The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey - By Walter Mosley Page 0,31
big knuckle and nodded.
After dragging the huge gray tarp out to the curb, Robyn cleared two places in each room and placed an insect bomb candle in each space. She only put one bomb in the bathroom.
“You go wait in the hall, Uncle,” she told Ptolemy, “while I set these bad boys off.”
He stood outside in the dilapidated marble-and-oak hallway. It was once a nice building that people kept up. That was in the old days, when black people came to Los Angeles to make a life away from the Jim Crow South. He hadn’t stood in that dark hall for many years. He’d walked down it ten thousand times; between two and a dozen times a day when he was younger. But he hardly ever just stood there.
Once there was a young man stabbed and killed at the front door of the building. He’d pressed Ptolemy and Sensia’s bell, but when nobody responded to the intercom they went back to bed. He was already old and she was fragile by then. They’d been burglarized and had put up the chain gate on the back window and door.
Hey, Mr. Grey,” Robyn said.
She’d come into the hallway, dragging one of his pine chairs with a small suitcase lying in its seat. The slight scent of sulfur and smoke came with her. She also had a sheet of paper and the roll of masking tape they got from the hardware store. Using the chair to stand on, she put tape all along the cracks of the door. She put many layers of tape, one on top of the other, to make an airtight seal against leaking poisons. Then she taped the paper to the door.
“Insect bomb,” Ptolemy read. “Stay away.”
“You can read, Mr. Grey?” the child asked.
“Sure I can read. Anybody can read an’ write they name.”
“Can you read a book?”
“Hunnert pages, two hunnert pages, two fifty.”
Robyn smiled and put her hand on his shoulder.
“Let’s go to the motel,” she said.
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.