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  'Don't you like this kind of work?' he asked at last.

  'No, it's not that,' she said, glancing nervously at the woman who ran the club. Satake noticed the look.

  'I know it's hard to make this sort of decision,' he said. 'But you came here to make money, didn't you? Then why not really make some? You're wasting a wonderful gift.'

  'Gift?'

  'A beautiful person has a gift, just like a writer or a painter. It's not something that's given to everybody; it's a special favour. But writers and painters have to work to develop their gifts, and so do you. That's your duty. In a sense, you're a kind of artist yourself, at least that's the way I look at it. But at the moment, you're neglecting your duty.' As she listened to his soft voice, Anna felt almost giddy. But when she looked up, she realised that he was probably just trying to lure her away to his club. The management at her current place had warned her about men like this.

  Satake sighed, guessing what was going through her mind. 'You're wasting yourself here,' he said, smiling at her.

  'But I don't have any gift,' she said.

  'You do. And if you start using it, things will work out just the way you planned them.'

  'But... '

  'And when they do, you'll see,' he said.

  'See what?'

  'Your fate,' he said.

  'Why?' she murmured.

  'Because fate is what happens to you in spite of all your plans.' Satake said this quite seriously and then slipped a neatly folded ¥10,000 bill into her hand. She glanced away as she took the bill, feeling that she'd caught a glimpse of something deep down in the pool of his eyes; something she shouldn't have seen.

  'Thank you,' she said.

  'I'll see you again,' he said; then, as if he had abruptly lost interest in her, he glanced over at the manager and signalled her to get him another girl. Having become suddenly extraneous, Anna moved on to another table. She felt disappointed, in part at her own lukewarm response which she blamed for Satake's loss of interest. She'd half believed him when he said that she'd be prettier if she went to work for him. And if what he said was true, she might even see what 'fate' held in store for her. Had she missed a chance to make something of herself? She regretted her own timidity.

  When she got back to her apartment, she took out the bill he'd given her. Unfolding it, she found the name 'Mika' and a telephone number written inside.

  -

  After she moved to his club, Satake had taught her a great many things about older Japanese men. That it was often better to make them think you didn't speak much Japanese. That they preferred quiet, conservative girls with nice manners. It was best to let them think you were still in school and that you worked as a hostess just for pocket money. Emphasise the fact that you're a student most men have a thing about schoolgirls. Even if they know it's a lie, they like to feel they're financially superior, and it makes them more likely to tip well. And above all, try to give the impression that you come from a good family in Shanghai. This they find reassuring. Satake also gave her explicit instructions about the sort of clothes and make-up that would appeal to them. In Shanghai, men might appreciate a woman who insisted on equal rights, but not here.

  When Anna still had doubts about the Japanese way of doing things, Satake told her to think of the whole thing as an act, a role she played to succeed in her chosen profession. After that, she learned quickly. She didn't have to become that sort of woman; she just had to perform, as part of her job. Anything for the job. This was something her parents would have understood. And in time she discovered that she did have a gift, exactly as Satake had said. The more she played the part, the more attractive she became. His discriminating eye had been right.

  Before long, she'd become the top hostess at Mika; and as her popularity grew, she became more confident. With self-confidence came the determination to make a success of herself in her new 'career'. At last she'd found a way of keeping loneliness, her old stray cat, firmly at bay.

  She took to calling Satake 'honey', and in return he made no secret of the fact that she was his special pet. When she realised that he hadn't tried to fix her up with a well-heeled customer the way he was always doing for the other girls, she decided that it was proof that he was in love with her. But no sooner had she come to this conclusion than he called to say he'd found someone.

  'He's just the right type,' he told her over the phone. 'What type?'

  'He's nice and he's rich.' Of course, the man in question wasn't

  Tony Leung. He wasn't good-looking and he wasn't particularly young, just very wealthy. Practically every time she saw him, he would hand her a million yen. The maths were simple: if she met him ten times, she'd have ten million - more than enough to live on for a whole year. Soon she'd be rich herself. By the time she actually passed the goal she'd set when she came to Japan, she had forgotten all about Tony Leung.

  But the man who had supplanted the handsome actor in her affections wasn't her wealthy patron, it was Satake himself. She found herself intrigued by what she'd glimpsed in his eyes when they first met. He'd said fate was something that happened in spite of our best plans. Then what had happened in his case? She had a feeling - one that aroused a nervous excitement in her that she of all people might be able to find out; after all, she was his 'number one'. She would have liked to see for herself what sort of creatures lived down there at the bottom of that pool, and catch them with her own bare hands.

  In the end, though, she realised that the more she tried to learn about him, the less he allowed her to see. He seemed to guard every aspect of his life with great care. He never let anyone come to his apartment, for example. Once, Chin, the floor manager at Mika, had told her that he'd spotted a man who looked like Satake in front of a run-down old apartment building in West Shinjuku; but instead of the flashy designer clothes the boss favoured, the man was shabbily dressed. He'd come out to dump some garbage, dressed in ragged pants and a sweater that was worn through at the elbows. He could have been any old tired drudge, but as Chin watched, the guy began cleaning up around the garbage can with a surly look on his face, and from the way he moved, he realised that it had to be Satake. The whole episode had come as quite a shock, he told Anna - had even scared him a bit.

  'Here at the club, he's so cool. He may not say much, but you know you can depend on him. If that was the real Satake I saw, then it's almost like he's schizy. It gives me the creeps to think that everything he does here is just an act. But why should he have to put on an act for us, anyway? What's he hiding? You get the feeling he doesn't trust us. But how can you live if you don't trust anyone? Maybe it means that you really don't trust yourself?'

  Satake was a mystery, a puzzle waiting to be solved. When the rest of the staff at Mika heard the story, the boss's secret life became a topic of endless discussion. Everyone seemed to have his own opinion about what sort of man he was, but no one felt you could trust him much. Anna, though, couldn't bring herself to agree with Chin that it was Satake who didn't trust anybody. Still, she found herself feeling jealous of his secrets, and even ended up thinking that there must be another woman involved. Perhaps it was only with her that he could really be himself

  One day, she finally got up the nerve to ask him straight out, 'Honey, do you live with someone?' Satake hesitated a second, staring at her in surprise, which she took as proof that she'd guessed right. 'Who is it?' she pressed.

  'No one,' he said with a laugh. But the light in his eyes had seemed to die at that moment, like the time at the end of the night when they turned off the lights at the club. 'I've never lived with a woman.'

  'Then don't you like women?' she said. It was reassuring that there had never been talk of a woman in Satake's life, but now she was suddenly afraid he might be gay.

  'Sure I do,' he said, 'especially beautiful ones like you. They're like the best of all presents.' As he said this, he took her hand and began stroking her long, slender fingers, but the way he did it was as if he were getting the feel of som