“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.