He shrugged. “It’s what I do when all my dreams are crushed and any hope I have for true happiness is strangled to death by the gnarled hands of fate.”
“This happens to you so often that you have a standard reaction?”
“I have a standard reaction for everything,” Monk said. “I made an indexed, color-coded list of them. Haven’t you seen it?”
“I don’t believe that particular list was part of my orientation packet.”
“I wonder what other critical lists you’ve missed,” Monk said. “I’ll have to make a list.”
“You’re going to make a list of the lists,” I said.
“See? My whole life is crumbling around me. I have nothing.”
“I’m here, Mr. Monk. You have me.” I put my hand on his knee and gave him a reassuring squeeze. “What happened?”
“It’s obvious.”
“Not to me,” I said.
“You’re joking,” he said.
“No, I’m not. I really have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Monk tipped his head towards the couch. “It’s right in front of you.”
I looked.
I saw the couch, centered in the middle of the wall.
I saw the four identically framed and sized photos of his wife, Trudy, on the wall, which I knew he carefully straightened and aligned each morning with a level and a ruler.
And I saw the coffee table, which was crooked in relation to the couch. It was the only item in the entire apartment that wasn’t perfectly centered. But that wasn’t the problem. It was intentional. Monk had explained to me that Trudy used to angle the table that way so she could put her feet up on it and he could lay his head in her lap. He left the table crooked for her. Sometimes when I came to work in the morning, I’d find a pillow where Trudy once sat, the impression of Monk’s head on it.
“I still don’t see the problem,” I said.
“Are you blind?” he said.
“It might help if I turned the lights on,” I said, beginning to get irritated. “Or better yet, you could just tell me.”
“The stain,” he said.
I stared at him. “You’re going through all this anguish over a stain?”
“It’s a coffee stain and I can’t clean it off the carpet.”
I got up and opened the shades to let in some sunlight.
He winced. “Don’t. The whole world will know my shame.”
I looked down at the carpet, expecting to see some huge mess. But the carpet was spotless.
“Where’s the stain?” I asked.
“Between the couch and the table,” he said. “You can’t miss it.”
I went to the couch, sat down on the edge, and looked at the floor.
“I still don’t see it,” I said.
“Use the magnifying glass on the table.”
“If I have to use a magnifying glass to see it, does it really matter?”
“What you can’t see could kill you,” he said.
“A coffee stain can’t.”
“No,” he said, groaning. “It will merely destroy your will to live.”
“So just slide the coffee table over a millimeter to cover it,” I said. “I hide all kinds of stains under rugs and furniture.”
“I’ll still know the stain is there. I’ll feel it. I’ll hear it pulsating.”
“It’s a stain,” I said. “It’s not alive. It doesn’t have a pulse.”
“The only thing I can do is replace the entire carpet,” Monk said. “Again.”
“You’ve done this before?” I asked.
A hand grenade exploded in my house a couple years ago and I still didn’t replace the carpet. I just bought a bigger rug and placed it over the scorch marks.
“Once,” he said. There was a moment of silence. “Maybe twice.”
“Twice?” I said.
“Three times,” he said. “You need to give the carpet company a call. Their number is on the speed dial. They know the color and style. They keep a roll of the carpet on hand for me in case of major emergencies.”
“So that’s why you’re so sad,” I said. “Because this is the third time you’ve spent thousands of dollars to recarpet your living room over a stain that’s invisible to the naked eye.”
“The fourth time,” he said.
“Four times?” I said.
“Definitely no more than five.”
I stared at him. “How is it that you can never afford to give me a raise but you can find the money to recarpet your house five times?”
He opened his mouth to speak, but I interrupted him, pointing my finger at his face.
"If you say’six, no more than seven,’ there are going to be bloodstains on the carpet and they won’t be mine.”
He closed his mouth.
I can tolerate most of his quirks, except the ones that cost me money. I make little enough as it is without him squandering my future raises on pointless expenditures. But I knew this carpet thing was a fight that I couldn’t win.
“Call the carpet company yourself, Mr. Monk,” I said. “I can’t bear to do it.”
He got up, went into the kitchen, and made the call. While he did, I took his seat on the floor. I felt as depressed as he was, but for entirely different reasons. I was looking at a future of poverty and despair because he couldn’t live with a stain that a normal human being couldn’t see even with an electron microscope.
Monk came back into the living room. “They can start tomorrow.”
“Good,” I said.
“The bad news is that I have to move out for two days while they do it.”
“Where are you going to stay?” I asked.
Monk looked at me.
I looked back at him.
He tried to gaze at me imploringly, which made him appear as if he was suppressing a burp or trying to swallow a golf ball.
“Can’t you go somewhere else?” I said.
I’d had Monk as a houseguest once before and it was not
