The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey Read Online Free PDF Page A

that.”
    “Oh,” the short woman said. “Mister, can you help me?”
    “Um, the boy there does most everything for me,” he replied, thinking that he should go over on line and stand with, with . . . Hilly.
    “I need five dollars more to make my telephone bill,” the woman said. She wore blue jeans and a pink T-shirt, black-and-white tennis shoes, and a cap with a long transparent green sun visor.
    “I don’t take care’a the money,” Ptolemy said. “I let the boy do that. I can’t hardly see the fingers on my hand and so he count the money so I don’t give ya a one instead of a, of a five.”
    The woman was the same height as he. She once had clear brown eyes that were now partly occluded with wisps of gray.
    “My name’s Shirley,” she said.
    “Ptolemy,” he said, “but they call me Li’l Pea.”
    “What kinda name is that?”
    “It was Cleopatra’s father’s name,” the old man said. He had said the words so often in his life that they came to his lips automatically. He didn’t even know if they were true because it was Coydog told him that and his mother had said, “That Coydog just as soon lie as open his mouf.”
    “The queen of Africa?”
    “What’s your last name, Shirley?”
    “Wring,” she said with a smile. “Double-u ara eye en gee.”
    “Double-u ara eye en gee,” Li’l Pea, Pity, Petey, Ptolemy Grey repeated.
    The woman smiled and lifted her left hand, which held the leather straps of a faded cherry-red purse. She placed the bag on the counter and took out a smaller black velvet bag. From this she took a piece of pink tissue paper, which held a lovely golden ring sporting a large, dome-shaped pale-green stone.
    “Emerald,” Shirley Wring said, placing the delicate jewel on his upturned fingers. “You can hold on to it until I get my Social Security an’ then I can buy it back for six dollars.”
    Ptolemy stared into the sea-green crystal, admiring the flashes of white and yellow from the inner variations as it tumbled between his fingers.
    A treasure, he thought. Glee set off in his chest, like the sunlight through the window ignited the jewel in his hand; he felt delight at the reward that Shirley double-u ara eye en gee delivered to him even though they were strangers. He experienced a deep satisfaction in the pleasure of her trust in him. He thought about Letta carrying him in through the window and tolerating his presence while she dressed and put on the red lipstick that her boyfriends paid for so dearly.
    The excitement became a pain in his chest. Ptolemy, now gazing into the cloudy-eyed woman’s brown face, understood that these feelings were strong enough to kill.
    He smiled broadly then and said, “Girl, you a beam’a sunshine at the end of a long day of rain.”
    He put the ring in his pocket. Shirley stared at him, smiling hopefully.
    Hilly came up to them then.
    “Okay, Papa Grey,” he said. “Let’s go.”
    “Gimme my money,” Ptolemy said.
    “Later . . . at the sto’.”
    “Now,” the old man commanded, “right here in this room.”
    Hilly handed his great-uncle a paper envelope filled with bills in small denominations.
    “This is Shirley Wring,” Ptolemy said. “Double-u ara eye en gee.”
    He was no longer looking around the room, wondering at the changing faces. Ptolemy spread the envelope open and took out a ten-dollar bill. He gave the money to the woman and then took the emerald ring from his pocket.
    “Will you take this gift from me, Shirley double-u ara eye en gee?”
    Hilly moved his big, heavy head back and forth with a perplexed twist to his face. Shirley smiled. Ptolemy lifted the ring higher.
    “You’re a sweet man, Li’l Pea,” she said, taking her collateral and squeezing it between gnarled fingers.
    She put the emerald in its tissue and placed the pink paper in her velvet bag. Then she put the black velvet sack into the faded red-leather purse. Shirley Wring made a movement that was the start of a curtsy and then