Chapter Text
These weren’t his streets.
The eight hour bus ride, longer than he had expected it to be, became a twenty minute taxi ride which ended on the curb of the address he had given the driver, but now that he stood on the curb, suitcase and briefcase in hand, trunk at his feet, he knew this wasn’t right. Certain he had given the driver the correct address, he had counted the turns the driver had made, the lengths of the blocks, distances he knew in his bones from a lifetime having lived these streets. The grinding rattle of the cab’s air conditioner and the too loud blaring of the Indian music the driver had been playing had not only discouraged conversation but had muted all but the nearest of outdoor noises but hearing it now, the underlying hum of the city, the pulse of life, none of it sounded the way Matt believed it should sound.
He knew there were blank spots in his memories, but surely the core of Hell’s Kitchen could be misremembered so thoroughly.
Even the smells were different…newer…fresher…cleaner. Too late to ask the driver if the address was correct, as the cab was already threading its way from the curb to the blaring of a horn from the cars around it. From the fullness of foot traffic around him, business shoes and loafers and ladies’ heels clacking up and down concrete stairs accompanied by professional conversations, friendly laughter, the clipped one-sided voices of Bluetooth dialogues told Matt that what should have been the stairs into the building that had been his home, he was facing a hotel. And each time the double glass doors opened, the air, cooler than the already stifling morning air of this early spring day, carried a balm of flowers, of expensive cuisine, perfume and cologne.
“Can I help you with that, sir?”
Shaking off his reverie, Matt faced the voice of the approaching concierge with what he expected was a perplexed expression upon his face. “Um…yes…thank you.”
“Business bring you in?” The trunk scraped the sidewalk as it was lifted and the man waited for Matt to take his arm before ascending the short set of stairs up to the door landing.
“No, I live…” Matt stopped himself and then shook his head. “I use to live here. Didn’t there use to be a brownstone at this address…?”
“Aye, indeed.” The man’s lilting accent identified him as an Irish immigrant, and that detail, at least made Matt feel slightly more at ease. “A long time ago…you grow up here?”
“How long?” By Matt’s recollection, surely no longer than a matter of weeks…but weeks would not have allowed for the demolition and reconstruction of something of this magnitude. At the top of the steps, he turned to face the street, head cocked to listen up and down the avenue, measuring differences in air current, in sound, in smells, tiny imperceptible things that those with eyes rarely noticed. He gauged this hotel now stood in place of four of what had been familiar side by side buildings.
“Thirty years…no…thirty-two I think…since the fire…”
Matt’s mouth opened but his confusion robbed his voice of sound. That made no sense. Maybe he had forgotten the address of home along with whatever else he had forgotten. This address was stuck in his head like a siren, however, so it must have meant something to him at one time.
They reached the check in desk, where a young woman, the source of the overpowering perfume Matt had detected outside, greeted him with a smile, one that he could not see but judged to be there by the quickening of her heart rate and the excited hitch in her breathing.
“Welcome back, Mr. Murdock. Did you have a good trip?”
“I…” So he had been here before. But when? And why? Why could he not remember it? What in the hell was going on.
Doubting the girl would have the answers he wanted, however, he swallowed the questions and said, “I did, yes. You have my key? Any messages?”
“No messages,” she replied, her fingers lingering upon his palm as she placed the keycard in his hand. “Only this.” There was a small package, the texture of a brown envelope, the size and weight of it suggesting to Matt that it contained money. A lot of it. He forced himself not to scowl as he tucked it into the breast pocket of his jacket.
“Thank you…”
She seemed disappointed at his hesitation, as if she expected him to remember her name, and when he did not speak it, she prompted, “Barbara…”
“Barbara…yes…sorry. Been a long night…a long time since I’ve slept…”
The excuse satisfied her, bringing the smile back with it. “Oh, that’s okay, Mr. Murdock. I’ll see that you’re not disturbed then.”
A group of eight men and women in business attire was joined by the crispness of bodies in uniforms behind him and Matt gestured.
“Oh, don’t mind them,” Barbara chirped. “There’s a convention of some sort this weekend…medical types…doctors and the like…but they’re well below your penthouse suite…you won’t even know they’re here, I swear.”
Penthouse. Well that sounded right at least. Unless he hid away in his room, he would rub elbows with the convention guests, but he could not do that. There were people he had to find. Answers he needed that he was not going to find here…unless they were in his room.
A second concierge, a youngster likely of college age or a kid barely out of high school, escorted Matt into the elevator and up to the twelfth floor of the hotel, the top floor judging by the clicks and clunks made by the elevator as it passed each one. He chattered about nothing, about city gossip of the sort residents expected, updates on day to day details that Matt would have once been keenly aware of but which now seemed connected to something distant and intangible. Though references to streets and landmarks remained the same, striking familiar notes, the overall chords of memory were discordant, clipped and blurred as if about details entirely outside of his experience.
And he was beginning to get a headache trying to sort them out.
Taking the key, the concierge opened the door, took the trunk and suitcase off of the rolling cart he had placed them on, and set them inside the door. The dusty scents from inside sparked familiarity, and for a moment, Matt finally believed he might have found home.
“Buy yourself something nice…” He slipped a $100 bill into the young man’s hand. He figured the boy could use it. The young man choked.
“That’s too much, sir…”
“No…it’s not.” Matt had been well paid for keeping Logan out of jail, more than he had expected to be paid actually, and he had cleared out every remaining dollar from the bank card account that had been set up for him upon his arrival in Havensport. With that hotel already paid for, and no intention of being followed, the card was destroyed; his ticket to Hell’s Kitchen was paid for in cash, and when he left Havensport, he left nothing behind.
Nothing material, at any rate.
It occurred to him that whoever had sent him on that trip, they were likely the ones who had left this new envelope full of bills as well. Maybe they were paying him for the work he had done against The Hand. Maybe they knew he had destroyed the bank card and this was the only way they could pay him.
Maybe there was more than one party working in his life.
“Thank you…thank you sir…and, sir…?” Matt’s hand on the door hesitated before closing it between them. “Good to see the reports of your death weren’t true.”
Reports of his death? This time he did not bother to hide the scowl. The boy knew him then, or knew of him, or was familiar with his coming and going in this place. So why hadn’t the doorman recognized him. What in God’s name was going on? “No…they’re not true, I assure you.”
The kid smiled, shoved the bill into the pants pocket of his uniform, and whistled his way back to the elevator.
Only when the elevator door was closed did Matt breathe easier, and only when he calmed his center could he play closer attention to the suite he had entered.
Given the décor of the lobby, the glass and light, carpet and decorative foliage, the bright modernity of the corridor beyond the door, this room was stark, barren…drab…and smelled like darkness and old paint and the mustiness of disuse.
It smelled exactly the way it should. It smelled like home.
Everything in it, every piece of furniture, the hum of fluorescent lighting from the large advertisement beyond his windows…lit even in the day…the sound of the floorboards beneath his feet, the wear of the upholstery, the feel of the blanket draped over the back of it, the layout of condiments and utensils and the dishrack beside the sink, the clang of beer bottles in the otherwise empty refrigerator…
It was exactly the way he expected it to be. It took some of the edge of his discomfiture, but it did not explain the dichotomy of the outside of the building or the floors below this one. Two things existing in tandem that should not…
But at least he was home amongst familiar safety. A shower, he decided, shoving the trunk into the place it belonged, a shower and a nap would make him feel normal…and then he would venture back into the unfamiliar and find the faces he needed to ground him and make him truly feel at home. They were the ones that could make sense of a world that he was beginning to doubt was even real.