Man Enough For Me

by Rhonda Bowen

  “Now that’s an entirely different question, Mr. Williams.”

  He laughed again, and Jules admitted to herself that she was more than a little glad that he had looked her up.

  “Okay, so here’s another question for you. Do you think you could stand having another meal with me?”

  “I think I could survive it.”

  “So how about lunch?”

  “When? Today?” she asked. She looked down at her gray slacks and royal blue, empire waist, button-down blouse. She knew she looked okay, but she wished she had known she might be seeing Germaine when she had gotten dressed that morning.

  “Sure. I’m in your area, and I could pick you up in half an hour.”

  “I don’t know,” Jules said with mock caution. “I only met you once, and you want me to get in a car with you? Who knows where you might take me?”

  “Hmm, Truuth was right,” Germaine murmured to himself. “Okay, how about I bring you lunch, and we can have it there? That way it will be a little harder for me to kidnap you.”

  “That sounds fine,” Jules said, rolling her eyes even though he couldn’t see her.

  “Good. Is Chinese okay with you?”

  “That would be great actually.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you at one thirty.”

  Half an hour later Jules spotted Germaine at a window table near the back of the hospital’s first floor café area. When he finally saw her as she neared the table, he stood and pulled out a chair for her.

  “You look nice,” he said, as she sat down across from him.

  “Thank you,” Jules replied, not missing the way his eyes sparkled as he looked at her.

  “So before you ask, Truuth gave me your number. He said Maxine said it was okay.”

  “I wasn’t going to ask.”

  “But you were wondering.”

  “I was actually wondering why you didn’t ask me for it yourself,” Jules said pointedly. She knew she was being a bit forward, but she was too old for games.

  “I wanted to be sure that I would still be interested after a day or two,” he said. He was smiling, but his eyes told her that he was serious.

  “So, what’s the verdict?” she asked.

  “Well, I’m sitting here with you four days later, so I think you can guess.”

  Jules smiled and took a sip of the cranberry juice he placed in front of her.

  “You have a good memory,” Jules said.

  “Well, with you, I figure I need to be on my toes,” he said, handing her napkins and a fork.

  “Geez, you make me sound like an army commander,” Jules said.

  Germaine chuckled. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

  “Well?”

  “Come on, Jules, you know you love playing hardball,” he said, looking at her knowingly. “Nothing gets past you.”

  “Sure,” Jules said, as she speared a piece of kung pao chicken with her fork. “This from the guy who gets me food and my favorite drink before I ask for them.”

  Germaine grinned but said nothing.

  “It’s like you’re always two steps ahead of me. I just met you; you’re not supposed to be this good,” she teased.

  “Well, you can learn a lot if you just keep your eyes open,” he said, watching her carefully. She let herself stare at him for a moment, loving the way she got lost in his warm hazel eyes.

  There was something about him that intrigued her. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but she knew there was more to him than he was letting on, more than the easy smile and casualness. And she wanted to know all of it.

  Jules took a long sip from her drink.

  “Truuth’s been doing really well,” she said. “It’s hard being a Christian in the music business, especially here. But he’s really held on to his beliefs. You must be proud of him.”

  “I am,” Germaine said. “I understand what he’s going through. I know for me it can get tricky running the Sound Lounge, and making sure it’s something I can feel right doing. But I feel like it’s something God’s called me to, you know?”

  Jules raised her eyebrow in surprise. She did not know what kind of answer she had been expecting from him, but that certainly wasn’t it. He had just doubled his points in her book.

  “People always ask, how I can serve God on one hand and run a nightclub on the other,” Germaine continued. “But I don’t really think the two are separate. Coming up, there weren’t many after-hours spots where grown folk could just go and chill, hear some good music, and not worry about being shot at,” he explained. “So I figured, why not make it happen?”

  Jules nodded and smiled. “You love it, don’t you,” she said.

  He grinned sheepishly. “Yeah, I do. I put a lot into that place; it’s like my kid, you know. Everyone has that one thing they’re meant to do. For me, the Sound Lounge is it. Isn’t that how you feel about what you do?”

  Jules shrugged and took another sip from her drink. “I’m not sure.”

  She knew she loved her job and enjoyed coming to work most days. But she wasn’t sure about it being her calling.

  At one time she had thought that by working in a hospital that was helping thousands of people every year she could fill that need—the need for a calling to have a life that was relevant. But although she felt good about the work she did, she knew it was the paycheck she felt really good about—particularly the security of knowing said paycheck would arrive on schedule every two weeks regardless of what happened.

  “Put it this way,” Germaine said. “What would you do with your time if money wasn’t an issue?”

  Jules thought about it for a moment. “I would do what I do for Truuth, full-time. I’d love to work with artists that have a ministry, and help them give that ministry a voice.”

  “Then you should do that,” Germaine said simply. “If it’s what God is calling you to do, then it’s the only thing that will ever make you happy.”

  “Well,” Jules said with a mischievous grin. “I’m sure there are other things that could make me happy as well.”

  Germaine coughed as he choked on a sip of his drink, and Jules couldn’t help but laugh a little.

  “I meant career-wise,” Germaine said with a laugh when he recovered.

  As she chatted with him about the Lounge, and about his business, Jules realized how little thought she had put into God’s unique plan for her life. She had been walking along this path that she figured was the right way to go, but how could she be sure? She definitely wasn’t as sure about everything as Germaine was, but she knew she wanted to be.

  Germaine glanced down at his watch, prompting Jules to look up at the clock behind him. She was surprised to see that almost an hour had passed since she sat down.

  “So, Jules,” Germaine began, a small smile playing on his lips. “I’m gonna be real with you. I like you, I think the feeling is mutual, and I want to see where this goes. But you gotta give me a sign that I’m not wasting my time here.”

  Jules took another sip from her drink, her eyes still locked on his. She glanced up at the clock again. She had five minutes—the exact amount of time it would take her to get back upstairs.

  As he watched her expectantly, she took her business card from her purse and wrote something on the back.

  “Thanks for lunch, Germaine,” she said as she stood to leave.

  Then she placed the card with her phone number on the table in front of him and leaned close to his ear.

  “Next time maybe you can give me more than an hour’s notice.”

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Jules. It’s me.”

  “Oh, hi, Mom.”

  “Don’t ‘oh, hi, Mom’ me. When were you gonna call me?”

  Jules sighed heavily, and tucked the phone in between her head and her shoulder, in anticipation of the ear chewing she knew she was going to get from her mother.

  It was about 6:30 p.m. She had just gotten home and was about to cut up some vegetables to go in her stew, when h
er mother called.

  “Mom, I saw you not too long ago,” Jules said, in what she knew was going to be a futile defense.

  “Child, your not too long ago is actually two weeks ago. You don’t think you could give your momma a call since then so I can know that you’re alive?”

  Jules didn’t bother to answer. It wouldn’t make a difference anyway, because Momma Jackson would still say whatever she was planning to say. Instead, Jules pulled another carrot from the washed pile in her stainless steel sink and began dicing it on the thick wooden chopping board.

  She missed her real mother, the one who existed before her father abandoned them and moved to New York. That was the point when sweet, tender Momma Jackson had turned into some sort of superwoman, working longer hours, buying a bigger house, and moving Jules and her brother out of Scarborough, a community in Toronto’s east end, into Whitby, a suburb so far from Toronto you needed a long-distance plan to call into it. It was almost as if Douglas Jackson’s departure had motivated Momma Jackson to succeed. Less than five years after he left, she moved from being an underwriter to the senior manager at the insurance company where she worked.

  Despite her work schedule, however, Jules’s mother had never been anything less than committed to Jules and her brother Davis. She always knew every teacher’s name, and remembered when every semester’s report card was due. And even though Jules and Davis had been teenagers when their father left, Momma Jackson still kept them in check every time they slipped up or acted a fool. To Jules it seemed like her mother still felt the need to have her hand in every part of her children’s lives. Even when it wasn’t necessary.

  “I suppose you too busy for your little old momma since you grown and all, with that big job of yours sucking up all your time.”

  “No, Momma, nothing like that,” Jules said, rolling her eyes. Now wasn’t that the pot calling the kettle black. It was after six, but Jules was almost sure her mother was calling from the office.

  “Then how come you haven’t been up here for dinner since last month? I can’t understand what it is you love about Scarborough so much.”

  Jules knew her mother hated Scarborough with a passion. When Jules had moved back into the city her mother had worked hard for them to leave, Momma Jackson had nearly had a stroke. She didn’t care that it was closer to work, or that it was cheaper to live there than in high-income Whitby. All she heard was that her daughter was moving back into poverty’s playground.

  “Momma, you know you ain’t got time for me to be under you every minute. You and Aunty Sharon are always gone to Buffalo to shop, or you’re holding some Women’s Ministries thing at the house,” Jules said, vigorously scraping the carrots in with the rest of the vegetables stewing slowly on the top of the stove.

  “What you trying to say child? That I abandoned you? That I ain’t got time for my own daughter? After I worked so hard to make sure you and your brother had everything you ever needed, you want to turn around and say something like that?” Momma Jackson complained. Jules wet a paper towel under the faucet and placed it against her forehead. “You always making excuses not to spend time with your mother,” she continued. “If it wasn’t for your brother I would feel like I didn’t have no children at all.”

  Jules closed her eyes and wet the paper towel again. This was why she never called her mother, and avoided visiting her, because it always led to a comparison between what Davis did and what Jules didn’t do. And no matter how many hoops Jules jumped through, or how many times she canceled her plans to be with her mother, or how many days she took off from work to drive Momma Jackson across the border to the States, Davis would always come out on top.

  “As much as he ain’t got no money, he calls me every week, and he’s always down here to visit me,” Momma Jackson continued. “He live in a whole different country, and he still visit me more often than you do, Jules.”

  Now that was a blatant lie. But Jules could never tell her mother that. She also couldn’t tell her mother that all those trips Davis made to visit her were actually trips to visit Keisha, his longtime girlfriend who still lived in Toronto, even though he was all the way up in Michigan. And all those long distance calls that Davis made to Mom were actually free, due to the unlimited international calling plan he got when he moved, so that he could talk to Keisha all the time. But no, Jules would never say any of that. Because, apart from the fact that it would completely destroy her mother, it would also start another of their infamous quarrels—one which would inevitably end with Momma Jackson not speaking to Jules for weeks.

  Sighing heavily, Jules moved back over to the stove and began stirring the pot of thick vegetable stew. She pushed the spoon around so hard that tiny brown droplets of sauce splashed over the sides. It was in moments like these that she felt her father’s absence most.

  Davis may have been her mother’s favorite, but Jules had always been Daddy’s little girl. When she used to get into arguments with her mother, her dad would be the one to tuck her into his arm and make everything better. Unlike Momma, he was reasonable and patient, and he understood Jules without her having to say a word. No matter what, she could always count on him to support her.

  But that was then. Now, he was no father to her at all. She could count on one hand the number of times each year she heard from him. And enough disappointment as a teenager had taught her that trying to reach out to him was a waste of her time. He did what he could in making sure she and Davis could afford college and have the material things they needed. But that was as far as his support extended. And that was fine with Jules most of the time. But every now and then, especially when her mother was on a roll, she would wonder what it would be like if he was still around.

  “Your brother’s coming down next month, and I want all of us to have dinner together. Do you think you can clear your calendar for us, Miss Busybody?” her mother asked.

  “I’ll do my best, Momma,” Jules said.

  “Good, I’d love to see you,” she said. “You know I love you, sugar.”

  “I love you too, Momma.”

  “I’ll talk to you later, honey.”

  Jules hung up the phone before turning off the stove and tossing the wooden spoon into the empty sink. No longer in the mood to finish the stew, she stretched out on the sofa as a feeling of tiredness washed over her. In only a few minutes, the elation of the day had transformed itself into the turmoil of the evening.

  The tension in the back of her neck began to turn into a headache.

  Lord, why does it have to be so hard with my mother. I honor her like you ask. I respect her, and I give her as much as I can, but it’s never enough. What more can I do?

  Jules closed her eyes and willed her headache and her conversation with her mother to go away.

  Chapter 4

  “So, are you going to tell me where we’re going?”

  “Nope.”

  “This is what I get after two weeks with you?” Jules teased. “Secret dates where I don’t know what’s going to happen?”

  “Don’t you mean two amazing weeks with me?” Germaine countered mischievously.

  Amazing was one word. Jules could also think of a couple others, like intriguing, addictive, and thrilling. She was having a hard time denying how much fun she’d been having with Germaine since their semi-date almost two weeks ago at the hospital. She’d had lunch with him on several occasions, invited him along to Truuth’s events, argued with him over the best old hits, let him school her on new artists, and exceeded her text message plan chatting with him throughout the day.

  “Fishing for compliments, Germaine?”

  He laughed. “No, just encouraging you not to hold back. The truth will set you free.”

  “Nice deflection,” she said. “You still haven’t told me where we’re going.”

  Jules narrowed her eyes at Germaine from the passenger side of his Honda Civic Coupe, but he just changed gears and threw her another mischievous grin.

  “You’re en
joying this aren’t you,” she said, trying to sound annoyed.

  “More than you know,” he said, chuckling.

  “At least give me clue.”

  “Okay,” Germaine said, thinking for a moment. “There will be food.”

  “Ouch!” Germaine laughed as Jules swatted him with her silver clutch purse.

  “Fine,” she said, turning toward her window to watch the other cars whizzing past on the highway. She sighed loudly and shifted in her seat. After a few moments she sighed again and propped her hand against her chin. On the third sigh Germaine glanced over at her and smirked.

  “You can sigh all you want, Jules, I’m not telling you,” Germaine said. “It’s supposed to be a surprise.”

  “I should probably tell you then that I don’t like surprises.”

  “Everybody likes surprises.”

  “Well, I’m not everybody,” Jules said. “The last surprise I got was a short circuit in my kitchen that left me with a refrigerator and freezer full of spoilt food.”

  Germaine laughed. “Well, I can promise you, it won’t be that kind of surprise. You’ll like this one.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I just know,” he said. “Besides, have you ever had anything less than a good time when you’re with me?”

  “No,” Jules admitted. “But it’s early days yet.”

  A few minutes later as they pulled into a small parking lot in the West End neighborhood of the city, Jules was still a bit skeptical. They were in an older part of town, and there didn’t seem to be much around but a few fifties-style bars and a couple mom-and-pop shops. The establishment they had stopped in front of was the last in a long cluster of well-worn two-story brick buildings that housed narrow stores, theme bars, and novelty shops.

  As she got out of the car, Germaine took her hand and laced his fingers through hers.

  “Trust me, you’ll have a good time,” he said, softly kissing the back of her knuckles. Jules felt a warmth spread through her when she saw the tenderness in Germaine’s eyes as he looked at her. Involuntarily she relaxed and let him lead her up a side stairway.