The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey - By Walter Mosley Page 0,68

But I have two left feet.”

“There’s a lady upstairs from me get my mail two times a week,” Ptolemy continued. “Her name’s Falona Dartman. I’d like to leave her a li’l sumpin’ when I pass. And there’s a woman dope addict across the street try to mug me every time I stick my nose out the door. I don’t wanna give her nuthin’. My grandniece Niecie Brown don’t know what’s goin’ on, and her son stoled money from me because he thought I was too old to notice. My other great-grandnephew, Reggie, took care’a me for years. He had a good heart but he didn’t know what he was doin’ and now he’s dead anyway—shot down in the street.”

“Oh my God,” the younger Abromovitz declared. “That’s terrible.”

“Robyn cleaned out my house and took me to a doctor. She beat up that dope fiend and cooks for me twice a day. I offered her all my money and she turned it down. But, you know, Reggie, my great-grandnephew, have left two babies behind him, and my grandniece needs looking after too. Robyn the only one will see my family is taken care of.”

“But how long have you known her, Mr. Grey?” Moishe insisted.

“You see that paintin’ on the wall, Moishe?” Ptolemy replied.

“Yes.”

“It’s called A Study of Darkness in Light.”

“That’s right. How did you know?”

“Your father bought it from a painter friend of his named Max Kahn. I remember Maxie. Him an’ me an’ your daddy used to go to this bar down on the boardwalk and drink beers and talk nonsense.”

“Max Kahn,” Moishe whispered. “I remember him. My mother never liked Max.”

“Your father told me that he bought the paintin’ because of the naked woman, said he liked to have a nude to look at all day. Your mother didn’t like the girlie magazines your father bought, but she couldn’t argue with oil paintin’s.”

Moishe smiled and nodded. It was as if Ptolemy had become a doorway to his lost youth.

“But as the years went by, Abe found himself looking more at the background, at the people in the town who had a light shined on ’em by the deity but didn’t know it. There’s a old woman leading a young woman toward a doorway. One day your father noticed that the young woman was blind. There’s a poor man leanin’ down to pick up a wallet—”

“That a wealthy merchant had dropped on the street,” Moishe said, remembering the words of his father for the first time in many years.

“There’s a watchmaker with no hands explaining to his young assistant how to fix a clock, and a dog headed down a dark alley-way. At the end of that alley is a woman’s face glowing and smilin’ down on the cur.”

“You remember all that, Mr. Grey?”

“Your father lost interest in the naked woman, but he saw somethin’ new in that paintin’ almost every week. He realized after Max died that he was a real artist whose work spoke out aftah death.”

There was benign joy in the face of Moishe Abromovitz. He nodded and smiled at the old man.

“Okay,” he said. He picked up the phone and pressed a button and said, “Esther, ask Miss Small to join us, will you?”

You sure it was all right, signin’ all them papers, Uncle Grey?” Robyn asked on the bus ride back to South Central L.A.

“You mean because he’s a white man and he might cheat us?”

Robyn nodded and the old man smiled.

“No, baby. Moishe ain’t gonna cheat us. All you got to do is tell him money you get from Mossa and get him to make out what the taxes ought to be. He’ll charge you maybe thirty dollahs an’ send you the forms to send in your taxes once every three months. That’s the deal me and his father made. I never did it, though. You the one. You the one gonna make Coy’s dream into somethin’ real.”

“What happened to Coy?” Robyn asked.

The pain that invaded his chest was sharp and sudden, like a knife stab.

“What’s wrong, Uncle Grey?”

“Pain,” he uttered.

“From what?”

“I cain’t talk about what happened, Robyn. I cain’t.”

The girl took his right hand and pressed the thick muscle in the webbing between his index finger and thumb.

The hurt, and then the release from the girl’s massage, eased his memory of Coydog dancing on feet of fire, being strangled by a white man’s noose.

“He died,” Ptolemy whispered. “He’s gone.”

When they got to Ptolemy’s block Robyn took out her knife and held it so that