“Get outta my way, niggah,” she’d said when Ptolemy got to his feet and tried to pull his bank back from her. “I will cut you like a dog if you try an’ stop me.”
Ptolemy hated how he cringed and cowered before the fat, deep-brown addict. He hated her, hated her, hated her.
And then she did it again.
“Don’t open the door unless it’s for me or someone I send,” Reggie had told him. And he had not opened that door for anyone but Reggie in three and a half, maybe five years, and nobody had stolen his coffee-can money since. And he never went in the streets except if Reggie was with him because one time he met Melinda down on St. Peters Avenue and she had robbed him in broad daylight.
But Reggie hadn’t been there in a week and a half by the old man’s calculation. He would have had to send somebody after that long. Anyway, it was a man’s voice outside, not crazy Melinda Hogarth. Ptolemy turned the knob and pushed the door open.
Down at the end of the long hall a young man was walking away. He was a hefty kid wearing jeans that hung down on his hips.
“Reggie.”
The young man turned around. He had a brooding, boyish face. He looked familiar.
“I was leavin’,” he said down the long hallway. His expression was dour. It seemed as if he might still leave.
“Did Reggie send you?” the old man asked, holding the door so that he could slam it shut if he had to.
“No,” the boy replied. “Niecie did. Mama did.”
Reluctantly he shambled back toward Ptolemy’s door.
Old Papa Grey was frightened by the brute’s approach. He considered jumping inside his apartment and slamming the door shut. But he resisted the fear; resisted it because he hated being afraid.
If you know who you is, then there’s nuthin’ to fear, that’s what Coy used to tell him.