Chapter 7: New Secretary

Dave watched from the doorway to the austere conference room that JR was using to meet with the marketing staff. EneRG was casual enough that having the CEO lurking in the doorway to eavesdrop on the meeting was no big deal. Several of the staff had waved or nodded in his direction. Everybody knew everyone on a first name basis, too. Dave noticed Nikky also sitting in the meeting.

JR was in her high-energy pattern and the meeting was clipping along at a rapid pace. The reports were crisp and obviously reflected a desire by JR and maybe some of the other managers to have ‘executive summaries’ and only delve deeper into the tasks and projects if there were questions or problems. There seemed to be a five-minute time limit on the individual reports.

JR quickly summarized the results of the trip to Phoenix, Portland, Wheeling, and St Paul to her staff, commenting that we were still a few months away from a huge product launch.

JR asked her staff whether they thought hitting the market with three new products at once would be unusual enough to capture the attention of the OEMs. She went around the table collecting comments and taking notes. The opinions were mixed, but terse. The idea seemed to take root. Two of her staff volunteered to do some research on the subject and report the following week.

The meeting broke up. JR turned to Dave, “Any questions?”

“No, but I had a small epiphany as I watched you moderate your meeting.”

JR tilted her head to ask the question. Nikky came up beside her. She smiled and said, “I bet I know, but go ahead.”

Dave said, “You are a control freak. You need to be in control of the situation. That’s why you were freaked out at The Meadows and your behavior. You gave up control for a brief period. THAT was what made you uncomfortable later. It wasn’t the sex or the sapphic play that bothered you, it was the loss of control.”

Dave’s voice was neutral and he was just reporting the news with little editorial comment. These were the facts as he saw them.

JR bowed in agreement, “I think you’re right. To live in the Circle everyone needs to relinquish some control, don’t they?”

Dave responded, “Do you need to give up control to be in a relationship? To love somebody? To be loved by others? To what extent did you do that in your previous serious relationships?”

JR sat pensively thinking about Dave’s questions. “Damn, you ask good questions. I have a kneejerk response to those questions, but then I suddenly think I’m wrong and you’re right.”

Dave said, “A beautiful woman named Byron Katie once wrote, ‘If you want real control, drop the illusion of control and let life have you. It does anyway. You’re just telling yourself the story of how it doesn’t.’”

Nikky stood with her notebook held against her small body. “My quote is, ‘Control is an illusion. Giving into chaos is the only way through. You don’t surf by telling the waves what to do.’”

Dave smiled, “One more quote for you from Otis Maxfield. ‘Fate is what life deals you; Destiny is what you do with it.’ If you add too much structure to feign control, you won’t escape fate and you may frustrate your destiny.”

JR said, “Are you telling me to relax and just let things unfold in an unmanaged way?”

Dave said, “It’s not a black or white decision. The scale is not only gray, but also in a spectrum of colors and vibrations. My questions about love and relationships were designed to get you thinking. Love and relationships are not subject to a lot of analytics and left-brain thinking. The attendant sexuality is perhaps even further removed from that kind of thinking.

“When you think of the party at The Meadows, what exactly bothered you? Yes, you allowed me and Nikky and Margo and Tom inside your shell, and we made love, and we had sex. When you felt uneasy about what happened, what was really going on?

JR swore under her breath “Shit. You guys don’t let anybody hide, do you?”

“We talked about Friendly Confrontation in our Circle 101 class. You were very quiet in class, but maybe you need to jar your thinking some more. This is part of your personal ‘Loosening Up Process’ as assisted in by your friends and people that love you.”

“What should I do? I want relationships with you and the others. I like the people in the Circle.”

Dave shrugged again, “Maybe you shouldn’t think about managing your relationships and sexuality the same way you manage the launch of EneRG products and services?” He posed the advice as a question, leaving it to JR to carry things further. On that note, he walked back to his office to make some calls.

Nikky fell into step beside him as they left the conference room. She said, “You like JR, don’t you?”

“Yes. A lot. I love her.”

“Don’t be too hard on her. She’s a good executive and is learning about the other side of her life after a long hiatus. I don’t think she ever felt even close to how she does now. Earlier in her life, if she started to have feelings in this area, she ran away from them.”

“Remind me from time to time. Thanks.”

Nikky said, “Also, by now you also have a new secretary ... or perhaps I should say that WE have a new secretary. She’ll sit in the space between our offices. There should be a new desk and computer there now.”

“You’re not going to do that any longer?” Dave sounded surprised.

“Oh, yes, but at a higher level. Plus, I’m overloaded. I need somebody to shovel the B and C items to. I’ll keep the A items.”

The two turned the corner into the president’s suite – really three adjacent rooms and an open plan conference room. A pert and pretty woman in her late twenties stood as they came in at a fast clip. Dave and Nikky stopped. She wore a dark blue jumped with low heels; some jewelry posed as perfect accessories to her outfit. She looked trim and efficient.

Dave smiled at the woman, “Are you our new secretary?”

The woman said, “I think so. That’s what HR told me. I think I’ve signed all the right forms and such and I got escorted up here, shown this desk, and ... well, here I am. My name is Jenny Harvest.”

“Well, Jenny Harvest I’m Dave Prentiss and this is Nikky Thomas. I guess we’re your bosses, or rather you’re our new boss. What have you done so far?”

Jenny pointed at the computer on her desktop. “Gotten the computer to work and checked the software portfolio on it. I’m good with most of it. I know the Adobe suite, MS Office, and a bunch of other apps. I’m pleased to find that you use Apple products. Those are what I learned on, although I do know PCs.”

“How’d you find EneRG?” Dave asked.

“The advertisement in Sunday’s paper a week ago. I responded and HR liked my qualifications.”

Nikky asked, “Did you get briefed about the company and some of the personalities?”

“I know the company has something to do with innovative batteries, but other than that I admit to not knowing much. I’m not an engineer but I’m not scared of technology. Your website doesn’t tell much more than that, except that you’re growing and expect a wild and crazy future. I noted that you need manufacturing workers in four locations, plus here. I like working in a growing company.”

Dave turned to Nikky, “Can you help Jenny get up to speed and get better informed about us? If this isn’t to her liking see what you can do to help her relocate either elsewhere in EneRG or to a new job.”

Jenny looked surprised, “Are there reasons I might not like this?”

Dave laughed, “Maybe, but they won’t necessarily impact you in any way except for how you think about some of us, and that will have little to do with work and certainly not your job. You just might prefer working for less... ‘controversial’ people. Nikky can show you our scrapbooks and explain.”

Nikky grinned and waved him away, “Ignore him. Come into my office where we can sit comfortably and I’ll give you Chapter One. I also have some reading material for you to digest over the next day or so. Of course, you can ask questions as we go along, but I’d wait until you’ve scanned the notebook.”

Jenny followed Nikky into her office as Dave went into his own office. Seconds later, he was on the phone doing a long-distance interview with an applicant for the general manager’s position at the Phoenix plant. If Russell Mitchell passed muster on the FaceTime interview, Dave would fly him to Florida for a full day of meetings with him and the other executives. He was especially interested in what JR thought of the man; he noted they were both graduates from UNC only a few years apart.

After the call and invitation to Russ, Dave left his office to head out to the prototype factory that some of the manufacturing types had built in the back part of the building. A man named Morse Jacobs had been the innovator about putting that space together and making it work.

Dave noted that Jenny was back at her desk reading the famous scrapbook Nikky had assembled based on the various articles about him, the Circle, and some of its members, as well as EneRG. She looked up briefly and flashed him a nice smile.

As he walked, he quickly assessed Jenny Harvest. She appeared to be slightly shy of thirty years of age with shiny and pretty long brunette hair almost to her waist. He figured she thought her hair was her best feature since it was so dominant in her ‘look’. She was on the thin side, and he guessed that she might be a runner. She had a tan and looked athletic. He’d review her resume later; he’d seen a copy of it on his desk.

He had noted that she wore no wedding ring, and she didn’t appear to carry the tension he noted in many men and women that had children, so he thought she might be childless to this age. She also seemed soft-spoken, and maybe a little too submissive for what he expected in that job.

Dave wanted somebody that would tell him ‘what for’ if he started to do something dumb. He chalked up that feeling to remaining somewhat the same way. He’d advanced very rapidly in his career in the past seven years from a simple mid-level manager in the utility to a junior executive’s position to a full executive and then a vice president, and then to the CEO of a very hot and entrepreneurial business startup. He felt his self-confidence and skills were still catching up with where others had propelled him.

After Dave’s impromptu meeting with Nat, Morse, and some of the manufacturing gurus, he headed back to his office carrying a handful of the newly minted AA-size batteries to test in some of his regular battery-powered devices. He chuckled to himself about what it had cost so far to be able to make a couple of thousands of AA cells – probably around $50,000 per battery.

He found Nikky and Jenny talking as he reached the door to his office suite. Nikky waved him over before he could go into his own office.

Nikky said, “Dave would you tell Jenny how many wives you have and who they are?”

Dave shrugged and sat in the chair in front of Jenny’s desk in a relaxed pose. “Sure. I have six wives. Alice is my legal wife and the number two person in the financial operations at Knightsbridge Manufacturing. Pam is a power company consultant and travels all over the country. Those two women also mother two of my children and instrument-rated pilots.

“Heather, my third wife, brought a young son with her and I adopted him a few years back. She’s a computer jock for a software company in town. Julie is Alice’s sister and also my wife and she works for the Bennett Foundation and Owen Bennett; then there’s Cricket, the author of the books and screenplays Road Trip and Crystal Clear – the movie one of the Hollywood studios is filming now. My sixth and newest wife is Scarlett Johansson, the movie star; she plays Crystal Lee in the movies based on Cricket’s books, by the way.”