The Lock Artist

Seventeen

Michigan

July 1999

Even now, when I think back on that day… the day Amelia gave me that last page… that hope I felt, for the first time in my life. That’s the part I want to remember most. That hope that was so real it was like something I could touch. Like it was right there in front of me. Those few hours I spent with nothing more than that one piece of paper in my hands. Waiting for the night to come. Being scared and unsure of myself, and having absolutely no idea about what would happen. But having hope that it would be as good as I could possibly imagine.

The sun went down. I waited for midnight to come. Then one o’clock. I made myself wait, told myself that I couldn’t afford to go any earlier than normal. Who knew how late anyone stayed up in that house? Two o’clock had been safe before, so that’s the time I would go.

I left at one thirty-five. I drove over to the house. I had my tools with me, of course. I kept telling myself, relax, calm down, or you’ll never be able to open the back door. But when I finally got there, the door was unlocked. Another new thing, this little message to me. I listened for a few minutes. Then I opened the door and went in.

Through the kitchen, to the stairs. Quietly up each step, into the hallway, to her room. I tried her doorknob. It, too, was unlocked. I turned the knob, but I did not press the door open. I stopped dead.

It was my last moment of doubt. Because this whole idea… it was obviously too good to be true. It was all a setup. A hoax. There’d be a movie camera on the other side of this door. The lights would snap on. Maybe all four of the art mafia would be there waiting for me.

Do I open the door or do I turn and run away? This was the moment.

I opened the door.

It was dark in her room. I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. I stood there for a long time, waiting. I had the envelope with me, my new page added to the rest. I put the envelope down on the dresser in its usual spot.

“It’s about time.” A voice in the darkness.

I didn’t move.

“Did you lock the door behind you?”

I reached around and locked it.

“Come closer.”

I took a step toward the voice. I couldn’t see her yet. My eyes still hadn’t adjusted to the dark.

“Over here.”

There was a soft click. Then a thin beam of light hit the ceiling. I saw her sitting on the bed, holding the flashlight.

“I was starting to think you wouldn’t come tonight. I fell asleep.”

I stood there, six feet away from her. I didn’t move.

“Are you going to sit down, or what?”

I sat on the edge of the bed. She was wearing shorts and an old T-shirt. Same as ever.

“I won’t bite.”

I slid down a little closer to her.

“I guess I’ve been waiting for something like this to happen,” she said. “Ever since the first time I saw you. But now that you’re here…”

She repositioned herself, sitting Indian style now. Her bare knees just a few inches from me.

“I guess this is a little weird, huh?”

I put one hand on my chest, then gestured to the door.

“No. You don’t have to leave. I mean, I haven’t seen your new page yet.”

I stood up, took the envelope from the dresser, then gave it to her. I watched her open it. She held the flashlight with one hand as she paged through the comics with the other. When she got to my new page, she picked it up and looked at it carefully.

“This is… me.”

She moved the flashlight back and forth across the page. On this drawing that had come from somewhere inside me.

A mermaid, with Amelia’s face. Underwater, her hair free and floating with the current. One arm crossed over her chest, for modesty’s sake. Her tail curving into a long U shape.

I closed my eyes. Somehow I had done the impossible, with a drawing that was both childish and salacious at the same time. The most ridiculous thing ever put on paper.

“I don’t even know what to say.”

That you hate it? That I should leave immediately?

“It’s beautiful,” she said. “It’s amazing. How did you know?”

I opened my eyes.

“How did you know I’ve always had this thing about being a mermaid?”

She looked up at me. The flashlight made a deep shadow across half her face.

“Is this how you really see me? When you’re dreaming about me?”

I nodded. Just the slightest movement. I looked at her mouth.

“If you want to kiss me, you better go ahead and-”

I put one hand on the back of her neck, drew her mouth to mine. No other thought in my head except for how much I wanted to do that, without waiting another second. She slid her arms around my waist, pulled me closer. I felt us both slowly tilting toward her bed. Then falling. Her tongue touching mine and then everything melting. A word I’d read in how many books, melting, when two lovers come together, and yet this is exactly what it felt like. Both of us stretched out on her bed now, wrapped together, our hands finding each other’s, clasping and almost pushing away, like it’s all too much.

“Oh God.” Her voice close to my ear. “You have no idea how much I wanted this to happen.”

I was seventeen years old, remember. Before this night, I had kissed one girl for about two seconds. It had been over before I even knew what was happening. Now I was right here, in Amelia’s actual bed. I knew how everything else was supposed to work, and God knows I wanted it to, but I had no practical idea of exactly what to do next.

“Are you okay?”

I nodded. She sat up.

“I promise I won’t ever ask this again… Can you really, really not say a word to me?”

I shook my head.

“Not even a little sound?”

I swallowed hard.

“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s okay. I think that just makes you more amazing.”

We were both silent for a while. The flashlight was lying on the bed now, the thin beam bouncing off her wall and casting a pale glow on both of us. Amelia’s face half hidden behind her hair. She drew closer to me again. I kissed her, slowly this time. The taste of her. The smell of her. This was really happening. She pulled me down again, and a dozen different thoughts ran through my head at once. What might happen next. What was going to happen next unless one of us did something to stop it.

Then we heard the noise. In the hallway, footsteps, then the creak of a door. Amelia put one finger to her lips to shush me, then seemed to realize how little sense that made. “Just wait,” she whispered to me. “It’s my father.”

We listened for the sound of the toilet flushing, then the footsteps again as Mr. Marsh made his way back to his room. I couldn’t help wondering what he would have done to me if he had woken up a little earlier and found me sneaking around in his house. I wondered further what kind of prison I’d get sent to, and if they’d be able to accommodate the fact that I’d have been crippled tonight and forever confined to a wheelchair.

We waited a few more minutes, long enough to make sure he had gone back to sleep. By then, the spell seemed half broken. I wondered if that would be it. For tonight, anyway.

Then she stood up. She grabbed the bottom of her shirt and pulled it over her head. Her skin was glowing in the window’s faint light. I swallowed, reached forward to touch her. I put both of my hands against her collarbones. She put her hands on mine, slid them down to her breasts. She closed her eyes.

She reached for my shirt. We pulled it off together. Then my pants. Then my underpants. She pulled her shorts down and kicked them away.

She took my hand and led me back to her bed.

“This is crazy,” she said. Afterward. “You don’t have to creep into my room in the middle of the night anymore. Even if I’m strange enough to actually like it.”

She pulled me to my feet. We stood there in the middle of her room with our arms around each other. The room was so dark, with the wooden floor painted so black it seemed like we were floating in outer space.

“My summer just got a hell of a lot more interesting,” she finally said. “Will you keep drawing for me?”

I nodded.

“I will, too. I guess it’s my turn.”

She kissed me again. Then she let me go. She went to the door, opened it a few inches, and looked into the hallway.

“It’s clear,” she said, “but be careful.”

I slipped past her, took a step onto the thick carpeting like I was coming back to earth. When I was halfway down the stairs, I heard a sound behind me. I stopped dead, expecting to hear Mr. Marsh’s voice. Hoping he didn’t have a gun in the house. When I turned, I saw Amelia looking down at me. She gave me a little smile and raised one eyebrow a quarter of an inch. Then she waved good night and shut her door behind her.

From one summer night… to the very next morning. How quickly the whole world can turn on you. How much I’d give to stop everything right there. Those few hours in Amelia’s bedroom. Finish my whole story on that note. Close the book. The End.

But no.

That’s the one thing prison teaches you. You can close your eyes and dream about the way you wish things could be. Then you wake up and everything comes back at you at once. The isolation and the locked doors and the crushing weight of the stone walls all around you. It all comes back and it feels worse than ever.

So maybe you shouldn’t dream at all if you’re in a place like this. Not that kind of dream, anyway. Don’t dream that kind of dream unless you don’t plan on waking up.

I left her house that night. I drove home. I went inside. I sure as hell didn’t sleep that night. I kept smelling her scent on me, kept feeling her lips against mine. Alone in the darkness of my room, my heart still beating as fast as a hummingbird’s. Until the sun finally came up and I was on my feet again, ready to go back to her house.

It felt funny to drive over there that morning. I couldn’t help worrying that the whole thing would fall apart in the light of day. That she’d see me and shake her head, put up her hands as if to say, no, that was just a mistake. Just go to the backyard and keep digging and forget it ever happened.

I didn’t see her when I pulled in and got out of the car. I stood there in the driveway for a few moments, waiting for her face to appear in one of the windows. It didn’t happen.

There was a strange car there. Somebody new in town. I didn’t think anything of it yet. I went around the house, remembering what Mr. Marsh had said to me the day before. About how I was through with the pool-digging, and that he’d be finding something else for me to do. Something more rewarding, he had said. Whatever the hell that meant.

He was just drunk, I thought. By today he’ll have forgotten the entire conversation, and I’ll be right back to work, filling up that wheelbarrow and dumping the dirt in the woods.

But there in the backyard, waiting for me, was a big surprise.

I saw the white tent first. It was as big as one of those huge white tents you see at outdoor weddings, big enough to cover the area where I had been digging every day. I blinked a couple of times, taking it all in, then finally seeing the two men standing in the shade underneath the tent. It was Mr. Marsh and my probation officer.

When Mr. Marsh spotted me, he stepped out into the sun. “Michael! Come on over!” He had a maniacally big smile on his face.

“Look who’s here,” he said, gesturing to my PO. “We were just talking about our little project back here.”

The PO stepped out and shook my hand. He peered into my face. “Good to see you, Michael. Boy, you look a little red.”

“I told the kid, you should always wear sunscreen, eh? Skin cancer? Melanoma? You think he listens to me?”

Mr. Marsh gave me a playful punch on the shoulder.

“I finally got this tent for him,” he said. “I’ve been meaning to get one, anyway.”

“Sure’s a beaut,” my PO said, looking up at it. The fabric was blinding white in the sunlight. “Turns your whole backyard into a real oasis.”

“You picked the right word,” Mr. Marsh said. “An oasis. As you can see, we’re really trying to do something special back here. Michael’s been such a huge help.”

“It’s gonna be impressive, all right. I better not bring my wife over here, or she’ll have me digging up our backyard in no time.”

The two of them kept smiling at me, their teeth as blinding white as the tent. I looked away from them and finally got around to noticing all of the stuff someone had dragged out here. There were a dozen potted plants, each one bigger and more multi-fronded than the next, all sitting on the ground. A large black tarp was draped down into the hole. My wheelbarrow was filled to the brim with rocks as big as Volleyballs.

“Mr. Marsh was trying to describe how this is going to look when it’s done,” my PO said to me. “I can’t wait to see it when you’ve got the fountain set up. Although how are you going to…”

He looked all around his feet at the straw and the stubby new grass. “You’ll need an electric line back here, won’t you?”

“Oh, yeah, yeah,” Mr. Marsh said. “Of course. That’s the last step. We’ll need an electrician to run the wire from the house.”

My PO followed an imaginary line to the house, nodding his head in agreement. “It’s a shame you can’t do that yourself.”

“The union would complain, eh?” Mr. Marsh put his hand on the back of my neck. I could feel the strength in his fingers.

“Well, it’s good to see that things are working out so well. I’ll be glad to report this as a success story.”

“I was just telling Michael yesterday… all the people I pay good money to work for me, and not one of them works as hard as he does.”

“That’s great. That’s outstanding.”

“Like you say, a success story. That’s exactly what this is.”

I still didn’t know what was going on, but the two men shook hands and smiled some more, and then Mr. Marsh showed my PO to his car. When he was done with that, he came back around to the back of the house. I was standing there next to the pretend oasis, marveling at how much effort had gone into the illusion. I hadn’t dared to go under the tent, figuring that even the shade itself would be forbidden to me. That he’d tear the whole thing down now that my PO was safely gone. Pull up the tarp and tell me to get my ass back to work.

Instead, he came back to me and put both hands on my cheeks. Grabbed me right by the face. “I tell you what,” he said. “Your stock is up today, young sir.”

He gave me one last little slap in the face and then let go of me. “Just hang loose for a while. I’ll be needing you inside in about a half an hour.”

Hang loose, he says. I didn’t know how to do that. I walked around the tent, looking for the shovel. I found it over by the edge of the woods. It felt so strange to be there without that wooden handle held tight in my hands. But what the hell, right? It sure looked like the pool was on hold today. I dropped the shovel and went back to the tent, looking up at the windows.

Please show yourself, I thought. Everything would feel a hell of a lot better if I could just see you smiling at me for one second.

I finally went under the tent and sat down on the edge of the hole with my feet on the plastic tarp. I kept waiting.

Finally, Mr. Marsh came back out through the back door.

“Come on in!”

He held the door open for me. I went inside, feeling the sudden chill of the air-conditioned air.

“Right this way, Michael.”

He showed me to his office, the same room where we had had our first extended conversation, about seven thousand shovelfuls of dirt ago. The same stuffed fish was there, the great blue marlin frozen in midair above his desk.

“Have a seat,” Mr. Marsh said. “Can I get you something to drink?”

I put my hand up to decline.

He didn’t look interested in taking no for an answer. “A Coke, maybe? Dr Pepper? I know we’ve got something. Let me see.”

He went to the wet bar on the far wall and rummaged around in the little refrigerator. “You want ice?”

I didn’t think it would matter if I did or not. I didn’t even try to stop him.

“Here we go,” he said, pouring a can of Coke into a glass filled with ice. The glass looked like crystal. He handed it to me and put the can on the desk in front of me. Then he sat down behind the desk.

“Let me tell you why I brought you in here. My daughter Amelia, she told me something very interesting about you this morning.”

Oh shit, I thought. Here we go. I didn’t figure on an early death today.

“She says that you’re a very good artist, and that you shouldn’t be spending all your time digging in our backyard. Those were her exact words.”

I started breathing again.

“You surprise me every day, Michael. That’s all there is to it. I mean, you’ve already proven your loyalty to me. After all that hard work… after not giving up your friends like that. By the way, I apologized yesterday, right? Did I already apologize?”

I nodded.

“I was so upset about what happened. What you boys did. You and those Milford High School punks.”

He cut himself off with a visible effort. Then he put his hands down on the desk.

“But that’s no excuse for abusing you like that. I’m just trying to explain where my head was. Okay? You understand? And you forgive me, right?”

I nodded again.

“Thank you, Michael. I appreciate that. Seriously. Why aren’t you drinking your Coke?”

I took a sip, feeling the bubbles go up my nose.

“So here’s what we’re going to do now. First of all, I meant what I said. Your days as pool digger are over. Okay? No more digging. Instead, well, I thought maybe if you’re such a great artist and all…”

He paused for a moment, leaning back in his chair. The huge fish just above his head.

“Amelia had this little friend… Zeke. Ezekiel. Whatever the hell his name was. You probably saw him around here, right? Anyway, I guess he’s history now. Can’t say it breaks my heart. I mean, his family has a lot of money and all, but he’s just a little too weird for me. Anyway, now that he’s gone… well, I know Amelia always likes to have somebody else around to do her art stuff with. So I was thinking… do you see where I’m going with this?”

No, I thought. I absolutely do not see where you’re going with this. Because there’s absolutely no way that you’d seriously be offering me this chance.

“Amelia has had a really tough time of it. I mean, since it’s just been the three of us here. Hell, the two of us now, with Adam gone. She spends way too much time alone. I just don’t know how to reach out to her sometimes, you know?”

No way. There’s no way you’re going to ask me this.

“So what I’m saying is, if you could come here and instead of digging… If you could spend time with her, while she’s drawing, or whatever you guys want to do. It would make me feel a lot better, to know she had somebody to be with. To talk to. I bet you’re a great listener, am I right?”

Yes. Yes I am.

“Now, if you’re worried about the probation officer…”

No. I’m not worried about the probation officer.

“I’ll just tell him you’re doing some other jobs for me. Down at the health club. I’ll make sure that’s covered, is what I’m saying. I’ll make sure you’re covered here. Totally covered.”

The catch is coming. There has to be a catch here.

“I’m having a little barbecue tonight. You think you could stay for it? There’s somebody I’d like you to meet. His name is Mr. Slade. He’s my partner, actually, at the health club. Along with some other stuff. We’ve got a lot going on these days. I think he’d really enjoy meeting you. Whaddya say?”

That’s the catch? I have to meet your partner?

“And maybe… I don’t know. Maybe if we have a problem that you could help us solve sometime? You think maybe that would be a possibility? You helping us out, I mean?”

Okay. Here it is.

“I’m just saying. You have a lot of skills. In fact, I bet Mr. Slade would be very interested to see them. You think you could show him? Maybe even tonight, after the barbecue?”

That’s when I heard the footsteps. I looked up and there she was, standing in the doorway. She had jeans and a simple white shirt on, untucked. Beads around her neck. Her hair tied up in a ponytail.

“Tell you what, you just think about it,” Mr. Marsh said to me. “You think about it, and we’ll talk later.”

“What’s he supposed to be thinking about?” Amelia said.

“Just an adjustment to our work agreement,” Mr. Marsh said. “I think everybody will be a lot happier. You included.”

She didn’t look convinced. I’d find out soon just how well she knew him. For as much as she loved him, the only parent she had left, she knew he was full of shit at least half the time.

“You guys run along,” Mr. Marsh said. “Go do some art stuff or something.”

“He doesn’t have to dig today?”

He smiled at his daughter. Then he gave me a little wink.

“No. Not today.”

I don’t know if I realized it yet, but he had me. Before I could even get out of the chair. I had no idea what he’d ask me to do. Or who he’d ask me to do it for. All of that would come later.

But for now… yes. He’d played the Amelia card, and he’d played it perfectly.

He had me.