Foggy had been left alone with the apprentice for the day and he was coming up short here in the bonding department.
He felt bad about it because Sam was very plainly gung-ho to do everything and anything and, in his excitement to have temporarily escaped his teacher’s unyielding, though empty gaze, he was practically rattling.
Matt and Kirsten were out on the town, bickering over herbs to put in the window boxes. Matt had been recently reminded by some feral god that he was obsessed with mint while Kirsten had decided two days ago that their lives would be improved collectively and objectively if they were growing their own saffron. Both parties continued to forget that Foggy had purchased multiple window planters the previous weekend, despite their being the same parties that bitched and moaned about having to carry six window boxes a whole mile and a half to their destination. There was more than enough room for both saffron and mint. Foggy had stated this multiple times before the herb-shopping adventure had gotten underway.
The closest he’d gotten to a compromise here was that Matt and Kirsten had promised to pick up no fewer than ten plants for the boxes. They refused to confirm or deny whether they intended to honor Sam’s request for a pot of cilantro.
This was the type of thing which they, as Murdock, McDuffie & Nelson plus paralegal and dogs, did these days. It really made their lives in New York seem like a whole world away.
It really made it hard to figure out what to do to with a twenty-four-year-old who was excited that things were happening and wanted to be included.
Foggy’s area of expertise with young people stood in the range from age zero to seventeen. After that, Matt was the pro. He had all the world advice and the type of grumpy, nagging, but ultimately disinterested persona that made him seem like a cool and valuable resource to the young adult population. Foggy was just the cool uncle. He’d let Matt nip Peter’s and MJ’s and Ned’s heels more or less in the right directions in their early adulthood. Matt was great at that kind of thing, so long as he didn’t think anyone was expecting it from him.
Sam, however, had really thrown a spanner into this once-predictable behavior.
Matt was the one who had brought Samuel into their blessed household. He’d really gone out and found a shorter, slightly more sighted version of himself out there in the big wide world, and for whatever reason, had decided that yes. Yes, this? This was the kid. This was the one he was going to invest in. Why? Because. Stop asking stupid questions, Franklin. I am a man of the night—I am shitty Batman, no one asks Batman where, why, and how he finds his Robins. Get off my back.
Foggy adored Samuel. Samuel was excellent and lovely. He worked hard, he had a great sense of humor. He was fond of hiding Kirsten’s cigarette packs in Foggy’s desk drawers. He and Tuesday were best friends and this made Matt endure strong, but fleeting bouts of envy periodically throughout the day. Sam also looked after Matt at night, even though Matt was the one who was supposed to be looking after him. And that was comforting. More than it had any right to be.
Matt wasn’t as young as he used to be.
Foggy would be lying if he said he didn’t worry.
He worried a lot.
He worried about the twice-torn ACL. The busted knee. The arthritis slowing pulsing its way, like a fungus, in and around the bones of Matt’s left wrist. He worried about the old bullet wounds, the ones that Matt laid his palms on right before rain. And the absurd cracking sounds that Matt’s back was known to emit in the mornings more often than not these days.
Foggy didn’t know when the helmet would have to be hung for good, but he could tell that the day was fast approaching. He just hoped that he’d work up the courage to convince Matt to hang that head before it was hung for him.
Sam helped a lot with that.
He burrowed himself into Matt’s side before the two of them went out and called him ‘old man’ and promised Foggy that he’d bring Matt back in the biggest pieces that he could. Matt swatted at him and cursed him and called him ‘cocky.’ And then they went out. And then they came home and Sam was there with a shoulder if Matt had a bad knee or if he was clutching at his ribs.
The problem with this was that now that Foggy could breathe slightly easier for Matt, he had a whole new person to worry about.
At some point over the last year, his heart had consumed Sammy and since then, every gunshot out over the city and every police riot and every boy’s night out was a surefire way to instant indigestion for Foggy.
Damn this boy. And damn his old man, while they were at it.
And while they were damning folks, it would be nice if God gave Foggy something to do with Sam who was still smiling at him across the table.
His earnestness made Foggy feel a little guilty and very self-conscious. He didn’t want to send the kid out with the dogs again. He didn’t want to give Sam any real work to do. Lord knew Sam worked just as hard as the rest of them, and then even harder trying to keep up with Matt.
Matt, for his part, only had one rule about what Sam was not allowed to do.
Well.
He actually had a couple of rules, so as to keep his apprentice in the realm of the living, but they currently had only one main gripe at the minute.
But Sammy looked so hopeful.
And Matt wasn’t home.
So.
It couldn’t really hurt, could it?
Foggy set down his coffee and folded his hands on the table. He practically saw the intensity of Sam’s vibrating increase. Tuesday felt it and the tip of her nose made an appearance over the edge of the table to inspect this strange behavior.
“Samuel,” Foggy said with gravitas. “Would you like to make furniture?”
Sam, bless him, was obsessed with these Chinese rural farming videos.
Obsessed.
At first, Foggy and Matt had noticed him curled up around the apartment enraptured by his laptop screen. They’d thought, reasonably, that Sam was binge-watching true crime again. It wouldn’t be the first time he scared himself shitless and sent texts from downstairs at ass ‘o clock at night, pleading with the two of them to verify that the horrible people he now had intimate knowledge of were not getting out of jail anytime soon.
Matt had banned any and all discussion of the Zodiac Killer from their house and the firm (and Kirsten’s house, too, because Sam was nothing if not resourceful).
But then Matt had actually listened in on whatever was happening in Sam’s headphones and had come away very confused. It didn’t sound like true crime to him. It sounded like music over some kind of plant-related sound effects.
He knew that the videos were in Chinese, but beyond that, he was just baffled.
Foggy peeked over Sam’s shoulder once and, after adapting his eyes to the kid’s screen brightness, realized that he was watching a number of girls making all kinds of food and crafts from what appeared to be their family farms.
He and Matt decided then that this was some kind of cultural education thing that Sam was watching. They thought that maybe he was trying to connect with his roots.
It quickly came to light (literally to light, with Sam holding his damn screen to Foggy’s face with maximum determination), however, that Sam’s family wasn’t from either of the places these girls were. Not even close. His family back in China were farmers, yes, but not like this. This, he said, was art.
One of the girls had made bamboo furniture.
Sam was now determined that he was going to make bamboo furniture. The absence of bamboo did not seem to be a stumbling block for him. Nor the fact that he was not presently in need of any kind of furniture.
It was the principle that he was interested in here.
Matt had one rule.
The rule was no furniture.
Foggy felt a little bad about this. But he’d literally never seen Samuel so happy. And so the construction of Tuesday’s new luxury summer dog bed began.
They had just investigated the stock of no less than four hardware stores when they got home to Matt feeding the dogs puppy treats in the kitchen.
Foggy had sworn Sam to secrecy on the way home, but he was rattling on a new frequency and Matt noticed immediately.
His face dropped about two seconds into greeting them.
“Why are you happy?” he demanded of his adored apprentice.
“Plants,” Sam lied.
Foggy could have covered his face and groaned, but he didn’t because Matt already knew that he was being lied to and he didn’t really need any corroborating evidence.
Matt’s eyebrows lowered over the tops of his glasses.
“Uh-huh,” he said, “Try again.”
“Plants,” Sam repeated.
Technically, he wasn’t wrong. Bamboo was a plant. A weed, actually. And a sufficient quantity of it for a far-too-complicated dog home had been located at store number 4.
Matt loomed and waited. Sam, 100% aware that Matt had a spot as soft as a bruised apple for him, cuddled in close and wrapped his arms around Matt’s chest. He kind of hummed in happiness. Matt’s fingers flexed in complete and full awareness that something untoward was now afoot. He turned his face meaningfully towards Foggy.
Foggy pled the fifth with his shoulders.
“Whatever you’re doing,” Matt said down to Sam, extricating him from his ribs, “I hate it already.”
Sam had the brains of a genius and the attention span of a clockmaker, provided that the clock he was working on was complicated enough to hold his excitement about the process in check.
The furniture was not doing this job.
Foggy was highly endeared by all this bouncing around, but also, if this kid didn’t settle down for five minutes then they were going to get fuck all done and Matt was going to figure out that his one rule had been broken and they both were going to be in for it.
“Sammy,” Foggy chuckled, “Let’s take it down to a 7, pal.”
Sam jerked his way with saw at the ready.
Boy was ready to do this shit.
Foggy laughed.
“Measurements first,” he said. “Need a pen and the tape—”
The kid was off.
To ensure that they weren’t about to make a load of firewood out of this bamboo, Sam and Foggy watched the video which had inspired this project a good four times. They then discussed some size issues and some of the logistics of making this bed accessible for dogs with old bones and inaccessible for dogs with jealous dispositions named Hazel.
Tues was going to need a lower foundation or a little step up.
Sam wanted to make her a step up so that she could watch videos with him.
She would also need a cushion, but that was going to be phase two of this endeavor. First they needed to measure the pieces and mark out where all the bends had to be and then they needed to figure out how this whole process of steaming bamboo to bend it worked.
Luckily, they had a non-credentialed engineer on hand. And a guy who’d grown up measuring and sawing wood.
It didn’t take as long as it could have, even though there were a few necessary blunders and do-overs.
The work of the first day came to a load of pieces which would require cooling and later assembly. They were hidden under a tarp in the backyard for the time being.
They got back upstairs to Matt drumming his fingers on the windowsill, silently furious and suspicious about the sounds of woodwork happening without his involvement.
“I’m onto you,” he threatened Sam who ducked out of his reach and gunned it downstairs for the safety of his bedroom. Tuesday scrambled up from Matt’s feet and clattered down the stairs after him. Matt turned his pout onto Foggy.
“You too, mister,” he said.
Foggy shrugged again.
“You love it when I smell like wood,” he pointed out.
Matt said nothing.
“Careful, Matty. You face’ll get stuck like that,” Foggy said, cracking open a bottle of lemonade.
Sam and Foggy reconvened the next day when Kirsten came by to lure Matt in the direction of the farmer’s market. Matt loved farmer’s markets. Loved the smells, loved the sounds, was very fond of the ever-shifting rotations of musicians.
What he didn’t like was shit happening in his household without his explicit permission and awareness.
Kirsten caught onto Sam’s desperation and Foggy’s smirk and tripled her efforts.
She waxed poetic about needing local honey and summer-ripe tomatoes and managed to drag Matt out of the door in appropriate farmer’s market attire: Foggy’s old flannel with a canvas bag over the shoulder. Matt glared behind him a couple of times as Sam and Foggy watched the two of them walk down the sidewalk. When they crossed the last block so they were out of sight, the coast was clear.
Tuesday and Hazel were mega interested by all the banging and sanding that was required to get all the previous day’s pieces together into an object which looked more or less like a fancy raised platform. Hazel decided that she needed to bark at the hammer and ignored all shushing to meet this need.
Tuesday sniffed at the bamboo scraps floating around the project placidly. When Sam offered her the frame of her new bed, she wagged her tail a little.
It was hard to tell if she was doing that because of Sam or because of the gift, but Sam chose to believe it was a direct result of their efforts.
By the time Kirsten texted them to let them know that she and the red beast were on the way home, the frame had been completed and the supporting beams laid. All that they needed to do now was assemble the detachable roof (in case Tuesday wanted some outside time in her new habitat) and to make a cushion for the lady’s old bones.
Sam also wanted to sand and polish the bamboo, but that was less of a Foggy problem and more of an aesthetic thing. He’d let Sam do what he wanted with that. He was just there for the structural shit.
Sam spent the work week polishing the dog bed until it gleamed and he also scrambled out on his break to a discount fabric store in the Mission, from which he acquired a couple yards of upholstery grade fabric of a cream color. He left work early to go procure a bag of stuffing, which he must have hidden somewhere in his room because Foggy found no trace of it. He only knew that this had happened because Sam appeared just behind Matt in the kitchen doorway on Wednesday night to shake a big fluffy cushion at Foggy over his shoulder before Matt noticed him and turned around. Sam clutched the pillow to his chest and, at Matt’s insistence that he come clean about his shenanigans, did an amazing impression of DD by hissing and tumbling down the stairs back to his room. Tuesday, alarmed, went to go assist her low-vision pal.
Matt took Sam out with him Daredeviling on Thursday and then again on Friday, but Saturday was this kid’s day.
Still scratched up from the night before, he assembled the dog home while Matt was out getting dinner. It was hard not to smile watching him.
He was just so earnest.
He got the cushion fluffed to his liking and then called Tuesday back upstairs. He lured her to the bed with high praise that made her tail sweep back and forth like a feather pen.
“Come here, baby girl,” Sam cooed, right in front of the bed, “Come on, Tues. Look! A present!”
Tuesday wagged a little more and then came over to sniff at Sam’s hands and knees for her usual presents.
“No, no treats,” Sam said, “Present—big present. Look!”
Tues finally acknowledged the dog bed and sniffed at it. Sam made enthusiastic noises to encourage her and, when she continued to show confusion in what to do with this lovely, handcrafted and well-polished addition to the living room, he picked her up and set her right on the cushion.
Tues didn’t like that.
She didn’t like folks moving her old bones without her permission.
She hopped out and went to hide with Foggy.
Sam’s face read as heartbroken, so Foggy gave it a go next.
He made the requisite kissy noises to get Tues back over to the bed and then commanded her to get ‘up.’
She anxiously put a paw on the bed and did that a few times before looking at Foggy in desperation.
Never fear, though. Hazel heard nice things happening without her and came to insert herself where she didn’t belong. She shoved right past her sister and inspected the bed thoroughly. She then barked at it to chase away any boogeymen and, that done, climbed on and wagged her tail standing over it.
Sam removed the princess from her tower and replaced her with the queen.
The queen was slightly more okay with this, this time. She snuffled around, bumped into the evil sibling’s offending nose a few times, then, with Sam’s encouragement in the form of pressure on her butt, she had a sit and experienced a revelation.
She laid down and laid her head on her paws.
Sam cheered.
Foggy almost cried from laughing so hard.
And things settled down back to normal, with Sam cooing at Tuesday in the living room. Foggy left him to his business and went to go text Kirsten.
He heard the door unlock and made the decision to not deal with that for the time being.
He ignored the mumbling and defensive noises in the living room until Matt called his name very purposefully.
There was an edge to his voice.
Foggy knew it well.
“Yes, dear husband,” Foggy said, peeking around the corner into the living room.
Matt stood, gesturing to apprentice and dog on the hardwood.
“Furniture,” he said in a tone like burnt coffee. Sam squinted up at him, jaw set.
“Gift,” Foggy corrected lightly.
“No,” Matt snapped, “Furn-i-ture.”
“For dogs,” Foggy said. “Not for people.”
Matt glared. Sam hunkered down and stroked Tuesday’s head. She lifted her head to sniff at his hands and then laid back down.
“She likes it,” Sam said. Matt ignored him.
“One rule,” he told Foggy.
“One rule for Sams,” Foggy pointed out, “There are no rules for Foggies.”
Matt processed that for a long time and went through a series of faces as he tried to figure out an answer to that which would not result in him sleeping on the couch.
He couldn’t seem to find one.
Foggy took pity on him.
“We made it for Tues,” he explained gently. “She’s getting old, Matt. Floor’s getting rough on her bones. It’s better to get some air flow under her, it’ll make her more comfortable.”
See now, if it was directly related to the dogs’ happiness, Matt could tolerate it. This could be a win-win for everyone provided someone wasn’t so stubborn.
Matt huffed. And puffed. And finally threw his hands up.
“I don’t know why I even bother,” he growled, leaving all the of them for the kitchen and then making a totally unnecessary amount of noise getting shit together for dinner.
Sam beamed after him and then up at Foggy. Foggy winked.
“It’s a slippery slope,” he whispered, “Might be able to swing a deck chair next.”
Sam’s face was priceless. Matt’s squawk from the kitchen was too.