"'Course I know you. You're my heir."

The beautiful child leaned over and kissed the old, old man on the lips. He closed his eyes to enjoy that unexpected blessing and then opened them again.

"What happened?" he asked.

"Aftah we got back from the head doctor you started talkin' like you used to when I first came here . . . only you didn't recognize n.o.body an' you was kinda like outta your head. I didn't understand most'a the things you said, and you'd be sleepin' almost all day and all night. I turned on the radio but you said that it hurt your ears, and you would get mad at the TV.

"Aftah two days I called Dr. Ruben. He come an' told me that you was dyin' but he'd give you a shot anyways. He said he'd give you a shot an' either you'd come back to the way you was, stay the way you was, or die."

"Devil said that?"

Robyn nodded, a serious look on her face, giving her the aspect of a young child.

"How long?" Ptolemy asked.

"Nine days since we come home from Dr. Chin, and one week since the doctor give you the shot."

"d.a.m.n. What kinda world is it we livin' in where you got to thank the Devil for makin' house calls?"

"He told me to call him if you pa.s.sed, Uncle, but, you know, I wanna give you a proper burial."

"When I die," he said, "you call Moishe. He and me done made the proper plans for the funeral. He gonna give my body to Ruben, but aftah he finished with it you get it back for cemetery. And I wanna be cremated."

"No coffin or nuthin'?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I lived a life afraid'a fire," he said. "In the last I wanna give in to it."

"How you feel now, Papa Grey?"

"You evah been to the circus?"

"Uh-huh. Mr. Roman used to take me when I was a li'l girl. He take me down early so we could go out back an' see the lions in the cages and the elephants in their stalls."

"Did you see the tightrope walker?"

"Yeah. But I'd look away sometimes 'cause I was so afraid that she would fall."

Ptolemy nodded and smiled.

"What's so funny?"

"It's like you an' me was the same," he said, "like we was born on the same day at the start of everything. We learned to talk from the same teacher, went to the same circus. We ain't related, but you my twin, and I'm smilin' 'cause I know that."

Robyn bit her lower lip and crossed her b.r.e.a.s.t.s with her arms.

A fly whizzed past, over her head.

"But why you asked me about the tightrope walker?"

"Because that's how I feel right now," Ptolemy said. "Like there's a rope where there used to be a wide road home. It's a thousand feet above the ground and it's so long that you can't see the beginnin' or the end. I know I'ma fall off it sooner or later, but I keep on walkin' because where you fall matters. Do you know what I mean, Robyn?"

She shook her head and took hold of his hand.

"I told you how Coy took them coins and they hung him and burned him, right?"

Robyn nodded.

"In that way he chose the time that he fell. He didn't plan on it. He wanted to go north and start a new life. But he knew that he could fall right then and that didn't matter because he had done his important thing in life."

"Why didn't he take that gold with him, Uncle?"

"Country boy don't need no gold," Coy and Ptolemy said as one. "Sun and soil, whiskey and women all a black farmer need. I'd give away everything I had for the sun on my face and you there next to me, girl."

Ptolemy hoped the girl would kiss his lips again, but she didn't. He smiled, though, as if she had.

"Can you go stay with Beckford for two days?" he asked.

"You might need me."

"Call me every evenin' at six. If I don't answer, come on ovah and check on me."

"Why?"

"'Cause I need to be alone for just two days. I need it."

"Okay. If you say so. When should I leave?"

"In the mornin', baby. Tonight I wanna go out with you and Shirley Wring. I want Chinese at a big red restaurant."

When Ptolemy woke up in the morning, his mind was filled with the sound of dissonant flutes that played over and over at Len Wah's Mandarin Palace. Shirley wore her emerald ring, and Robyn had on a tight black dress that was short, with spaghetti straps over her shoulders. They laughed and talked and drank cheap red wine with their meal.

For Ptolemy each story they told was a piece in a stone puzzle that made up the ground below his rope. His head was burning but he didn't take the pill. His mind was soaring but he didn't worry about a fall.

At their small table he felt that there was seated a mult.i.tude. Coy and Sensia flirting at the far end, Reggie and Nina arguing at each other. As he looked around he saw a hundred faces. It was like when he was in the bank with Hilly, only now he felt that he knew every name, every face . . .

Robyn was at the kitchen table, waiting for him in the morning.

"I wanted to say good-bye," she said, apologizing.

"Me too."

"I love you, Papa Grey."

"If I was fifty years younger and you was twenty years older ..."

"I'd marry you and make your children and we'd move to Mississippi and grow peaches and corn."

They kissed and embraced and kissed again . . . embraced again.

Ptolemy watched as she went down the hall toward the door. The sun was bright through the cracks, and when Robyn pushed it open her shadow threw all the way back to the old man's toes.

"Bye," she said.

He tried to reply, choked, and waved. He smiled but doubted that she saw it.

Hilly?" he said into the phone.

"Uh-huh."

"You know Alfred's phone number?"

"Yeah," he said defensively.

"Call him up. Tell him that I got Reggie's gold here at my house."

"What gold?"

"Just tell him what I said. An' if he don't know what you talkin' 'bout, tell him to ask Nina. Tell him to tell her that I said it was okay."

Forty-seven minutes pa.s.sed. Ptolemy sat on Robyn's couch-bed, looking at the clock and remembering his life.

At some time it come to you that you only thinkin' 'bout the past, Coy had once said to him. Coy had once said to him. When you young you think about tomorrow, but when you old you turn your eyes and ears to yesterday. When you young you think about tomorrow, but when you old you turn your eyes and ears to yesterday.

Ptolemy sat at the edge of the couch, aching in his joints and remembering. His life loomed before him like ten thousand TV screens. All he had to do was look at one of them and he'd remember driving the ice truck, moving to Memphis. He saw his father in a coffin, wearing a new suit that Ptolemy bought for the burial. He saw Sensia kissing a man down the street from their apartment. It was a long soul kiss that repeated itself again and again. He hated her when she got home but he didn't say anything because he couldn't stand the idea of her leaving.

He took out a yellow No. 2 pencil and a single sheet of paper that was so old that it had turned brown at the edges and was somewhat brittle. On this paper he wrote a note to Robyn, telling her, as best he could, about what he was doing and why.

Ptolemy was finally done with the Devil and his alchemy. He'd lived that life and now he was through.

There was a knock at the door.

"It's open," the old, old man said.

Alfred pushed his way in and stormed at Ptolemy.

Ptolemy's only response was to smile.

Alfred had on black pants and a fuchsia-colored shirt. Across his chest was the medallion that said Georgie Georgie. Alfred's strawberry skin was redder than it had been, and his freckles seemed darker. His pretty face was as brutal as ever and his breath was coming hard.

"Sit down, Alfred," Ptolemy said, pointing to the straight-back chair across from him.

There was a gold coin on the table between the couch and the chair; a twenty-dollar gold piece from before the Civil War. After sitting down, Alfred picked up the coin and caressed it with his thumb.

Ptolemy's smile broadened.

"Where the rest of 'em, old man?"

"Before I met Robyn, Reggie was the light of my life," Ptolemy said. "I couldn't think worf a d.a.m.n, but you don't have to think straight to love somebody."

"You want me to go through your pockets?"

"It nearly killed me when I saw him in his coffin."

"I will tear this house up."

"Robyn brought me up to his grave 'bout a month ago."

"I ain't foolin'," Alfred said. "I will hurt you, old man."

"It was beautiful up there," Ptolemy remembered. "Big green trees and a breeze. He had a small stone, but it was respectful. You evah been up there?"

This question derailed the younger man's rage for a moment.

"I took Nina and her kids up but I waited in the car."

"That coin you put in your pocket was for him."

"He's dead."

"Then it's for his wife and his chirren."

"I'm lookin' aftah Nina."

"But you ain't givin' a care for them kids. Niecie got the kids."

Alfred's eyes bulged and he jumped to his feet, gesturing violently. Ptolemy looked up at him, wondering what the Devil could have put in that injection to make him so unafraid of impending death.

"What would you do with them coins if you had 'em?" Ptolemy asked.

"I already got one."

"Okay," Ptolemy said. "What you gonna do with that?"