Free The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey by Walter Mosley Page A

this is enough, don’t you think?” Ptolemy asked, still running a hand over the cool ceramic rim.
    “I got to go, Mr. Grey. Okay?”
    “Okay.”
     
     
     
    At the open door of the apartment Robyn and Ptolemy stood face-to-face. They both seemed a little confused. Finally she put her arms around him and kissed his cheek, after which he put his hands on either side of her face and curled his fingers like clawless paws.
    Ptolemy couldn’t speak because he had more than one thing to say. The first was that he didn’t want her to go into the bedroom. He didn’t need a bed. He didn’t want to be in that room, not ever. But he also wanted Robyn to come back and be there with him. Maybe she could clean the bathroom again.
    She kissed him a second time and then walked away down the hall. When she got to the front door of the building she turned and waved before going out the door. He stood there for long minutes with the news and medieval recorder music behind him. He watched that closed door with many people on his mind: Robyn, and Coydog, and Reggie, who had been coming to his house for more than five years.
    Then Reggie the man was standing next him in the hall but next to them was Reggie the corpse in the whitewashed pine coffin. The children were on the floor. Ptolemy wanted to call to them but couldn’t remember their names.
    “Children shouldn’t be in the room wit’ dead peoples, Reggie,” he said into the empty corridor but also, in his mind, he was in the small bedroom of Niecie’s house where the dead man lay.
    The front door to the hall came open and a woman the color of dark redwood came in carrying a bundle of envelopes and magazines. She looked familiar.
    “Mr. Grey?” she said, walking toward him.
    He usually slammed the door and threw the locks when someone came in the building but this time Ptolemy hesitated.
    “Miss Dartman?”
    Approaching him, the tall colored woman said, “I haven’t seen your face in almost two years, Mr. Grey. Sometimes I be droppin’ the mail in your slot and I think, ‘Maybe he’s dead in there.’”
    “Not me. Old Man Death done lost my numbah, I think.”
    The phrase was used by Coy McCann when someone hadn’t seen him for a while and assumed that he’d died. Almost all of Ptolemy’s automatic coherent sentences came from his old friend Coydog.
    The tall woman smiled and handed Ptolemy a bundle of mail.
    “I was outta town seein’ my brother for the last few days so I didn’t get the mail. Maybe I should give you back the key so that nice grandnephew of yours could collect it for you.”
    “Reggie got hisself killed.”
    “No!” Miss Falona Dartman cried. “How did that happen?”
    “They lynched him. A mob drived by and kilt him.”
    “I’m so sorry, Mr. Grey. He was ...” she said, and then sighed. “He was such a nice young man. Oh no. What are they doin’ to our young black men?”
    “Killin’ ’em,” Ptolemy said. “What they always done.”
    “Who’s gonna come take care of you now, Mr. Grey? You can’t be here all by yourself.”
    “My great-granddaughter Robyn come from down Alabama, or someplace, to he’p me out. She cleaned up my bafroom today. Worked all day at it. All day long she cleaned and th’ew away garbage. But I’ma miss Reggie.”
    “Was he married?”
    Ptolemy nodded. “An’ they had some kids.”
    “Oh no.”
     
     
     
    Ptolemy placed the mail in a neat stack on Robyn’s lawn chair. Then he went into the bathroom, put the top lid down on the commode, and sat there. Robyn had brought new lightbulbs and screwed them into the seven sockets above the sink. The light was so white in there that it made him laugh. He was happy sitting on the toilet and watching the bathtub.
    Now and then a curious roach would dart in and then scurry away again, daunted by the brightness of the room. Four times he went to the sink and turned the corroded spigots, just to see the water run. There was a leak at the base of the