Man Enough For Me (17 page)

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.

Thankfully she had been too busy to think about him. But now that Tanya had brought him up …

Jules gritted her teeth, and began to gather her things to leave. She didn’t have the energy to go through this again.

“Whatever, Tanya,” Jules said, standing. “I gotta go.”

Without looking back Jules took up her purse and her supply bag and headed to her car. She dropped the larger bag into the
trunk and was about to leave when she remembered she had left a box of CDs and promotional materials under the stage.

Sighing heavily, she closed the trunk and headed back toward the stage area. She noticed that everyone had left, so she walked straight up the center aisle between the rows of chairs, circled around the side of the stage, past the lighting equipment, and into the large “backstage” area the staging crew had created with curtains and ropes.

Getting on her hands and knees, she crawled under the stage and pulled out the crate of promotional materials from the area where she had stashed them a couple hours before. When she stood up again, she found Tanya, and a rather sulky Maxine standing behind her.

She sighed to herself.

Here we go again.

“I don’t like this, guys,” Tanya said worriedly. “We’ve been friends for too long for us to be holding grudges over silliness like this.”

“Tanya, I’m not holding a grudge with anyone….”

“Except Germaine,” Maxine mumbled under her breath.

Jules’s eyes flashed. “What’s that gotta do with you?”

“A whole lot, seeing that he should be here now, celebrating with Truuth, but instead he’s avoiding us. All because you’ve been treating him like some kinda criminal.”

“Maybe he is a criminal,” Jules shot back, glaring at Maxine. Both Tanya and Maxine looked at her in disbelief.

“Do you even hear yourself?” Maxine asked, her eyes narrowing. “That’s my family you’re talking about.”

“Whatever, Maxine, he ain’t your family yet.”

“Jules, that’s a pretty serious accusation,” Tanya said.

Jules pursed her lips, and when she eventually spoke, the words came out firmly but quietly.

“I saw him messing with some drug dealers,” she said. “They were in his office more than once, and then Easy saw him get into a car with them.”

Maxine looked at her long and hard. “How do you even
know they were drug dealers?” There was less hostility in her voice, but she didn’t sound totally convinced.

“I didn’t,” Jules said. “I just saw them with him. And then I saw them again at Regent Park on the day of Truuth’s shoot, and Easy told me who they were.

“That’s why Easy never liked him,” Jules said, turning to Tanya. “It was because he suspected it before I did. Of course, when I asked Germaine about it, he denied everything.”

“Wow,” Tanya murmured in shock. “I can’t believe this.”

“Yeah,” Jules said, leaning back against the edge of the stage. “Neither could I. That’s why I wanted to move the event. I didn’t want Truuth or Triad mixed up in anything like that. Especially not because of me.”

“Geez, Jules, why didn’t you just tell us all this from the get-go?” Tanya asked. “We would have understood.”

“I don’t think so,” Jules said dryly. “Truuth would never believe me. Furthermore he would be upset that I could even suggest something like that. And then he would have insisted on having the launch there just to prove that he was right.”

She looked over at Maxine who, though silent, still looked more than a little annoyed at Jules.

“See, even now I’m telling you everything, and Maxine still isn’t buying it.”

“Well, what do you want me to say, Jules? Geez thanks for making my boyfriend and his family sound like hoodlums?” Maxine snapped.

“Maxine, I never said …”

“No, but you implied it,” she said, cutting Jules off. “And so what if it’s true? Okay, so maybe Germaine got mixed up in some bad stuff. Is that how you deal with it? He’s only human.”

Now it was Tanya and Jules’s turn to look at Maxine as if she was crazy.

“Everybody makes mistakes, Jules,” she continued.

“That was one hell of a mistake, Maxine,” Jules said. But Maxine didn’t seem to agree. In fact she seemed much more upset about the whole thing than Jules thought she had a right to be.

“So what? I didn’t know you were perfect,” she said. “Did you even ask him what happened or did you just throw accusations at him?”

Jules was silent. She knew she hadn’t asked him what happened. She had been too angry to think that way. But why should she feel guilty about that? Anyone in her situation would have done exactly what she had—even self-righteous Maxine.

“Nobody grows up and decides to be a dealer, Jules,” Maxine continued. “Nobody wants to be a disappointment to everyone around them. It’s just that things happen sometimes. And you don’t mean for them to happen, but they do. And you can’t take them back. So you end up in this place you never wanted to be, and you don’t know what to do about it….”

Somewhere in the middle of the tirade, Maxine began to cry, and Jules and Tanya realized they were no longer talking about Germaine.

“Maxine, what’s going on?” Jules asked with concern as she watched her friend try in vain to dry the tears that were pouring down her cheeks.

“Maxine, talk to us,” Tanya said in her motherly tone, her arms already around the tiny girl.

Between sniffles, Maxine managed to warble out an answer. “I’m pregnant.”

“What?”

Jules’s mouth fell open, and Tanya’s arms fell from around Maxine in shock. Maxine wrapped her arms around herself and nodded tearfully, her eyes fixed on the ground in front of her.

“When did you find out?” Jules asked, after she got over the initial shock.

“A … couple … days … ago,” Maxine said, sniffling after almost every word.

“Have you told Truuth yet? … I mean, it is Truuth’s … right?” Jules asked.

Despite her tears, Maxine still managed to shoot Jules a nasty look.

“I was just making sure!” Jules said. “It has been a weird couple of weeks.”

“Of course it’s Truuth’s,” she said shakily. “But I haven’t told him yet. With everything that’s happened with the launch and the whole Germaine thing … I was scared.”

“Oh, Max,” Jules said, walking over to her friend and wrapping her in a hug. “I’m sorry.”

Maxine sniffled and buried her head in Jules’s shoulder. Jules looked over at Tanya, who was standing frozen a couple inches away. She hadn’t moved since Maxine had said the
p
word.

Maxine looked across at Tanya. When she noticed her stiffness, she suddenly pulled away from Jules. “See, that’s why I never wanted to tell any of you,” she said angrily. “I knew you would be like this.”

“Be like how?” Jules asked, annoyed that she was being blamed for Tanya’s standoffish attitude.

Judgmental,” Maxine snapped. “Acting like you better than me.”

“Nobody thinks that, Maxine.”

“I’m not judging you, Max,” Tanya began. “It’s just that I never knew you and Truuth were …”

Even though she didn’t say the words, Jules could hear the disappointment in Tanya’s voice.

“It was just one time,” Maxine said guiltily, looking down at the ground. “We never planned it or anything, it just happened.”

“You don’t have to explain anything—” Jules began.

“I know,” Maxine said, cutting her off. “But I want to. I don’t want you to think I’m some kind of hypocrite-Christian. I knew it was wrong, and we shouldn’t have done it. We both did. And we promised it would never happen again until we were married,” Maxine said. “But I guess it only takes one time.”