One
First, Matthew Murdock was a kid who lived in a one-bedroom apartment where the faucets leaked and mold grew underneath the sink. His father Jack was a boxer with a crooked nose and big, careful-angry hands, and he smelled like sweat and blood and the damp-dry of horsehair boxing gloves. He called his son Matty and stretched the vowels into almost-taffy, made the bed with perfect hospital corners just like his mother taught him, left early and came home late, always aching for the relief of stolen prescription painkillers and a woman who had left him 10 years prior.
Later, he died like he lived, and that was alone.
He never taught his son to throw a punch, but still managed to raise a martyr.
No, a saint.
No, that’s not right.
Matt Murdock is an angry teenager with a chip on his shoulder the size of Manhattan.
He’s 18 and bored and tired. The rest of the kids at St. Agnes give him a wide berth, which gives him the space he needs to give up the charade of being well-meaning and mild-mannered. On weekends, with the little free time allotted, he explores the roofs of Hell’s Kitchen, holes worn into the knees of his donated jeans. When curfew hits and David who occupies the bed 5 paces from Matt’s is breathing heavy and deep, Matt wanders alleys and construction sites dilapidated by lack of funding, one hand in his pocket and the other on his cane. The metal of the cross around his neck is stuck to the skin of his sternum from the sweat of mid-August. He is tired. He has been for a long time.
Sometimes, like tonight, he finds himself in front of his old apartment building. It still smells like mold and the cuñapés Mrs. Vargas makes Saturday mornings, and someone new has moved into Matt’s old apartment. He can taste their dollar store shampoo through the drywall and brick. It has been 7 years since he lived there, and the smell of his father’s aftershave has long faded from the bathroom wallpaper.
He’s so tired.
6 blocks away, a woman is giving birth. A man is watching, waiting, pacing outside of the room, and the woman’s wail is a siren, a steamboat, a car horn.
Somewhere, a boy is being beaten by his father. He is crying. Somewhere, there is a 3 car pile-up, a robbery, a gunshot. An old man is yelling into his phone by the docks, something about his late wife and a cemetery upstate.
Matt removes his hands from his pockets. He places his palms on the facade of the apartment building and keeps them there. Beneath him, a subway car shudders by.
In five days, he will have packed his things into a duffel and stripped the sheets from his bed at St. Agnes, and he can exist out of the limbo of nightly prayer, curfew, incense and hymns. In five days, David will have a new roommate, and Matt will have one of his own 57 blocks north at Columbia.
“The mind controls the body,” Matt whispers into the brick. He straightens, shoves his glasses further up the bridge of his nose, returning one hand to the pocket of his hoodie.
5 days. It’ll be the first time he’s left the Kitchen in years.
The mind controls the body .
Stick always called him a pussy for missing his dad. Matt figures missing a neighborhood is twice as bad.
He’s so tired.
He runs his fingers over his watch and walks the 5 blocks back to St. Agnes.
Matt’s roommate’s name is Franklin, but he goes by Foggy. He’s from Hell's Kitchen. He has a younger brother named Theo and a younger half-sister named Candace who is pissed at him for going poli-sci instead of something cooler and anti-establishment. His favorite color is blue, probably, and he feels sorry for Matt when he says that he went to Catholic high school. His favorite foods are the little pastéis de nata that his Portuguese neighbor makes, bagels and lox from that place on 9th, or his dad’s everything-but-the-kitchen-sink soup for when any of the Nelsons get sick. He likes parties, action movies with the sound on as he studies, and girls with long blonde hair and sad eyes and pink lips.
It’s been a week. Foggy talks a lot.
He also snores loud enough to make his nickname ring true with how it resembles a foghorn, smells like stale Cheetos, and wears the most obnoxious cheap cologne known to man.
Foggy talks a lot, and Matt kind of hates him.
“Matt.” Speak of the devil. Matt lifts his head from his studying and removes his headphones, letting the screen reader prattle on. Classes only started 4 days ago, and he’s already feeling the thrum of anxiety underneath his skin.
“Yeah,” Matt hums, flexing his fingers and turning in Foggy’s direction, who has been texting someone on his newly christened Motorola Razr that he got as a graduation present for the past hour, tiny keys clicking.
“Marci knows a guy who’s throwing a party. Wanna come?” Foggy asks.
“Marci?”
“Uh. Kinda bitchy, smells like lemon? I met her in my Punjabi class. Thought you’d met.”
They had.
Matt briefly entertains the idea of him going with Foggy and kinda-bitchy-smells-like-lemon Marci, returning happy and flushed from the alcohol, arms linked. Something similar to nausea stirs in his gut, and he swallows, then shakes his head.
“No, thank you.” He’s here on scholarship anyway– can’t blow that on something as trivial as the thrum of loud bass, alcohol poisoning, and liver cirrhosis at the age of 18. Can’t distract himself with something as silly as a party. “I have work to do.”
“Oh,” Foggy says. Matt can hear him stand up, the sound of denim rubbing against itself, the low swish of his hair. Matt briefly wonders what Foggy looks like. Long hair. Dirt underneath his fingernails. Hell’s Kitchen’s very own brand of surfer. He sucks in a breath and shakes the thought away, flexing his fingers and wanting desperately to rub at his chest to release the tension that’s suddenly gathered there. “You sure?”
“Yes,” Matt says, not caring about the way it sounds, then shoves his earbuds back into his ears and turns back to his notes. By the time he refocuses on the world around him, Foggy has left.
Someone on the floor above him is having an argument with their mother over the phone. Angela and Imani down the hall are watching reruns of something that sounds like Buffy, and outside, someone is walking a dog that can’t seem to shut up. Someone heated up fish in the communal microwave 2 floors down, and there’s strawberry-scented body wash spilled all over the bathroom floor. The lights above his head are buzzing frantically– they must be fluorescents. He’s pretty sure the scratching in the walls is rats, too.
Matt closes his eyes. Takes off his glasses, rubbing at his face.
He’s so tired.
He shuts his hand-me-down computer. He stands up, pushes in his chair. He grabs his cane from where it's propped up against the door frame, letting out a huff of air.
His back hurts. The dog is somehow getting louder. He flexes his fingers again, breathes.
He’ll take the subway to Fogwell’s. He’ll slip in through the skylight, soak in the familiar taste of salt in the air. He’ll go a couple rounds with a punching bag, just until he’s evened out the pressure over his sternum, until his knuckles feel raw and half-numb, until he’s managed punch drunk without having to take a beating.
He can hear the beat of 50 cent’s Disco Inferno reverberating from Beta Theta Pi down the block. If he listens closely, he can make out the sound of Foggy’s laugh and the low hum of his voice. He seems to be having fun.
Matt opens the door. He walks the 5 flights down to the ground floor just for the fun of it, cuts through campus and to the subway. He takes line 1 to Columbus Circle, walks through the Kitchen and past St. Agnes to Fogwell’s. If he wanted, he could swing by the old apartment block, amble past Clinton Church, but he doesn’t. He slips in through the back door, goes a couple of rounds with a punching bag, evens out the pressure on his sternum. He takes line 1 back, cuts back through campus, walks the 5 flights up. He showers and brushes his teeth.
The bass is still pumping in Beta Theta Pi, and Foggy still isn’t back yet.
He breathes, he breathes, he breathes.
It’s Karen Page, an NYU student and friend of Judith and Leah Zaworski in his comparative literature course, who eventually gets him to go to a party. She invites him the night before, as Judith (who prefers Jude) and Leah resume arguing about the medical drama that comes on on Sundays midway through their studying. Karen is nice, has long hair that she seems to always touch, and a wobbly voice that makes Matt think she’s always about to cry, so he says yes.
There were no parties at St. Agnes, no loud music and heavy bass. There was the smell of wet wipes and vinegar, the rattle of ancient window air condition units, the whine of the younger kids nearing tears.
When entering Jake Timmon’s 2nd-floor apartment, Matt is reminded viscerally of Agatha Adeyemi-Clarke, who Sister Rachel deemed “a screamer” within her first hour at the home. The noise borders on deafening, pulsing and angry, and the smell of cheap beer wafts from the group amassed in the main room. Leah mumbles something about getting a drink, drifts off in the direction of the noise, and Jude follows, huffing.
Karen nudges Matt’s hand with her elbow, prompting him to take it. She leans in to talk into his ear over the music, and her breath is hot on his neck.
“I’m gonna say hi and then roll up. You wanna come?”
The stumbling beat of Feel Good Inc. clatters out of a set of falling apart speakers, and Matt dully lets Karen weave the two of them through the crowd, pulls his face into a half smile when Karen gestures at him with a rustle of movement, introducing him to the thousands of people she seems to know. Jake, the host, apparently pre-gamed too hard and has already been sick in the bathroom sink twice.
“Finally,” Karen says, pushing through a door and into another room. “Couch at your 2.” Matt sits, and the motion sends dust into the air. He sneezes. “Cute,” Karen remarks and continues to dig through her bag. The smell of weed overwhelms Matt’s senses, and he shoots her a lazy grin.
Contraband was big at St. Agnes. Alcohol was hidden behind the loose brick in the chimney, stolen bars of Xanax were stuffed into holes in mattresses. Rebellion was bigger, and by 15 Matt had it distilled down to an art.
David, the St. Agnes roommate, was never much of a smoker, but the kid before him was. Eric. Matt’s forgotten his last name by now, but it was Eric who would sneak Matt out the back fire escape and onto the roof, who taught Matt to roll a joint using Revelations in Eric’s deadbeat dad’s musty bible as rolling papers. At 16, Matt was spending most of his weekends walking Hell’s Kitchen or up on the roof, freewheeling through the static haze of being high, set on the intent of pissing away Stick’s training and enjoying the numbed distance from the usual onslaught of sensory input.
“Yeah?” Karen says, and Matt can hear the grin. “Never picked you for a stoner, Murdock.” She lights the pre-roll with it between her teeth, sucks in a frantic breath to get the ember going.
“Not a stoner,” he replies, petulant, but takes the joint she presses into his hand and inhales, slow. Junior year’s stress and Eric’s placement at a new home prompted two years of total sobriety, and the smoke itches the back of his throat. He suppresses a cough. “Just… experienced. Catholic school,” he offers as an explanation.
Karen snorts, then coughs.
“Seems a little contradictory.”
Matt laughs.
“You’d be surprised what strict teaching and rigid rules encourage.”
“Ah, the good ol’ teenage rebellion.”
Matt nods and can feel the fog of weed smoke settle over his senses. If he were to stand, his knees would feel weak and stumbling. His mouth is numb.
“Do you believe in God, Karen?”
“My dad does,” she offers. She huffs a laugh, sighs, takes a long drag. “Probably why I don’t.”
“Ah, the good ol’ teenage rebellion,” Matt echoes, and Karen nudges him with her shoulder.
“You?”
“I just told you I went to Catholic school.”
“Doesn’t mean anything, as we’ve established.”
“Hah.” Matt itches to grab at the cross around his neck. “Uhm. Yes. I think.”
Karen’s heart skips, and Matt doesn’t know what to do with that. Her teeth click together like she’s swallowed down whatever she was going to say next.
“There’s so much shit in the world,” she says. “Does it– does it help?”
Matt turns towards her and tries for a grin.
The hours in the hospital after the accident. The bills, the morphine drip. Exploring the apartment with the mold under the sink and its thin walls all over again, counting his steps.
His father, with his big hands and crooked nose, deep voice and hulking shoulders. His father, wearing his brother’s too-small suit coat as his Sunday best. His GED books shoved into the back of the closet with hand-me-down board games, spines still uncracked. His father, his father, his father. With a hole punched through his skull, viscera leaking out.
Matt shakes his head and laughs. Shrugs. The mind controls the body. He almost shudders.
“Not really.”
Foggy’s roommate is. Something.
Matt Murdock. He wears a crucifix. Cross, whatever. It’s on a little gold chain, and he fiddles with it when he’s studying. He goes to church on Sundays. He has red hair that is kind of shaggy and in his eyes, and it curls around the back of his ears. He wears dark glasses and smiles tight, wears the same beat-to-shit sneakers everywhere, and hates Foggy.
He thinks.
Foggy’s high school fantasies about college had gone a little something like this: nice dorm room with air conditioning (not the case), classes that would eventually lead to him being able to pay back his student loans with the job he would score post graduation (debatable), and a roommate who he would become best friends with (100% no).
Matt ignores every last one of Foggy’s attempts at conversation, rejects invites to social outings, avoids the dorm like the plague. Worse, Matt appears to be unable to school his features fully blank, and the vaguely disgusted look that seems to cross his face every time Foggy enters the room has gone from mildly amusing to just plain rude.
Foggy has spent the past month paranoid because it’s obvious he is doing something wrong despite his best efforts. He doesn’t talk to Matt when he catches him with earbuds in so as to not interrupt his studying, picks his shit up off the floor so that Matt doesn’t trip, makes enthusiastic attempts at friendship. He invites him out, stops playing music out of his computer speakers, and lets Matt know when he’s inviting friends over to the dorm. He’s lost sleep over this. He doesn’t know what is so unlikeable about him, especially when he’s been nothing but nice.
“My roommate is an asshole,” Foggy tells Imani from down the hall halfway through their study session. He’s leaning back in this chair, knees against the rim of the table to maintain balance, and Imani is tapping her fingers restlessly against the particle board, chewing on the back of her pen as she attempts to make sense of their reading for Contemporary Political Ideologies. “Sorry,” Foggy continues. “Keep reading, my bad.”
Imani looks up.
“Matt?” she asks.
Foggy shrugs, suddenly self-conscious of his confession.
“Uh, yes?” he says, and Imani raises an eyebrow. “Let me explain. Totally frigid. I have never seen him smile, like, once. I always try to make conversation with him and he just responds in like, grunts or single syllable words. And he keeps disappearing after class. Like, walks in, puts down his books and stuff and then immediately leaves.”
Imani hums.
“Probably just introverted. Like anti-social?”
It’s Foggy’s turn to hum. He spins his pen around his thumb and sighs when it clatters to the ground.
“I’ve talked to Marci about him,” he says while reaching down to grab it. “And she says he’s perfectly civil in their lit theory class. Even helps out the girl behind him when she isn’t paying attention and gets lost or doesn't do the reading.”
“A regular good samaritan,” Imani says, with something that could be a smirk on her lips. She has a gap in between her front two teeth, and it makes Foggy want to smile back. Her nose ring glints as she turns her head back down to the work in front of her. She’s cute. Foggy is surrounded by cute girls and still can’t seem to get any.
Foggy snaps and points and Imani looks back up.
“Exactly! So what am I doing wrong? I keep the room clean so he doesn’t trip over anything. I’m very pleasant, I even invite him to things I’d rather him not go to! I told him about my entire life and when I asked him about his he just… kinda brushed it off.”
Imani is still smiling, but she sighs, stopping tapping on the desk.
“Look, Foggy. He’s just probably kinda shy and overwhelmed by your general loudness.”
“Are you just saying the way to make him like me is to shut up?”
“You don’t need to do anything to make him like you. I mean, it kinda sucks that he doesn’t seem to, but I don’t think there’s really anything you can do.”
Foggy lets out a huff of air, letting two legs of his chair snap back to the ground to join the others.
“Screw you for being all nice and smart and shit.”
“Would you rather me be evil and stupid?”
Imani picks up her pen and pulls a paper on the desk back towards her. Foggy sighs again, brain still stuck on Matt.
Marci, who usually has huge opinions on anyone she meets, described him as ‘fine’. Foggy doesn’t get it.
“Do you think he has a girlfriend?” Foggy asks. Imani looks shocked and then begins to laugh. “What?”
“You’re obsessed with him!”
“I am not,” Foggy insists. Imani pokes his hand with her finger.
“Stop mooning over your roommate and do your fucking work. Please.”
Foggy pouts but begins to flip through his textbook. Imani resumes her tapping.
Mooning?
He forgets about it pretty soon after. PS 35 had nothing on Columbia, and Foggy finds himself lost in assignments, office hours, and trying to still maintain a healthy social life. When he calls Candace, she admonishes him that it’s what he gets for going to a fucking Ivy, Franklin, you really had to go out and do the most, which is a little fair. He’s kind of homesick, constantly wired on cheap energy drinks that give him heart palpitations, and just shy of extremely stressed, so his sorta shitty roommate with a stick up his ass is the least of his worries.
Until Jake Timmon’s party.
It really isn’t that big a deal. Foggy gets invited to a lot of things due to his proximity to Marci, and he was planning on spending the night drunk and stupid, nursing a beer and maybe making out with someone who will give him the time of day. He’s walking to the kitchen for another drink, chatting mindlessly with a sophomore named Alessandro who has pretty brown eyes and nice lips, when he hears Matt. Foggy turns, and there he is, laughing, his head on the shoulder of a blonde who appears to be determined to hot-box the apartment.
“Karen,” Foggy can hear him say. “I’m done. I’m good. No more.” He waves his hand, almost smacking her in the face, and it occurs to Foggy that Matt, the uptight little asshole, is high.
Foggy grins.
“What?” Alessandro says over the music. They’re pressing their shoulder against Foggy’s.
“That’s my roommate!” Foggy shouts back. “Massively uptight. First time I’ve ever seen him out!”
“What, you’re proud?”
Foggy sways, feeling the alcohol. His joy at seeing Matt at a party is a little unfounded, he’ll admit, but he’s feeling confident and pleased with himself. Alessandro the sexy mountain with pretty eyes is hanging off his arm, he’s got bitchin’ music taste and a hot best friend/ occasional fuck buddy who thinks he’s the shit, too. Screw Matt’s dismissal and surly disposition.
Foggy’s gonna woo that motherfucker.
Alessandro follows him as he makes his way over, plowing through people he should recognize but doesn’t really. As they approach, Matt lifts his head and cocks it.
“Foggy?” he says. The dead-eye stare of the dark glasses almost makes Foggy shudder. He feels weirdly seen, and the confidence from before drains.
“Uh, yeah. How’d you know?”
Matt waves a lazy hand as if that functions as an explanation. His knuckles are bizarrely bruised like he’s been in a fight.
“Deodorant.”
“Who are you?” the blonde, who Foggy assumes is named Karen, asks.
“Shit, yeah.” He holds out a hand for her to shake, then puts it down when he realizes her eyes are closed. Which, yeah. Weird. Maybe that’s it. Maybe Foggy isn’t freaky enough for Matt’s tastes. “I’m Foggy. Matt’s roommate.” Silence. Foggy switches directions. “Nice party, huh?”
“I love this song,” Matt says, deadpan.
“What?”
“Don’t Cha,” Karen agrees, and Matt giggles. Karen joins in, and pretty soon Foggy is feeling awfully uncomfortable standing there watching the two of them dissolve into hysterics.
Uh.
Foggy turns back to Alessandro, who is smirking.
“Nice going, Casanova.” Foggy can feel his ears burn red.
“You still want that drink?” he asks.
When the two of them leave, Matt and Karen are still cackling. Matt’s glasses are askew and his hair is mussed. His silly little cross glints and his smile is straight and sharp and perfect. Foggy huffs.
Yeah. Fuck Matt and his weirdo friend. Foggy doesn’t need him.
Alessandro mixes Foggy a drink that leans heavy on the rum and light on the coke, and he downs it in one gulp. C'est la vie.
Candace was right. Fucking Columbia.