Man Enough For Me

by Rhonda Bowen

  “Jules! Get in here.”

  Jules sighed, pushed back her chair, and made her way to Penny’s office. It was the week of Truuth’s launch, and the last thing she needed was drama at work, but it seemed like that was exactly what she was going to get.

  “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee,” Jules whispered to herself. It was all she could do to summon God’s tranquility when she had to deal with Penny.

  In the year that the woman had been Jules’s boss, Penny had been nothing but a couple tantrums short of a nightmare. Both Jules and Michelle disliked the loud, pushy woman, but they were able to tolerate her because she only worked from their office two days of the week. The other three days she worked with the hospital’s executive team or worked out of her office at Toronto General Hospital, the other major hospital in the Toronto Central Hospital Network.

  With the hospital restructuring and the associated tension between the executive team, the staff, and the hospital’s community consultation board, Penny had been out more often in various meetings trying to pacify what was slowly brewing into a stormy issue. While that meant more time spent outside of the office, it also meant that the hours when she was there, she was more snappy and sadistic than usual. Jules knew that her summons to the office would likely be another of Penny’s torture sessions.

  “Yes, Penny?” Jules asked, trying to force a small smile as she appeared at her boss’s office entrance. From where she was, she could see Michelle looking annoyed from her position near Penny’s desk.

  “What’s happening with the community newsletter? It should have gone out two days ago.” she asked, her large green eyes boring into Jules.

  “It’s completed. It’s just waiting for final approval.”

  “From who?” Penny asked, sounding slightly annoyed.

  Jules grimaced. “From you.”

  “So where is it? Why didn’t you get it to me?” Penny asked, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

  Though wilt keep him in perfect peace.

  “I gave it to you last week, Penny. And I sent you an e-mail reminding you about it three days ago,” Jules said.

  In fact she had sent Penny multiple e-mails, and had even spoken to her directly about the newsletter at the end of the previous week. But Penny had kept putting it off, and now that it was late, she had conveniently forgotten that Jules had spoken to her about it. This was classic Penny.

  Penny sighed as if she was talking to a child. “Well, Jules, if you gave it to me, where is it?”

  “It’s right there on your desk,” Michelle said, pointing to the two-page newsletter sitting on Penny’s large, maple wood desk, in the same corner that Penny had tossed it when Jules had given it to her the week before. “Right where it’s been all week.”

  Inwardly Jules sent up a quick prayer for Michelle, hoping that Penny didn’t pick up on the woman’s tart tone. Jules could tell that Michelle was annoyed with Penny, but she worried that the young woman’s sharp tongue would be her undoing. In fact, the tiny Asian woman was famous for letting her dry remarks slip when Penny started with her antics.

  Jules was sure that Penny would have loved to fire the girl, but even she knew that the office would probably fall apart if she did. Though younger than both Jules and Penny, Michelle had been at the hospital longer than both. As a result she was the only one in the department who knew the exact who, what, when, where, and how of the work they did. She also was the only one who knew exactly who to go to in order to get certain things done. Jules knew that she personally couldn’t do her job without Michelle. She was sure Penny knew the same thing went for her, but it seemed like Penny sometimes forgot.

  Penny glared at Michelle before snatching the newsletter from the corner where it lay, and quickly signing the approval slip at the bottom and handing it over to Jules. The signature wasn’t really necessary, but previous incidents had taught Jules that when it came to Penny and her convenient memory, it was often best to get everything in writing.

  “Let’s try to get that out as soon as possible,” Penny said briskly, as if she had done them all a huge favor.

  Jules resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Michelle didn’t.

  “Anyway, that’s not what I called you both in here for,” Penny said. “Jules, I need you to attend this evening’s community consultation board meeting.”

  Jules’s mouth fell open, and she looked at her boss as if she had lost her mind. She had grown accustomed to Penny’s passing off her responsibilities on her, but this was ridiculous.

  “With all due respect, Penny, isn’t that meeting your responsibility?” Jules asked, fighting to keep the annoyance out of her voice. How dare this woman pass off a community consultation board meeting on her, and at such short notice?

  It wasn’t that Jules had a problem with the consultations. They were a vital part of maintaining the link between the community and the hospital. Jules had been to a couple of the community meetings out of curiosity. But public consultation was not a part of her portfolio at the hospital. Penny was the public relations director, and was thus required by the hospital’s constitution to sit on the consultation board. That had been the whole reason they hired Penny, because of her supposed familiarity with the process.

  “It is, but I have an engagement this evening that I absolutely have to attend, and I cannot make it. Someone from the department has to be there,” Penny said.

  “What kind of engagement?” Jules asked, an eyebrow raised.

  Penny blinked rapidly, seemingly surprised that Jules would question her.

  “Excuse me?”

  “She said what kind of engagement,” Michelle repeated, leaning closer to Penny’s ear. A look of perverse pleasure sat on her face as she watched Penny squirm.

  “An engagement,” Penny huffed, obviously flustered. “One with a very important political figure who has a lot of influence on this hospital.”

  “How come you never mentioned it before?” Jules asked, folding her arms. “Seems kind of sudden.”

  “I am the boss here,” Penny snapped, her face getting red. “I don’t have to tell you everything.”

  Jules shrugged. “Whatever. I can’t make it this evening. I’m busy.”

  Her “busy” involved washing her hair and downloading photos of Triad’s last event from her digital camera to her laptop. But Penny didn’t need to know that.

  “Are you telling me no?” Penny asked, bewildered.

  “I’m telling you I can’t make it,” Jules said, turning to leave the office.

  “That’s too bad,” Penny said to Jules’s back. “I always admired your commitment to this hospital. But it looks like you don’t really care at all. It will certainly be something to think about at the end of the month while I’m filling out the performance reports for our team.”

  Jules froze. Had Penny really said what Jules thought she said? She turned around to look her boss in the eye.

  “Are you threatening me, Penny?”

  This was a dangerous conversation, and even Michelle had an uncertain look in her eyes. But Jules was tired of Penny’s drama.

  “No,” Penny said, with a look of mock sincerity. “Of course not. I just don’t want you to feel at the end of the month like you could have done more but you didn’t. Come on, Jules, you love working with the community, and it’s not like I’m skipping this to stay home. I’ll be working too. Can’t you just take this on this one time? It will only be for a few hours.”

  Jules sighed knowing that since Penny had laid down the law, she really had no choice. She would have to fill in.

  She dreaded the thought of having to lead out at one of the community board meetings. They were filled with angry residents who were tired of the hospital’s giving them sorry excuses for why they still had to wait hours for care, or why they couldn’t get the tests they wanted done when they wanted them. They didn’t care that funding to hospitals had been cut, or that the hospital wards and labs were
understaffed. They just wanted it fixed. And they were rarely reasonable people.

  “Fine,” Jules said in defeat.

  “Excellent,” Penny said. “It’s at the John Innes Community Centre at seven. Don’t be late.”

  Jules clenched her jaw and trudged her way back to her office. This was shaping up to be a very bad day.

  She had barely sent the freshly approved newsletter down to the print shop for copying when she heard the main office door open and close, signaling Penny’s exit. Only moments later, Michelle was in Jules’s office scowling.

  “I can’t believe you let her weasel you into that meeting,” Michelle said, obviously more upset about the whole thing than Jules had the energy to be. “Do you know what the engagement she has this evening is?” Michelle continued, tossing her jet black hair away from her creamy white skin.

  Jules shook her head, knowing that Michelle was going to tell her anyway.

  “Harry Douglas’s anniversary party. The invitation came in the mail two weeks ago, and she made me RSVP for her last week.”

  Jules’s stomach fell, and she almost wished Michelle hadn’t told her what she did. Penny was missing the community consultation meeting to go to a lower level member of Parliament’s shindig? Didn’t she realize that the hospital was in the middle of a restructuring that would involve the whole community? Didn’t she realize that making sure the community was updated on the changes, and making sure they were a part of it, was more important than getting drunk with some politicians?

  What’s more, Penny had known all week that she would be opting out of the meeting, but she waited until the day of the event to ask Jules to take her place?

  Jules shook her head. The woman was unbelievable.

  “Jules, I don’t know what that woman did to get this job, but she certainly didn’t earn it,” Michelle said, shaking her head.

  Jules sighed. Generally she tried not to encourage Michelle’s gossip about Penny, but she couldn’t help but agree with her this time.

  “Did she at least leave a copy of the progress report developed from the last consultation meeting?”

  “Yeah, let me get it for you.”

  A few minutes later Michelle returned with a slim red binder that she placed on Jules’s desk.

  She shook her head as she stood at the door watching Jules flip through the document.

  “I don’t know how you do it, Jules. If it was me, I’d just let it all spin out of control and watch her take the blame for it.”

  Jules heard Michelle but said nothing. She knew Penny well enough to know that if she ever tried that, Penny would find a way to pin the blame for the fallout on Jules. Furthermore, the public relations department as a whole would get a beating because of it. And with all the instability in the hospital, Jules didn’t need anyone finding fault with her department or her. That was the way people lost their jobs, and she wasn’t ready to lose hers yet.

  With her other job on the skids, that was the last thing she needed.

  *  *  *

  It was 3 a.m. Sunday morning when Jules finally stopped moving. She had been on her feet for the past eight hours making sure that everything at Truuth’s launch concert went as planned.

  After cancelling the event at the Sound Lounge, she’d had to find a new location that would hold the crowd they expected at a price they could afford. She was almost at the point of hysterics when it occurred to her that they didn’t even need to have the launch inside. It was the end of summer. No one would mind an outside venue. In fact many people would probably prefer it.

  So she had called up a friend of a friend who worked with the city and managed to book Albert Campbell Square, at the Scarborough Civic Centre, a little open-air spot in the East End, for less than should be legal. With the money she saved she was able to pay for sound, lighting, and enough seating to make the empty space come to life.

  The toughest part had been getting ‘Dre and Truuth to go along with the new venue. If ‘Dre had been skeptical about the Sound Lounge, he had been downright against the park idea. But somehow she had managed to convince him it would fly. And earlier in the evening when she overheard some friend of Truuth’s telling him the venue was off the hook, she knew that the effort had been well worth it.

  That was not to say that everything had gone entirely as planned.

  It never did. That was the one thing Jules had learned about coordinating events. No matter how well you planned things, something always came up that you never anticipated. That was where the good event planners got separated from the great ones. If you were a good coordinator, you would find a way to fix the problem and get things back on track. If you were a great coordinator, you would know how to turn the problem into an opportunity and make it look like you had planned it that way.

  That was what Jules had to do about halfway through the concert, when the amps controlling the sound for the band blew out in the middle of Truuth’s performance. She would never forget the look on Truuth’s face as he realized he was singing a cappella. He had completely panicked. The hundreds of fans gathered near the front of the stage continued to cheer, unaware of what was going on, while the band members began to look at each other in confusion.

  “Jules, the sound is out,” ‘Dre had yelled into her earpiece.

  “Yeah, I noticed,” she had replied, trying to think fast. Truuth had finished his song, but wasn’t sure where to go next.

  “Can you fix it?” Jules asked ‘Dre.

  “Yeah. But I’ll need about fifteen minutes, and we don’t have that kind of time.”

  ‘Dre was right. After just five minutes of silence, the performance would begin to lose some of its momentum. In ten minutes fans would start to complain, and in eleven minutes they would start to walk out. Even if they got the sound back up by then, there would be no way to bring the crowd’s energy back to the original levels. Furthermore, every journalist with a blog, podcast, or column would already be on their way home, writing a rotten review of the event. The album, and Truuth’s image, would take a major hit.

  “Okay, put me though to Truuth’s earpiece,” Jules said.

  Moments later the sound of the crowd seemed suddenly to amplify, and Jules knew she had Truuth on the other end.

  “Truuth, can you hear me?”

  “Yeah,” he muttered. He had walked back to the band for a moment, and his back was to the crowd. “The band is out, Jules, what should I do?”

  Jules could hear the anxiety in his voice, and all of a sudden he sounded a lot less tough than he usually seemed.

  “Don’t panic, Truuth. Everything’s gonna be fine. I’m gonna talk you through this, okay?” Jules said reassuringly. “Just do exactly what I tell you.”

  Under Jules’s direction, Truuth managed to revive the crowd and get them singing one of his songs. Jules couldn’t help the excitement that built up inside her as she heard hundreds of voices chant Truuth’s single, a cappella style, under the open sky. With all his initial nervousness gone, Truuth was right there jumping up and down onstage, feeding the crowd’s energy and acting like every bit of the entertainer Jules knew he was.

  “Thank you, Jesus,” Jules murmured. If she had doubted that God had blessed this ministry before, she was sure now. Only God could make a technical failure look like they all had planned it.

  A few minutes later, long before the fifteen minutes ‘Dre had predicted, the amps came back on. Jules let out the breath she had been holding and said a small prayer that the show would continue without incident.

  Now that everything was over, Jules could actually look back at the whole incident and smile. This was definitely one for the books.

  As the euphoria wore off, the tiredness began to set in, leading Jules to sink into a chair in the last row and stretch her feet out on the seat in front of her. From where she sat she could see Truuth, Maxine, ‘Dre, and his flavor of the month, Petra, milling around at the front. They were probably celebrating how well everything had gone, but since
none of them were really talking to her, Jules thought she would just chill out by herself. In a few minutes she would be on her way home anyway; she just needed a minute to rest her eyes.

  “Is that seat beside you taken?”

  Jules opened her eyes and saw Tanya standing over her.

  “Only if you mind sitting with Judas,” Jules said wryly.

  Tanya sighed and sat down beside her friend. “Come on, Jules, nobody thinks you betrayed them.”

  Jules didn’t bother to answer. Tanya was always trying to be the peacemaker in the group. If she thought she couldn’t create harmony among everyone she would be heartbroken. So Jules just let her think what she wanted.

  “You did a really good job tonight,” Tanya said.

  “Thanks,” Jules said, smiling. Even though she knew things had gone well, it was nice to hear someone say she appreciated her part in it.

  “Couldn’t have done it without you guys, though,” Jules said. “Truuth really killed it.”

  “Yeah,” Tanya said. “Let’s just hope all those chicks who were lining up at the front actually buy his album instead of downloading the bootleg off the Internet.”

  Jules laughed.

  “So how have you been?” Tanya asked. Even though the question was casual, Jules could see the concern in Tanya’s eyes.

  Jules sighed. “I’ve been better.”

  “You know I’m here for you.”

  Jules shook her head. “No, you’re not. Truuth’s there for Germaine, and Maxine is there for Truuth, and ‘Dre is there for the best interest of Triad and so are you. Me, I’m just … there.”

  “It’s not like that, Jules.”

  “It is,” Jules said calmly. “But that’s okay. Everybody’s gotta do what they gotta do, right?”

  “I know you feel like nobody’s with you on this, Jules, but you got to understand that you basically turned Germaine into the bad guy and gave us no reason for it. It was like when you broke up with Germaine we all were supposed to break up with him too.”

  Germaine.

  Jules was sure she had seen him at some point during the evening, but with the dusky lights and the throng of patrons, it was hard to tell. In any case, it had only been for a moment, and before she had time to take a second look, someone was screaming into her ear about something else.