The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

“I wanted to say good-bye,” she said, apologizing.

“Me too.”

“I love you, Papa Grey.”

“If I was fifty years younger and you was twenty years older ...”

“I’d marry you and make your children and we’d move to Mississippi and grow peaches and corn.”

They kissed and embraced and kissed again . . . embraced again.

Ptolemy watched as she went down the hall toward the door. The sun was bright through the cracks, and when Robyn pushed it open her shadow threw all the way back to the old man’s toes.

“Bye,” she said.

He tried to reply, choked, and waved. He smiled but doubted that she saw it.

Hilly?” he said into the phone.

“Uh-huh.”

“You know Alfred’s phone number?”

“Yeah,” he said defensively.

“Call him up. Tell him that I got Reggie’s gold here at my house.”

“What gold?”

“Just tell him what I said. An’ if he don’t know what you talkin’ ’bout, tell him to ask Nina. Tell him to tell her that I said it was okay.”

Forty-seven minutes passed. Ptolemy sat on Robyn’s couch-bed, looking at the clock and remembering his life.

At some time it come to you that you only thinkin’ ’bout the past, Coy had once said to him. When you young you think about tomorrow, but when you old you turn your eyes and ears to yesterday.

Ptolemy sat at the edge of the couch, aching in his joints and remembering. His life loomed before him like ten thousand TV screens. All he had to do was look at one of them and he’d remember driving the ice truck, moving to Memphis. He saw his father in a coffin, wearing a new suit that Ptolemy bought for the burial. He saw Sensia kissing a man down the street from their apartment. It was a long soul kiss that repeated itself again and again. He hated her when she got home but he didn’t say anything because he couldn’t stand the idea of her leaving.

He took out a yellow No. 2 pencil and a single sheet of paper that was so old that it had turned brown at the edges and was somewhat brittle. On this paper he wrote a note to Robyn, telling her, as best he could, about what he was doing and why.

Ptolemy was finally done with the Devil and his alchemy. He’d lived that life and now he was through.

There was a knock at the door.

“It’s open,” the old, old man said.

Alfred pushed his way in and stormed at Ptolemy.

Ptolemy’s only response was to smile.

Alfred had on black pants and a fuchsia-colored shirt. Across his chest was the medallion that said Georgie. Alfred’s strawberry skin was redder than it had been, and his freckles seemed darker. His pretty face was as brutal as ever and his breath was coming hard.

“Sit down, Alfred,” Ptolemy said, pointing to the straight-back chair across from him.

There was a gold coin on the table between the couch and the chair; a twenty-dollar gold piece from before the Civil War. After sitting down, Alfred picked up the coin and caressed it with his thumb.

Ptolemy’s smile broadened.

“Where the rest of ’em, old man?”

“Before I met Robyn, Reggie was the light of my life,” Ptolemy said. “I couldn’t think worf a damn, but you don’t have to think straight to love somebody.”

“You want me to go through your pockets?”

“It nearly killed me when I saw him in his coffin.”

“I will tear this house up.”

“Robyn brought me up to his grave ’bout a month ago.”

“I ain’t foolin’,” Alfred said. “I will hurt you, old man.”

“It was beautiful up there,” Ptolemy remembered. “Big green trees and a breeze. He had a small stone, but it was respectful. You evah been up there?”

This question derailed the younger man’s rage for a moment.

“I took Nina and her kids up but I waited in the car.”

“That coin you put in your pocket was for him.”

“He’s dead.”

“Then it’s for his wife and his chirren.”

“I’m lookin’ aftah Nina.”