Steve Hamilton - The Lock Artist

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.