Steve Hamilton - The Lock Artist

“I think we should just stay right here,” he finally said to me. “Be the lookouts. Whaddya think?”

It was too dark to see his face.

“Okay, maybe this was a mistake,” he said. “I’m sorry. We shouldn’t have gone along with this. I was just thinking it would be… I don’t know, like something real for once. You know what I’m saying? Didn’t it feel that way?”

I didn’t want to stand there listening to him. I wanted to see more of the house.

“Where are you going?” he said.

I didn’t answer him. I left the kitchen, walked into the living room. There was a fireplace with a big art print hanging over it. A woman in a tight sleeveless dress, hat shading her eyes. Next to her, a sleek black panther on a leash. Real classy.

There was cream-colored leather furniture. There was a television bigger than any I had ever seen. On the opposite side of the room, there was an even bigger aquarium. The air pump was humming away. There was a treasure chest on the bottom, with a lid that would open every few seconds, releasing a stream of bubbles. I counted the fish. There were four of them. I stood there, watching the fish swim back and forth in that bright rectangle.

Until it exploded.

The tidal wave was soaking my pants before I could even process what was happening. A few seconds later, I was looking across at Trey’s face, on the other side of what had just been glass and water. He was holding a long iron poker from the fireplace.

The way he looked down at the ruin he had caused, the cruel smile on his face. How happy this made him, the sheer mindless destruction in that one moment. I hated it. I hated it like a sickness and I knew I’d never forget it.

A voice came hissing down at us, from upstairs. “Trey! What the fuck are you doing?”

“Just saying hello to the fish,” Trey said.

“What the hell’s the matter with you? They’re supposed to come inside and be surprised when they see the fucking banner! You just ruined everything!”

“Well, then let’s do something even worse in the bedroom,” Trey said. He winked at me and dropped the poker. Then he went upstairs. I stood there for a while, watching the fish flopping around at my feet. I picked up two and took them to the kitchen.

“What the hell was that?” Griffin said. He hadn’t moved from the door.

I went to the sink, ran some lukewarm water, and then dropped in the fish. I went back into the living room and picked up two more. I put those in the sink and turned the faucet off. All four fish were swimming around now like it was just another day at the office.

“I think we need to get out of here,” Griffin said. “Let’s just leave those idiots here, eh?”

I held up one index finger, left the kitchen again, and went upstairs. I poked my head into the first room. It looked like a sewing room or something. It was untouched.

I kept going down the hall, poked my head into the master bedroom suite. There was a king-sized four-poster bed and two walk-in closets. I took a look in the master bathroom, saw a big whirlpool tub, a separate shower, a marble sink with gold fittings. That’s the kind of house this was.

I stepped into the last bedroom. This was a Lakeland house, remember, so I didn’t know anything about the family. I didn’t know that Adam had a brother. Or at least that was my first thought. I was assuming it was a boy’s room. There were posters all over the walls, for rock bands I had never heard of. Then I noticed that the bedding was bright red, and that there was a big black heart-shaped pillow on it, along with about a dozen stuffed animals.

“Mike! Where are you?” Griffin’s voice coming to me from downstairs. I ignored it. My attention was fixed instead on a large portfolio lying on the dresser. I knew exactly what it was. I had one myself, for carrying my drawings. I untied the string and opened it. Then I reached back to the wall switch and turned on the light.

“Mike! Come on!” The voice louder now. It could have been a megaphone in my ear, I wouldn’t have moved an inch. I was lost in these drawings.

The first was of a young girl, sitting at a table and looking up at something or someone out of the frame, her face showing both fear and hope simultaneously. The next drawing was of two men, standing in an alley, one man lighting a cigarette for the other. The next a simple still life, one single apple sitting alone on a table, with a knife stabbed into the top of it.

The drawings were good. There was talent here. There was something else, too. I remembered something that Mr. Martie had said to me, about how I needed to find a way to put more of myself into my work. Something I tried so hard not to do.

This is it, I thought. This is how you do it. Even if it’s just a drawing of a young girl, or two men smoking, or even just an apple with a knife in it. Whoever had done this work… she was on these pages, too.

I was about to close the portfolio when I noticed the second portfolio that had been lying underneath it. Whereas the one on top had been one of the cheap cardboard portfolios they give you at school, this portfolio on the bottom was made of black leather and had a zipper along three sides. I hesitated for a moment, then unzipped it.

“Mike, we gotta get out of here right now!” The voice was frantic now, but it didn’t register with me. I wouldn’t even hear it until I played the whole scene back in my mind an hour later.

There were several drawings of a woman. Thirty years old, maybe. Very pretty in a sad, used-up kind of way. Long hair tied back. A tight, self-conscious smile. In the first drawing, she was sitting in a chair with her hands folded in her lap. Indoors. In the next, she was sitting on a bench outside, the same look on her face. Like she wasn’t totally comfortable. There were a few more drawings of the same woman. Judging from the different types of paper and the different shades of pencil, I was guessing they had been done over a fairly long period of time. You could even see an improvement in the ability of the artist.

Then the very last drawing… a new subject. Younger. I could tell from the way the paper was worn thin and creased around the edges, by the eraser marks around the eyes and mouth… this was something the artist had worked very hard on, had come back to again and again. I could practically feel the sheer effort, trying to capture something in this simple drawing of one person’s face.

This was her, I realized. This was a self-portrait. I was looking at Amelia’s face for the first time.

From somewhere outside, the sound of tires screeching on asphalt. Then a sweep of headlights across the wall, finally breaking my trance. I dropped the drawing. I went into the hallway and then down the stairs. I could see the car stopped diagonally in the driveway through the front window. I ran out the back door. A mistake. You should find a window on the far side of the house, away from any doors, if you’re going to make a run for it.

There were two of them. They tackled me in the backyard. They knocked the wind out of me. I couldn’t breathe for a full minute. That old familiar feeling coming back to me, from nine years before. You cannot breathe, Mike. You cannot breathe and you are surely going to die.

“Where are the others?” A voice hot in my ear. My breath slowly coming back to me.

“Tell us where they went! Who was with you?”

I didn’t say a word to them. So they just picked me up and hauled me off to the police station.

Los Angeles

January 2000

Before I went to the bus station that next morning, I cut off most of my hair. No more shaggy curls for me. I cut as close to my scalp as I could, going for as drastic a change in my appearance as I could manage. When I was done I looked like someone who had just finished his last round of chemo.