We Suck Young Blood (help me title this piece, please)

This is for my Creative Writing class with Alapi. It was rushed to an extent, but I'm proud of the plot. I think it would work better as a screenplay, but feedback would be greatly appreciated for the short story. Enjoy. Excuses for the length.


Barry looked at his watch laying on his desk within the last few minutes of his first Friday at his new job. Finally, he had almost finished his first week. He counted down his last minute and left the office. Five more days of probation. He remembered his interview. His first week in the city, Barry got an interview at a steel door manufacturer’s headquarters located in the Rosemont/St-Leonard area. The interview went as smooth and dull as people imagine interviews happen in sitcoms: one awkward comment, comment ignored and through some miracle, Barry still got the job. However, he was on probation for his first ten days with the company.

He walked past the three blocks to reach Cadillac metro and waited for his bus. He boarded the 32 and waited in the back of the vehicle, placing his bag on the seat in front of him. He was ready for the long ride back to Montreal-North, where he lived with his quiet cousin, Jeremy, but only temporarily.

Barry grew up on the outskirts of Sault Ste-Marie, Ontario on a family farm. He was the youngest of four boys in the White family and a wiz with numbers. His mother, Penny, would keep him in the house to do math while his brothers tilled the fields with their father. Statistics were his forte and Penny pushed him into the field of finance. Graduating from the Mathematical Finance Program at the University of Toronto, Barry was prepared to go into the field. However, he never liked the way people treated him in Toronto. He also wanted to be in a city far enough to keep away his parents; far enough to remove all possibilities of parental guilt trips

He placed his earbuds in their respective place and searched his iPod for his favourite album: Hail to the Thief by Radiohead. Critically panned, but greatly appreciated by Barry White (the one from rural Ontario). Shuffling the songs on the album’s playlist, he hears “Go to Sleep”, the song that reminds him most of riding his bike in the fields of Sault Ste-Marie. He remembered how the wind would rush over him and through his hair. The gentle blend of toneless electric guitar and a steel-stringed acoustic with the run of brushes on the skin of a snare drum, the melancholy behind the lyrical shifts and key changes pulling Barry through the fields of freshly worked earth on newly pumped tires made him miss his old home. He missed the scent of the rural environment. He never liked the city. His mother wanted him to live a wealthy life. Finance was the only endeavour for him to achieve this, according to her.

Cough.

Coming out of his daydream, Barry realized that the bus had filled over time. Filled with people in seats and others standing, scrunched together, holding on to any pole or grip available. Realizing his bag still occupied the seat in front of him, Barry reached for it.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” he said to the man closest to him, “I’ll move –“

“Do you have the time?” said the man, interrupting Barry’s attempt to clear the seat.

“Uh, sure,” Barry rolled back his sleeve to reveal his watch, “it’s about –“

“Mind if I take a look at it myself?” interrupted the man, only this time, he eased his jacket open to reveal a knife tucked in the waist of his pants.

Barry stared nervously at the knife, but true to his nature, he did what he was told. “Here you go.”

“Thank you,” the man put the watch on his wrist, “it’s a little big, but I can fix that. What are you listening to? I hope you don’t mind me listening to it, too.”

Barry White obeyed this man’s wish once again. The man looked over at Barry’s bag and made a gesture to signal his desire to sit down. Barry removed his bag from the seat, almost grateful the man didn’t ask to look through it.

Barry stared at the man. The man was held together by a boney figure. “He wouldn’t have been intimidating without his knife,” he thought. He was a jittery fellow. He kept pumping his legs and slapping his knees. He spoke.

“So,” he started, “crazy weather we’ve been having, eh?”

The NERVE of this guy!

“Uh, yeah,” Barry replied nervously. “Real crazy.”

“Man, I tell ya, all this snow and shit and then beautiful sunshine and then more snow! God’s fuckin’ with us,” he laughed at the thought of God just having fun with the weather system of Montreal to mess with their heads. Barry forced a laugh and agreed. The conversation was more awkward than pillow talk post-one night stand sex.
Barry looked out the window, accepting the fact that he had just lost two of his belongings. The bus came to a stop and Barry noticed a man lighting up a cigarette.

He wished he could have one. Facing the craving, Barry pulled out his pack of nicotine coated gum.

“Ah, you pussy!” the man pointed and laughed at Barry. “Quitting?”

“Yeah,” Barry cracked a gum through the plastic.

“No, you’re not,” the man told him, “Put that pack away.”

The man reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a carton of cigarettes. He pulled out a stick and handed it to Barry. “I assume you still have a lighter,” he continued. “All ex-smokers keep their lighters.”

Barry accepted the cigarette, caving in to his craving, and thanked the man.

“So what’s your name?”

“Uh,” Barry hesitated, “Barry. Barry White.”

The man laughed. “No way!” the man exclaimed, still in complete disbelief that he had just met Barry White, let alone a skinny, submissive Barry White who probably doesn’t have a deep, sultry singing voice. “My name is Julian,” he revealed, “but friends call me Jules.”

“Nice to meet you,” Barry started, “it’s just a shame it had to be through these circumstances.”

Jules laughed. “Oh, Barry!” he screamed, slapping his knee and folding over himself. “Quite the kidder, aren’t ya!”

Barry was still uncomfortable. The situation was as awkward as taking the first steps on or off a stopped escalator. He fiddled with the cigarette Jules gave him.

If only I could smoke it now, he thought.

“So where are you from, Barry?”

“Sault Ste-Marie.”

“Really? I’ve got cousins down there. Real pricks. They made me believe they’re all like that down there.”

“Well, you’re not completely wrong. There are a lot of dicks all over Ontario. Sault Ste-Marie seems to be a niche for the ones aren’t big enough dicks to live in Toronto.”

Jules laughed. “You’re a killer, Barry!”

A moment’s silence took over between them.

“Maybe you know my cousins.”

“I might, but I lived on a farm a little far from the city. I’d only go in for school. Plus, I spent most of my adult life in Toronto.”

“Ah, I thought you might be an academic. You look the part, with that snazzy suit! Their names are Jason and Paul Stone. Big guys. Played football. They probably teach gym class at an elementary school or something.”

“Yeah,” Barry started. He sighed. “I know them.”

“Real assholes, am I right?”

“Yes. Absolutely. I went to high school with them. They actually went out of their way to come to my house after school one day. They drove over and egged the house and the barn.”

“That’s classic!”

Barry shot a look at Jules.

“Oh, come on!” Jules defended himself, “It’s kind of funny.”
He looked behind him and realized his stop had come. He pulled the cord to signal his desire to debus.

“Take care of yourself, Barry. You seem like a good kid.”
He saluted Barry and headed for the door. Barry returned the salute with a slight smile. He still had a few minutes before his stop came. He reminded himself that he no longer had a watch or iPod and his notion of time was based on his cell phone. The bus came to the corner of Lacordaire and Leger. Barry signalled his descent and debarked the bus, cursing Jules’ name every step to the sidewalk.

He stood quietly surveying his surroundings. The run down gas station, the shitty old video store, the Mom and Pop grocery store, the grey of the buildings without
discernable signs and the potholes of the street made Barry feel as empty as deserted as the intersection.

Barry pulled the cigarette from its nest behind his ear and, against every fibre of his being, decided to smoke it. Jules was right: Barry kept his lighter as a reminder of the great accomplishment, an accomplishment that became a failure at the flicker of the fire. Once lit, Barry inhaled the wonderful lung-killing joy that is nicotine smoke. Jules had gotten to him. Barry could have whatever he wanted.

Barry crossed the intersection diagonally. He waited at the 32 stop in the opposite direction. Only moments later, he boarded the bus and headed back toward Cadillac metro. He spotted a man who looked to be in his late thirties looking at his watch and approached him.

“Hey, do you have the time?”

“Yeah,” the man said, rolling back his sleeve to reveal his watch, “it’s about –“

“Do you mind if I take a look myself?”