The Kaleidoscope (2 page)

“Excuse me, Mr. Donaldson?”

“Good heavens, Rhashan, you startled me.” The ridiculous tam, askew and leaking black corkscrews, was another issue for the list of grievances. “What is it?”

“Sorry, mon.” A large-knuckled hand, silver rings flashing, held one of those massively reproduced flyers addressed to no one in particular. “I missed dis.”

Harold scanned it without turning his head. “That could have waited until tomorrow.”

“I won’t leave any for tomorrow. No orphans in my bas-ket!”

The space between Rhashan’s front teeth twinged Harold’s ire worse than the gaps in his to-do spreadsheet.

“Say, good luck on your promotion. I heard about the way you saved the day, you should be a toe-in.”

Harold took the flyer and placed it on the stack of mail he would open at precisely 4:30 P.M. “Shoe-in.”

“I heard you have, what they say…a sixth sense for catching dese tings. You lucky mon.”

“Nonsense. It was just good old-fashioned hard work.” Harold couldn’t believe Rhashan had the gall to imply the six weeks he’d spent re-building the compromised database had been mere luck.

“Sorry, Mr. Harold. If you say so.” Rhashan backed away. “See you lay-tah!” Hips swaying to a tune more suited to island culture, he whistled away in his insouciant cloud of joie de vivre.

Harold clicked
Save
and opened the next file. Probably already hopelessly mangled by some data entry clerk downstairs.

****

The next morning before he left for work, Harold called Georgia as he had done every morning since she’d moved out. She’d ceased answering, but he always left a message anyway. “You’ve made your point, now come back. I won’t complain about your committee work, or…” Harold was trying to come up with new ways to entice her back when a clicking prompted him to check the ID. “Hello, Geo—”

“Harold, for heaven’s sake. Stop calling me. I told you we’re—”

“Before you say anything else you’ll regret”—he held the phone away from his ear so she’d be forced to listen—“you should know I have taken the steps to be considered for that promotion to Senior Investigator. You see? I’m not in a rut.” His fist opened and closed at his side. “And I’m willing to let you continue your meetings here.” The last concession was the clincher, and he fully expected her to gush over the magnitude of his gesture.

“You monitor bank accounts for fraud, Harold. What, are they giving you more staples for your stapler? Nice try.” Scratching noises had Harold imagining her cradling the phone against her ear while she did something else more important than talking to him. “Now I have news. Our divorce will be final in three weeks, and as soon as I can, I’m marrying Gilbert. He gets me, Harold.”

He pictured the calendar push-pinned into his cubicle wall. The interviews began in ten days, and he could conceivably land the job well before she could go through with it. “Before you left, you told me you hated my rut, and that I didn’t understand your feelings. Well, now I get it. I am willing to let you continue with your little crusades. And I think you should reconsider our vows.”

“Harold, you don’t even drive. They’re not promoting someone who has to take a cab everywhere. And you still don’t get it. I want to be with someone whose blood runs hot, who cares deeply about life. You spend all day hiding from the world, Harold. You’re cold, you have no soul, no love of life. No passion. Consider what you’re missing by hiding your feelings underneath what happened to you a long time ago. I waited and hoped, but I could never break through. I give up.” She paused, but he couldn’t form a rebuttal to all that. “I’ve got to go. There’s a council meeting this morning. We have one last chance to stall the St. Mark’s demolition. And don’t call them my little crusades. These landmarks mean a lot to me. Good luck, Harold.”

She hung up, and he weighed the advisability of redialing and reminding her that Gilbert’s job as a Sparklett’s delivery driver was an odd kind of passion, and he wasn’t hiding from what happened to him as a kid. He’d just been able to forget the past and move on. But he was already three minutes behind schedule.

During the eighteen minutes it took to shower, shave, and dress, he replayed the script. Grandma Destiny had warned him he could never pull off marriage; he was just like his father. But he was
not
like his father, and he had managed to build his life to prove otherwise.

Scraping his right cheek with the razor on its third and final day, Harold was more resolved than ever to prove to Georgia she should return.

On one of her latest protests she’d met Gilbert, who was delivering water to the courthouse one day when she was picketing the 101 freeway widening, and she hadn’t come home at all. She’d left thirty-four-year-old Harold alone in the mission style bed they’d dragged home from the thrift store and sanded and stained over the next three weekends. His only satisfaction was that Grandma Destiny had believed to her death two years ago that he was happily married. The streaky varnish still wafted pungent when the late afternoon sun warmed the bedroom. It had been the final piece of furniture they’d worked on together and Harold was determined to lure Georgia back to share it with him once again.

He selected a clean shirt, planning his appeal. He would remind Georgia that he was no longer going to be “mind-numingly dull” as she had scrawled on the back of his dry cleaning receipt as a form of farewell—he’d noted the misspelling. A strange sense of relief had washed over him after the turbaned shop owner impaled the thin paper and then handed over the filmy bag for his weekly three pairs of black slacks and five-button down shirts, lightly starched. He was focused; “meticulous” was not a dirty word, nor was it spelled with a “k.” Georgia never was the scholar; that was his contribution to the relationship. She was wrong about him. He had plenty of passion, and somehow, he would prove to her how he hadn’t withdrawn into himself. Because solving problems was what Harold did. Methodically, logically, and with focus. Everything could be explained.

****

Later that morning at work, Harold chased down a set of anomalies he’d been following for weeks. He’d written code to find the source of what at first tracked as sloppy transfers. Somewhere along the line, though, either because of his training or because of the sophistication involved in the coding, he had begun thinking downright fraud. Since his last catch was called a lucky break, Harold was determined to prove he had the chops to catch a crook on purpose, not by stumbling on awkward code a high school hacker could decipher, but by applying sophisticated algorithms.

While he traced the program for errors, Harold was devising a new tactic for retraining Rhashan. With that accomplished, and when he’d unraveled the last few glitches to find the leakage, he would once and for all prove his qualifications to the interview committee. And Georgia would be proven wrong. She didn’t understand the mysteries behind computer software like he did.

He flipped open the notebook he’d filled with remarks for the promotion committee and scanned the bullet points, searching for a few more sharpened arrows to fill his quiver. Then he arrived on an idea. He would do something to clean up the park of all the bums. If they wanted to know if he had management skills, he would show them and get something done for the community at the same time.

He picked up the phone, called the city clerk’s desk, something he’d seen Georgia do many times, and left a complaint about the eyesore that was a disgrace to him as a taxpayer and resident of the neighborhood. Check, and check.

Struggling to rein in his giddiness, he noticed the time, and got up for his 9:30 restroom break. His hands slick with Purell when he returned, Harold noted that the corner of his desk was still empty. Perfect.

At 10:32, the familiar whistle and disruptive morning chatter lifted over the cubicles like the LA marine layer on a summer morning. Harold stretched his neck until vertebrae popped, determined to keep his head low, his powder dry. Rehearsing his speech, Harold’s lips moved in rhythm to the squeal of the wheels on Rhashan’s cart. Harold counted to ten. Then, when the screech stopped, Harold swung his chair to face the opening. Eye-level with a leather pouch hanging in the V of Rhashan’s green, blue and yellow tie-dyed shirt, he waited for the dark-lashed eyes to settle on him.

“Good morning, Mr. Harold.” Rhashan’s baritone singsong rang out, and his gap appeared.

Was the man that oblivious to the dressing down that was about to commence? “May I speak a word with you?” Harold decided to keep his seat. He had practiced standing, but even if he stood, the man would still tower over him by at least half a head. Chills of expectation ran from his ginger sideburns to the tips of his freckled fingers.

“Of course, Mr. Harold. What is it?”

“I wanted to thank you. For setting down the mail as I like it. And then moving on.” Nodding briefly, he returned his gaze to the monitor, pretending to be absorbed in a string of numbers. It seemed to work, for Rhashan’s whistling moved off down cubicle road.

That went well, Harold congratulated himself. First praise, then the next phase would be correction. Earn his trust, and then he’ll be more amenable. What works on circus animals should also work on a Rastafarian. Tomorrow he would proceed to the next attempt at correcting the man, move closer to the promotion, and prove Georgia wrong on all counts.

****

Instead of going back to the empty apartment, weaving through the winding queue of sneaker-shod secretaries and stroller-pushing nannies moating the playground, Harold had begun bringing his lunch. He calculated he’d save approximately eighteen minutes, making the change quite satisfactory.

Harold aimed for a picnic table in the building courtyard that boasted the correct balance of shade and privacy. But the warm temperature had drawn out more people than usual, and the table was already occupied, so Harold selected a bench and shoved aside a potted plant someone had set out to catch some sun. Harold doubted anything could save it; the crackled leaves indicated its final days drew near.

He considered tossing the plant into the trash, but when he reached for it, he noticed a woman, sitting alone across the courtyard, watching his every move. He pretended to admire the final petal, cupping it briefly before sitting back down to unscrew the lid off his thermos. He then unwrapped today’s bologna on white bread, one slice of tomato, and a V-8.

Willing his transitions glasses to darken enough to hide him from the woman’s intrusive stare while he chewed, he turned toward the shaft of sunlight. The petal had fallen, and he brushed it off onto the concrete. She continued to stare, and he stood to turn his body away from her. A message clearly sent. Probably a visitor to the building, unfamiliar with the unspoken agreement to keep your attention focused on your own business. He finished eating and went back upstairs, mentally composing a memo about proper attire and courtyard etiquette for his management spreadsheet.

His boss motioned to Harold as he passed the door to his corner office. “Got a minute?” Clyde’s cheeks wobbled in his exuberance.

Harold chose one of the leather visitor chairs, and diverted his gaze from a rhombus patch of chest hair exposed between popped shirt buttons. He imagined placing in order the confusion of files, framed photos of children and pets, and candy jar on Clyde’s desk. He mentally lined up the company-issued stapler, in-box and telephone for maximum efficiency. “Yes?”

Shoveling aside a tumble of paperwork, Clyde lifted a manila file. “You’ve been here for, what, nearly five years now? I see you’re interviewing again.” Jowls opened in a forced smile, then bobbled closed as he skimmed Harold’s application. “Perhaps I can help make the process go a little smoother for you this time.”

Smoother
? Harold searched for a response. “Actually I’ve been here three years, six months. Is there something you’ve seen lacking in my work?” He strained to see what page Clyde had landed on.

Sausage fingers thrummed Clyde’s leather executive chair as he rocked back, gaze focused on Harold. “Your attention to detail is legendary around here, you’ve gotten us past some sticky audits, and happened upon a major inconsistency.”

Harold blanched at “happened upon.” He cocked his chin sideways, preparing a respectful, but more accurate description of the episode that had taken him hours of overtime to track down. “The ‘inconsistency’ was sloppy code, and we could have lost—”

“I’m not diminishing your value to the department in that respect, Harold, but a management position?” Clyde swiveled several degrees, and seemed to focus on a photo of himself with a trophy fish next to a boat captain. “Let me see how I can put this. Perhaps we can think of something you could do to, shall we say, soften your delivery.”

“My delivery?”

“It may help to raise your interpersonal scores, which play into the decision at this juncture. We appreciate your diligence, and we’re impressed with what I consider your genius at forensics. As you so rightly noted, it required a great deal of skill to find the error. But we also need a manager with, shall we say, attention to people skills.”

Harold’s mouth opened and closed.

Clyde scooped a handful of jellybeans and tipped the jar toward Harold. He declined, imagining germs swimming in the chromatic pool where many fingers had groped.

Tossing the candies one by one into his mouth like little cannonballs, Clyde regarded Harold. “Perhaps Gordon could give you some pointers.” He gestured, and Harold realized the captain in the fish picture was his co-worker, also up for the promotion. Always tanned and tousled from deep-sea fishing off his thirty-foot yacht, Gordon had invited Harold and Georgia out once. From his perch behind the chrome wheel, he’d bragged about the boat’s features until Harold could recite them by heart. The blisters Harold suffered from that outing peeled for weeks, and for a couple years, Georgia begged Harold to find a boat they could afford, until she finally gave up.

“Now there’s a fellow with some real charisma. I believe he volunteers at the soup kitchen. Things like that make a person, well, easier to work with, in case there are
issues
.” Clyde dropped his voice to a conspiratorial growl. “Oftentimes people of a special caliber may find other parts of their makeup need a certain amount of shoring up. While I can’t tell you how to run your personal life, perhaps there’s something you can do that would show the committee you can handle people as well as you do lines of code. I know you’ve recently had some personal setbacks, and while it’s none of my business whether you’re married, divorced…” Clyde clicked the space key on his keyboard with a crooked pointer finger. “Anyway, good luck, Harold, and again, thanks for all you do from that cubicle. The pennies certainly add up.” A trace of spittle worked its way down a fleshy groove.