A stolen moment

Perhaps it was in the way that I felt that I commanded everything and I was in charge and I made the plans and strategies and executive decisions from the Captains chair, my chair! Perhaps my point of view was tainted or others allowed me to see it and just played my game to be nice.
They were very nice at times.
Perhaps the position that I attained made me feel a little special... a favorite.

Whatever it was, it was something I had grown used to before the fall from grace left me shunned to the point of social recluse.
Well that's not totally true, I was out and about and doing things that I'd never had the time for whilst I was hard at work. But it won't make for the good story!

After several months of quiet reflection, rehabilitation and being a family girl once more, I am suddenly thrust back into the maelstrom of journalistic nightmares and daring to drop hastily prepared drafts of assignments that have more tangents in them that a geometry textbook into my editors in tray.
OK they're not that bad but when he peeps at me over his cheap spectacles and looks at me like I am something left over from last weeks fish market sales I feel like they are. I guess this time around, I'm not so special yet!

This week however part of my assignment had me in familiar territory. So I was bound to be OK you'd think!
I was at "Just me, just 80 MHZ" Tokyo FM Radio having a chat with Yuko, an old friend of mine. I'd known her a few years ago when my ex boyfriend also worked at this station and it gave us a foundation on which to be open and frank in our discussions. Supposedly the direction of the topic was changing of music sources from familiar C.D.'s to the download market. She had many excellent thoughts and quite a few private ones, so many that several times she asked for some comments not to be written up! But it was during one 'off the record' chats that she mentioned Terutaka and his wife.
Not Terutaka the crazy or Terutaka the innocent !

Sometimes I like to be thought of as a great actress or even a decent poker player where no one can possibly read the turmoil of emotions bubbling underneath.
But his wife!
He got married and I'd never heard?
My mouth was so agape that any roast chicken casually flying by could have parked safely in there and still have room for all the trimmings.

There was one of those awkward moments and looking at her looking back at me I just knew she was measuring the effect of her words. You know damn well curiosity got the better of me and no play-acting was needed. I just had to know
Who did he marry? I asked in a voice that seemed to come from the lips of some coy mouse hiding under my chair as they kind of 'squeaked out' from my general direction.
"Oh you remember her, that receptionist that worked here."
"Menoko'" I said in disbelief and she nodded.

The interview went out of the window really as I let personal feelings cloud over me.
It wasn't really that I still loved him and often saw his parents in Roppongi.
It wasn't that I'd known him since school
It wasn't that we almost married ourselves
It wasn't that we had something really special once...

No!
What it was was the fact that Menoko was a deceitful player who almost tricked him into marriage the first time by pretending to be pregnant before he and I were together the last time and .... oh it's so complicated.
But the fact is, she isn't nice and tried to trick him and it was my intervention that made him see sense and then after that our friendship became more and....

I guess I'm in shock!
In all innocence news is exchanged and some of the things you learn are better or worse than the drama's on TV.
Perhaps I have an idea for a new story now but the names will be changed to protect the guilty.
Except for Menoko the bitch whose name will live on in the annals of infamy and will be forever synonymous with wickedness like the Jezebel she is.
I'll discuss it over dinner where I'll plot and devise strategies. Oh the Captains chair is quite a comfortable place for that.