The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

He went through the kitchen door and found the girl throwing piles of pots down from the sink onto the floor. Hundreds of roaches of all sizes and breeds were scuttling madly from the wild woman’s attacks. The black gunk from her hands was coming off on the pots and pans and and even the dishes that she was putting on the floor.

“Stop,” Ptolemy said, but Robyn didn’t even slow down.

“I can’t, Mr. Grey. I gotta wash my hands and clean this house and get rid’a all these roaches an’ shit.”

“But you the one messin’ it all up.”

“It’s already a mess, Mr. Grey. It’s already messed up,” Robyn said. “Look at all the junk just piled up and moldin’. Look at all these bugs.”

“They only out ’cause you th’owin’ everything around,” the old man argued.

By this time the sink was clear enough that Robyn could turn on the water and wash her hands.

“Oh no,” Ptolemy said, feeling as if maybe the walls would fall down or a fire would erupt from the stove. “This is bad.”

Turning to him, smiling, her hands dripping because there was no dry towel, Robyn said, “We have to clean up this place, Mr. Grey. You can’t live like this with a house full’a garbage and bugs.”

“But it’s too much. Too much stuff. We should just leave it and go to the store. I don’t have to cook.”

Robyn whipped her hands back and forth through the air to get off the excess water and then came to Ptolemy and put her arms around him. She hugged him to her chest and put her cold hand on the top of his bald head.

“Shhh,” she whispered.

He realized then that he was crying.

“It’s all right, baby,” Robyn said. “I can clean up all’a this mess in a week or two. I could have your whole house set up for you. Don’t you want your house clean and neat? Don’t you want a nice bathroom and a bed to sleep in?”

“No.”

Robyn moved back a few inches, still holding on with her face there close to his.

“Why not?”

“My things,” he whined.

“But most of this stuff is just old junk an’ trash.”

Ptolemy lifted up his hands, resting them on the girl’s chest beseechingly.

“In between the garbage and the trash is all the things I have. Keys and lockets, pictures and money . . . treasure. One time Reggie tried to clean up but he just took a armful’a stuff an’ th’owed in the thrash. There coulda been anything in the middle’a that.”

“I won’t do that,” Robyn said with the solemnity of a much older woman. “We will go through every newspaper and rag, lookin’ for all your li’l trinkets. Okay? I won’t th’ow away nuthin’ before we go through it.”

Ptolemy realized where his hands were and pulled them back to his own chest.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Grey. I know you don’t mean no harm.”

“Really?”

“Of course I do,” she said. “You a sweet old man. There used to be a man like you lived next do’ to me and my mama before my mama died. He used to give me peaches in the season. He said that I was a smart little girl and I needed peaches to make me smarter. It didn’t mean nuthin’ but it was nice.

“You still got that money Hilly got you, Mr. Grey?”

He nodded and smiled, feeling gratitude for no reason he could have explained.

“Well then, get your wallet and show me where the sto’ is. We gonna get you some soap and steel wool and a mop an’ broom. We gonna get a big box of trash bags an’ shake out ev’ry newspaper, rag, and old shirt until we done emptied out the whole bathroom.”

On the walk to the market Ptolemy swiveled his head from side to side again and again.

“What’s wrong, Mr. Grey?” Robyn asked him. “You lookin’ for somebody?”

“Melinda Hogarth.”

“Who’s that? Your girlfriend?”

“She the one gonna rob me if she sees me.”

“Rob you? You mean you think she gonna try an’ take yo’ money?”

Ptolemy nodded, feeling disgraced by what felt like a lifetime of weakness and fear.

“Don’t you worry, Mr. Grey,” Robyn said. “I got me a six-inch knife in my purse and I know to use it. My mama told me that I always had to have a li’l sumpin’ extra ’cause I’m short and a girl. You know I stick a mothahfuckah in a minute they try and mess with either one’a us.”

It was her grimness that gave Ptolemy confidence. He glanced up at the sky, thinking, This is everybody’s ceiling. This blue roof belongs to me just as much as anyone else. They were words he’d heard along the way somewhere. He remembered them, and they held him like an anchor, like that young girl, that Robyn, held his hand.

They didn’t see Melinda Hogarth that day. Robyn spent seventy-three dollars of Ptolemy’s retirement check on cleaning supplies. They stopped by a