Steve Hamilton - The Lock Artist

I hung up the phone and walked back to the house.

The summer went by. September came, but the heat didn’t break. There was one day… one slow, hot afternoon. Gunnar was at the tattoo parlor. Lucy was in my apartment, watching me draw. She seemed a little rattled, which probably meant she had gotten into another fight with Gunnar. She liked to hang out with me whenever she was upset, because she knew I wouldn’t start peppering her with questions. Or with advice on how to improve her life. She kept watching me for a while. Then she asked me if I had any drawings I could show her.

I didn’t want to show her the pages I was still doing for Amelia every day, but I had plenty of other stuff, including some more drawings of herself and the rest of the gang. She sorted through them one by one, looking at each one carefully.

“How do you do this?” she said. “You just get us all so perfectly here. I mean, look at this.”

She pulled out a drawing I had done of Gunnar, right after he had been working out in the backyard. Every muscle and tendon standing out in the sunlight. The scar above his lip. The spiderweb tattoo on his neck. It was one of my better spontaneous drawings, I admit.

“This is the best drawing of him I’ve ever seen,” she said. “I mean, it’s better than a photograph. It’s like it’s just… it’s him . How did you do that?”

I had no answer for her. She kept looking at the drawing. When she finally put it down, she went through a few more, finally picking out a drawing of Amelia. I hadn’t even realized it was in there.

I had an urge to take it from her. To tear it right out of her hands. Then in that very next moment I realized how useless it would be. It was just scratches on a piece of paper, after all. A faint representation of someone I’d never see again. Someone I’d lost forever.

She looked at the drawing for a long time.

“This is her,” she said. “The girl you love.”

I nodded.

“It hurts, doesn’t it? Wanting something so much.”

She looked at me. Her hair a complete wreck, as always. The one eyelid slightly heavier than the other.

“You know that painting of the lion I did? The one Julian hung up?”

I remembered. It was probably her best, because it wasn’t a cutesy fuzzy lion like some people would do, or a proud and noble lion, either. It looked ragged and half starved. A lion that would rip your face off in a second.

“When I got off the drugs… I mean, I kicked it, but I knew it wasn’t gone for good. Julian always makes it sound like I got clean in one day and me and Gunnar just joined up with him and Ramona and everything’s been a big party ever since, but he doesn’t realize how hard it is. He doesn’t know what it feels like, when it’s still out there, all the time, just waiting for me to come back to it.”

She put the drawing down.

“Did you ever see two lions having sex?”

I shook my head. Slowly.

“It’s violent.

It’s dangerous. It must feel good, but at the same time you might get yourself clawed to death.”

I was watching her lips as she talked.

“Imagine if a lion loved you too much. If it wanted to have you too much. That’s what I’m saying. That’s what it would feel like.”

She reached out to me. She put her hand on my throat.

“What’s inside you, anyway? Why won’t it let you talk to me?”

I swallowed hard, feeling her cool fingers against my neck. I closed my eyes.

“Let me see you try talking.”

I can’t do this, I thought. I tried so hard for Amelia. I couldn’t do it. Not even for her.

I pushed her hand away and stood up. A second later she was behind me, so close I could feel her breath on my neck.

“What’s her name?” she whispered. “Tell me the girl’s name.”

When I turned she kissed me. She was so unlike Amelia in every way, a different creature entirely. So much more like me really, all broken and fucked up but she was right here and her arms were around me and I could feel her heart beating in her chest. When she took her clothes off… her body looked even more naked than Amelia’s had. More pale and vulnerable. I saw the tattoos that Gunnar had given her. A Chinese symbol on her left shoulder blade, a black rose on her right ankle, and finally Gunnar’s name itself, not in big bold letters but in letters so small I could barely see them, in the small of her back. He had literally marked her with his name to claim her forever, yet here she was with me in my little borrowed apartment in the backyard on a late afternoon and I had no idea what I was doing. It felt good and yet not good and it was all over too quickly. Then as we lay there afterward I heard the faint beeping from under my bed.

“What’s that noise?” she said.

I got up and pulled out the shoebox. Another call from my good friend at the FBI? Just what I needed.

No. This one was for real.

“Who is it?” she said, looking into the box. “Who’s paging you?”

I picked up the red pager.

It’s the master calling, I said to her in my mind. If you’ll excuse me, I have to run barking all the way home.

Michigan

July 1999

The next day, when I rode out to the Marshes’ house, I saw the car parked in the driveway. The same long black car from the day before. The car was empty, but as I got off the motorcycle, I could hear the car’s engine still ticking in the heat. They hadn’t been here long.

I went to the front door and knocked. A voice from inside told me to come in. As soon as I pushed open the door, I saw the three men in the living room. The same three men. All of them now making themselves at home. The man with the tan fishing hat was standing on one side of the aquarium. The tall man with the mustache that didn’t quite go with his face, he was on the other side.

The third man, the one with the slow, hooded eyes that made him look half asleep, he was just sitting there on the couch.

“You’re late,” he said to me. “They’re waiting for you. In the office.”

The other two men looked up at me. I stood there wondering what the hell was going on. And where Amelia might be.

“Today would be nice,” Sleepy Eyes said.

I took a few steps forward, pausing at the bottom of the steps. I could see that Amelia’s door was closed.

“Hey!” Sleepy Eyes said. “Are you deaf or what? Get your ass in there right now.”

Fishing Hat and Tall Mustache both seemed to think that was funny. Sleepy Eyes pointed one finger at them and was about to say something, but I didn’t hear it. I opened the door to the office and stepped inside.

Mr. Marsh was in his usual chair, and in the guest chair sat a man I’d never seen before. He had a gray suit on. A white shirt. A red tie. He had dark hair and dark eyebrows. There was something a little rough and sand-papery about his skin. He was smoking a long cigarette.

“You’re here,” Mr. Marsh said. “Come on in! Have a seat!”

He jumped up to pull over the other guest chair.

“I’d like you to meet somebody,” he said. “This is, um…”

Everything stopped in its tracks right at that second. The man with the cigarette looked up at Mr. Marsh. Mr. Marsh ran his tongue along his lower lip.

“This is another business associate of mine,” he said. “Please sit down. We’ve got something we want to, um, talk to you about.”

I sat down. Mr. Marsh sat back down in his own chair, wiping sweat from his face.

“So you’re the young Michael,” the man with the cigarette said. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“All good,” Mr. Marsh said. “All good things.”

The man with the cigarette looked over at Mr. Marsh and raised one of his eyebrows. Maybe a quarter inch. Mr. Marsh put up both hands and then kept his mouth shut for the next three minutes.