An uncertain evening

She's such a queen.

The shadows of early evening crept across the city as if a plague sought to remove the joy of the day that had made it such a bright and warm place a few hours earlier. It brings a cool chill on a southern breeze that reaches into the last sanctuaries of warmth to steal it from me. A shiver runs across me as the city lights up greedily consuming mega-watts of energy in an effort to push back the night. One hundred towers of glass and steel claw at the clouds as architects try remove people from the land and thrust them into the skies.
Let there be light!
Store windows and street lighting and the blazing neons of advertising make it so and I saw that it was good, it's all good!


I sit in my car and look up at one tower and one window in particular on the eastern corner, seventeen floors up. I look and I imagine I can see figures moving around, but really from the angle of my view from the street level looking way up there, they would have to be super-glued to the window or crawling across the ceiling for me to see them.
I wait and wonder what the hell I'm doing.
I get a text: Be there in 5 minutes, sorry for the delay
Perhaps I should drive away now and forget my madness. Perhaps I'll wake up from this and realize that I was experiencing some nightmare. But no, the thought of a large sum of money and I am talking here about 'large' in huge over-weight proportions, has me sitting here like the fish looking at a worm in the river. This worm is stuck on a hook and attached to a string and I am a fish, so I won't think that there is anything wrong or unnatural about a nice big juicy worm being here in my river.
OK! I'm not a fish and I'm being stupid. I know those strings will pull me up out of my environment and land me as lunch on someones dining table.
I'm leaving.
Too late, he has seen me and he's walking towards my car.
Nervously I look around to see if anyone is paying attention here.
He looks back up towards that window. I know she is in there.
He looks in through the car window at me.
Yeah, it's me, Momo looking out at the worm!
I wish he'd hurry and get in.
He gets in and greets me and straps himself in while I quickly drive away from that place with one eye on the road, one eye in the mirror, a third eye looking at other people to see if they look at us and my fourth eye on his hands and make sure he behaves himself.
"Something wrong?" he asks looking at me looking every which where.
"I don't like this area" I tell him
"It is a nice area, a lot of the people in the loop live in this area" he replies, looking smug.
"It's a plastic loop with plastic people and plastic lives" I reply
Head for Ginza he says and I comply.
He also said something about my little car. I wanted to stop and tell him to get out right now, but instead I made some trite remark about my going green and that my turbo charged Bentley was getting serviced and it was the Chauffeurs night off!

We walked from the car park to the bar he'd chosen, which luckily wasn't too far along two alleys, one side road and thankfully only one main road. I had several reasons for the discreet route, the main one being that I was not wanting to be seen with him. He chose the Lupin which is funny since it has the reputation of being a writers bar. Many famous writers have at one time over the years sat in this bar and today it has the clientèle of literature students and young hopeful writers. I told him I wasn't going in there because the people in there have the eyes of hawks and I would rather we try some low key establishment where we can sit and talk without disturbance and offered us a little more privacy.
He suggested a hotel.
I suggested that he get real!
I looked along the road and saw a bar that wasn't quite so well lit and led him too it. Once inside I found us a quiet corner while he ordered our drinks. He remembers what I like, he gets half a point.

I asked about the sum of money. You might think it awfully impolite of me to mention the financial package that he was offering me up front and by-passing the usual formalities but I'm not going to read up on the rules of business etiquette in my dealings, real or potential, with this guy. Quite frankly it was my only reason to be here with him and yield a little from my usual abrupt dismissal of him and listen to his proposal instead. I still carried the pepper spray though if in case there was no substance to this meeting at all and he was going to waste my time with some secret agenda of his own.
I guess we all have a little code of ethics that we live by and a rule book placed close to our hearts, but I think I may bend the rules a little when there are certain incentives that might allow me to do that and justify it to myself. Here is a guy I don't trust with anything personal and I wouldn't want to get close to in any way like that, like we were before but his business sense has made him very secure and many of his ventures have been successful in the extreme.
Now don't mis-understand me, I'm still a girl of principles even if mine don't match yours or I attain your expected ideals of me. But in this world money talks and I can still listen to the proposition without compromising anything, can't I?
After an hour, and lets be honest here, I can't write in a public blog any details of this business venture, I said that I find it interesting and I think it has promise and a good potential to succeed, but I'm uncertain if to play a part in it or not. I pointed out some good parts and also parts I was uncertain over.
By now I was being diplomatic. I think I had already decided in the negative.
He was asking a lot of time and commitment from my part and I have got used to the way my life has played out since saying goodbye to him. He then more or less begged me and was trying the soft-sell, selling it to me as if it can only succeed if I and I alone took an active role.

I want to ask you all if you are like me and when you are close to someone you develop little code phrases, you say something but it means something else? Well when this guy was my guy and crazy and fantastic as he was, there were times when he'd say something and I wouldn't really believe it and if only how much I knew that those stories of his would escalate into, "No honey I'm not having an affair with her!"
But there were little ones before that like "Sorry I wasn't back for dinner, I had a late meeting in the office!"
The problem was that some of those late meetings were genuine and the others smelt like white musk oil or satsuma fragrance with a hidden smile and a smudge of lipstick on his collar.
"Yeah, I believe you!" I'd say and we both knew that I really meant "Enough, talk no more, I don't want to hear it!"

I looked at the money he was offering me and I carefully weighed up the secret details he had let me be privy to see and I looked at him and asked if he really thought this would succeed?
His face lit up as if a child had discovered the ultimate proof that Santa existed and then he saw my facial emotions and I suppose he remembered what they meant.
He looked hurt as if I would doubt him and I don't even wanna go there...
So he promised me the moon and the stars and a sum of money that would make my bank manager salivate and asked if I could believe like he believed.
"Yeah, I believe you" I said and we all know what I really meant, "but I am past all of that now. Sorry, you will have to find yourself another star to twinkle in your sky. Can you find your own way home?"


As I drove home alone I was still considering these ideas and all the things he'd told me. Don't get me wrong, the business proposition and general outlay was a great idea with a solid foundation and some interesting looking names in the associates list. But I like to look forward and not go back and even though the project could be exciting and we all know every venture is a gamble, I feel that I don't want any kind of partnership with him even if I believed it could work and my initial concerns are usually right. What do they say about a womans intuition?
The money was the most attractive thing about it, I can admit that, but I am fairly secure and do not have to rewrite my principles for that.
I may not be a bright star in the sky, I may be a dim one barely over the horizon, but I like my present position and I may be a bright star in the skies of those who matter most to me. I like the people who are close to me and I do remember how beautiful all that all glitz and glamor looked from a distance. But close up, its baubles and chains and the people are mostly like him, plastic! I think I've outgrown these Pierrot dolls.

Here comes the week-end and I have an appointment with my photographer friend to get some nice outdoor shots. I will have a little professionalism and have as much glamor in that and not through a new business venture. At least I can send dad a better photo of me than the silly looking ones that are on his table at home now.

Again I see 60+ IP's mostly from Germany hitting my "A rose by any other name" blog. There must be a great interest in the tourist guy!

Roses are pretty but look what they come from!