saw things that he wanted to see.
“Hi,” she said.
Ptolemy smiled because this was the girl that didn’t look like anybody else he ever knew.
“Robyn,” he said.
“Can I come in?”
He nodded, not moving.
The child swiveled her head and moved toward him; then, just as she came close, she kissed him on the cheek. He moved backward, grinning and touching the place she had kissed.
When Robyn moved around him Ptolemy turned with her, feeling as if he were dancing with Sensia at the big band shell at Pismo Beach.
“Dog!” Robyn said as she came into the congested room. “Where do you sleep, Mr. Grey?”
He pointed at the oak table against the southern wall of the room. It was piled almost to the ceiling with brown boxes.
“In them boxes?”
“No. Under.”
She stooped down, putting her hands on her bare knees and turned her head to see the thin mattress and sheer olive blanket.
“You sleep on the floor under a table?”
He nodded, suddenly shy and ashamed.
“What about rats and roaches?” she asked.
Smiling, he was reminded of red-breasted robins singing brightly, thanking him for their breadcrumbs.
“You wanna sit down, girl?”
“Where?” she asked, her left nostril rising.
“There’s chairs everywhere,” he said. “But I gotta special one for guests that I keep in the kitchen.”
He walked there feeling but not minding the pain in his knees. He’d found the aluminum garden chair set out in front of a house with six cars parked on the lawn.
“They got so many cars, they don’t have room for no outside furniture,” he said to himself as he dragged away the lightweight chair with the threaded seat of sea-green and aqua nylon ribbons.
“You use patio furniture?” Robyn asked when he returned dragging the chair behind him.
“I got them oak chairs over there,” he said, “but they too heavy now, an’ there’s all that stuff stacked on ’em. This here’s a lawn chair, but it’s comfortable, though.”
After the lovely young girl was seated, Ptolemy got his folding wood stool from under the east table. Reggie had brought it for him. It was composed of light pinewood legs held together by rainbow-colored cotton fabric. Ptolemy opened the stool and sat down in front of the black-clad black girl.
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Seventeen.”
“You should be in school, then.”
“I dropped out when I was fifteen but then I went to night school and got my GED. Now I’m gonna start goin’ to community college in the fall,” she said, adding, “An’ I’m almost eighteen, anyway.”
They were quiet for a while, looking at each other. She cast her eyes about the room while he wondered where someone like her might come from.
In the background a man was talking about Palestinians. This brought the image of Egypt into Ptolemy’s mind. Egypt—where his name came from.
“He had what they say is a Egyptian name,” Coydog had said, “but Ptolemy, Cleopatra’s father, was a Greek —mostly.”
“Is that music German?” Robyn asked.
“It’s from Europe,” he said. “Classical.”
“Oh.”
“How come you here, um, um, Robyn?”
“I came to see you.”
“Why the most beautiful girl at the whole party gonna come to a old man’s house smell like he ain’t clean it in ten, no, no, twenty-three years.”
Robyn sat forward on the lawn chair and took hold of one of Ptolemy’s big fingers. She didn’t say anything.
Ptolemy noticed that her skin was actually as dark as his but it had a younger tone. He wanted to say this but the words fishtailed away, eluding his tongue.
“Niecie wanted me to come and make sure you was okay, Papa Grey.”
He took a deep breath into his large nostrils and smiled.
