He licked his lips and smacked them a couple of times.
“My mouth is dry,” Monk said, and turned to the passenger beside him. “You’re right; that was a salty sausage. I need a drink. You mind?”
He picked up his tray and held it out to the passenger to hold for him. The man took it.
“Thanks.” Monk lifted up his tray table and went down the aisle toward the back of the plane. I looked over my shoulder and saw him filling a paper cup with water from the plane’s dispenser. Before I could say anything, he drank it all.
I bolted out of my seat and hurried down the aisle after him. “Are you insane, Mr. Monk? That’s the deadliest water you can drink.”
“People drink out of water fountains every day.”
“Drinking airplane water is like drinking out of a toilet.”
“Dogs do it without a problem,” Monk said. “Doesn’t kill them. Chill out, hotcakes.”
Hotcakes?
“Mr. Monk,” I said firmly, hoping to get his complete attention. “Are you on something?”
“I thought we agreed you were going to call me Chad.”
“You are on something.”
“It’s a prescription Dr. Kroger gave me once to relieve my symptoms in extreme circumstances.”
“What symptoms?”
“All of them,” he said. “As long as I’m up, I think I’ll use the restroom.”
“You’re kidding,” I said. Wherever we were in San Francisco, he always made me drive him home to go to the bathroom.
“Where else would you suggest I relieve myself?”
He edged past me, opened the restroom door, and went inside. Monk was using a public lavatory. I would never have believed it could happen.
I continued back to the galley and asked the flight attendant for a drink.
“What would you like?” she asked.
“A scotch,” I said.
Monk emerged from the bathroom a moment later, not caring at all that he was trailing a piece of toilet paper from his shoe.
“Better make it two,” I said.
The rest of the flight was a living hell.
Although Monk wasn’t obsessing about how things were organized (or, more accurately, disorganized) or freaking out about little stuff that normal people would take in stride, he was irritating in an entirely new way. He was like a restless child.
What did he do? Let’s see, where should I start?
He led a Hawaii Five-O singalong with everybody making up their own lyrics to the theme. His lyrics went like this:
If you get in trouble, call the Monk, that’s me.
If you find a dead body, I’m the guy to see-eee.
Stop! In the name of the law.
Stop! Murder sticks in my craw.
I’ll find the killer. Call the Monk, that’s me….
There were more lyrics, but those are bad enough. I couldn’t get them out of my head for the entire flight. It was a crime against humanity, since I certainly wasn’t the only one suffering. (Even now, when I least expect it, those lyrics will come back and torment me for hours.)
He took off his shoes and roamed barefoot up and down the aisles, striking up conversations with startled passengers.
“I’m the Monk,” he said to one woman. “That looks like an interesting book you’re reading. Can I read a chapter? I know—let’s read it aloud.”
And he did.
He also went to the galley and hounded the flight attendants for their macadamia-nut-pancake recipe and refused to believe them when they insisted they simply reheated frozen food.
“But they taste so fluffy and fresh,” he said.
And he ate twenty-one bags of roasted peanuts, leaving the wrappers all over the plane.
“Everything should be dry-roasted,” he proclaimed to one and all. “Has anyone here ever tried dry-roasted chicken? Or dry-roasted granola? The possibilities are limitless!”
I thought the flight would never end. Finally we made our descent into Oahu. It says something about the beauty of Hawaii that the moment I glimpsed the island out the window, all my frustration with Monk disappeared.
Our approach to Honolulu International Airport took us over Pearl Harbor and gave me a terrific view of Waikiki and Diamond Head. The colors were so bright, the mountains so lush, and the water so blue, it didn’t seem real. It didn’t help that I was seeing it through a tiny porthole. I was separate from it. It was too much like seeing it on TV.
Television was my entire frame of reference for Hawaii anyway. I couldn’t look at the Waikiki shoreline without thinking of that shot from the Hawaii Five-O main titles, the camera zooming up from the water to the rooftop of a hotel tower to find Jack Lord standing there, grim faced and stoic in his blue suit.
And that memory naturally brought Monk’s atrocious improvised lyrics back into my head.
As we deplaned, we were greeted by airline hostesses who draped fragrant flower leis around our necks and welcomed us to the islands.
Much to my surprise, Monk accepted the lei and the kiss the hostess gave him on the cheek. It was a good thing he didn’t ask me for a wipe, because I didn’t bring any with me.
We had a one-hour layover in Honolulu before our forty-five-minute flight to Kauai. The airport was so nice, it wouldn’t have bothered me to wait twice that long. The main terminal was an enormous open patio that wrapped around a Japanese garden and a koi pond filled with Jurassic carp that could probably chew off my arm. The balmy trade winds blew through the airport, giving the entire place the feel of a resort hotel.
We had to take the Wiki Wiki shuttle bus to the Inter-island Terminal for our connecting flight to Kauai. Luckily it was a short distance, because Monk couldn’t stop repeating, “Wiki Wiki,” and giggling during the drive.
As soon as we got there, I ditched Monk in the terminal on the excuse that I had to use the ladies’ room. Which was the truth, but I also wanted to make a call in private.
I reached Dr. Kroger on my cell phone and told him what had happened.
“Amazing,” Dr. Kroger said. He sounded astonished and not the least bit horrified. He
