Steve Hamilton - The Lock Artist

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.