In other words, my night showed. I hoped I would be strong enough to handle the salesmen, a particularly noxious all-male assortment of junior executives. We had a history of bad blood since last summer’s company retreat, when the men had asked me to stand atop a table for a casual photograph. Before I realized what was going on, somebody had darted the camera under my skirt and snapped a picture. I’d reported it to Mr. Katoh as an incident of seku hara—sexual harassment—but all that happened was I received a mysterious extra two weeks’ pay and Richard took over the salesmen’s instruction.
At nine o’clock I strode into their classroom carrying the new espresso maker like armor before my body. According to Richard’s plan, today’s task was teaching all parts of the machine in English plus some fancy coffee talk in French and Italian. There was giggling at first, but I ignored it and got down to business, asking two students to role-play an encounter between customer and salesclerk.
“What is caffe rat-te?” Mr. Takeuchi asked his partner, Mr. So.
“Caffe rat-te is a delicious beverage made from milks and exsu-presso—”
“Espresso!” Mr. Nara, the know-it-all, shouted from the back row.
“Espresso,” continued Mr. Takeuchi. “For added delicious taste, please try a sprinkle of cinnamon or nutmeg or cocoa.”
“Beautifully said. Now, can Mr. So explain the perfect formula for caffe latte?”
“One half milks, one hall kohi,” said Mr. So.
“No, two parts milk, one part kohi,” corrected Mr. Takeuchi.
“Mr. Takeuchi is right, but please remember we must not call it coffee or kohi. We need to use the Italian word espresso to show how special the product is.” It wasn’t my favorite machine. I’d burned my hand trying to steam milk with it two weeks ago. This wasn’t the time or place for my opinions, though. The men ran through the lesson in a remarkably ordered format, leaving the last fifteen minutes free.
“Miss Shimura, please may we have conversation time?” Mr. So begged. I was surprised; usually, the students didn’t like exercises where they couldn’t crib from the book. I readily agreed.
“What shall we talk about today, then? Any suggestions from the floor?” I asked.
“Current event!” shouted Mr. Nara.
“Sure. What’s in the news?” I’d seen only the Asian Wall Street Journal that morning and had no idea about anything beyond a brief surge in the U.S. dollar.
“Mr. Nara, did you watch television this morning?” Mr. So asked so stiffly I wondered if he had rehearsed.
“Why, yes! I watched News to You. There was some very interesting news on that program.” Mr. Nara grinned and rubbed his hands together.
“So, what’s up?” I asked, trying to teach a colloquialism but making half the class squirm with laughter.
“The program say Miss Shimura is friends with a satsujin-han.”
“The word in English is murderer,” I said, feeling cold.
“This murderer is gaijin from Scotland. Scotland is a part of Great Britain, you know.” Mr. Nara smirked, playing to his crowd.
“Selfridges,” said someone from the back, mentioning our biggest British vendor.
“Does your murderer know about Selfridges?” Mr. So turned an innocent face toward me.
“It’s interesting that you choose to call this person a murderer,” I replied. “In Japan, as in the United States, a person cannot be called a murderer unless he or she is convicted. And as you may have heard, Mr. Glendinning was questioned and released.”
“Convicted?” Someone in the class asked for a translation.
“Miss Shimura, is he your boyfriend?” Mr. Nara advanced on my desk, crossing both physical and emotional boundaries.
Talking about personal life was so off-limits that when Mr. Katoh’s wife was expecting a baby, nobody knew until the day after it happened. If pregnancy within the bonds of marriage was taboo, what was an affair between single people? I hesitated a moment too long before saying, “I’m not sure.”
“No commento!” some wit said.
“This class is for conversation about you, not me.” I turned my back and started to write on the blackboard. “Here’s a conversation topic: quickly, I want everyone to tell me how they plan to attain their sales goals in a new and interesting way.”
“But Miss Shimura, you are more new and interesting!” Mr. So whined.
How could a good thing turn bad so fast? I pushed Hugh to the back of my mind and willed myself to get through the rest of the class. When the electronic melody finally chimed, the answer came to me. Things had been bad all along. I’d just forgotten.