Changing his mood as quickly as an infant child distracted by a sudden sound, Ptolemy stuffed the little gun into his pocket, threw the four locks, and opened the door.
She wore an orange dress and largish, bone-colored beads. Her half-blind eyes glistened behind glittering glasses. Her short hair was done recently, forming a cap that wrapped in arcs down under her ears and got curly over her forehead. Her tennis shoes were white and sensible. And instead of the red bag, she carried a pink paper box in her hands.
“Can I come in?” the small woman asked.
Ptolemy reached out to take the box and then backed away for her to enter. As she went past, he could see the red bag hanging from her left shoulder. For some reason this made him happy.
“Come on in an’ sit,” he said. “Can I get you somethin’? Water? Tea?”
Shirley Wring set her bag on the couch and took the box from Ptolemy.
“You sit down and rest and I’ll put together some coffee an’ fudge for us,” she said.
“I’ll be right with ya,” he promised. “First I’ma get sumpin’ in the bedroom.”
He put the pistol back in the drawer and took out a smaller item, which he placed in his shirt pocket.
You okay, Ptolemy?” Shirley asked when he sat down heavily at the kitchen table.
“Ain’t no way a man could be almost ninety-two an’ okay at the same time,” he answered. “But I’m as good as a man like that can get. That’s for sure.”
Shirley lit a match to start the burner under the kettle and then she came to sit across the table from him. Her eyes were watery and slightly out of focus, he could tell.
He must have frowned, because she asked, “What?”
“Oh . . . nuthin’. I was just thinkin’ ’bout gettin’ old.”
“Once you get our age,” she said, “I guess that’s what we always be thinkin’ ’bout.”
“How old are you, Miss Wring?”
“Seventy-four last March.”
“I was almost a man when you was born. I got old in these bones make you seem like a wildcat on the prowl.”
“Old is old,” she said, and smiled, enjoying a moment that she didn’t see coming.
“No, baby,” Ptolemy said, wondering at the words coming out from his mind. “No. That’s what I was thinkin’ about. You know, I got every tooth I was born with except for one canine that got knocked out when I fell off’a the ice truck one day when Peter Brock took a turn too fast. That was sumpin’ else. I looked at that bloody tooth in my hand and I knew I was not nevah gonna work on that ice truck again. Not nevah. Damn.
“But you know, I nevah had a cavity, an’ I nevah needed no glasses.”
“And here I got nuthin’ but dentures,” Shirley said, “an’ I got to squint just to see you across the table.”
“Yeah, but just a few weeks ago I didn’t even have half a mind. If you told me the apple was red an’ then you right away asked me what you just said, I wouldn’t remembah. I’d stutter and think about my wallet, or Reggie, or maybe I wouldn’t even’a understood the question.”
Shirley’s smile slowly faded. Her eyes retained their blind fondness, though.
“Yeah,” Ptolemy continued. “I sold my body to the Devil an’ I can only hope that he don’t care ’bout no old niggah’s soul.”
“Don’t say that.”
“What?”
“That word.”
“That word begins with a
“Yes. That word.”
Ptolemy smiled at this genteel black woman. The kettle whistled and she got up to make filtered coffee and arrange her homemade fudge on a white plate.
When she was through preparing and serving she took her seat again, but now she wouldn’t look her host in the eye.
“What’s wrong, Miss Wring?”
“I didn’t mean to snap at you,” she said.
“Snap? Girl, all I got to say is that if you call that snappin’, then you must think kissin’ makes babies an’ a argument makes a war.”
Shirley smiled and looked up. Ptolemy could see the young girl in her features and for a moment Shirley and Robyn and Sensia came together in one.
“You’re hot,” she said.
It was only then that he realized that she’d reached across the table to take his hand.
“Devil’s medicine,” he explained.
“Why you keep talkin’ ’bout the Devil, Mr. Grey?”
“When you met me, I was, was confused, right?”
