“I’m losing money on this place and that’s not why I own it,” he shouted at Reggie one day.
“Get the fuck outta here, man,” Reggie had said, and the white landlord, Mr. Pierpont, got the cops.
The police threatened Reggie, but then Pierpont tried to make them get rid of Ptolemy too.
“You’re trying to evict this old man?” one of the cops had asked.
“I’m losing money on this place,” Pierpont said, as if Ptolemy had stabbed him.
“If I was this young man I would have done more than threaten you,” the cop said. The police left, and potbellied Joseph Pierpont never came back, or answered any calls.
Now the doorbell no longer worked and people had to knock. And when they’d knock, Ptolemy would get up and go to the front and ask, “Who is it?”
But not this time. This time he stayed in his seat, listening to the newsman’s gibberish and music that scratched at his ears.
The knock came again and Ptolemy remembered why he stayed in his chair. That big boy Hilly had been there and knocked and said that he wanted to come in. He’d come three days in a row and each day Ptolemy told him that he didn’t need him and that he would call if he did.
“But you don’t know my numbah, Papa Grey,” Hilly said through the door. “You haven’t called up in years.”
“I know how to phone for a operator. All you have to do is dial oh. I call her if I wanna talk to you.”
“Mama told me to come help you,” Hilly, the thief, beseeched. “She be mad at me if I don’t.”
“I don’t need no help.”
“How can you go to the sto’?”
“I walk there.”
“What about the bank?”
“You stoled my money, boy. You stoled it at the bank.”
“I didn’t.”
“I don’t need yo’ kinda help,” Ptolemy said, and after three days he no longer even asked who it was. He just stared at whoever was giving the news and waited for the caller to go away and for the words to make sense again.
The first time someone knocked on the door after Reggie’s wake it wasn’t Hilly.
“Who is it?”
“Mr. Grey?” a man’s voice said.
“You Mr. Grey too?” Ptolemy asked.
“No,” the man said patiently, “you’re Mr. Grey. Open the door, please.”
Ptolemy almost obeyed; the voice was that certain.
“Who are you?”
“Antoine Church, Mr. Grey. Your nephew, Reginald, applied to the social services office for a doctor for you a while ago. Is Reginald around?”
“Reggie’s dead.”
“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that. Is someone else taking care of you?”
“I don’t need no one to take care’a me. Reggie’s dead and now there’s just me.”
The radio was playing a march and someone on the TV was laughing. Ptolemy pressed his ear against the door.
“I’ve found a doctor who wants to see you, Mr. Grey,” Antoine Church said. “He’s a memory specialist, and he has a grant, so his services are free.”
“I’m not sick. I don’t need no doctor.”
“Let me in, Mr. Grey,” the voice said. “Let me in and we can sit down and talk about it.”
“I don’t wanna talk. Go away and leave me alone.”
There came a spate of silence filled in by electronic babble.
“Mr. Grey?”
“Go on now.”
“I’m putting my card under the door. If Reginald or someone else comes by to help you—”
“Reggie’s dead. Drivebee killed him. Now, you go away.”
Again Ptolemy pressed his ear against the door. There came a soft rustling and then a sigh. After that he heard footsteps going away down the hall.
On the floor at the old man’s feet was a bright white card. Using the wall for support, he leaned down and picked it up. Putting Antoine Church’s business card in his pocket was reflex more than anything else.
Hilly kept coming by but after three days Ptolemy never opened up or even asked who it was. Sooner or later they all went away.
The knock came again.
He concentrated on the TV to keep the person on the other side of the door out of his mind.
“. . . the convicted killer was found innocent. The DNA test did not match the blood found at the crime scene,” the woman was saying.
“Mr. Grey,” a girl called.
Ptolemy leaned forward suspiciously, wondering if somehow the TV had learned how to talk to him.
“Mr. Grey, it’s me, Robyn.”
Robins. They gathered in the trees outside his parents’ house in September and October and sang a sweet song to the cool winds that eased the last heat of summer. If Ptolemy sat still enough with week-old breadcrumbs scattered on the ground, the robins and other birds would gather around him in the grass next to the cypress tree.
“That food gonna attract rats,” his father would say, but Li’l Pea didn’t believe him.
The knock came again.
“Mr. Grey, are you all right in there?”
That was the right question. Hilly had never asked how he was. Hilly was a thief and even though he had saved him from Melinda Hogarth he still stole his money and then lied about it.
Ptolemy used to give Reggie money. Reggie wanted to help him. But then Reggie got lynched.
“Mr. Grey, if you don’t talk to me I’ll have to go call the police. I’m afraid that you might be hurt in there.”
Ptolemy opened his mouth to tell the girl that he was okay but he hadn’t spoken in days and his voice was gone. He got up and coughed, took a step, coughed again.
“I’m here,” he rasped.
“What?”
“I’m here.”
“It’s me, Robyn, Mr. Grey. Can I come in?”
“Who?” he wheezed.
“Robyn. You remembah, I took you in to see Reggie’s coffin. Then we took a taxi here.”
The image of Reggie’s body came up out of the floor at Ptolemy’s feet. He gasped and sobbed, remembering the death of his beloved son or nephew or great-grandnephew, yes, great-grandnephew.
He took the chain off its hook and flipped the four locks Reggie had installed. He opened the door and Robyn stood there in a little black dress with an ivory locket hanging from her neck. Her hair was tied back and her eyes saw things that he wanted to see.
“Hi,” she said.
Ptolemy smiled because this was the girl that didn’t look like anybody else he ever knew.
“Robyn,” he said.
“Can I come in?”
He nodded, not moving.
The child swiveled her head and moved toward him; then, just as she came close, she kissed him on the cheek. He moved backward, grinning and touching the place she had kissed.
When Robyn moved around him Ptolemy turned with her, feeling as if he were dancing with Sensia at the big band shell at Pismo Beach.
“Dog!” Robyn said as she came into the congested room. “Where do you sleep, Mr. Grey?”
He pointed at the oak table against the southern wall of the room. It was piled almost to the ceiling with brown boxes.
“In them boxes?”
“No. Under.”
She stooped down, putting her hands on her bare knees and turned her head to see the thin mattress and sheer olive blanket.
“You sleep on the floor under a table?”
He nodded, suddenly shy and ashamed.
“What about rats and roaches?” she asked.
Smiling, he was reminded of red-breasted robins singing brightly, thanking him for their breadcrumbs.
“You wanna sit down, girl?”
“Where?” she asked, her left nostril rising.
“There’s chairs everywhere,” he said. “But I gotta special one for guests that I keep in the kitchen.”
He walked there feeling but not minding the pain in his knees. He’d found the aluminum garden chair set out in front of a house with six cars parked on the lawn.
“They got so many cars, they don’t have room for no outside furniture,” he said to himself as he dragged away the lightweight chair with the threaded seat of sea-green and aqua nylon ribbons.