There was a chubby young stranger standing on the concrete stairs of the tenement building when Ptolemy came out into the daylight clutching his outside right front pocket. He squinted from the bright sun and shivered because there was a breeze.

“What took you, Papa Grey?” the unfamiliar stranger asked.

“Do I know you?”

“Hilly,” he said. “Hilda’s son. I’m here to take you shopping. Did you lock the door?”

“’Course I did,” Ptolemy said. “It’s Monday and you always lock the door on Monday. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, uh, um, Saturday, and, and, and Sunday. You always lock the door on them days and then put the key in your front pocket.”

“Hey, Pete,” someone yelled from down the street.

Ptolemy flinched and backed up toward the door, hitting the wood frame with his shoulder.

A tall woman, almost as fat as the stranger who called him Papa Grey, was coming quickly up the block.

“Hold it right there, Pete!” the woman yelled. There was a threat in her voice. “Wait up!”

Ptolemy reached for the handle of the door with his left hand but he couldn’t grasp it right. The woman climbed the stoop in two big steps and slapped the old man, hitting him hard enough to bump his head against the door.

“Where my money, bastid?” the woman shouted.

Ptolemy went down into a squat, putting his hands up to protect his head.