made lots of rain. Five of the six most important banking deals last year took place because Kazu had made them happen. It was also Kazu who had brought Solomon into the game. The older guys grumbled about losing to the kid, but Kazu shut them up, saying that competition was good for everyone.