“If we gonna talk about death, she could wait outside.”
Ruben smiled again. “You’re just about half mad,” he said, “not quite. I’m the other half of that.”
“You like the crazy white doctor down in Adamsville used to come down an’ help colored men get shot and stabbed when the hospitals turnt them away?”
“I’m more like the gunshot or the knife wound.”
Ptolemy heard these words clearly, and he understood, even though he could not have explained this knowledge.
“You want my life, Doctor?”
“There’s a drug,” Bryant Ruben said. “They make it in a town in Southeast Asia where there are fewer laws governing research. A group of physicians from all over the world that work there, remotely, are testing a medicine that might be able to help you.”
“A trial-and-mistake medicine?” Robyn asked.
“Yeah. It’s dangerous, and would be illegal if the FDA knew about it. It doesn’t always work, and when it does, it burns bright for just a little while. We need subjects who have not deteriorated so much that they have lost too much, so that we can tell where we went right and where we went wrong . . . after the subject dies.”
“Dies?” Robyn stood up, putting her hand on Ptolemy’s shoulder. “Let’s get outta here, Uncle.”
But Ptolemy Grey didn’t stand. Instead he bowed his head and pressed his fingertips against the bones of his skull. He’d caught a few of the doctor’s words. He’d grasped at them something like when he was a child chasing chicken feathers floating on the breeze.
“Come on, Uncle.”
Ptolemy raised his head; staring into those beady green eyes, he realized with a shock that he was staring into the face of the Devil.
“Devil a angel just like all the rest,” Coydog had told him more than once. “Devil came to the Lord and demanded more. His wings was singed an’ he was th’ow’d down, but he still a angel, and you got to give him his due.”
The two men, Dr. Ruben and Ptolemy, looked at each other across the desk. There was the heavy scent of roses drifting in from the open door. Robyn’s hand was on Ptolemy’s shoulder.
“Do I sign something?” Ptolemy asked the Devil.
“A form willing your body to a university I have a relationship with. It says that upon your death we can examine your remains.”
“Uncle Grey, we don’t have to listen to this man.”
“Do you promise that it woik?” Ptolemy asked, a slight smile on his dark lips.
“Not always. There are three phases ...”
The doctor explained but Ptolemy did not care, or even try, to comprehend. He watched the fallen angel’s expressions and gestures, looking for signs and portents. There was a rushing sound in his ears and his heart ran fast.
“. . . that has been the last phase,” Bryant Ruben was saying. “We’ve changed the cocktail, hopefully to alleviate this symptom, but I’d be lying if I promised you anything.”
“Uncle.”
“If I drink yo’ medicine, that will be for you, right?” Ptolemy asked, picking over the words carefully, slowly.
“You’re likely to find relief from your cognitive issues.”
“But you wanna pay me, right?”
“I would give you a sum of cash . . . twenty-five hundred dollars.”
It was Ptolemy’s turn to grin. The back door of his mind was open for a moment. He didn’t understand most of what either of them was saying but he could follow anything the doctor said with an answer that he knew must be true.
“Keep yo’ money, Satan,” he said. “Gimme the poison for you, but I don’t need no money.”
A deal was struck, over Robyn’s protests. Papers were signed, plans were made, and the men shook hands. Ruben saw them both to the door.
“You paid Antoine Church for this?” Robyn asked at the door.
The green-eyed Devil-doctor smiled for her, barely nodding. She sucked her tooth at him.
Ptolemy laughed on the bus ride home.
“Uncle, we cain’t do this,” Robyn said.
“It’s already done, baby.”
“But you don’t have to go through with it.”
“I already done the hard part.”
“What’s that?” the dark child asked.
