The Book of Green - Number 3

A trolley car slowly burned by as he dropped his cigarette to the ground and made the move across the Street. As Cole split the passing cars, his carcass pained with the coiling molten winds they fashioned.  He would have been glad to be uptown because most of the buildings had air, but not down here. Not down in the slums. Somebody once said that the coldest winter they ever spent was a summer in San Francisco, but that logic didn’t apply to the slums—they were a separate hell.

          The door to the building was copper and burned Cole’s hand when he reached for the knob. He quickly jerked away his hand and then angrily kicked the damn thing loose and walked in. “Everyone needs a lesson,” he thought and then he kicked the door again.

          Looking at the building registry, Red was either on the third or fourth floor, but she was upstairs for sure.  Cole began walking up the stairs, wondering just where the two women were at this point in their adventures with each other. He smiled and walked a little faster.    

At the top of the stairs, Cole looked at the doors to the apartments; they were all wide open to let in the breeze except for one. Any fool would have known the closed door was hiding the girls, but Cole felt especially clever for putting ‘two and two together’ anyway.

As he got closer to the door, the heat began to grow around him. Sweat fell from his brow, and his stomach began to turn a little. What should he say? Should he knock? Should he just kick the door down? Should he strip down before he entered? Of course if they didn’t want him to help in their endeavor, a naked man entering an apartment with a gun strapped to his side could be seen as a less than positive experience. And the boys from the Department would probably leave him in the clink naked for days before releasing him to the State Hospital.”  “Maybe, I’ll just walk in and see what happens.”  
 

Getting closer, the door was not locked and the heat that encircled it felt like there must have been a fire on the other side.  Cole smiled and thought about the fire the two women were creating. Then from the back of Cole’s ‘whatever’, a sort of self preservation radar went off.  Had his prurient interests not been in such a rage, he would have been more prepared for what was about to happen as he pushed the door open.

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"The Book of Green"

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Written and Illustrated by Fuller Bumpers