Wring?”
“I might be lookin’ but the couch would be all yours.”
“One’a my mama’s boyfriends used to make me take off my clothes an’ lie up on top’a him,” Robyn said, answering a question he’d asked days before.
Ptolemy did not reply right away.
Robyn squirmed, turning her left shoulder toward him and averting her face. Then she twisted the other way, shoving her right shoulder in his direction. Finally she got up from the bed, falling down on her knees at his feet. She put her head in his lap and he placed a hand on the side of her face.
“When I was a boy I had a friend named Maude. She was so black that even the darkest little children made fun of her.”
“But you didn’t?” Robyn asked into his fingers.
“No.”
“Did you think she was beautiful?”
“I guess. But even if she wasn’t lovely that wouldn’ta mattered because she was my friend. She was my friend and she died in a fire and nobody could save her.”
Robyn raised her head to regard him.
“You are my girl, Robyn. Everything I have is yours. Everything. Do you understand me?”
She took his hand and squeezed it.
“How do you feel when I tell you about that man?” she asked.
“That I would kill him if ever I saw his face.”
“I only ever told you about it.”
While they were eating takeout Chinese for dinner a hard knock came on the door.
“Who is it?” Robyn asked while Ptolemy came up behind her, thinking about his pistol.
“Police.”
Robyn opened the door.
Two Negro policemen stood there, wearing uniforms and stern frowns.
“Yes, Officer?” Robyn asked.
“Can we come in?” one of the policemen asked. He was shorter, maybe five ten, and lighter-skinned. A plastic rectangle on the left side of his chest said ARNOLD.
“What for?” asked Ptolemy. His throat was filled with phlegm and so he coughed twice.
When the old man spoke up, Robyn moved back, giving him the lead.
“There was a man attacked in front of your apartment building a few days ago,” Officer Arnold said. “Darryl Pride. He was seriously hurt, hospitalized, and we’re here investigating the assault.”
That was the first time since his coma receded that Ptolemy felt his mind slip. He was confused for a moment, just a moment. He didn’t understand the words, or where he was, or why people were complaining.
He tried to speak but the words were caught in his mind, and then these words, his own thoughts, were incomprehensible to him.
“Sir?” the officer named Arnold said.
Ptolemy didn’t answer, didn’t know what to say.
“Papa Grey?” Robyn said, and the wheels started turning again.
“Darryl Pride?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“I don’t know the name but do he have a girlfriend name of Melinda Hogarth?”
“That’s him, sir.”
“You are a very polite young man. It’s nice when a policeman is civil.”
Officer Arnold smiled.
“You young men come on in,” Ptolemy said, once again master of his own mind.
The officers, Arnold and Thompkins, sat on the couch while Ptolemy took the folding stool and Robyn brought out a chair from the kitchen.
“Ms. Hogarth says that you were involved in Mr. Pride’s beating,” Arnold was saying.
“Did she tell ya that she been muggin’ me on the street for three years? Did she tell ya that she pushed her way in this house an’ stoled all the money outta my spendin’ can an’ slapped me to the ground an’ here I’m ninety- one year old?”
“We’re not here about that,” Officer Thompkins said. He had a baby face and dark skin that was so smooth, it could have been called perfect.
“When my great-grandniece come to stay wit’ me, she told that heifer that she bettah not be robbin’ me no mo’,” Ptolemy said. “That’s when she turned to this man Pride. Imagine that. A man named for self-respect tellin’ me I got to pay up.”
