Matt knew that Foggy was excited. In the beginning he was excited too, if he was being honest. They had gotten an internship together, and it was for one of the biggest law firms in the city. Even if he had reservations about it, he couldn't be unhappy. And Foggy was right to remind him that there were students in their graduating class who would have gleefully murdered them for taking their spot at Landman and Zach.
But the moment Matt walked through the heavy revolving doors and into the expansive lobby he knew that they'd made a mistake.
It wasn't the coldness of all the steel and glass that Foggy loved so much, the way that it echoed and bounced off his heightened senses like he was in a snowstorm. And it wasn't the phones ringing off the hook or the rush of clacking keyboards he could hear pounding into his ears like a jackhammer. No, it was the smell that set him off.
He had been expecting it to smell sterile, perhaps, like a dentist's office or the DMV. Maybe leathery and rich, like a courtroom. Instead, it just smelled disgusting. Like stale cologne and Axe bodyspray. Like too much make-up, and women not wearing underwear. Like expensive lattes, tears and anxiety. Within seconds of entering the building, Matt was convinced that he had learned everything he needed to know about the place and it was all he could stand not to turn around and go back through the door onto the street where he could breathe deeply without wanting to vomit.
"Wow," said Foggy. "Isn't this place amazing?" Matt could tell his friend was grinning.
"Yeah," he replied, with a weary resignation, "amazing." He followed his friend towards the front desk.
Once they were settled for the day into the shared closet where they would be working, Matt leaned back and tried to meditate quietly as Foggy unpacked his things. He tried to block out the smells and sounds around him and centre himself. It didn't help.
"Is this really what you want?" he asked Foggy finally.
"What do you mean?" Foggy asked. "Dude, this is the dream! Think about how much money we could make in a place like this."
"I thought you agreed that what we do is about more than money," Matt said.
"Well yeah, but come on!" Foggy said emphatically, "Come on! This is awesome!"
"Maybe," said Matt, unconvinced.
In the days to come, the smells continued to get to Matt. The people who worked at Landman and Zach frequently smelled of desperation. Matt had smelled desperation before. After all, he lived in a neighborhood that stank of poverty and homelessness, disease and prostitution. But this particular desperation was tinged with depression, and alcoholism, and loneliness. It matched the sounds he heard on a daily basis. Sobbing coming from the bathrooms. People being fired. The still constant ringing and clacking, and the phone conversations in which people told their loved ones "I'm sorry, I know I said I'd be home for dinner. I have to work." It bothered him, but he knew that it meant something to Foggy to stay and complete the internship, so he bore it, like he bore so many things for the sake of his friend.
Weeks went by. The internship was almost finished when Matt encountered one last horrible smell, one that broke his heart. It was then that he knew it was time to move on, that he had to say something to Foggy. It was the smell of a dying man.
Matt sat next to Foggy across the table from the man whom their firm was opposing, a man with unnatural and poisonous chemicals coursing through his bloodstream attempting to flush out the cancer eating away at his organs. Matt could smell the chemotherapy, and he could smell the cancer. The man didn't have long. And he listened, trying to hold the nausea at bay, while the attorneys at the firm he worked for told that man that they were suing him for a breach of patent law. They revealed, in a calm and patient tone and with none of the anxiety or frustration that Matt usually detected from them, that they were that petty, and that cold. Matt realized in that moment that the desperation he smelled at Landman and Zach was one that was borne out of a desire for power and money, and that the people around him couldn't sense the destruction the path they were on was leading them towards the way that he could. And he knew that he needed to get out, and that he wasn't leaving without Foggy. He also knew that if this is what other law firms were like, the two of them would need to forge their own path.
Sometimes later, when he and Foggy were up until 4am sitting across from one another at one desk while Karen made them their tenth cup of coffee each, in their cramped office that smelled like stale donuts, dust and sweat, Matt would reflect on his time at Landman and Zach and the decision he and Foggy made to leave. He never regretted it.