The Lock Artist

Fifteen

Michigan

July 1999

So after failing to open that lock… I didn’t think the day could get any worse.

Then it did.

When I was back to work in my hole, I took the envelope out from under my shirt and put it on the ground under the wheelbarrow. I started digging, throwing the dirt into the wheelbarrow until it was full. I rolled the dirt over to the woods and dumped it. Then I hid the envelope behind a tree.

I had worked for two hours straight under the brutality of the midday sun when I saw Amelia come out of the house. She didn’t come to me. She didn’t come anywhere near me. Instead she stayed on the little back patio, turning a crank on a big umbrella over a table until it was open.

Time for a water break, I thought. A perfect excuse to go over near her, to give her that drawing.

Before I could act, she was gone. Back in the house for a few minutes while I kept digging and watching. When she came back out, there were three other people with her. The dreaded Zeke again, plus one more guy with bleached blond hair done up in spikes, and a girl with hair dyed to look like pink cotton candy. The four of them sat down at the table, laughing and drinking from a big pitcher of ice tea or something. Cool in the shade of the umbrella, young and funny and goddamned perfect. They didn’t seem to notice me there at all, not more than twenty yards away.

I was thirsty as hell by then, but I didn’t dare go near them. I kept digging and trying not to listen to their laughter. When things got quiet, I looked up and saw the blond guy and the cotton candy girl kissing each other. Zeke and Amelia were sitting close now. They weren’t exactly kissing at that moment, but it looked like Zeke was staring into Amelia’s eyes and stroking her hair.

A few more minutes of talking and arguing and laughing, then more silence. I was afraid to look up again. When I finally did, they were all staring at me. No, worse than that, they were drawing me. The Lakeland High School art mafia apparently, all four of them, each with a pad of paper and a pencil. Watching me intently and trying to capture the sight forever. The young convicted juvenile probationer repaying his debt to society and to the family into whose house he had entered illegally. Miserable. Sweaty. Filthy. Barely more than an animal. A beast of burden.

“Don’t stop!” Zeke called to me. “This isn’t supposed to be a still life!”

More laughter.

I started to get dizzy again. The sunlight beating down on me so hard, for so long. I don’t know how I lived through that day. I really don’t.

When it was over, I retrieved my envelope from behind the tree, put it on the top of the pile, and then dumped my last load of dirt on top of it. A fitting burial.

I can’t overstate what that day had done to me. I really can’t. When I was new to the school and feeling like I had absolutely nothing, that was a bad time. But now it wasn’t just a matter of having nothing. It was having nothing and knowing exactly what it was that I didn’t have. What I’d never have. I had seen it in living color that day. I couldn’t stand the thought of seeing it for one more minute.

Somehow, it all seemed to come back to that one stupid lock. Like if I had been able to open it, everything would have turned out differently.

Crazy, I know, but I fell asleep with that thought ringing in my head. The lock with the serrated pins. The lock that beat me.

I woke up. I sat straight up in my bed and looked around the dark room.

That’s it, I thought. That’s why I couldn’t open that lock.

I got out of bed and grabbed the first clean clothes I could find. It was just after 2:00 A.M. I rummaged through the things on my desk, found my handmade tools. The pieces of scrap metal bent into the right shapes. I put them in my pocket, grabbed the keys and a flashlight, and sneaked out of the house.

I drove across town on the dark, deserted roads. I had no business being out there, nothing beyond a simple idea so insane I couldn’t even begin to stop myself. I drove all the way to the Marshes’ house, seeing it now in the darkness as I had seen it the very first time. Only now I was alone, and I had a different kind of mission to accomplish.

I parked a good quarter mile away, left the car on the side of the road, and began walking. A regular, normal pace. When I got close to the house, I slipped into the backyard. I made my way back to the tree line, picking up the shovel on the way. I found the last mound of dirt I had made, then pushed the dirt aside, making my way down to where I had buried the envelope.

Careful, I thought. You don’t want to damage it any more than you already have.

When I found the envelope, I picked it up and brushed the dirt off. I stepped behind one of the bigger trees and switched on the flashlight. The envelope looked a little wrinkled, and of course it was dirty as all hell, but it had stayed pretty flat. I opened it and took out the picture and examined it carefully in the thin beam of the flashlight. The corners were a little dinged up. Some of the lines had been rubbed until they were blurry. Overall, though, it didn’t look too bad. Someday I’d have to write a letter to the company who made the envelope and thank them.

Now the tricky part. I turned off the flashlight and made my way to the house. I went to the back door, put my head against the window right next to it, and listened. Last thing I needed was Mr. Marsh standing in the kitchen, raiding the refrigerator for a late-night snack.

Nothing. Silence. It was time to do this. I pulled out my tools and got to work on the lock. As I worked over the pins, I started to appreciate how good the locksmith’s tools really were. I would have given anything at that point to have them in my hands. But no, I thought. These will have to do. As long as I have the right idea, these will work.

Serrated pins, that’s what the man had said. If a mushroom pin had one notch, then a serrated pin must have more than one, right? That’s what “serrated” means. So instead of one false set on each pin, there were many. Like what, three? Four? Five?

It was time to find out. I set the back pin, started working my way to the front. All six pins set, go to the back again, set them all again. Here’s where you have to be so careful, just enough tension to keep everything in place. One tiny bit too little and you lose it, one tiny bit too much and you can’t feel it anymore. I worked through the second sets, got to the exact point I had gotten to before, with the locksmith laughing over my shoulder. This time I knew to keep going.

Back pin again, third set. Work my way to the front. Damn, it was like balancing a house of cards. You have to keep going, but it gets harder and harder with each one, and one false move makes it all fall apart.

I got almost to the end of the third sets, lost the tension, and felt the back pins start to give. So hard to keep the front pin set and go back and fix the back. I let the whole thing go, took a deep breath, shook out my hands, and looked around the empty backyard. I heard a motorcycle revving its motor, maybe a half mile away. I started over.

I got into the fourth sets this time, felt them all start to slip again. These amateur tools, I thought. These worthless hunks of scrap metal.

I stood up and stretched. This is just beautiful, I thought. What the hell are you going to do now?

Try the garage maybe? If you can get through the exterior door, the inside door shouldn’t be too hard to crack, if it’s even locked at all. But hell, if it’s an automatic opener, how do you even get through that? God damn it all. If you hadn’t shown off and opened it the first time, I said to myself, then Mr. Marsh wouldn’t have switched out this lock. You’d be in the house already.

One last time, I thought. One more shot at this and then I give up. Drive home like an idiot and go back to bed.

I went for that last pin again. Only this time… hell, why don’t I try setting it all the way? Go through every notch until I get to the last one…

No, that won’t work. Think about it. As soon as you get to the first set on the next pin, you’ll have to let up the tension and you’ll lose the back.

Wait. Wait one minute here…

I pushed the last pin up, felt it go through all of the sets. Five of them. That last one being the true set. So what if instead of keeping it there… I push it past the last set? I overset each one until I get to the front, then I release enough tension…

I tried it. It was like picking a lock in reverse. I overset the back pin, then the pin in front of that one, and so on until I had gotten through them all. With all six pins overset, all I had to do was let up just enough…

Six little clicks. Six pins falling back to the sheer line. The plug turned and the lock was open.

I stepped into the kitchen. The same kitchen I had been in, how many nights ago was it now? The same feeling came back to me. My heart beating faster. My breathing shallow. Everything in sharp focus. My mind perfectly clear for the first time since… well, since the last time I broke into this house. Only this time, I didn’t have three accomplices stumbling around, putting fireplace pokers through aquariums. This time it was just me, and I felt in complete control.

It felt good. I admit it.

I stood there in the kitchen for a long time, listening carefully for any movement. I could hear a clock ticking in the next room, and nothing else. I made my way through the house, to the stairs. I paused again, listening. Then I went up the stairs, slowly. There was a single night-light plugged into one of the hallway outlets. I went to Amelia’s room, thankful that I knew exactly which door it was. My previous criminal activities coming in handy already. I stopped at her door and listened again. Then I took the drawing out from under my shirt. I was about to slip it under the door. That would have been my last chance to do something halfway smart that night. Instead of doing that, I tried the doorknob. It was locked.

I looked at the knob. There wasn’t even a keyhole, just a single round hole in the center. I took my pick out, slid it through the hole, hit the simple release lever, and slowly let it out so it wouldn’t make any noise. In my whole life, I’d never crack an easier lock.

I pushed the door open an inch. I stood there listening to the sound of her breathing. She was still asleep. I opened the door a few inches more, enough to peek inside and see her bed. A faint shaft of moonlight coming through the window. She was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, and she was wrapped up in her sheet like she’d been wrestling a boa constrictor.

I took a few steps into her room, put the drawing on her dresser. It looked good there. Good enough to make this whole little adventure seem worthwhile. I paused there for a few moments, watching her sleep, fighting off the urge to touch her skin. I should have felt shame then. Shame and guilt for this violation. I certainly wouldn’t have let any other person in the world do this to her. I would have fought to the death anyone else who would dare invade her bedroom and stand over her while she slept.

I backed out of the room, pushing the lock button on her door and then closing it behind me. I moved with quiet speed down the stairs, to the kitchen and out the back door. I locked that door behind me, too. Leaving no other trace except that one single gift. Which I had left unsigned.

I’m crazy, but I’m not stupid.

____________________

I was dead tired the next day. When I got to the Marshes’ house, I knew things could go one of two ways. One, Amelia gets up, sees the picture, freaks out. She tells her father and all hell breaks loose. I’ll have to play dumb, pretend I’ve never seen the drawing before. Hope they believe me. Hope they believe there’s no way I’d actually risk breaking into the house again. Maybe they’d go talk to Zeke the artist boyfriend instead.

Or two, she sees the picture and keeps it to herself. At least for now.

Option two was looking good as I pulled into the driveway at noon. There were no police cars waiting for me. No Mr. Marsh tapping his free hand with a baseball bat.

I went around the house to the backyard and grabbed the shovel from where I’d left it the night before. Before I could even put it in the ground, the back door opened. It wasn’t Mr. Marsh coming out to get me. It was Zeke, and he was moving fast. He was wearing another jacket today, this one even more ugly, with a crazy pattern that looked like he’d splattered every color of paint on it. His hair was still braided down the back. He came right up to me and tried to grab me by the shoulders. I pushed him away.

“What the hell did you do to her?” he said. “Huh? What did you do?”

Okay, I thought, now this is interesting.

“I don’t know what the hell your problem is, but you’d better stay away from her. Do you hear me?”

Not really. Maybe you’d better say it again.

“You will really regret it, believe me. I promise you. You just stay away from her. Or else…”

Or else what?

“I mean, just… You’ll see.”

He turned and walked back to the house. Amelia was there waiting for him. She gave him an exasperated look. Then she looked over his shoulder. At me.

That look.

She didn’t give much away. But it was enough.

It was all I needed.

A couple of hours passed. More hard digging for me, of course, but it was the first afternoon in that hole that didn’t feel like a death march. It wasn’t any cooler that day, but maybe I was already getting a little bit stronger. Maybe Amelia had something to do with it, too.

I kept watching for her to reappear again, but she didn’t. No sign of her. No sign of Zeke. Or even Mr. Marsh. None of his daily yelling into the phone. For all I knew, the house was empty now.

About an hour later, I heard a car pull into the driveway. Amelia, I thought. Please be her. I just want to see her again. I went to the faucet for some water, heard Mr. Marsh yelling inside. All was right with the world again. A few minutes later, a man came walking out the back door. He was wearing a white dress shirt with a tie that he had undone so it hung loose around his neck. He was about the same age as Mr. Marsh, but he didn’t look like an overaged jock. Instead he had a slick polish on him like he’d be perfectly at home on a used car lot. He came over to where I was working. He stood there and lit a cigarette.

“Are you seriously digging this thing by hand?” he said.

I showed him the shovel.

“Okay, by shovel. You know what I mean. God, I thought I had a shit job.”

I kept working.

“He told me to come out here and cool off. What is it, like ninety degrees back here? Stupid jackass.”

He blew out a long stream of smoke.

“You been working for him long?”

I shook my head.

“You don’t talk much, do you?”

I shook my head again.

“I can respect that. World needs more people who know enough to keep their mouth shut.”

Mr. Marsh came out the back door and called to him.

“Case in point,” the man said. “I’ll catch ya later. Looks like you’ll be here a while, eh?”

I didn’t look up. I didn’t think about seeing him again, and I didn’t care either way. Little did I know.

The two men drove away together, leaving me there alone. As it got close to four o’clock, I gave in to temptation and left a few minutes early. I had important things to do, after all. I went right home and got out my drawing paper, sat there for a long time staring at it. You’ve got her attention now, I told myself. What’s the next step? Draw something that will shock her and intrigue her and make her fall madly in love with me. Piece of cake, right?

I started drawing her face again. Trying once again to capture what I saw in her. I realized after a few minutes of work that I was drawing the exact same portrait again. I put it aside and started with a new sheet of paper.

I can draw myself, I thought. A self-portrait that’ll help her to see the real me. Not just the dirt-streaked mute digging a hole in her backyard. That’s always been hard for me, drawing myself, but I worked on the drawing for a good hour. Then I put that aside, too. I went and got something to eat, came back, and started over.

I knew I was trying too hard. I knew I couldn’t win her over with one drawing, no matter how much I wanted to. But I didn’t know how else to approach it. I did a quick sketch of myself sitting there at my desk, trying to draw. I drew flames coming out of my body. That’s exactly how I felt. Fire! Madness! I drew Amelia floating in the air above me, rays of light shining from her face. Then me again, holding on to my chest. A broken heart above my head. Just stupid nonsense doodling, trying to shake loose an idea.

I thought back to the beginning. The first time Amelia spoke to me. She’s standing behind me, slightly above me. I drew the scene, working quickly, just getting the general idea and not obsessing over the details yet. Now, what did she say to me? What were her exact words?

“You are so full of shit, you know that?”

Yes, that was it. I wrote the words over her head, then enclosed them in a balloon. I drew a box around the whole scene. That was my first panel.

You have to understand, comic books were still something from when I was a kid, something to lose myself in during those long days in the back room of the liquor store. I didn’t know yet that they had become cooler than cool. I had never even seen a “graphic novel.” I remember someone in my art class had done something that looked just like a comic book once, and Mr. Martie had verbally destroyed it for her. “Lowbrow faux-ironic bullshit,” I think he called it. So I wasn’t naturally inclined to go in the comic book direction with anything. It just sort of happened.

The more I used it, the better it seemed to work. The next panel was me looking up from my digging, turning to see her in the flesh for the first time.

A wider shot for the third panel. I knew instinctively to keep using different viewpoints. Both of us in this one, with her talking again. “I already heard about you. Before you broke into our house. You’re the guy who doesn’t talk, right?”

Closer shot on me, the streaks of dirt on my face. Just rough it in for now. Don’t get hung up on making it perfect. Because here’s your chance to answer her. Finally, a chance to say something to her, even if it’s only in a thought bubble…

Don’t be coy, you idiot. Just say it.

“My God, she’s even more beautiful in person.”

Yes. That’s it. Next panel, back to her. Play it back in your head. Every word.

“What’s the deal with that? Because something happened to you when you were a little kid?”

Now what? What do I say to that? I drew myself looking away from her, thinking “Yes.”

Her again. “It’s all an act, isn’t it? I can see right through you. Because believe me, you want to talk about things happening to you when you’re a kid? We could exchange a few stories someday.”

A view of me from behind, her face visible over my shoulder, which I’ll have to come back and make just right. Another thought bubble over my head. “If only she knew how much we have in common…”

Then a shot of her walking away, me watching her. Then me putting the shovel back into the dirt. The last panel on this page, the last thought bubble. I worked it over in my head for a while. Then I gathered my nerve and wrote down the words.

“If she asked me to, I would dig this hole to the center of the earth.”

God, that’s ridiculous. So yeah, write that down, too. Recognize how ridiculous that sounds. Another thought bubble, to the right of the first, and slightly lower. “God, that’s ridiculous. But I think it’s true.”

Okay, I thought. Okay. At least you’re talking to her now. This might actually do something.

I worked for a couple more hours, filling in all of the details in the drawings. Getting the faces just right. The texture of the dirt. Some background here and there, never so much that it would be distracting. When it was done, I put it in another big envelope. Then I set my alarm for two in the morning.

I tried to sleep. When the alarm rang I was out of my bed in seconds. I put my clothes on, slipped out of the house, and got in the car. The trip I was already making every day, and now apparently even that wasn’t enough. There was a police car on Amelia’s street as I made the turn. I held my breath, kept driving, and didn’t look sideways. The police car passed right by me. I went to the end of the street, turned around, and came back. I parked far from her house again. Got out and walked in the darkness, once again trying to act like I belonged there.

I ducked behind the house, got the tools out, and opened the lock again. Tonight it felt as easy and natural as using a key.

When I was in the kitchen, I stood there for a long time listening again. Feeling my heart beat faster, that same feeling, now so familiar. You could get addicted to this, I told myself. Just this part right here.

I went up the steps, paused at her door, waited for another minute, listening. This time, when I finally turned the doorknob, it wasn’t locked. That got me a little worried for a moment. I couldn’t help wondering if she was waiting for me on the other side of the door. Ready to turn the lights on, maybe. Ready to scream her head off.

No. I could see that she was sleeping as I pushed her door open. I stepped into the room, placed the envelope on her dresser. I froze when I heard a sound outside the door. I waited. Amelia rolled over, kept sleeping. I listened to her breathing.

I got that funny feeling again, at the thought of someone breaking into the house and standing there in her bedroom, watching her sleep. I mean, it’s not like I didn’t know it was wrong for me to be there, but somehow it was like that idea didn’t really apply to me, because I knew I was there for the “right” reasons, and that I’d never do anything to hurt her. I was more upset that it was so easy to do, and that anyone who really wanted to could follow in my footsteps tomorrow night and be standing here instead.

Nobody is safe. Ever. Anywhere.

I slipped out the door, down the hallway, down the stairs, through the back door, and into the night. Back to the car, got in and drove, all the way home. I tried to sleep for a while. It didn’t happen.

The morning came. I was so tired. I didn’t even want to look at myself in the mirror. I took a shower and put clean clothes on, wondering what her reaction would be to my comic strip. Today it felt like the biggest mistake ever committed in recorded history.

“If she asked me to, I would dig this hole to the center of the earth.” I actually wrote those exact words down on paper.

When I got to the house, I went right around to the back, picked up the shovel, and got to work. The hole was getting close to a decent-sized kiddie pool now. I hadn’t even started the deep end yet, but hell, I wasn’t thinking about that today. I looked around for Amelia. She was nowhere to be seen.

I’ve scared her away. The whole thing was just so wrong and so stupid. I might as well just beat myself to death with this shovel right now.

I had to live with all these crazy thoughts for the next four hours. Another hot day, another half ton of dirt to move into the woods. I still don’t know how I got through it. When four o’clock came, I dragged myself to the car. This is it, I was thinking. I won’t last one more day here.

When I opened the door to the car, I stood there for a moment, not quite sure what I was looking at. There was an envelope on the driver’s seat. It was the envelope I had left in Amelia’s bedroom. I picked it up as I sat down behind the wheel. I held it for a moment. My heart was pounding. Then I opened the envelope.

It was my comic strip. Obviously a big “No, thank you” here. Return to sender. Your submission does not fit our needs at this time.

But wait, there was something more. A second page in the envelope. I pulled it out and looked at it. Another comic strip? More panels?

Yes. That’s exactly what it was.

Amelia had drawn page two.

Now, I don’t have to have it with me, all these years later, to tell you exactly how it went. I can close my eyes and see it again, panel by panel. Every little detail. She was a better artist than I was, that was the first thing I noticed. Maybe not in a technical sense, but in this medium especially, she had a natural ability to reduce everything down to its essentials without losing anything. Just simple, clean lines. Her face. My face. The shovel across my shoulder, one hand resting on the handle.

Her first panel was herself standing on the edge of the hole, saying, “You’d have to drop the act first.” Her exact parting words to me that day, which I had left out. Second panel, her walking away. Anger on her face. A dark cartoon squiggle in the air over her head.

Third panel, her inside the house. The dreaded Zeke, sitting in front of the TV with a bottle in his hand. His hair swung around his neck and hanging down to his chest. “What’s the matter?” he says. Amelia responding, “Nothing.”

Close up on Amelia. Zeke’s words coming from off-frame. “I think we should go to that showing tonight. Linda is so cool and I think she’s got so much talent and if we get there by,” and then the words disappearing behind Amelia’s head. She’s ignoring him completely, her own thought bubble reading, “Maybe I’m being too hard on him.” Him being me.

Next panel, more words coming at her from off-frame. “Are you even listening to me? What the hell’s wrong with you today?” Amelia standing up now, looking out the window, thinking, “We’re not so different, right? If he can talk to anybody, it should be me.”

Last panel, me as seen through the window. I’m bent over, picking up a load of dirt with the shovel. Amelia’s thoughts at the bottom of the panel. “Why does it bother me so much that he won’t?”

End of page. I sat there looking at it for a long time. Finally I looked up and saw Mr. Marsh staring at me from the front porch. I put the car in reverse, backed out of the driveway, and took off.

When I got home, I laid Amelia’s page out on my desk, studied it and read it over a dozen more times, still not quite believing it was real. Then I put it aside and got busy with page three.

Okay, what to do here… Maybe go to the second day I was there at the house. I wrote “The next day…” in the upper left-hand corner. What did she say that day? She told me I was wasting my time digging a pool, that nobody would ever use it. Then she got to the good part. I’ll start there.

So first panel, her watching me again. Wearing shorts and a T-shirt that day. “So are you going to talk today, or what?”

Next panel, me looking up at her.

Third panel. What did she say next? “I’m calling your bluff, okay? I know you can talk if you want to. So say something.”

Here’s where I took out my little pad of paper that day. Wrote down that I really, honestly couldn’t say anything. Gave it to her. That was what happened in real life, anyway. Here on this page, though, I could do anything I wanted to, right? I could make my own alternate reality.

So fourth panel. Me talking. Yes, me actually opening my mouth and saying a word out loud. On paper, it was as easy as drawing a dialogue bubble instead of a thought bubble. My first word after nine years of silence… She said to say something, so I did. “Something.”

Fifth panel. Surprise on her face. “You can talk,” she says.

Sixth panel. My answer. A little smile on my dirt-streaked face? No. No smile. Just the truth. “I can talk to you, Amelia. To you and nobody else.”

I wanted to keep going. I wanted to fill up ten more pages and give them to her, but that wouldn’t be right. It would be like dominating a conversation, something I’d never done, as you can probably guess. No, one page back from me and then it’s her turn again.

I went over the panels and filled in the details, trying to be a little more selective this time. Following Amelia’s example. The time flew by. Then, as I was about to set my alarm, I stopped and thought about what I was doing. You don’t have to break into her house every night, I realized. If you left the envelope in your car, she’d find it.

But then you’d have to wait an extra day. For someone who’s waited his whole life for something like this to happen…

No. Not if she knew to look for the envelope when you first got there every day at noon. She’d have four hours then to draw her own page and give it back to you. Assuming she’s still up for this. So you don’t have to take stupid chances anymore.

I knew it was the right way to play it, but at the same time I was disappointed that the idea made so much sense. That feeling I got when I picked that lock and stepped into that dark kitchen… I’d have to live without it for a while.

The next day finally came. I got to the Marshes’ house a few minutes early. As I got out of the car, I left the envelope on the dashboard, so there’d be no doubt where she could find it. All she’d have to do was look out a front window.

I felt the whole plan unravel when I went around to the back and saw the Lakeland art mafia sitting under the big umbrella again. Zeke was there with Amelia, along with the guy with the bleached-blond spikes and the girl whose hair color today had been switched from cotton candy pink to sour apple green. I did everything I could to ignore them, but I couldn’t help hearing the laughter, along with the unmistakable sound of one of them applauding my arrival.

I attacked the dirt for the next half hour or so. Whenever I dared to sneak a glance, Amelia seemed to be doing a professional job of not making any eye contact whatsoever. Finally, on my second trip back with the wheelbarrow, I noticed she was gone.

Another half hour passed. The remaining threesome kept working on whatever it was they were working on. The laughter faded with each passing minute. I caught Zeke staring at me. After another five minutes or so, he got up and went into the house. Ten minutes after that, he came out and said something to Blondie and Miss Green Hair. The two of them gathered up their things and left. Then Zeke came walking out to me.

“I thought I told you to stay away from her.”

I kept digging. I didn’t even look up.

“I’m talking to you.”

I stopped, cupping my hand to my ear like I was deaf. Then I picked up a shovelful of dirt and threw it into the wheelbarrow.

“You goddamned son of a bitch.”

He came at me then. I turned and pointed the shovel blade at his neck. That’s all I had to do.

“I will get you, you stupid bastard. I promise you.”

Then he left.

I went back to work. Every few minutes I looked up at the back windows, hoping to see Amelia. I didn’t. When I went to the faucet to fill the water jug, I heard Mr. Marsh yelling into the phone.

Just before four o’clock, I saw the back door open. My heart went into my throat for a second until I realized it was Mr. Marsh. He had a drink in one hand. With his other hand he grabbed one of the patio chairs and carried it out to the hole. He set it down a little too close to the edge, tried to take a seat, and almost dumped himself right into the dirt. He adjusted the chair, sat down again, and this time kept his bearings.

He watched me dig for a while. He took long sips out of his glass until it was almost empty.

“Why are you doing this?” he finally said.

I looked up at him.

“I got all sorts of guys working for me these days. Building things. Trying to make deals happen. You know what I’m saying? All sorts of guys all over the place. And you know what?”

He rattled the ice cubes in his glass and then drained it.

“I’ll tell you what. If every one of those guys worked like you do, I’d have absolutely no problems at all. I’d be fucking rich and I’d have no problems.”

He took out one of the ice cubes and threw it at me. It went two feet over my head.

“Look at you! You show up here every day. You do your job. Every minute you’re supposed to be working, you’re working. Every single minute. And the whole time you keep your fucking mouth shut. No complaining. No back-talk. No calling me up and telling me you can’t do one simple goddamned thing because this thing happened and that thing happened and this person said goddamned whatever. None of that bullshit at all. Not one little bit. Do you have any idea what I’m saying to you?”

I stayed still. I wasn’t sure what the right response would be, or if he’d even notice it.

“Who’da thunk it,” he said. “All these guys supposedly working for me and getting paid pretty goddamned well, and the one guy doing the best job is the juvenile delinquent who has to do it for free. Can you imagine?”

No. I cannot imagine.

“You want a drink?” he said. “A real drink? Come on, I’ll fix you something.”

I put my hands up. No thanks. It’s almost four o’clock, and I’m dying to get to my car, to see what might have been left there.

“You sure? I make a mean vodka martini.”

I put my hands up again.

He got out of the chair and stepped down into the hole. He came close enough for me to smell the alcohol on his breath.

“I didn’t want you to actually dig me a pool. You realize that. I mean, what the hell do I need a pool for?”

Once again, staying absolutely still seemed to be the only way to go.

“You win, okay? No more digging. Put the shovel away. Put the wheelbarrow away. You’re done. You win. End of story.”

End of story. Yet he was still standing there.

“I’m sorry I did this to you. Will you accept my apology?”

He seemed to really mean it. What else could I do? I nodded my head.

“Can we be friends now?”

Okay… not sure what to think now.

“Tell me we can be friends.”

What the hell. I nodded my head.

“Shake on it?” He switched his glass to his left hand and put out his right.

I shook it. It was cold and wet from the drink.

“When you come back tomorrow, we’ll think up something else for you to do, okay? Something a lot more fun? More rewarding?”

He’s really, really drunk, I thought. Or really, really crazy. By tomorrow, he may have forgotten all about this. Or else it’s going to be an interesting day all around.

“It’s a little early,” he said, “but you go on home. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Without another word, he stepped back, grabbed his chair, and dragged it back to the house. I stood there for a while, watching him. Waiting for the big zag after the zig. It never came. So I just threw the shovel in the wheelbarrow and went around the house to my car.

It was empty. No envelope.

I was running the scenarios through my head. Amelia coming to her senses. Or Zeke getting to her somehow. Or hell… maybe even Zeke figuring out our little game and taking the envelope out of the car himself.

Before my stomach could turn completely over on that one, I heard something behind me. A door shutting? No, a window. I looked up and saw the brown envelope sailing through the air. The window already shut and the person behind it already gone.

I retrieved the envelope from the front lawn, got in my car, and drove a hundred yards. The craziness with Mr. Marsh already forgotten, because this was something much, much bigger. I pulled over and opened the envelope. First page from me, second from her, third from me again…

Page four.

I knew she had had to deal with Zeke for the first hour, so she hadn’t had much time to work on it. But here it was. I was expecting that maybe she’d pick up from where I had left off, her standing there at the edge of the hole after I had finally uttered my first words, but the scene was different. The first panel showed the foursome sitting outside under the umbrella. Today? Is that what she was drawing? In the middle distance, there I was, hard at work, while Zeke and the other two artists watched me and laughed. You could only see the back of their heads, Amelia’s profile in the foreground. Her thought bubble… “You clowns can’t even see it. He’s got so much more talent than any of you. And he’s kind of beautiful, too.”

Holy fuck, I thought to myself. Holy motherfucking fuck.

Second panel. Amelia standing up. Zeke looking up at her with dumb surprise. The way she drew him in that panel alone, like he was the most pathetic and ridiculous human being who ever lived. It brought even more pure joy to my heart.

Third panel. Inside the house. Amelia with her back to Zeke, saying, “Get out. I don’t ever want to see you again.”

Fourth panel. “Later…” in the upper left-hand corner. Amelia in her room, sitting on her bed. The thought bubble… “He was here. Right here in my bedroom. Two nights in a row.”

I swallowed hard, kept reading.

Fifth panel. Silhouette of Amelia on the bed, leaving lots of room underneath for a longer thought… “Definitely an uncool thing to do, sneaking into my room in the middle of the night. Absolutely way over the line un-fucking-cool, right. So last night, when he didn’t come here at all…”

Sixth panel. Viewpoint from outside the window. Amelia on the inside looking out, saying it out loud… “Now that was just fucking cruel.”

One page of paper. Wood pulp bleached and then pressed into a thin layer. Marked with the rubbed-off graphite from a single drawing pencil. That’s all it was. You understand this.

I held that page of paper in my hands for five minutes maybe, while sitting in my uncle’s beat-up old car on the side of a road just outside of Milford, Michigan. On a hot afternoon turning into a hot evening. When I could finally breathe again, I put all of the pages back into the envelope. I reminded myself of the correct procedure for operating an automobile, put it in gear, and pressed the gas pedal. Steered it all the way home.

I went inside and opened the envelope again, took the pages out, and put them on my desk. This lonely cigar-smoke-smelling room at the back of this old house. The miracle that these sheets of paper could even exist within that lonely room’s four walls.

I sat down with a clean page in front of me. If I had been capable of laughing out loud, I would have done it. What in goddamned hell could I possibly draw in response to this? Six panels of what exactly?

I tried out a few different ideas. What might happen between us if I broke into her house again. If I slipped into her bedroom in the middle of the night. I wadded up every piece of paper and threw them onto the floor. Every single one.

Eventually, I put my head down on my arms. I had to close my eyes for a minute. Just one minute. As I slipped into a dream, I could hear the water pouring into the room, running down the walls, coming through the window. Pooling on the floor and then rising. Slowly, inch by inch. Until I was submerged in it.

Like every night. Like every dream.

When I looked up again, it was after midnight.

I shook myself awake. You’re blowing this, I thought. You’re totally letting this whole thing slip away.

I knew I had to draw something. Anything. I had one hour left. Maybe an hour and a half. Then it would be time to go to her house.

What are you really feeling right now? That’s what I have to ask myself. Just think about that one simple idea and start drawing.

I took out a clean sheet of paper. In the bottom right corner, I drew myself, here at the desk, my head down, just like I had been a minute ago. A big dream bubble above me, taking up the rest of the page.

Yes. This is it. Not six panels. Just one. A big risk, maybe. Probably totally insane. But here it is. One single page showing her exactly how I see her, late at night, in my underwater dreams.