Steve Hamilton - The Lock Artist

Waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Until I finally hear the footsteps. Into the room. Then out. Then into the room again. My father’s voice.

“Michael?”

Then farther away. Then closer.

Then right next to the safe.

“Michael? Are you in there?”

I must be quiet.

“Michael? Seriously, did you go inside there? You know you shouldn’t be in there.”

Quiet, quiet. Not a sound.

I feel the safe being tipped over a few inches.

“Michael! Come on! You didn’t really go in there, did you? You’re gonna die in there! There’s no air!”

I feel the warmth spreading in my pants again.

“Michael, open the door, okay? You’ve got to open it.”

I can hear the dial being spun now.

“I don’t remember the combination! You have to open it!”

More spinning. Such a simple idea. If those three numbers come into his head, he will spin those numbers and the door will open.

“What was it? Fuck! It was two years ago! How am I supposed to remember?”

A hand slamming down on the top of the safe. I stop myself from crying out. Nothing. Not a sound.

“Listen to me. You have to open this thing right now. Just reach up and turn that handle. You have to do this, right now!”

Be quiet. Be quiet.

“Come on, Michael. Turn that handle.”

There is no handle.

“I promise you, it won’t hurt. Okay, buddy? I swear to God. It won’t hurt. Just come out and we’ll do this together, okay? You and me.”

Be quiet.

“Come on, Mike. I can’t do this by myself. You have to come with me, okay?”

There is no handle. Be quiet. There is no handle.

“It’ll be so quick. You won’t even feel it. I swear to you. I cross my heart and hope to die. I want us both to be together when we do this. Okay?”

I keep my nose against the edge of the door, but I’m getting dizzy.

I hear my father crying. Then I hear him go away. At last. At last he’s gone.

The relief and the panic all at once. He’s gone but now I’m going to be in here forever.

Then the footsteps again. A crinkling noise, all around me. The light getting dim.

“We’ll go out together,” he says. “I’m right here with you. I wish I could see you one more time. It’s okay. Don’t be afraid. We’ll go out together.”

The air getting thinner and thinner. My mind starting to shut down. A pinhole of light, at the bottom of the safe. Whatever he has wrapped around it, he isn’t covering the whole thing. He’s trying to cut off my air but…

Everything’s black for a while. I think. I’m out and then I come back. I can hear his breathing.

“Are you still there, Michael? Are you still with me?”

That’s when I feel the whole world tilting. I hear the steady squeak of the wheels underneath me. The rumbling across that wooden floor. Down the steps. Whump whump whump. A fresh blast of air through that crack along the safe’s door. Waking me up. We are outside now. We are on the sidewalk. Hitting every crack. Bump bump bump. Onto the smooth road. A car passing by us, honking its horn. Then the motion of the safe almost stopping. I can hear my father laboring outside now, fighting for every inch. We must be on rough ground. The dirt and weeds and gravel beside the road. Where are we going? We can’t be going toward the river. We can’t be.

A few more feet. Then we stop.

“You and me, Michael. You hear me in there? You and me. Forever.”

Then the fall. The impact, slamming me against one side of the safe. The sudden darkness.

Then the water, seeping in through the crack. It’s cold. It fills up the safe, one inch at a time. It’s squeezing out the rest of my air.

The seconds ticking away. I feel the water covering my face.

I can’t breathe. I am cold and I am dying.

I can’t breathe.

I close my eyes and wait.

I finished the last panel. Amelia was right behind me, darkening the lines and making everything stand out as if we had burned it into the wall. For the second time that night, the tears were running down her face.

We stood back and looked over what we had done. The panels started in the room where the safe had been. They wrapped around three walls and out into the hallway. They continued into the living room and finished on the wall opposite the front door, right where the couch had been. The last panel was the biggest of all. A complete underwater panorama, with the trash collected there on the bottom of the river. An old tire. A cinder block. A bottle. A piece of lumber with the nails still in it. The stringy weeds pushing up through the debris and swaying with the current.

In the middle of everything, tilted slightly with one corner submerged in the sand, the great iron box. Sunken. Abandoned. Never to be brought back to the surface again.

That was it. That was the very last panel.

“Why does it stop here?” she said. “They got you out. They saved you.”

I understood what she meant. In the reality she was thinking about… yes, they got me out. It was a cheap safe, after all. That’s why the door didn’t quite seal shut, and why I was able to keep breathing, at least until I was in the water. That’s why the men who pulled the safe from the river were able to open it. With a big crowbar? With the Jaws of Life? I didn’t know. I wasn’t awake to see that part. It didn’t really matter. In my own mind, the safe was and always would be at the bottom of the river. With me locked inside forever. That was the only real part for me. As real as anything had ever been real.

“You’re not in that box anymore,” she said, wiping her cheeks. “You’re free now. You can leave the box here.”

I looked at her.

“Now that you’ve done this. Can’t you leave it all right here in this house?”

If only it were that easy.

She kissed me, in that room where the worst parts of that day had begun. She kissed me and she held me tight. We both sat down on the floor and stayed there for a long time. Just the two of us in that house.

When I opened my eyes again… it was so late. Past the middle of the night. We had been here in this house so long. We collected our things. We went outside and got on my bike. Then I took her back to Ann Arbor.

As we left, I knew that if anyone else ever dared to come inside this house, they would see this story. They would know exactly what had happened here.

____________________

When we were stopped in front of her dormitory, she got off the bike and stood there next to me for a long time, not saying anything. She reached into her shirt and pulled out a necklace. It was strung through the ring I had given her, a year ago.

“I still have this,” she said. “I wear this every day.”

I wanted to say something so badly. I wanted to open my mouth and talk to her.

“When you left… I tried not to care about you anymore. I really did.”

She kissed me.

“I know we can’t be together right now. So just…”

She stopped. She looked up at the stars.

“I can’t do it. I can’t just let you ride away again.”

I reached back into my bag for a pad of paper. I took out a pen and wrote two sentences for her. The two most important sentences I’d ever written for anyone.

I will find a way to come back. I promise.

She took the paper from me. She read it. Then she folded it up and put it in her pocket. Whether she believed it or not… well, I wouldn’t have blamed her if she didn’t. But I did. I knew I’d find a way back. Or die trying.

“You know where to find me now.”

She turned to go inside. As I rode away, I hoped to God that it would always be true.

It was another long trip, all the way back to Los Angeles.

I started out slow, but halfway there, the decision came to me. As crazy as it sounded… as desperate and hopeless… I knew it might be my last chance to be free.