The Pacific Ocean, right below me as I struggled my way up those wet rocks. One false step, I thought. That’s all it would take. Not the way I wanted to die today. Then in that very next moment I lost my footing and I felt myself starting to fall. I could already feel the cold water against my skin. The waves turning me over and dragging me to the bottom. How quiet it must be down there, compared to this violent roar on the surface.
Then Gunnar reached out a hand and grabbed me by the belt. He saved my mortal life right there. When I was back on the rocks, I shook it off and we kept climbing, until we finally got to the house.
Gunnar located the window with the deactivated foil, put a wad of modeling clay on the glass, and then started cutting a hole, just large enough for us to climb through. We obviously weren’t going for a clean in-and-out this time. There’s no way you can cover your tracks when you cut a big hole in a window, after all. Julian was confident we wouldn’t need it this time. Not with Mr. Moon Face. So we made the forced entry, and within two minutes we were standing inside the house. There was no infrared motion detector to worry about this time, so we were clear. Julian, Ramona, and Lucy would be sure to keep Mr. Moon Face out for another couple of hours, at the very least.
We walked in through the kitchen, past the remains of their fancy dinner. A half-dozen wine bottles sat empty on the table. We found the man’s office, where the safe stood tall and proud in the corner. No hidden wall safes for this guy.
I eliminated the tryouts first, then got to work.
Find the contact area, park the wheels, spin and count. Three wheels, check.
Back to 0. Find the area again, feel for the short contact.
3. 6. 9. 12. 15.
I started getting nervous around 30. Were all three numbers high on the dial? Most people don’t do it this way.
45, 48, 51.
Damn. Damn.
72, 75, 78.
I was starting to sweat.
93, 96, 99.
Nothing.
I stopped and shook out my hands.
“What’s the problem?” Gunnar said.
I shook my head. No problem, man. Everything’s cool.
I could hear the waves crashing on the rocks outside. I could smell the salt in the air. I started again.
This time, when I got to 15, I thought I was getting close to something, but the difference felt so faint to me. It was like tuning in a radio station from a thousand miles away.
I shook out my hands again. I tried to clear my mind. I didn’t even bother asking myself what the problem was, because at that point I knew.
I hadn’t been practicing enough. Simple as that. I hadn’t been spinning the dial enough on the safe in Julian’s house. I hadn’t been spinning on my portable lock. I just hadn’t been doing it. I had just assumed I could pick it back up again, any time I wanted.
So I had to spend the next full hour finding my touch again, while Gunnar paced back and forth and tried very hard not to strangle me. I finally narrowed the numbers down, and even then I wasn’t totally sure about them. My face was dripping with sweat now.
I’ll never take this for granted again, I promised myself. Just get this thing open and I promise I’ll practice every single day.
I spun through the possible combinations. Every single damned one of them. None of them opened the safe. So I had to go back and redo my contacts, go through them again and find the number I had gotten wrong. When I finally did that… when I hoped I had done that… I had to go back and do the combinations again. We were going on two hours inside the house now.
I cranked through each possible combination. The waves were getting louder. From somewhere in the room I could hear a clock ticking.
Then… finally. Finally! I hit the right combination and turned the handle. Gunnar pushed by me and started shoving money into his bag. I got up and stretched out my back, walked around a little bit and saw the headlights through one of the front windows.
Son of a bitch.
I ran back and helped him finish putting the money in the bag. Then I slammed the door shut, and we went back to the hole in the window, keeping our heads down. We jumped through it like circus performers, rolling in the sand and gravel outside and scrambling down onto the rocks.
When we were down on the beach, we ran back toward the rental car, the waves even higher now, our legs getting soaked. We climbed back up to the car. We stood there catching our breath for a minute. Then Gunnar grabbed me by my shirt. He got his face up close to mine, and I was waiting for him to yell at me for taking so fucking long to open the fucking safe. But he didn’t.
“Lucy’s mine. Do you hear me? She’s the only person I’ve ever loved. Like in my whole life. You understand me?”
I looked at him. Was he really telling me this now?
“Do you understand me or not?”
I nodded my head. Yes, I understand.
He let go of me. He threw the money in the backseat and got behind the wheel. I got in beside him and made two promises to myself.
Stay away from Lucy.
And practice.
Nineteen
Michigan
July 1999
I knew it was too good to be true. I knew the catch was coming. For the moment, I didn’t care. I was outside, not digging but sitting in a chair, next to Amelia. With the official approval of her father.
Somehow it felt different now. You’re another person when it’s late at night. Here it was… just us, our real daytime selves. Two seventeen-and-a-half-year-olds who went to different high schools and otherwise lived in different worlds. Only one of whom could speak.
“You feel weird?” she said.
I nodded.
“Would you rather be digging?”
I didn’t think I had to answer that one.
“So… how are we gonna do this? I mean, how are we going to communicate?”
I was about to make the writing gesture, so maybe she could go find me a pad of paper, when she came right out of her chair and grabbed me. She kissed me for a long time, long enough for me to forget about pads of paper and everything else in the whole world.
“You must know sign language,” she said, sitting back down. “Teach me some stuff. Hello is…”
I waved my hand. It made me think of Griffin, asking me the same thing once upon a time.
“Yeah, okay. Duh. How ’bout, ‘You look good.’”
I pointed to her. You. Then I drew a circle around my face. Look. Then a simple thumbs-up. Good.
“What if I wanted to tell you to kiss me again?”
With each hand, I put my fingers and thumb together, like a gourmet ready to say “Magnifique!” I brought one hand to my lips, then put both hands together.
“That’s ‘kiss’? Are you kidding me? That’s the lamest thing I’ve ever seen!”
I shrugged it off. I wasn’t around when they made that up.
“We need our own secret sign language for ‘Kiss me,’ ” she said. “How about this?”
She grabbed me again and took me inside the house. Up to her bedroom. I looked around for her father on the way, figuring this might be one sure way to die. Maybe not the worst, but still. He had apparently run off somewhere, so for the moment we seemed to have the house to ourselves.
We did some things next that we’d need a whole different set of sign language for. When we were done, we lay in her bed, staring at the ceiling. She kept running her fingers through my hair.
“It’s nice to be around somebody who doesn’t talk all the time.”
If that’s really true, I thought, then you came to the right place.
“Are you going to draw something for me today?”
To be honest, I didn’t feel like drawing just then. Or doing anything at all except exactly what I was doing. But we had to get up and get dressed eventually. She found a couple of big sketchbooks and a few pencils, and for the next hour or so we sat on her bed drawing. We were drawing each other in the act of drawing each other. Her with one strand of hair falling over her face, me with a serious expression on my face, bordering on sadness. On melancholy. I was surprised to see that in her drawing of me. It was my first truly happy day in a thousand days. How must I have looked before then?