Week 6 - The Family Portrait – Part 3

The Family Portrait – Part 3

Matthew Ryan Fischer

Continued...

The pounding at the door continued, and soon it invaded Artemis’ dreams. It was awful and annoying and it disrupted an already restless sleep. Artemis slowly, painfully and groggily awoke. He wasn’t exactly sure where he was. All he could tell was that there was a loud pounding, over and over again, and it wasn’t just part of the headache in his head. Someone, or something, was creating an awful racket. He mumbled something unintelligible at the door, but there was just about no way the person on the other side could possibly have heard him.

Artemis was still drunk from the night before with only a sore body and an aching mind to show for it. He couldn’t turn his neck fully, and his right eye hurt badly. There was a possibility that he broke a blood vessel. He had a bad case of cottonmouth along with a nasty aftertaste in his mouth and something small that seemed stuck in his throat. Maybe he had thrown up somewhere in the night, although there was no evidence of it. Maybe it was on the way home from wherever he had been drinking. He couldn’t remember. If he had been with Lou, he was pretty sure that he’d be in the backroom of Lou’s bar. That he was not. He was clearly in his bed at his apartment and the pounding noise was coming from his door.

Artemis had been drinking a lot lately. It was too much. Too often and too much. He knew it too, but that didn’t stop it from happening. Ever since Amy had left him, he and the bottle had become much better acquaintances. Amy had left him before, but never for this long or this adamantly. It seemed as if this time she really meant it. Their tumultuous relationship had ended tumultuously. That was no surprise. It had begun that way, so how else should it have ended except with a bang. His elaborate plan of drinking too much and destroying his life didn’t seem to be bringing her back any faster. But then again, he really hadn’t expected it to.

Amy was gone, and this time she meant it. When she wanted to be, she could be thick and stubborn, and there was nothing Artemis was going to do or say that could change that. He knew it. She knew it. It had been one of the defining characteristics of their relationship. Artemis never had structure growing up, and didn’t have any structure now. In between then and now, Amy had lent him some of hers. If Amy had an overabundance, it probably ended up being better for the both of them. She could give him focus. She could give him purpose. But even when he realized all of that, it didn’t mean he always liked putting up with it.

Despite any of his usual protestations, she was usually right. Artemis could be a man-child. What was cute and exciting and fun about him at twenty-one, didn’t really work as well just a few short years later. And now that he was pushing thirty, much of it had completely worn out its welcome and had become downright unattractive. Even though she was younger, she was so much older.

  Amy never had a problem with his career choices, even if she didn’t participate. She did have problems with his inability to function in polite society, whatever that meant.  She wanted certain things from him, but was bad at expressing what she needed. She needed Artemis to grow up alongside her and to try to act like a man. What that entailed exactly was a mystery to Artemis. It was easy to have an undefined icon in the back of her mind and believe she would know it when she saw it. It was much harder to understand what was and wasn’t actually possible. She obviously didn’t clearly know what Artemis could be, but perhaps she had no idea what to really expect from any man she might meet. Whatever characteristics her current definition of a man included, she knew he wasn’t it.

 Artemis lacked ambition beyond that which he had already achieved. He stole for a living and spent the money he made freely and recklessly. When they first met, it was an adventure, and she loved him for it. He was the most dangerous and thrilling man she had ever known. It was a turn-on and there was a time that she really did enjoy the money he made. For a brief moment they were happy and for an even briefer moment, Artemis thought she might grow into his world and perhaps partake in it. But that was wishful thinking on his part. The more she saw, the more the illusion was ruined. When she met his associates, she realized that what made him exciting was what made any of them exciting. It was a lifestyle. It was a life for thrill seekers. It was a life of tempting fate and doing dangerous things and always pushing for more. She loved him, but for the first time, began to wonder just what it was she loved and whether or not it was the man or the image and idea of what he represented to her.

At a certain point, the whole thing just wore away. She didn’t need the thrills or the momentary chemical release of adrenaline. And while money was nice to have, there were other more important things. She was getting older and slower and safer, but Artemis’ career was just getting started. He was moving on to bigger and better crimes and part of a world that was much larger than she had ever imagined. It seemed as if the only thing his path had to offer was more. She wasn’t sure she wanted more, anymore. At least not his type of more. She needed something else and was tired of constantly having to fight him to be something he was not. She stopped wanting to push all the time. What was fun and attractive now looked old and broken and ruinous. The middle-aged accomplices he ran with had all served time, had all faced certain death, and all of them had the scars to show for it. They came from broken families and left behind fresh new broken families in their wake.

Amy had never been worried about Artemis being arrested or killed before, but suddenly she could see his whole life spelled out and the results weren’t pretty. She didn’t want to be alone with a man in jail, or widowed or worse. And she certainly didn’t want to bring children into a situation like that.

Artemis only learned any of this later, after she had already made up her mind and had her exit plan in place. He knew things were tense, he knew she was unhappy, but he wished he had been presented with an option or ultimatum. He may or may not have been able to live up to it, but not being able to do something was radically different from never having been given the chance.

Still, he wasn’t mad at her. He loved her. He knew all the ways she had been unfair, but also all the ways she was being right about him and had been justified to leave. He knew it, but he didn’t want to admit it, and so he hid it in the bottom of the latest bottle.

Artemis was sure if he could just talk to Amy, he could convince her that he could change into a better man. He was just as sure of that as he was that he needed to stop drinking so much. But right now, he was mostly sure that he needed the pounding on his front door to stop.

Artemis mumbled some more as he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and tried to clear his head. He made his way to the door and opened it. Once he did, he wished he hadn’t.

It was an Enforcer. Muscle. Artemis usually called them something more along the lines of dumb and ugly. But never to one of their faces. No, arrogant and cocky as he might be, he knew he was not born to be a fighter like these men were, and he knew not to piss one of them off. For the most part they were all thugs. Jack-of-all-trades thugs, but thugs none the less. They were hired muscle and they did whatever needed doing, with very few questions asked. Artemis didn’t care about most laws, but he had certain lines. From what he knew of the Enforcers, ethical and moral lines were never on their radar.

Artemis wasn’t in the best of shape, but he was wise enough to put two and two together. Recently he had been hired by a widow to talk to a man about a painting. He had threatened to steal it, which he knew was a dumb idea. He was pretty sure that this was a message in return to let him know that Mr. Thornewill didn’t appreciate it when people came around threatening to steal his property.

Artemis took a deep breath and tried to keep the remaining contents of his stomach from reappearing unexpectedly. He really was in no condition to have this happen right now.

Cole had known Artemis for a long time. As teenagers, they had been pickpockets together, hitting streets near the courthouse as unsuspecting potential jurors made their way to perform their civic duty. They got a good laugh out of committing a crime against those that were supposed to dole out punishment, right before they were selected. They were sure that many cases took a much more negative direction because they had spoiled so many opinions. They certainly liked to remember it that way. It felt better to imagine that they had a bigger impact than they probably actually did.

Cole had opted for a different path than Artemis, but they had stayed in touch through the years. Cole worked as a junior detective for an investigation firm, and so it was with great dismay that he attended a morning meeting and found out that the senior members were investigating the theft of a rare painting, stolen from the private collection of a very wealthy family. At the top of their list of suspects was Artemis.

As far as Cole knew, Artemis had never been arrested or convicted of anything. To even be a suspect could ruin his future chances with many paying customers. If it were true, then Artemis’ reputation was about to be ruined and worse, his life could be in danger.

No one knew that Cole knew Artemis or that they had worked together as thieves in the past. And Cole didn’t offer up that information. His first loyalty was to his friend.  

Armed with this information, Cole rushed out of the office as soon as the meeting was over. As he sped towards Artemis’ place, he repeat-called over and over, but Artemis wasn’t answering. This was a bad sign, but Cole tried to keep his imagination in check.

Cole arrived at Artemis’ apartment and threw open the door.

“Art! You here? You got trouble coming your way…”

Cole turned the corner into the living room just in time to watch as the Enforcer punched Artemis in the face.

To be continued...