The thought of a new house tickled Ptolemy. He walked briskly toward the front door of the building, happy, unafraid of Melinda Hogarth for the first time in years, and looking forward to the day outside, and a new man in the bathroom mirror.
Are you lookin’ at my legs, Uncle?” Robyn asked coyly.
She took one of the single beds and the old man lay down on the other. He’d gone into the bathroom to change into his sleeping clothes. Robyn had brought his navy-blue sweatpants and a gray T-shirt. When she changed, all the teenager did was tie up her hair and put on a T-shirt over her panties.
The TV was on a show about three young black women who lived together in an apartment and argued all the time. Now and then Ptolemy would swivel his head to catch a glance at Robyn’s strong brown legs.
“I guess so,” he said.
“Are you a dirty old man, Uncle?”
“No, but . . . you sure do remind me of somethin’.”
“What’s that?” Robyn shifted on the bed but she didn’t hide her legs. She was smiling at Ptolemy as if she was telling him something.
“Cover up them things, girl,” he said. “You know I’m a old man but I still remember how much a girl can hurt you. I’m past ninety but that don’t mean you could play wit’ me like that.”
Robyn slipped under the blankets and buried her head in the pillow.
The women on the TV program were screaming and running around a couch where a man sat with a perplexed look on his face. Ptolemy didn’t understand what they were saying.
He got up from the bed and pushed buttons on the side of the box. The first button made the volume go up and then down. The second one changed the channel and suddenly there was a naked couple having loud sex with everything showing.
“Fuck it harder!” the woman cried out, and Ptolemy, his heart thumping in fear, pressed another button, which shut the TV off.
The TV was the only light on and so the room went dark.
He made his way gingerly to the bed and climbed in. The blankets were tangled but he finally got himself mostly covered.
In the dark he lay awake. From time to time he’d forget where he was and fear would thrum in his ears. He’d wanted to jump up but the angry face of Robyn beating Melinda Hogarth would come to him and he’d grab on to his blankets, determined to wait for sunup to go home.
“Uncle?”
“Yeah?” he said, relieved that she sounded like the nice girl he’d met.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“’Bout what?”
“Dancin’ around half naked in front’a you. I know I shouldn’t’a done that.”
“No. I mean. Baby girl, you are my angel. I, uh, I love you, you ...”
“What?”
“God done send you down here to me. He send you to help me save them chirren.”
“Letisha and Artie?”
“Yep.”
“How you gonna do that, Uncle?”
“With your help, baby. With your help.”
“What can I do?”
“You got to, got to . . . help me remembah what it is I’m thinkin’.”
For a while after that they lay in silence.
“Is that true, Uncle?”
“What?”
“Do you love me?”
“When I think about you my heart hurts and laughs.”
“That’s why you din’t wanna see my legs?”
“That’s why I don’t even wanna think about your legs.”
The next day they had breakfast at a diner and went to the La Brea Tar Pits park, where Reggie used to take Ptolemy sometimes.
“When Reggie was a boy he loved the dinosaur bones,” Ptolemy told Robyn. “The museum was on’y one buildin’ then and they had dinosaur bones in a buildin’ like a hole. When Reggie grew up he didn’t like this place no mo’ but I wanted to come so’s I could remembah ...” Ptolemy drifted off, staring at the large clouds passing overhead.
“What you remembah, Uncle?”
“What it used to be like in my head before things got confused.”
“What’s that like?”
