"THE CONDEMNED"
Beginning in the post-high school year of 1973…
Ricky Dills and Doug Burger, having moved to Atlanta, Georgia to get menial employment, just happened to end up with Ricky working as a parking attendant in the sub-floor section of the prestigious Hyatt Regency hotel, while Doug took a job as "Bushelp", which was, in actuality, simply "Busboy" work, though the name change was meant to make such sound at least a little more important than it truly was, in that self-same Hyatt Regency hotel.
It was hard for Doug Burger working in the ground-floor restaurant-bar called Clock of Fives, basically doing the bidding of waitresses as well as customers. He would, at the end of a very long and tiring day, make only enough in shared tips, gathered and subsequently distributed by the Head Bushelp person, a very hip guy to whom Doug constantly tried to clumsily simulate his own "hipness" only to end up a two-legged joke to all who bussed tables, to barely buy a burger.
He'd always only leave the below minimum-wage job with just barely enough cash and coin to purchase a single fast-food hamburger, he couldn't even afford the cheese!, and a very small order of fries. Day in and day out.
Needless to say, an already lanky young man, with a comically long face, humorously large hawk-nose, overtly protruding Adam's Apple on the front of a too-long neck, with hair parted ridiculously low on the left side so as to allow a ridiculously long clump of greasy straight hair to hang down the entire right side of his singularly funny face, wasn't exactly eating as well as he had been before coming to Atlanta.
Such a situation would be even more harshly exacerbated when an always well-fed Ricky Dills would come home stuffed and satisfied.
"Where've you been, Dills? Didn't you get off work at the same time as me?" asked Doug as he sat on the squeaking side of one of two worn-out twin beds in a claustrophobically small room, overrun with seemingly mutant cockroaches, some of which clung to the stained by something ceiling, that had not only a completely missing window, but also a sizeable portion of the brick-and-sheet rock wall as well. And, wouldn't you know it, such a literal hole-in-the-wall was on Doug's side of the nearly-condemned room.
"Just had me a big, juicy steak with all the fixin's," Ricky said with a satisfied sigh as he plopped onto the too-soft mattress of his less-squeaky bed, which sent a veritable army of cockroaches scurrying from beneath.
Glaring at Ricky with that laughably longish face, a gaping mouthed expression half-hidden by the curiously combed, dangling greasy hair, accentuating that comically large hawk-nose, Doug exclaimed, "How the hell did you afford that? All I could get with my tips was a hamburger and fries! Which I had to choke down 'cause I couldn't afford a Coke!"
It never even occurred to Doug Burger's often half-witted forethought to ask for water with his hamburger-and-fries.
"That's because you're bussin' tables," Ricky grinned broadly while slipping hands in behind his head and crossing his feet at the ankles in order to further relax, "while I've been parkin' cars for people with real money."
As if to punctuate such truth, Ricky pulled a fairly large roll of fives, tens, and twenties from one of his pants pockets while Doug desperately dug out a few pennies, dimes, nickels, and a couple of quarters from his own. The expression on his face that of dumbfounded disgruntlement.
"Bastard," grumbled Doug beneath his breath as he, too, stretched out on his too-soft bed…which slowly sank two dozen inches below the rusting metal frame until his too-skinny body formed a ludicrous U-shape.
Amidst a too-tense sigh of absurd exasperation, Doug groaned, "Great."
END OF "THE CONDEMNED"