SOBS: Fiction: The Green Dress

The Green Dress by Paul Barile

She ran her hand up and down his back. It was lumpy and hard. The lumps started out small down near his pelvis and got bigger as they reached his shoulders.

The little room was hot and sticky, another windless merciless night on the West Side of Chicago.

Her armpits were sticky and slick and each time her arm reached up, the flesh smacked softly. She was embarrassed by it but he didn't even notice. There was no way that she could have known that his simple mind was back in Iowa. It was running along Route 80 on a hot afternoon in early autumn. He breathed in deep through his nose and could swear he smelled the vegetation. That familiar joy of growth, that delicious feeling of life. He finally opened his eyes and looked at her. She was still wearing that lime green dress. It made her skin look sickly and pale. She needed something deeper, something darker.

He decided that her new dress should be a deep dark hunter green with an occasional gold streak running through it. It was up to him to buy her one.

As soon as he left this place, he was going to go down to 26th Street and find her a hunter green dress with gold streaks running through it. He might even spring for a hat, if he could make the extra scratch. She would look great in a shiny green hat to match her pretty new dress.

"Hot," he said as if he was offering new information.

"Yeah Baby," she agreed continuing the slow machine-like movement of her arm.

"Gotta go," he said suddenly turning from the window.

His faded denim shirt hung over a nail in the wall, next to the bed. He pulled it on and began to tuck it in before he even began to button it.

"You gonna go work?" she asked him.

"Probably."

He reached for the crumpled cigarette pack that sat on the pillow. The first one out was cracked. He had to pinch the filter and the paper between his callused fingers to light it.

"What about tonight, lover?" she asked him. "Will you be coming around?"

He knew that he had to find work. He had to buy that dress for his angel "Just might," he said even though he knew he would.

He would come strolling back, just before sunset, with a new dress and maybe even a new hat.

"Alright baby," she walked toward him now. "You know where to find me."

She wrapped her arms around his waist and offered him a thick juicy wet kiss. It was the kind of kiss that she usually reserved for when she knew she had to bring the man back.

"Bye, Baby," he said.

He crossed Kilborn Avenue and headed south past the storage place where the old Mexican man sold furniture.

"Hey Mex," he said to the old man. "You got work?"

"Yeah I got work," the man spit back. He obviously didn't understand the question.

"I mean, you got work for me?"

"No work for you! Only work for me!" the man said.

"Thanks just the same," he said and walked away.

When he got to Kostner Avenue, he turned right and headed south again. He walked past the rundown tenements and the two flats that lined the streets. He stared suspiciously at the black faces that stared back at him from the stoops and porches.

Crossing under the viaduct, just south of Ogden Avenue, the faces changed to the golden tones of the Mexican families, but the suspicious glares were still there. They cut right through him making his stomach turn slowly under his rib cage.

At 26th Street he headed east, looking into the shiny clean windows of the carnicerias and the panaderias. He knew that he had to find work. He had to buy that dress for his angel.

After a few blocks, he stopped in front of a nondescript bar with a grimy sign that read Little Village Disco. He pushed the heavy wooden door open and walked in.