The Lock Artist (24 page)

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.