Roy lived on the West side of town that spelled out decay visually in debris, broken sidewalks and post industialism.  Dilapidated buildings marred against a crumbling sunset, small time hustlers looking for a cheap thrill.  The gathering spot was a run down hotel and mini mart in the center of West Duluth.  A sign in the window said "Stealing will earn you a free ride in a police car."  Roy didn't add up the equations of the end game.  Though his mind was set on the present, his thoughts filtered back to the past when opportunity was more than a word that he heard at a Work Force Center lecture on Monday mornings.  He planned to carry out the rest of his existence in an unpremeditated manner.  Go to work, return, watch channel 54 or 38 and hit the rack.  The only compromise he made picking a non denominational church after his parents indoctrinated him and not speaking up at work when Slim would give him shit for not asking out Trudy.  Trudy was a thin, well thought out blonde both optically and intrinsically with steel eyes and a heart to capture many.  She was basically out of his league and everyone knew it.  She equally did not want to be paired with him.  His sour look, his long nimble fingers when he dealt the cards, his resistance to laughter made him an eternal train wreck that could only be redeemed by someone with a savior complex.  Roy was simply not her type and it was about time she directed her energies other ways.  Trudy was a waitress and a damn good one at that.  She could juggle more drunks than Siegfried could tigers.  Her life was not going to end the way Roy's did.  She was going to find new ways to bust out of the 55806 horizon.  A perfect example of this, is that Roy had a counter on his desktop, counting how many hours he had left to live.  His only fear was that he would outlive the computer prediction of his calculated life.

Roy had a brother named Floyd was flamboyant marked by his preference for lime green soft cotton jeans.  Everyone knew him in town.  Roy lived in his shadow.  Floyd dated men and would show up at the Flame weekly, looking for new meat to grind.  He could size someone up faster than Joan Rivers on the Fashion police.  There were indeed just slim pickings in this industrial town (even though Slim tried to pick for others at the casino where Roy worked) and he liked to wait until 9 p.m. at night when the sheik, urban crowd hit the bars.   In Duluth, that consisted of the bankers, the small pool of venture capitalists and the old money offspring. The artsy crowd only showed up when there was an alternative singer.

to be continued