by H.H. Fowler
Chapter Five
I arrived to work half an hour before my usual time Monday morning. My mind was well-rested and ready to tackle that day’s tasks. My plan was to go through my listings and identify those properties I felt were right for Taj and Jennifer. Once I’d made it into the grand marble foyer, I greeted Esther, our secretary, and then proceeded toward the elevator.
I’d requested to study in France for six months while working in one of the offices over there, but it was not easy to secure an approval. I was up against fierce competition amidst ten other career-driven moguls. My boss, Bruce Bradshaw, presently held the record for selling the largest beachfront property at a cool twenty-four million dollars. My goal was to surpass that.
I stepped out of the elevator and noticed Reuben sitting on the floor with his back against a wall and a pair of earplugs stuffed in his ears. His eyes were closed, which gave me some time to study his muscular physique: a surfer-type body that exuded youth, casually clad in shorts and a tank top. His skin was smooth all over. A beaded chain connected beautifully around his neck, which matched the beaded bracelet that was around his left ankle. I reminded myself that Reuben was five years younger than I was and that I didn’t feel an ounce of chemistry between us.
When I tapped him on the shoulder, he jumped out of whatever he was listening to and flashed me a broad smile. He removed the earplugs.
“Why are you sitting on the floor outside my office?”
He shrugged. “My father gave my office space away to someone else. And he doesn’t want me lounging around in his office. Your office is the safest place for me to be at the moment.”
After that humbling episode with Jennifer, I was not in the mood to be mean to anyone. I opened my office door and invited him in.
“Just so that you know,” he said as he followed me in, “I don’t plan on being in your hair all day. You are a workaholic and I will not get in the way of that.”
“That’s very considerate of you, Reuben,” I replied. “But what are you going to be doing in the meantime while I spend hours staring at my laptop and drawing up my contracts?”
“This...” He showed me his earplugs and the iPad that it was attached to. “I have an interview with a gym owner this afternoon. I’m just going over some information I know I’m going to be asked.”
I eased my butt in the swivel chair and gave Reuben a questioning stare. Several things I was confused about.
“Question number one,” I said to him. “Why are you meeting with a gym owner when your father paid for you to study Mandarin, which he obviously did to enhance your realty skills?”
He grinned. “Do you want the short version?”
“It seems as if you are enjoying this.”
Reuben rubbed his right brow. I could see that he was trying hard not to smirk. “You remember what I told you yesterday,” he reminded me, “about finding my calling? Well, I’ve been doing missionary work for the last eighteen months.”
I laughed.
“Why did you laugh?” Reuben asked.
“Because the Reuben I know made fun of those sort of those things. What are you telling me? That you are a Christian now?”
“I am. You should be proud to know that your little sermonettes weren’t preached in vain.”
I eyeballed Reuben, waiting for him to tell me that he was kidding. But he just smiled and dove right into the details of his stay overseas.
“When I initially arrived at the Beijing office,” he started, “I was excited about the opportunities my father had dropped in my lap – so to speak. I went to work in the mornings, and during the late afternoons, I sat with my Mandarin instructor. After about three months, I walked by an abandoned building and saw a group of young men who seemed to be rehearsing for some theatrical performance. By this time, I could make out quite a few words in Mandarin and became curious about what was being said by the leader of the group.”
“So one afternoon, I built up the courage to go and inquire of it. I discovered that the young men were preparing to face prosecution. Two of their Christian friends had been placed on house arrest and they were planning to take food and water to them. But the Beijing police were cruel and would arrest and punish any Christian attempting to do so.”
“So what does the theatrical performance have to do with anything?” I asked.
“Well, those young men were building their faith by mimicking the cruelty of Beijing Police. They knew they would eventually be arrested and mistreated. By practicing to stand under pressure, they became unbelievably valiant. I was blown away. Not because I suddenly realized how fortunate Christians are in the western hemisphere, but because of the ages of those young men, which ranged somewhere between 12 and 17.”
“What a show of bravado I could only assume came from their faith in God. My appetite for that sort of demonstration had been aroused and I wanted more. Of course, I didn’t accompany them on that particular mission, but I found out where their church was located and joined it. I then immersed myself into their ‘feeding the poor’ program while I developed my bible IQ. And as they say, the rest is history.”
I wanted to begin my work, but Reuben’s story had me reeling in wonderment. But could I trust him to tell me the truth? Working with Reuben in the past only reminded me of how arrogant and pretentious he’d been.
“So basically, you ditched a promising career in real estate to learn how to support a food drive? I’m not striking you down for it. As a matter of fact I think it’s commendable, even more so now that you profess to be a Christian, but you have to understand why your father is furious with you. Because you, Mr. Reuben Bradshaw are next in line to take over for your father.”
Reuben seemed to take my words with a grain of salt. He opened his hands, and said, “It’s kind of hard to explain. Yes, I went against my father’s wishes, but I had to find myself and what God has called me to do. And part of that was focusing on my health and making my body as fit as I could, in order to do the work the Lord has assigned me to do.”
“I eventually abandoned the real estate office and enrolled fulltime into a health and nutrition program. I started going to the gym and I began to enjoy learning about it. I was 150lbs overweight and I realized while preparing meals to distribute to the poor that I was being excessive and extravagant, even down to the way I ate. It won’t matter if a person spends four million dollars on a house if they’re only going to suffer a heart attack or die from a poor-diet-related disease before they’re fifty years old.”
I waved Reuben’s philosophy aside with a little of my own, because I felt as if Reuben was condemning my affluent lifestyle. “What you are talking about only happens in certain cases. Everyone who is rich is not going to die of some disease. In fact, I know of dozens of rich old folk, who swear by fried chicken as one of their main foods.”
Reuben raised a brow at me. “Dozens of old folk? I would like to meet some of them. They are probably on their way to their grave and don’t even know it. Imagine how many years they’ve been clogging their arteries.”
I wanted to win this argument, so I cut my eyes at Reuben in a way to indicate I was ready for the conversation to end. “What are you now? A health consultant wannabe?”
He smiled. “And what is so wrong with that? Imagine when I open my own chain of companies.”
Not able to come up with a sensible comeback, I watched as Reuben put the earplugs back into his ears and stared at his iPad as if it held all the answers to life. Too filled with pride to let Reuben see his actions had bothered me, I turned my attention to my laptop and buried myself in my work. About an hour later, he mumbled something before he quietly slipped out of my office. I was happy to finally be rid of him anyway.