We talked about the usual first-date stuff. We told each other abbreviated versions of our life stories. I tried to tell mine without dwelling too much on Mitch’s death so as not to depress myself or Joe. I learned that he was raised in Berkeley, that his father was a poet and his mother was a park ranger, and that he’d never been married.
The conversation then turned to firefighting. He told some exciting stories about fires and the colorful history of his firehouse, which was built after the 1906 quake on the site of a rooming house that was the final hideout of desperado Roderick Turlock, the notorious train robber who bedeviled the Pinkertons with his daring gold thefts.
Talking about the firehouse, of course, brought up the investigation into Sparky’s death. I filled Joe in on what we’d learned, that on the night of Sparky’s murder Gregorio Dumas claimed he saw a fireman leave the station a half hour after the rest of the company went to put out the fire at Esther Stoval’s house.
Joe said Gregorio had to be lying, since all the firemen on duty were at the fire. Nobody was left behind at the station or sent back for any reason later.
I could see that talking about Sparky was bringing him down, so I told him some stories about Monk, who amazes me because he can untangle the most perplexing, complicated murder mysteries but is afraid to step into a telephone booth.
We left the restaurant and walked aimlessly around Chinatown for a while, then stopped in at City Lights Bookstore at Broadway and Columbus to browse. I liked that we could enjoy each other’s company even when we weren’t saying anything, but were just standing near each other looking at books.
The clock was inching toward midnight by the time he drove me home. We were only a few blocks away when he pulled over at Dolores Park, at the corner of Church and Twentieth. The park was a scary place at night, full of vagrants and drug dealers.
“Why are we stopping?” I asked.
“I’d like to pay my respects,” he said.
Joe pulled over, got out of the car, and went over to a fire hydrant, which was painted gold. I got out and joined him, looking around to make sure no killers, rapists, or junkies were heading our way.
“What are we doing here?” I asked.
“This was the little fire hydrant that saved San Francisco after the 1906 quake,” he said, gazing at it thoughtfully.
I glanced at the hydrant. It never struck me as special, though I’d certainly noticed it over the years, usually when some dog was peeing on it.
“This one?” I said. “It seems so far away from downtown.”
“The quake knocked out all the other hydrants. But it was water from this one that finally tamed the firestorm. Every year after that, at five A.M. on April eighteenth, survivors of the quake would show up here and give it another coat of gold paint. Some still do, but mostly it’s up to members of the St. Francis Hook and Ladder Society to carry on the tradition. I’ve missed the last couple of anniversaries.”
I thought he might salute the hydrant or something, but he just gave it a nod and we got back in the car. I wondered if every fireman was as into the lore and legend of San Francisco firefighters as Joe was.
He got me from the park to my doorstep in about two minutes and walked me to my door. I wanted to avoid any awkward moments, so I took the initiative and gave him a friendly kiss on the lips.
“I had a great time,” I said. “A really, really great night.”
“So did I,” Joe replied. “I hope we can do this again sometime soon.”
I wasn’t going to leave him hanging. Or myself. “When are you off duty again?”
He gave me a big smile. “Wednesday.”
“It’s a date,” I said. “Same time?”
“Same time.” He gave me a kiss, a little friendlier than the one I had given him.
I unlocked the door and went inside. I immediately froze. Something wasn’t right. I mean, I was definitely in my house—these were my things—but there was something wrong. Off-kilter. Weird. Like I’d stepped through the door into an alternate universe. It was as if I weren’t standing in my house, but in a brilliant re-creation, like a movie set.
I blinked hard and looked around again. What was it that was giving me that feeling of being in another dimension?
Monk came out of the kitchen with a glass of milk. “Did you enjoy your date?”
“He’s a very sweet man,” I said.
I told Monk the story about the firehouse and the train robber and the reasons Joe thought Gregorio Dumas was lying about seeing a fireman at the station. Monk mulled all of that for a moment, working out that nonexistent kink in his neck.
“How did things go tonight with you and Julie?” I asked.
“We worked the LEGOs for a while.”
Monk gestured to the kitchen. I looked past him and saw a massive and elaborate LEGO castle, complete with drawbridge, turrets, and a moat, erected on our table. It would have taken me a year to build that.
“She’s got the touch,” he said proudly.
“Really?”
“With the right training and lots of practice, I think she could become a LEGO master.”
“Like yourself.”
“I don’t like to brag.”
“So what did you do with the rest of your evening?” I asked, still feeling unsettled and off balance.
Monk shrugged. “I straightened up a little bit.”
So
that
was it.
I looked around the room again and saw what I’d only registered unconsciously before. Monk had done exactly what he said: He’d literally straightened the place. He must have taken a T square and a level to everything in the house. All my stuff was still there, only it had been adjusted. Aligned. The furniture was centered and each piece was repositioned at uniform, measured distances from the others. All the pictures on the wall had been rehung, so that the spaces between them were consistent. The knickknacks and framed photos on the tables and shelves were grouped by height and shape and spaced evenly apart. The magazines were arranged by name and stacked chronologically. He’d reorganized my books alphabetically, by size, and, for all I knew, by copyright date as well.
The living room—and I assumed the entire house—was clean, organized, and utterly sterile. It looked like a model home. I hated it.
“Mr. Monk, everything in here is level and centered and perfectly organized.”
“Thank you.” He beamed with pride, which only frustrated and infuriated me more.
“No, it’s wrong. Don’t you see? You’ve taken all the personality and charm out of my house.”
“Everything is still here,” Monk said. “Except the dirt, the dust, and half a grilled cheese sandwich I found under the couch.”
“But there’s no more clutter,” I said. “It looks like robots live here.”
“And that’s a bad thing?”
“
People
live here, Mr. Monk. Eight years of marriage, twelve years of parenting, a mother and daughter living together; that all leaves a trail. I like that trail. It comforts me. It’s the muddled arrangement of photos on the shelf, the half-read book left open on the arm of a chair, and yes, even the forgotten grilled cheese sandwich. Clutter and disorganization, those are signs of life. It
is
life.”
“Not mine,” he said.
Those two words carried an infinite sadness that made me ache and, for a moment, forget my own frustration and think about his.
Monk’s life was a constant pursuit of order. I’m sure that’s why he became a detective and why he’s so good at solving murders. He notices all the things that don’t fit as they should and puts them into their proper places, creating a solution. Restoring order.
The only mystery he hasn’t been able to solve is the one at the heart of his own personal disorder.
The murder of his wife.
Everything else he did, like organizing my house or making sure my daughter’s shoelaces were even, was a poor substitute for the perfect order he lost with Trudy. That could never be restored.
But I couldn’t say all that to him. Instead I took his hand in mine.
“Your life is a lot messier than you think. I’m a big mess and I’m part of it, aren’t I?”
“You and Julie,” Monk said. “And I’m glad you are.”
“Me, too, Mr. Monk.”
“Actually, I’ve loosened up quite a bit.”
“You have?”
“I haven’t always been the easygoing guy you know today,” Monk said. “There was a time when I was very uptight.”
“I can’t imagine that.” I gave his hand a squeeze and let go. “Please don’t straighten up my house anymore.”
He nodded.
“Good night, Mr. Monk.”
“Good night, Natalie.”
I went to my room. It wasn’t until I was in bed, and nearly asleep, that I realized that I’d held his hand and he didn’t ask for a wipe. Even if he sanitized his hands later, at least he didn’t do it in front of me. That had to mean something, and whatever it was, I think it was something good.
9
Mr. Monk and the Thirtieth Floor
Straightening up the house must have exhausted Monk because on Monday morning Julie woke up before he did and managed to beat him to the bathroom by a few seconds. They nearly collided at the door at six o’clock.
“I need to use the bathroom first,” Monk said.
“Is it number one or number two?”
“I think I have a constitutional right not to have to answer that question.”
“I need to know how long you’re going to be,” Julie said, holding the door possessively with one hand, her school clothes draped over her arm.
“No longer than usual.”
“I can’t wait that long,” Julie said. “School starts at eight fifteen, not noon.”
She closed the door on him. He stared at the door for a moment, then looked at me. I was standing outside my bedroom, not bothering to hide my amusement.
“Does she have to use the bathroom so often?” Monk said.
“Would you prefer she didn’t bathe at all?”
“But it was ready for me. I cleaned it last night.”
“You cleaned
everything
last night,” I said, and padded past him into the kitchen.
The LEGO castle was gone. Monk must have dismantled it and put all the pieces back in their proper boxes before he went to bed. No wonder he’d overslept. I opened the pantry to get myself a bagel and noticed that Monk had rearranged all the boxed and canned goods by food group and expiration date.
Monk came in and reached past me for his box of Chex. The cereal was made up of almost perfect squares of shredded wheat. The imperfect squares would be sorted out of his bowl before he poured in the milk.
I opened the cupboard to get him a bowl and was shocked to find it empty. There wasn’t a single bowl, plate, or dish inside, just barren shelves.
I turned to look at Monk, who was sitting at the table carefully selecting Chex one at a time from the box and eating them.
“What happened to all my dishes?”
He wouldn’t look up at me, pretending instead to concentrate on the difficult task of selecting Chex. “It’s a little complicated.”
“I don’t see the complication, Mr. Monk. I had dishes last night and now I don’t. Where are they?”
“You had seven bowls, which isn’t right. You should have six or eight, but not seven. So one bowl obviously needed to go. But you had eight plates. You can see the problem.”
“I can see that I don’t have any dishes;
that’s
the problem.”
“Everyone knows you can’t have six bowls and eight plates, so two plates had to go. But then I noticed that some of the bowls and plates were chipped, and not all of them in the same places. You had a matching set of dishes that didn’t match at all. I was faced with a situation that was spiraling out of control into total chaos. The only reasonable thing to do was to get rid of them all.”
Monk looked up at me then, clearly expecting sympathy and understanding. He sure as hell wasn’t going to get it from me.
“Reasonable? You call throwing out all of my dishes
reasonable
?”
“ ‘Thoughtful,’ ‘conscientious,’ and ‘responsible’ also came to mind,” Monk said. “But I thought ‘reasonable’ said it best.”
“Here’s what we’re going to do today before you solve any murders or catch any bad guys,” I said. “As soon as you are showered and dressed, we’re going to Pottery Barn and you’re going to buy me a new set of dishes, or you can eat your next meal in this house off the floor.”
I reached for the silverware drawer for a knife to cut my bagel, but I stopped before opening it.
“Do I want to open this drawer?” I asked.
“It depends what you’re looking for.”
“A knife would be nice,” I said. “Actually, how about any silverware at all?”
Monk shifted in his chair. “You don’t want to open the drawer.”
“You can add silverware to the list of things you’re buying me today,” I said, and went to the refrigerator. I picked up the carton of orange juice and took a drink from it.
Monk cringed, as I knew he would. “You really shouldn’t drink from the carton.”
“Fine.” I turned and pinned him with the coldest, cruelest, most accusatory glare I could muster. “Do I still own a glass I can drink from instead?”
He shifted in his seat.
“I didn’t think so.” I took the carton with me and slammed the refrigerator door shut. “I hope your credit card is paid up, Mr. Monk, because it’s going to get a real workout today.”
I stomped back to my bedroom with my bagel and orange juice and left Monk alone in my dish-less, knifeless, cupless kitchen.
The streets were damp, and fog completely obscured the skyline on that Monday morning, but the city was bustling. The downtown sidewalks were jammed with young professionals wearing the latest fashion accessory—something electronic in the ear.
There wasn’t a naked ear in sight.