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When Foggy was a kid, he had a dog. That fat Scottie that belonged to scary-ass Mrs. Nguyen on the fifth floor had a litter with some stray mutt and Foggy and his sister got the runt. He'd been the one who begged for a puppy, so it became his job to take her around the block every morning before school.
Foggy was late for school a lot. Blackie loved to sniff, and he became a slave to her every caprice; she wasn't a large dog, but she had the ability to lock her short little legs and become immovable when she was invested in something. There were certain areas of the neighborhood that were especially enticing to her, spots that became very familiar to Foggy – the trash can in front of the bodega on 36th, the stoop of the building where Brett's uncle lived, specifically-chosen hydrants and security grates. And it was all a big mystery to Foggy at first. He would tug impatiently at the leash for two minutes while Blackie took her time investigating the metal base of a mailbox, and then they'd walk right by an identical mailbox which she would totally ignore.
It was a little like that with Matt. From the day they met, his roommate seemed insanely particular and fickle to Foggy. Matt sometimes took an instant hate to specific people, or started to avoid people he'd been fine with the week before. He wouldn't study on certain floors of the library, would make Foggy lead him off a subway car and onto the car behind for no reason that Foggy could see. Hungover, they'd order two bagel sandwiches and Matt would suddenly want to share Foggy's everything with egg and swiss, abandoning the very sesame-egg-and-cheddar he'd picked out himself ten minutes before. He was apologetic about these whims, polite when asking Foggy to do something for him that made no sense, but he was utterly insistent. Like a little dog that wouldn't move until she stuck her face behind her favorite trash can.
Now, in the wake of Matt's disclosure, Foggy remembers a smaller revelation from a winter morning the first year they had Blackie. He'd gone out with the dog like usual, but this time, Hell's Kitchen was dusted with two inches of fresh powder from the night before, and it all made sense. Foggy could see the dots of yellow all around the bodega. He made out the footprints of a cat on the bottom step of that stoop. Blackie couldn't tell him what was up, but with olfactory cues translated to visual, he understood.
“Hold on, I'm in the middle of the intake paperwork,” Matt says without taking his fingers from the Braille display when Foggy pokes his head in with the Thai delivery, but half an hour later, Matt makes his way into Foggy's office with a question about whether bruising is visible on their client's face in her mug shot, and then, while Foggy takes a closer look at the pictures, he's casually reaching for what's left of Foggy's yellow curry. “What was wrong with the pad kee mao?” Foggy asks and he can see how Matt is about to lie – at long last, he recognizes that disarming self-deprecating half-smile for what it really is. Matt's going to say he doesn't feel like noodles after all or he's going to deny that he was even going for the curry, tell Foggy that he was just feeling around the desk for the staple remover. But then Matt remembers. He remembers where they are now and what he's done. How he's hurt Foggy before. His face gets kind of serious and he says, “Ah, it's no big deal. The cook went to the bathroom before he started prepping the peppers, didn't wash his hands." He fidgets with Foggy's chopsticks. "I don't think it's going to give anyone food poisoning or anything. But I can, you know, tell.”
He can tell. He can smell it, that means. He could smell it right away through the cardboard take-out container and the plastic bag, could sense it over the competing aromas of Foggy's food and his B.O. or whatever and Karen's Miss Dior Cherie and the fresh paint in the neighboring office and Foggy can't even guess what else. It's incredible – literally incredible – and Foggy wants to make a big deal about it, but instead all he says is “Gross,” and then asks “Mine's OK, though – right?” and Matt nods and they talk about getting duty rosters from the precinct and act like nothing weird just happened.
Two inches of snow, and it's all clear. This world, this secret world – it was there all along.
It's some mutant shit, only useful. It's like Matt is a bloodhound, a bloodhound who can talk. Foggy is trying to find all of this cool, instead of finding it threatening. He's trying to let go of his resentment and celebrate the miracle in front of him. It's just a little challenging, right now. The best he can do is to act like all the things Matt knows are normal. Because as mad as Foggy has been, as many times as he's been deceived, he knows that Matt can't help being this way, that he was always just protecting himself. The last thing in the world that he wants is to make his best friend feel like a freak.
The next week, Matt lays an unerring hand on his forearm while he's reaching for a blood orange at the bodega around the corner – the same bodega that Blackie used to like. “What's wrong with it?” Foggy asks suspiciously. “Did it get dropped on the floor? Is it pesticide? Some kind of horrible pesticide that'll make my hair fall out?”
“No, nothing like that.” Matt tucks his head down shyly, eschewing even the limited approximation of eye contact of which he's capable. “It's just, the navel oranges smell better. Fresher, you know. You should go for one of those.”
“Thanks,” Foggy says. And he does.