“Tomorrow works for me.” Ten minutes from now would have worked for me, too, but I didn’t want to seem too eager. We set a time and I gave him my address.
When I hung up the phone, Monk was drying the dishes and giving me a look.
“What?” I said.
“You’re going on a date with Firefighter Joe?”
“It appears that way,” I said, smiling giddily.
“Who is going to take care of Julie?”
I wasn’t as concerned about that as I was about who would take care of
“I was hoping you’d keep an eye on her for me,” I said. Then I lied, “A sitter is going to be hard to get on such short notice. Do you mind?”
“Will there be any shenanigans?”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Will I have to organize any activities?”
“She’ll probably just stay in her room,” I said. “She’s at that age.”
“Me too,” Monk said.
On Sunday mornings, Julie and I like to get into our grungiest old sweats, grab the Sunday
Julie likes to read the comics, of course, and the capsule movie reviews in the Datebook, also known as the pink section for its colored pages. Each review is accompanied by a drawing of a little man in a bowler hat sitting in a movie theater chair. For a great movie he leaps out of his chair, hands clapping, eyes bugging out, hat flying off his head. If the movie stinks, he slumps in his seat, sound asleep.
Sometimes, as I go through the week, I picture that guy sitting in his chair, reviewing my life as it plays out in front of him. Most of the time he’s sitting ramrod straight in his seat, mildly interested, which is a mediocre review. Rarely do I imagine him leaping out of his chair in ecstatic glee on my account.
After breakfast we take a long walk up a very steep hill to Delores Park, where the view of the Castro, the Civic Center, and the Financial District is spectacular. But that’s not the view we go to see. We like to sit under a palm tree on the grassy knoll and people-watch. We see all kinds of people of every race in every possible combination.
Take the couples, for instance. We see men and women, men and men, women and women, and people who fall somewhere in between. We see mimes performing, kids playing, families picnicking, bands playing, groups protesting—all of it against the panoramic downtown backdrop. It’s the best show in town.
We usually stay in the park for an hour or so, talking about the week that was and the week that’s coming, and then, once we’ve caught our breath and had our fill of the show, we make the easy walk downhill. Once we get home, around noonish, we take our showers, change into fresh clothes, and do whatever chores and errands need doing.
But our routine was shaken up on that Sunday by a couple of things. First there was the weather. The city was socked in by thick fog and soaked by drizzle. And then there was Monk.
He woke me up at six A.M. with his incessant scrubbing. I dragged myself out of bed in my T-shirt and sweats to find him in the hall bathroom.
Monk, his hands in dish gloves, was on his knees in the bathtub polishing the drain. He was wearing a matched set of pajamas, and sheepskin slippers, which would have been adorable if he weren’t an adult.
Obviously I’d cleaned the bathroom before he arrived, but not to the point that you needed sunglasses to tolerate the glare off the linoleum, which was what he’d done to it. On the sink there was a bar of soap still in its wrapper, a brand-new toothbrush enclosed in plastic, and a fresh tube of toothpaste. His electric razor was plugged into the outlet.
“It’s six o’clock in the morning, Mr. Monk,” I whispered so as not to wake Julie.
“I didn’t know you’re such an early riser.”
“I’m not,” I said. “What are you doing?”
“Getting ready to take a shower,” he said.
“You do this before every shower?”
“And after,” he said.
I shook my head and trudged to the kitchen. He was still in there two hours later. Julie was up by then and she was sitting at the table in her bathrobe, eating a bowl of cereal and shaking her leg.
“I really have to go to the bathroom, Mom.”
“I’m sure Mr. Monk will be out in a minute,” I said.
“You said that an hour ago,” she said. “I’ve had two glasses of orange juice since then.”
“That wasn’t very smart, was it?”
“I didn’t think he’d be in there forever,” she said. “Couldn’t you knock?”
“Is it that bad?”
“It’s that bad,” she said.
So we both got up and went to the bathroom door. I knocked.
“Mr. Monk?” I said. “We really need to use the bathroom.”
“Does it have to be this one?” he asked from behind the door.
“It’s the only one in the house,” I said.
He opened the door, still holding his toothbrush. The bathroom gleamed the way it had at six. There was no sign at all that he’d used it. Julie bounced and shifted her weight from foot to foot.
“How well do you know the neighbors?” he asked.
“Not that well,” I said. “We’re going to have to share this bathroom.”
“I don’t see how that is going to work,” he said.
Julie groaned in frustration, pushed past Monk, and went straight for the toilet. He scrambled out of the bathroom in terror and slammed the door closed behind him before she could even lift up the lid of the toilet seat.
Monk stood there looking at me. I looked at him.
“There’s only one bathroom and three of us,” I said.
“It’s barbaric,” he said. “Does the health department know about this?”
“You’ll just have to get used to it.”
“How can you live this way?” he said.
“If you paid me more,” I said, “I wouldn’t have to.”
That shut him up. I knew it would.
The only thing stronger than Monk’s compulsion for cleanliness and order is his stinginess with money.
6
Mr. Monk Meets the Queen
I spent an hour acting as Julie’s social secretary, arranging a playdate for her at the home of one of her friends so she would be under a parent’s supervision for the day while I assisted Monk on his investigation.
Since, technically, Monk was working for Julie, she didn’t mind that I was dumping her at her friend’s house. It didn’t hurt that her friend had an Xbox, a PlayStation, a Game Boy, and every other computer game gizmo ever devised by man. The downside for me was that Julie would come home demanding, for the hundredth time, that I
