The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey - By Walter Mosley Page 0,67

Esther, nodded and smiled sadly.

“Yes,” she said. “He always asked how I was in the morning, and he would listen too.”

“Moishe still here?” Ptolemy asked.

The receptionist registered surprise at the question.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Mr. Ptolemy Grey.”

Mr. Grey,” a middle-aged, paunchy white man was saying a few moments later, after Esther had made a call on the office line.

Robyn followed her adopted father into the small dark office. There was a window but it only looked out onto a shadowy air-shaft. Bookcases lined every wall. Along with law books, there were novels, piles of magazines, and stacks of typing paper held together by old brittle rubber bands. The room reminded Robyn somewhat of Ptolemy’s home before she had cleaned it out, and a little of Mossa’s rooms filled with ancient treasures.

The only free space on the wall held a painting of a naked white goddess standing in the foreground with a medieval village behind her. The people of the village seemed unaware of the voluptuous maiden passing before them.

“I haven’t seen you since I was a young man,” Moishe Abromovitz was saying. “I think I was still in school.”

His face was young but his hair had gone gray and the backs of his hands were prematurely liver-spotted.

Ptolemy pressed Robyn toward one of the four visitors’ chairs and then took one himself. Moishe remained standing next to a pine desk that was probably older than he was.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Grey?”

“I’m sorry to hear about your father,” Ptolemy said. “I didn’t know.”

“I thought we sent you a notice,” the fortyish man in the aged body said. “I hope we didn’t forget you.”

Ptolemy wondered if the letter had come in and Reggie had read it to him. Remembering himself as a feebleminded old fool was painful and frightening; next to that memory, Death didn’t seem like such a bad fellow.

“You still got that file on me?” Ptolemy asked.

“My father had sixteen clients that he wanted me to take special care of after he was gone. You were one,” Moishe Abromovitz said as he went to a wooden file cabinet behind the elder desk. He drew out an old manila folder, about three inches thick, and placed it on the pine desk. “He said that you were a gentle man with a good heart and that I should handle your estate when the time came.”

“You mean when I died.”

Moishe sat down behind the file and smiled.

Ptolemy put his left hand on Robyn’s forearm. The girl seemed uncomfortable and he wanted to put her at ease.

“This child has saved me,” Ptolemy said. “I was sick, very sick and she cleaned my house and brought me to a doctor that made me well, or at least as well as a man my age can be.”

Moishe’s smile evaporated.

“I want you to make her my heir,” Ptolemy said. “Put her in that trust your daddy said he made for me, and take care’a her business like you did with mine.”

Moishe nodded noncommittally and Ptolemy placed a stack of ten one-hundred-dollar bills on the table.

“This should cover the first part’a the work you got to do.”

The legal adviser turned to Robyn and asked, “What is your name?”

“Robyn Small,” Ptolemy said before she could answer. “That’s Robyn like the bird only with a y instead of an i. An’ she got all her information in her bag.”

“Robyn, would you mind waiting outside for a moment while I talk to Mr. Grey alone?”

The girl nodded and stood right up. She walked from the room, closing the door behind her without a word or gesture of complaint.

After she was gone Moishe turned to Ptolemy.

“How well do you know this girl, Mr. Grey?”

“That’s not the question you should be askin’ me, young man.”

Moishe frowned and said, “No?”

“Uh-uh. No. I know what you thinkin’. You thinkin’ that I’m a old man and this young thing is after anything she can get outta me. But how good I know her ain’t what will tell you what you need to know.”

Moishe smiled as if he perceived something he recognized in the old man’s words.

“What should I have asked, Mr. Grey?”

“What you wanna know is how well I know anybody. Not just Robyn but ev’rybody in my life. You know, a old man don’t have much to go on. He don’t have a big social life. He don’t cut the rug no mo’.”

“Cut the rug?” the lawyer asked.

“Dance.”

“I never danced very much,” Moishe said apologetically. “My father did. He was a wonderful dancer.