Taking Stock

by Scott Bartlett

  Taking Stock

  Scott Bartlett

  Mirth Publishing

  St. John’s

  TAKING STOCK

  This novel is a work of fiction. All of the characters, places and events are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.

  © Scott Bartlett 2013

  This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0 or, send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 2nd Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California 94105, USA.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Bartlett, Scott

  Taking Stock / Scott Bartlett.

  ISBN 978-0-9812867-2-3

  Chapter One

  Sam first met me in the middle of committing suicide.

  I’d been standing on the stool for a while, to tell the truth. In the shed. It was wobbly—the stool. Poorly-made.

  Before I came in here, I thought I’d made up my mind. I felt ready. I felt killing myself was the logical thing to do.

  But I stood, stool wobbling, rope hung from a ceiling beam and draped around my neck, for a long time. A crow started cawing, and wouldn’t stop.

  Crows have a remark for every occasion.

  A few minutes before Sam came in the stool almost fell over. I grabbed the rope above me and managed to keep my balance. My heart hammering against my chest, the rope scratching against my neck.

  I decided to decide whether to kill myself soon. On account of the scratchiness.

  The arguments in favour of suicide seemed numerous. I’d spent the last of my inheritance. I had no résumé—I’d never had a job, and didn’t feel like looking. Two years before, I stopped talking to my only remaining friends because they fell in love with each other. Ever since, I’d been a complete recluse.

  And I really wanted that crow to shut up.

  I started to consider whether the lawn mower was too close. I envisioned my dumb, flailing body trying to use it to survive. Its foot finding just enough purchase on the mower’s handle to prolong asphyxiation. Its fingernails clawing dumbly at the noose.

  That’s when the door opened wide, and the bright light made me squint. A silhouette stood framed in the doorway. “What are you doing?” it asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “It looks like you’re committing suicide.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, no, not really. That rope is too long, for one.”

  “Oh. Geez.”

  The silhouette took out a silhouette of a cell phone and dialled three numbers. “Hi, I need an ambulance at 37 Foresail Road. I just found the young man who lives downstairs attempting to commit suicide in our shared shed. No, he’s not hurt. I’ll keep an eye on him till you get here. No. I don’t think the police will be necessary. Okay. Thanks.” He put the phone back in his pocket. “I don’t believe we’ve ever been formally introduced. I’m Sam.”

  I removed the noose from around my neck and stepped down from the stool. My thigh cramped. I ignored it, and offered my hand. “Sheldon.”

  “Why did you pick the shed to kill yourself in, Sheldon? Didn’t you figure I’d be the one to find your body? Awful first impression.”

  My cheeks heated up. “The ceilings are too low in my apartment. Anyway, I was going to make up for it. I left you everything I own in a note. Including my bike, in the corner there.”

  “I don’t know how to ride one.”

  “Oh. Well, I left you a lot of books, too.”

  “I like books. Anything else?”

  “A cat.”

  “I’m allergic.”

  “Oh.”

  Silence. For a moment I couldn’t think of anything to say, which was somehow worse than him walking in on my suicide attempt.

  Then I thought of something: “So, what were you coming in here for?”

  “Lawn mower.”

  “You’re the one who mows the lawn?”

  “Yeah. Did you think it mowed itself?”

  “I thought the landlord did it.”

  “You don’t look out the window much, do you?”

  The ambulance arrived. The sirens weren’t on, and it didn’t pull up in any kind of rush. The driver got out and gave us both a friendly hello. He showed no special interest in either of us—just opened the back door. I climbed in, and so did Sam.

  “You’re coming too?”

  He shrugged. “Nothing better to do.”

  “What about the lawn?”

  “I tend to procrastinate.”

  *

  Spending three weeks in hospital on suicide watch is not very enjoyable. After that, it feels good to come home and fall into your own bed.

  For me, though, that sentiment doesn’t survive the night.

  I wake up drenched in piss. It’s on my neck and chest. It’s in my hair and mouth. The sheets are soaked. My throat is raw, and the air is thick with the pungent odour of ammonia. The cat looks at me from the computer desk, tail twitching.

  “You little bastard,” I say in a hoarse whisper.

  My Mom used to say that belongings should embody social relationships. That’s why they’re called ‘belongings’. A keyboard helps you email your friends, a book can be borrowed, a painting elicits discussion, a glass holds a guest’s drink. She used to periodically purge all her possessions that didn’t facilitate her interaction with others, and she taught me to do the same. During these purges, if she came across an unwanted item she thought I might like, she’d toss it on my bed. We called them culture bombs.

  The day she died, my belongings died, too. Objects that used to represent parts of my relationship with her—inside jokes, favourite games—were dead things, now. Inert.

  Except the cat. The pudgy calico. The little bastard, who used to rub against the legs of guests, who suffered even me, and adored Mom. The cat who, since she died, stalks around the apartment, fur bristling, hissing. Who shreds my books and scratches my ankles. Who pisses on me, apparently.

  Mom named him Brute. I call him Marcus Brutus.

  *

  Sam and I weren’t sitting in the emergency waiting room long before I started wishing I’d brought a book. I’m very tolerant when I have a book. Otherwise I’m forced to look at reality, which in my experience is glacial and dull. A nurse took my blood pressure, and after that we were told to wait. Which we did. For hours. I guess the suicidal aren’t a priority unless they’re really feeling motivated.

  Around suppertime I asked Sam, “Why are you still here?”

  “Told you. Nothing better to do.”

  “I heard your phone ring like six times.”

  “No one important.”

  “I’m not, either.”

  “You kidding? Trying to kill yourself makes you VIP.”

  “Not really. You just don’t want to sound like an asshole when you tell people you found the kid who lives downstairs trying to kill himself. You want to be able to say you stayed until he was safely committed, and you did all you could.”

  Sam scratched his nose. “Did you know most people who are hanged urinate and defecate as they die?”

  “So?”

  “Is that really how you wanted to be found?”

  “How I appear after I die is irrelevant to me. Dead people don’t care how they look, or about anything else.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “Yes. Trust me. I’m sure.”

  A nurse finally called my name, and led us down a series of corridors to a room with a bed and a couple chairs. It turned out this was just a waiting room in disguise, since another hour passed before I saw anyone. When I did, it was another nurse, and she a
sked Sam to leave the room while she spoke with me. She asked what my relation to him was, and why I thought I was there. She asked if I’d been hearing any disembodied voices or strange noises. She asked if I was sleeping well. She asked if I’d been having trouble concentrating. She asked about my appetite. She asked if I was irritable.

  Then it was on to yet another room, for another two-hour wait. Sam asked me if I was currently attending school, and I said, “Ever notice how every conversation you’ve ever had gradually became more and more pointless, until it finally spirals headfirst into redundancy?”

  Sam tilted his head a little to one side.

  Until I met Dr. Cervenka the chairs were made of plastic or wood, but once he became available I was shown to a room with soft, leather seating. Cervenka took a couch. I took an overstuffed armchair and watched him study a clipboard.

  “Sorry about the wait. How are you feeling?”

  “I guess ‘ennui’ would be the word.”

  “That’s a good word. Why don’t you explain to me what brought you here?”

  “I was about to off myself when my neighbour intervened and called an ambulance.”

  “Succinct. Why did you want to commit suicide?”

  “Nothing about living interests me.”

  “Have you had thoughts like that before —that life isn’t worth living?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Have you tried to act on them before today?”

  “No.”

  “Why now?”

  “I ran out of money. Living is expensive.”

  “You could get a job.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Well, are you still inclined that way? Do you feel like you’re a danger to yourself?”

  “Suicide still appeals, if that’s what you mean.”

  The doctor nodded. “Looks like you’ll be staying with us a while.”

  *

  Unlike mine, Sam’s apartment has a porch. It leads into the living room, which features a couch, an armchair, a flat screen TV, and a hodgepodge of cabinets, dressers, and chests. There are also more video game systems than I can name. Not many guys pushing 40 have that many video games.

  “Sorry about the PJs,” Sam says. “Though, you’re lucky I’m wearing more than underwear. When you live alone, fashion sense is the first thing to go.”

  “I didn’t have any to begin with.”

  “You want a beer?”

  “What?”

  “Beer—it’s an alcoholic beverage brewed from fermented sugars.”

  “Oh. I’ll have a beer.”

  He goes into the next room—the kitchen, I assume. There are swinging saloon doors, which flap back and forth at his passage. I sit on the couch.

  “Careful, though,” he says, passing me a sweating bottle. “I was reading about your meds—apparently they increase the effects of alcohol. How does it feel to have your freedom back?”

  “Good. I guess.” I twist, and the beer hisses.

  Sam sets his beer on the coffee table and sits beside me. My leg twitches.

  “You guess?” he says.

  Let’s play What Does Sam Want to Hear.

  “I need a job. I want to get a job.”

  Sam smiles. “Good. Work gives life meaning. You know, they did a study where they put a rat in a cage, with a metal bar hooked up to a food pellet dispenser. Once the rat figured out how to operate the dispenser, the scientists put a tin cup filled with pellets in one corner of the cage, and the rat was given a choice between free food and food it had to work for. They did this with 200 rats, and only one of them chose not to press the bar.”

  “Maybe I’m that rat.”

  Sam shakes his head. “I don’t think so.” He sips his beer, peering at me. “You’re still taking your meds, right?”

  Two knocks on the door—the second harder than the first. Sam looks at me, then looks up at the ceiling. “Excuse me.” He gets up and walks to the porch.

  “Hey, Sam,” a low voice says.

  “Hi, Gord. Come in. I have a visitor.”

  Gord enters ahead of Sam, and he stops in the doorway, blocking Sam’s path. “I don’t know him.”

  “Yeah, Gord, this is Sheldon. Sheldon, Gord.”

  “There aren’t supposed to be strangers here.”

  “It’s okay, Gord, he—”

  “He a cop?”

  “No, he—”

  “What does he do, then? Where do you work, kid?”

  “Nowhere, at the moment.”

  “You don’t work anywhere? He’s a cop, isn’t he? I’m not buying from you, Sam. I’m telling everyone about this. You’re done.”

  He turns around. Sam looks at him, expressionless. “Sit down, Gord.”

  “You can’t keep me here. That’s illegal. I know my rights.”

  “Sit down, Gord.”

  “Sam, I’m serious, if—”

  “Sit down.”

  Gord stands there, hands balled. Sam raises his eyebrows. Gord sits in the armchair and stares at me.

  “Sheldon’s a friend,” Sam says. “He lives downstairs. Has for years.”

  “How come I haven’t met him, then?”

  “I recently met him myself.”

  “What do you do, kid, seriously? Do you live with your mommy?”

  “No.”

  “What do you want to be, then? When you grow up, like?”

  “I used to want to be a writer.”

  “A writer, hey? I could give you some pointers. I’m a writer myself.”

  “Really?”

  “Wrote my will last week.”

  I fake-chuckle. “It’s good to be prepared.”

  Gord grins. “This kid’s not a cop. Got any weed, Sammy?”

  “Plenty.”

  “Break it out. Let’s see how it tastes.”

  We go out onto Sam’s deck, which overlooks our backyard, as well as a great stretch of suburbia beyond it. There’s a dresser out here, in the deck’s far corner, and from the top drawer Sam takes a bag of marijuana, a pack of cigarette papers, and a long, thin book. When he lays the latter on his lap, I see it’s the illustrated version of A Brief History of Time. He produces a playing card from within its pages, and uses it to sweep some weed into a line. He starts rolling it. When he’s finished, he takes a lighter from his pocket, lights the joint, and inhales once. He passes it to Gord.

  Gord takes a long drag. “Delicious.” He inhales twice more and holds it out to me.

  “I don’t smoke.”

  “Suit yourself. Hey, Sam, you still having that dinner tomorrow?”

  “Yep. At 6:00.”

  “Great. You’re a good cook, Sammy.” Gord gives him the joint and stands up. “I better get going. I want an ounce.”

  “Come inside. I’ll be back in a few, Sheldon.”

  My beer is gone, and honestly, I’m feeling it. Buzzed as I am, though, I still can’t relax. There’s a tension in my chest that never really goes away—like a spot oxygen can’t reach, no matter how deeply I breathe. Mom used to say I got that from her.

  “Sorry about that,” Sam says when he comes out.

  “So you’re a drug dealer?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How’d that happen?”

  Sam shrugs. “I have a cousin who’s been growing it since junior high. I turned 26, and I lost my taste for working hard to meet other people’s goals. Quit my job, borrowed some money, and bought a pound of pot from my cousin.”

  “I see.”

  “Would you like to join us for dinner tomorrow night?”

  I try to think of an excuse. “Um.”

  “The rest of the guests won’t be like him. Promise.”

  I hear a car start, and the crunch of gravel as it pulls out of the driveway.

  “Is that him?”

  “I guess, yeah.”

  “He’s driving stoned? You’re okay with that?”

  “It’s not my place to enforce anything.”

  “Well, I can’t come to
your dinner.”

  “Sorry to hear that. Can I ask why?”

  “I’ve had my fill of social interaction. I get tired of people pretty fast. Try to avoid them, normally.”

  “That hasn’t been going too well for you.”

  “People disappoint.”

  “Maybe it’s not them.”

  “Goodbye.”

  “See ya.”

  *

  I wrote my first story in grade three. It was about a superhero with the power to turn anything into food, just by touching it. Like King Midas, but not really. Mom was ecstatic I’d found my passion. She bought me lots of writing books. She registered me in programs for young writers. She made me practise writing every day. For years, every story I wrote was homework for some course.

  She enrolled me in other stuff, too. Piano lessons. Soccer. Figure skating. Rock climbing. Gymnastics. Hockey. I don’t think she had any concept of gender roles. She registered me for little league, but I never played a game. Before the first one started, the coach hit some pop flys for us to catch. Except, one wasn’t a pop fly. One was a line drive that smashed into my face and raised a bump between my eyes the size of an egg. When it hit me, I spun around like a ballerina and landed on all fours. Blood dripped onto the sand. On the way to the hospital, I considered that I would probably die.

  Eventually, I quit everything—even writing, though that happened later. Kung Fu, I stayed in for a while. Earned a couple belts. Pushed up, sat up, jumped jacks, ran laps. Once, the instructor called me a mental giant. I wasn’t sure whether he was praising my cerebral fortitude, or calling me tall and retarded.

  I wonder what my instructor would have said if he’d seen me sitting around a psych ward, wearing a pair of Velcro Reeboks.

  They took away my sneakers around the same time they took my freedom. They didn’t explain it, but I knew why. Laces are problematic.

  I had no money, so Sam bought me these Velcro shoes. He also bought me Crow, a book of poems by Ted Hughes, after I mentioned it’s something I’ve been meaning to read.

  To be honest, I was a little surprised when Sam brought me the sneakers. I hadn’t expected to see him anymore.

  *