The Kaleidoscope by B K Nault Read Free Book Online

interesting.” He twirled to take his chair back, signaling the discussion was over.
    Rhashan put hands to his cart, but he wasn’t interested in leaving yet. “You have college degree in software design, don’t you, Mr. Harold?”
    He didn’t have a chance to suppress a snort. “Of course, and my masters in forensic coding as well.” That should impress him.
    “In my country, Jamaica, I was valedictorian in my high school.”
    Harold tried to hide his surprise, but he wasn’t very good at acting. “That’s…wonderful. How did you end up…” He started to say “in the mailroom,” but Rhashan knew where he was going.
    “You wonder how I end up here.” Rhashan was pensive, an unusual condition for someone who was usually jolly to the point of annoying. He riffled through the line-up of documents and envelopes on his cart, re-sorting the chaos from the spillage. “I mess up. I was going to UCLA. For agriculture. “
    Harold had to lean back from his desk to hear the man, who slipped into some kind of trance. “But I partied, flunked out, and then I got my girlfriend pregnant.”
    Harold waited, and when it appeared the story had concluded, he assumed he would move on, but Rhashan remained motionless. His monitor flickering angrily for his attention, Harold resisted going back to work. He could be sensitive to someone else’s needs when he wanted to.
    “So I marry Leesa and find this job.” Rhashan’s fist dragged across a wet cheek. “And she almost have her master’s degree while I work here. You want to see them?” Before Harold could protest, Rhashan pulled out a picture, and held it in front of Harold’s nose.
    He pushed the photo into the sweet spot of his glasses. She was a smiling woman in her early twenties, the breeze lifting her long blonde hair from her shoulders. He examined the composition. The shoreline undulated behind the woman sitting in the sand, a young child on her lap, curly ringlets forming an aura around his face, backlit from the sunset. The composition and lighting were exquisite.
    “And dat our boy, Dante.”
    Harold murmured appreciatively, then counted to five. Some personalities find their manager’s attention to family and home increases trust and camaraderie, his management book advised techniques he could use and not appear to be rude. He handed the photo back.
    Rhashan’s thumb rubbed up and down the edge before he replaced the picture into his wallet. “Anyway, you have the potential for good or bad in that t’ing there.” Rhashan met Harold’s gaze. “In my childhood culture, people put faith in many different t’ings.”
    Bristles prickled Harold’s neck hairs. He was hardly dabbling in the occult, if that was the implication. “I’m sure what you saw was already something in your subconscious.”
    “Maybe you’re right, mon, but the feeling of irie I have from this is unmistakable. You know dis word?”
    Harold pecked at the keyboard and jammed the keys, then deleted the nonsense he’d entered hoping the man would move on. “It means you feel good about something.”
    “Whatever you have in here, mon.” Rhashan thumped his chest. “It comes out here.” His wide-spread hands filled the space with leather, beads and his surprisingly delicate hands. “If seeds in the lifeless dirt can turn into beautiful roses, or tomatoes, or what-not”—his impromptu philosophizing filled the cubicle. He peered somewhere into the distance—“what might not the heart of man become in its long journey toward the stars?”
    Harold’s gaze traveled up Rhashan’s arm to an upturned palm. Was the guy praying? Or reciting fortune cookies?
    “You know G.K. Chesterton?”
    Surprised, Harold nodded. “He’s the Catholic philosopher.” But allegory and metaphor often flummoxed him. Seemed like glorified navel gazing. “How do you know him?”
    “Beauty, complication, laughter…love. Truth.” Rhashan regarded Harold. “You can find it in the most unusual