“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.”