Lock Artist

by Steve Hamilton

  I pointed up to her window.

  “Yes, she’s doing just fine. I’ll be sure to tell her you were here.”

  I waited him out. I wasn’t about to leave.

  “She’s studying art, just like she always wanted to. Isn’t that great?”

  I kept waiting.

  “She’s in London, if you can believe it. She absolutely loves it there.”

  London …

  “I’ll tell her you were here. She calls me every week.”

  She’s in London.

  “Look, I really should get back to the party. If you ever need anything … I mean anything. You let me know, okay? You take care of yourself.”

  He put a hand on my shoulder. Then he went back to his party.

  I wasn’t sure what to do then. I stood there in the driveway for a while, looking up at her window. Wondering if her bedroom still looked the same. The garage doors were open, with several large tubs filled with ice. This is where he kept the wine, along with the bottles of water and soda pop and whatever else. I grabbed a bottle of Vernors. I figured he owed me that much. One bottle of cold ginger ale in exchange for saving his life, his home, his business, his family. His old Mercedes was parked there on the other side of the garage. He’d be trading it in for something new, no doubt, as soon as the new health club took off. I was about to turn and leave. Then I noticed the stickers on his back window.

  Michigan State University.

  And above that … the University of Michigan.

  I knew his son Adam the football star was at MSU. And if I remembered right, from all that bragging he had done when I first met him, that was Mr. Marsh’s alma mater, too. So why the hell would he have a University of Michigan sticker on his car?

  Only one reason, genius. Although you had to hand it to him. Art school in London. He came up with that one pretty quick.

  I couldn’t even blame him.

  After all those hard miles to get here, it was only forty more to get to Ann Arbor. A beautiful September afternoon as I headed down to where I thought the center of campus had to be. There were students walking all over the place. Backpacks over their shoulders. Maize and blue Tshirts. Young smiling faces.

  I rode down State Street, looking at the buildings. The biggest of all had eight huge columns in front, and right next to that was the art museum. I figured I had to be getting closer, but I didn’t see the art school anywhere. I finally parked and walked around until I found a campus map. It looked like the art school was up on North Campus, a whole separate area of town. I got back on the bike and headed up that way, passing the huge hospital. It looked vaguely familiar now. I must have come down this very road when I was nine years old, to see some supposed expert about getting me to speak again.

  There were blue buses running back and forth on the main road. This was how the students must have traveled between the two campuses. I kept going until finally I saw the art building. It was all metal and glass, and in the late afternoon light it was already starting to glow from the inside.

  I parked the bike again and walked through the building. The people there, the art students … they didn’t seem to be moving as quickly as the students on the main campus. They were dressed a little better. Hell, they were just flat out a little more attractive and more put together. They wouldn’t make any money when they graduated, but at least they’d have more fun.

  This is where I should be, I thought. If everything hadn’t gotten turned inside out. One more year of a regular life, and this would have been me.

  I hadn’t planned on everything being quite so big, so I wasn’t sure what to do next. Write her name on a piece of paper? Start showing it around?

  No, not yet. I decided to go back outside first, to get on my bike and to keep looking. I went up the hill and found a big dormitory. It seemed to be the only dorm on North Campus, the only dorm anywhere near the art school, so I figured there was a good chance she lived there.

  Inside, there were two women at the front desk. They both looked like students themselves. Like maybe this whole town was run by people in their twenties. I went up to them and made a writing motion. They looked at each other, until finally one of them produced a pen and a piece of paper. I wrote down Amelia Marsh with a question mark after it.

  The first woman took the paper from me and read it. “Okay, umm …” She looked over at the other woman. “I’m not supposed to do this, but why don’t you go on up and leave a note on her door yourself? Who knows, you might see her.”

  She gave me directions to the sixth floor. I walked down the long hallway, passing students on their way to dinner, I assumed. I went up the elevator to the sixth floor. Down the hallway to the room number they had given me. I heard music coming from every open doorway I passed. Finally I got to her door and knocked. Nobody answered.

  I sat down right there in the hallway, my back against the hard wall. There was music coming at me from two directions, and I was tired and hungry, and not sure now if this had been a good idea in the first place. Maybe this was the sort of thing you just don’t do to a person. You don’t just show up after a year and expect her not to slap you right across the face. I put my arms across my knees, put my head down on my arms.

  The time passed.

  “Michael?”

  It was Amelia. She looked beautiful. Incredible. Amazing. Of course. She had long black shorts on. A black sleeveless shirt. Black work boots. Her hair was tied up to one side of her head, but otherwise as unruly as ever.

  I got to my feet. I stood there in front of her. In the hallway of her dormitory, having not seen her in a full year. Having run away from her without a word.

  “I’ve got one question for you,” she finally said.

  I prepared myself.

  “What the hell did you do to your hair?”

  ______

  I sat on her bed. She sat at her desk. I watched her reading my pages. I watched her catching up on the last year of my life. Starting with the day I left her. Riding east. My first job. Ending up in New York City. The horror in that house in Connecticut. Then the long trip west to California, and everything that had happened there.

  I hadn’t had the chance to cover the last few days, of course. What had happened with Lucy. Then this trip out to Cleveland to witness three murders, before deciding on the spur of the moment to come up here and find her.

  Even so, it was enough.

  The tears were running down Amelia’s face as she followed my story. Page by page. This is why I’m here, I thought. This is the whole reason right here. If one person in the world can understand what I’ve been going through. One person who really knows me. That’s all I could ask for.

  When she was done, she put the pages together carefully and put them back into the envelope.

  “You’re telling me,” she said, wiping her face, “that my father got you into all of this?”

  I gave her half a nod. It wasn’t quite so simple, but basically yes.

  “You became … a safecracker. That’s why you had to leave.”

  Yes.

  “Are you going to stop now?”

  I didn’t have an answer.

  “Why did you agree to do it in the first place?”

  I did it for you, I thought. But I don’t want to tell you that.

  “You know,” she said, leaning closer to me, “the way you drew some of these pictures … it’s like you really get into this stuff.”

  I looked away from her. Out the window at the fading light. What a long day this had already been.

  “Michael. Look at me.”

  I turned back to her. She gave me a pad of paper and a pen.

  “Why did you keep doing this?”

  I wrote on the pad. I didn’t have any choice.

  She looked from the pad back to my face.

  “But … you did. You always did.”

  No. I underlined the word.

  “There’s more to this …”

  I swallowed hard. I closed my eye
s.

  “This is about what happened to you, isn’t it … when you were a kid.”

  I wasn’t surprised at this leap. She was the one person in the world who could have made it.

  “I told you everything,” she said. “About my mother killing herself. About what I was going through last summer. Everything.”

  I shook my head. This part … This is not why I came here.

  “You said we had all this stuff in common, remember? If that’s true, how would I even know that? You still haven’t told me anything.”

  I pointed to the papers in her hands. It’s all right there.

  She wasn’t buying it.

  “What happened to you?” she said. “Are you ever going to tell anybody?”

  I didn’t move.

  She took a few deep breaths. She took my hand for a moment, then she let go.

  “I don’t know why I feel this way about you. Okay? I try not to, because it’s just … it’s just crazy. But I swear to God, I will kick you out of my room and you will never see me again, ever, unless you tell me what the fuck happened to you to make you this way. Right now.”

  There were cars passing by under her window. People walking in the evening. Normal people. A thousand of them all around her, playing music, talking, laughing. While I sat there on her bed, with a pad of paper in my lap. I started writing again.

  I want to tell you.

  “Then go ahead.”

  I don’t know how.

  “Start with where it happened. Draw me the house.”

  I looked at her.

  “I’m serious. You were eight years old, right? Isn’t that when it happened? Where did you live?”

  I thought about it for a while. Then I put the pad down. I stood up. I went to the door and opened it.

  She bit her lip as she watched me.

  “Okay, fine,” she said. “Good-bye.”

  I stayed there at the door.

  “What? What is it?”

  I picked up the pad.

  Let’s go, I wrote.

  “Where are we going?”

  I’m going to show you where it happened.

  It was getting dark now. It was crazy to be doing this. I had no business taking her where I was about to take her, but I had been on the run so long … I was so tired, and I had already lived through enough in the past few days to last me for the rest of my life. So maybe the fact that I had no idea what I was doing was a good thing just then. Maybe that was exactly what we both needed.

  She got on the back of my bike. Just like old times. It felt just as good as ever to have her hands around my waist. We rode out of Ann Arbor, heading due east. I knew where I was going. I had always known. Even though I hadn’t gone anywhere near it in ten years.

  I got off the highway, right before it took us into the heart of the city. I wandered in a slow zigzag toward the water. I knew we couldn’t get lost now. All we had to do was keep going until we hit the Detroit River.

  It was coming up on midnight when we hit Jefferson Avenue. We turned north. We passed the enormous steel plant on the river. The taste of the smoke and the grit in the air already, punishing us as we got closer and closer. Amelia wrapped her arms tighter around my body.

  I kept going. I knew we were close. Then I saw the bridge.

  The bridge over the River Rouge.

  I looked at the street signs. Just before we got to the bridge, I took that last left turn. The last turn before the river. We were on Victoria Street now. I rolled to a stop.

  “Is this it?” she said. The wind was still buzzing in my ears. “Is this really where you lived?”

  Now understand, this has nothing to do with the city of River Rouge. Or the people who live there or the businesses or the streets or the river itself. It is a place like any other place, where you grow up and you go to school and you make your stand against the world. If you go to this particular street, though, you’ll be just as amazed as Amelia was when we got off the bike and looked around and breathed that air.

  There are six houses on the southern side of Victoria Street. On the northern side is the plant where they make wallboard, a city unto itself of brick and steel, of pipes and smokestacks and water towers and huge mounds of gypsum.

  “Is the air always like this?”

  Amelia covered her mouth with her hand. Besides the gypsum, there was the salt from the salt plant just up the river, the coke and the slag from the two iron plants. Not to mention whatever came out of the wastewater plant. Or from the storm drains, whenever it rained.

  “Which house did you live in?”

  I walked down to the street and stopped in front of the house. She followed me. It was a simple one-story house. Inside, a small living room, a small kitchen. Three bedrooms. One bathroom. An unfinished basement. At least that’s what I remembered. I lived here from the time I was born until that day in June of 1990. Kindergarten, first grade, second grade. Playing outside in the tiny backyard on those days when the air wasn’t too bad. Inside on all the other days.

  As I looked at the house, I knew it was empty. I knew it had been empty for ten years. Nobody would buy this house. Nobody would live inside these walls. Never mind the air or the industrial blight across the street. You wouldn’t go into this house for one second if you knew what had happened here.

  And everybody knew. Everybody.

  The whole street looked abandoned. I opened up one of my luggage bags and grabbed a flashlight. Then I took Amelia by the hand and led her up the two front steps to the door. I tried the knob. It didn’t turn. I got out my tools and started in on the lock.

  “What are you doing?”

  It didn’t take long. Less than a minute. I turned the knob and pushed the door in. I took her hand again and led her inside.

  The first thing that hit me was how cold it was. Even after a warm September day, the unnatural chill in this place … the lights from the plant came streaming in through every window, so it wasn’t that dark, but still I felt myself wanting to reach for a light switch. To fill the place with a warmer light than this pale glow that made everything look like it was underwater.

  Amelia didn’t say anything. She followed me as I walked through the living room, our footsteps creaking on the wooden floors. There was no carpet. I remembered that. Other things coming back to me, like where the television was. Where the couch was that my mother would sit on while I was on the floor, watching cartoons.

  We went into the kitchen. The tile had curled up in places. The old appliances were still in place.

  “Why is this house still here?” she said. “Why haven’t they torn it down?”

  Yes, I thought. Tear it down. Burn the lumber and everything else that will burn. Take the ashes and bury them in the ground.

  I led her back out, through the living room to the hallway, where it got much darker. She gripped my hand tighter, and I took her past the bathroom, past the master bedroom, past my own bedroom from way back when. To the extra room at the very back of the house.

  This door was closed. I pushed it open.

  It was empty. There was still a roller blind on the window. I went to open it and the whole thing fell off the window with a crash.

  “Okay, I’m getting a little nervous in here.” Her voice was small in the middle of this emptiness.

  I looked along the floor for the faint indentations in the wood. Four of them. They were centered against the back wall.

  I took out my pad of paper and my pen. I started to write, holding the pad up to the dim moonlight that came in through the window. Then I put the pad back in my pocket. There was no way I could do this and make her understand what it felt like. This whole trip was a horrible mistake.

  “So show me,” she said. “I want to see what happened.”

  I shook my head.

  “There’s a reason we’re here. Show me.”

  I took out the pad again. I started to draw a picture. But I didn’t have room on the pad. How could I do this on a stupid little
pad of paper? I ended up throwing it against the wall.

  That’s when I got the idea.

  It was plaster, with a simple coat of off-white paint. It had always been that way. No bright colors for this house. No wallpaper.

  I turned on the flashlight. I went to the wall, and I started drawing with my pen. Amelia came over to me and watched over my shoulder. I drew a picture of a little boy reading a comic book in a living room. I drew a woman smoking a cigarette and watching television. My mother. On the couch next to her … this was the tricky part. A man with a drink in his hand. But not the father. How do you make that clear? This man is not the father.

  “Michael, do you have stuff out on your bike? Pens? Pencils?”

  I nodded.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  What? You’re going to leave me here?

  “It’ll only take a second. You keep doing what you’re doing.”

  She left the room. I heard her footsteps, and I felt the air shift as she opened the front door. It was just me and the ghosts for a long minute or two. I fought off the feeling that I was trapped here forever now. That the door was locked and she’d never come back.

  Then the door opened again, and she reappeared in the room. She was carrying my wooden art box. Everything I’d need to do this for real.

  Especially if she helped me.

  When I finished the first panel, she came behind me and started filling in some of the details. The second panel went a lot faster. I just sketched in the general idea, and then she finished it while I went on to the third.

  That’s how we did it. That’s how I finally told her this story. On this one September night, in this half-dark empty room, me and Amelia together again, filling up the walls.

  June 17, 1990. Father’s Day. This is the day that happened then and is still happening. This is the day that lives outside of time.

  I am sitting on the floor of the living room, reading a comic book. My mother is on the couch, smoking a cigarette. The man I call Mr. X is sitting on the couch next to her. He is not my father, but even though it is Father’s Day, there he is on the couch with my mother.

  His last name really does start with the letter X, but it’s a name I can never quite remember. Xeno? Xenus? Something like that. Anyway, that’s why he is Mr. X.