He didn’t know at the time it came with a furry blond pirate.
With the windows open, a faint hint of the shore reached him as he worked. The perfume of the exotic woods he worked with mingled pleasantly with the permeated metal scent of the ex-ironwork’s girders, and the converted docking bay was big enough to hold his larger lathe, something he’d been itching to use since he got it out of storage. After fitting a seasoned, slab of a red-brown burl, Kane locked the wood into place, easing the scissor clamps in until the teeth lightly bit into the slab to keep it from flying free of the lathe as it spun.
Despite the cold lingering in the late morning air, Kane left the docking bay door open as he worked the wood. Kane could almost see the graceful lines of a bowl under the burl’s mass, with the shape of the lip framed in the burl’s rough bark. Setting his foot onto the lathe’s pedal, he could lean into the grain’s curve, his shoulders and arms straining to keep his carving tool firm against the hard wood. The whine of the motor lulled him as he worked, the tip of his blade finding the form he wanted to bring out of the amboyna burl.
That’s when he noticed the dog with its nose buried deep in the shelves where he kept his exotics.
“Fucking son of a bitch,” Kane spat out as the terrier dashed out of the workshop with a large chunk of koa clamped in its jaws. Stopping only long enough to roll down the bay door, Kane dashed after it.
The warehouse next door was built by the same architect as the gallery, a mirrored version of the co-op’s. A small alley, barely large enough for two men to walk shoulder-to-shoulder, separated the buildings’ back walls and, unlike the co-op, the other warehouse had been transformed into a home. The warehouse’s long alley wall retained its solid brick lower level, and the frosted glass square panels on the second level had been left in place, effectively preventing anyone from looking into the home from the gallery’s broad glass windows. Only two of the four docking bays seemed to remain, with thick blackened steel doors instead of the bright white the gallery chose. The warehouse’s old front glass panels were gone, replaced with long art-nouveau-style windows, but Kane couldn’t see past the thick curtains that swaddled the glass from the inside.
“Damn it,” Kane swore as he spotted the dog slipping under a bay door left open only a foot, enough for a blond terrier to squeeze through. He’d almost caught up with the mutt, but it was gone, and a tug on the metal rolling door only rattled it loudly. He squatted and tried to look through the opening but saw nothing, only darkness.
“Padlocked! Okay, let’s find out who owns this mutt.”
He paced down the front sidewalk and stared at the thick wooden door with its elaborate curlicue ironwork. There didn’t seem to be a doorbell, or at least not one Kane could see. Frowning, Kane was about to turn around and head back to the studio, but the koa’d been a bitch to get.
“And it’s not my damned problem that dog’s not on a leash,” he muttered angrily. “Fuck it. Time for whoever owns it to reap what they sow.”
FIRST, the pounding woke Miki up. It echoed through the converted warehouse until it seemed like the bricks picked up the beat and bounced it back on top of him. Mumbling in disgust, he turned over on the bed, pulling the soft sheets over his naked body. His bones ached in the cold San Francisco morning, and from the throb pulsating through his right leg, Miki knew in his gut that fog rolled in thick over the water, and there would be hell to pay in pain if he crawled out of his warm cocoon.
A wet tongue wormed into Miki’s ear, and he recoiled, spitting softly in disgust. The ripeness of the waterfront’s salty stink tickled his nose, and he reached out to shove the dog off the bed. The canine was too quick. Dodging the Miki’s wildly flung arm, the dog returned to lave the grumbling man’s face. In counterpoint to the slurping, the pounding continued, growing louder, although Miki hadn’t thought it was possible.
“Fuck, is it Thursday? Is that the grocery guy?” He sat up suddenly and instantly regretted it when the throb turned into quick, stabbing pains. Gritting his teeth, he reached for the bottle of ibuprofen he’d dropped to the floor the night before and dry-swallowed four of the burnt orange tablets. Bleary-eyed, he tried holding off the dog’s enthusiastic greeting and rolled out of the bed he’d set up on the warehouse’s lower floor.
The two-storied, narrow brick building had been refurbished while he was out on the road, and he’d slunk back to a home he’d never lived in, hoping to lick his wounds and maybe drink himself to death before anyone noticed he was gone.