We were installing a bamboo floor for Dwell Magazine’s offices in North Beach. The floor was quite large and it took at least a day longer than anticipated to finish the installation. We listened to NPR and Nirvana CD’s on Matt’s little boombox as we worked. I would turn it to a local radio station on occasion, for variety, but Matt was the Mamet of flooring and needed to hear, and say, words – lots of them. “Always be nailing” was what he would say, when he wasn’t saying something else that made me strain to understand. A six-hour day was just about right for us. Matt tended to rush things late in the day. He said that on a job site I was good at anticipating what was needed next, but I could never stop him from making these mistakes. I tried. He was quite skilled at this point, much more so than me, but he was also like a fast-moving train with no brakes. Bamboo is a hard and splintery floor material and pulling up a piece of it you just nailed down requires a quick, loud, intense physical effort that makes you rue the mistake you just made. You could fix almost any mistake, it just hurt a little more each time you had to. We made mistakes then went out for coffee, probably our third coffee break of the day. As we passed one of the many strip clubs on Columbus, the hawker tried to lure us in. I asked if they give foot massages. He and Matt chuckled. We were cash-poor, our feet hurt, and not his target audience.
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