Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants (5 page)

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Authors: Lee Goldberg

BOOK: Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants
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“How’s that look to you, Adrian?” Sharona asked.
 
 
“Balanced,” Monk said.
 
 
“Wow, there’s no higher praise than that in your book,” Sharona said. “That may just be the nicest compliment you’ve ever given me.”
 
 
I resented Monk for making my daughter even more uncomfortable than she had to be and I resented Sharona for just being there.
 
 
“Can I play soccer next weekend?” Julie asked.
 
 
“With your arm in the cast?” Sharona said.
 
 
“Arms,” Monk corrected.
 
 
“Why not?” Julie said. “You’re only supposed to use your feet, not your hands.”
 
 
“I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” Sharona said. “But I like your attitude. You’re tough.”
 
 
“I’m a Teeger,” Julie said. “We don’t give up.”
 
 
I don’t know whether Julie was sending a message to Sharona on my behalf, but I loved her for it anyway.
 
 
“I believe you.” Sharona looked at me. “It was really nice meeting you both. I’m just sorry it was under these circumstances.”
 
 
“Me, too,” I said.
 
 
Sharona turned to Monk. “It was good to see you, Adrian. You seem to be doing just great.”
 
 
“I was,” Monk said forlornly.
 
 
I was so angry with Monk that I was tempted to leave him at the hospital. Let Sharona take him home if he missed her so much.
 
 
But in the end, I just walked out with Julie and he followed along with us to the car, like nothing had ever happened. Like we hadn’t just run into his former assistant and he hadn’t practically offered her
my
job in front of
my
face.
 
 
How could he be so insensitive? So selfish?
 
 
So
Monk
?
 
 
We rode in silence. Nobody said a word.
 
 
I dropped him off at his house and sped off, not even waiting to see if he got to his door. He was a grown man; if he couldn’t handle the journey from the sidewalk to his living room, too bad for him.
 
 
“Are you angry?” Julie said.
 
 
“What makes you say that?” I snapped.
 
 
“You’re grimacing and your face is red,” she said. “Is it because of me? Because of the medical bills?”
 
 
“No, dear, of course not,” I said, consciously willing the edge out of my voice. “I’m not mad at you at all. You’ve been amazing. I am so proud of you.”
 
 
“What for? It’s no big accomplishment to break your wrist.”
 
 
“For being so brave and strong and mature. You were very considerate with Mr. Monk when he wasn’t very considerate with you.”
 
 
“That’s not true, Mom. Mr. Monk is scared of hospitals but he came with us anyway,” she said. “He must really care about me.”
 
 
“He does,” I said.
 
 
“Now he knows that I care about him, too.”
 
 
“That’s why I’m so proud of you,” I said. “You’re worrying about how other people feel at a time when you should only be worrying about yourself.”
 
 
“There is no such time,” she said.
 
 
“Who says?” I asked.
 
 
“I do,” she said. “It’s something I decided.”
 
 
I’d spent so many years teaching my daughter how to think, but I’d missed the moment when she’d started thinking for herself. My little girl was growing up into someone with her own beliefs and opinions about life.
 
 
When had
that
happened? And why was it bringing tears to my eyes? I was turning into an emotional wreck.
 
 
“You still haven’t told me what you’re mad about,” Julie said.
 
 
“I’m mad at the Killer Cleats for playing so rough. I’m mad that you got hurt. And I’m mad that both of your arms are in casts when only one of them needs to be.”
 
 
“And you’re mad that Sharona came back.”
 
 
“Yeah,” I admitted, “that, too.”
 
 
“If you lose your job,” Julie asked, “will Mr. Monk still come to see us?”
 
 
“I hope so,” I said.
 
 
CHAPTER FOUR
 
 
Mr. Monk Can’t Decide
 
 
When we got home, I took the extra cast off Julie’s left arm, made us both grilled cheese sandwiches and gave her a couple painkillers. She went to bed early that night and was asleep within a minute. I went to bed early, too, but sleep didn’t come as easily for me.
 
 
I was really troubled about Sharona coming back into Monk’s life. I won’t lie to you, I felt threatened.
 
 
Monk wasn’t an easy man to work with. I was hired to take care of him, to be his caretaker, his driver, his shopper, his secretary and his companion. It was a real struggle at first.
 
 
Over time, though, that relationship had changed and things got easier for both of us. I wasn’t just taking care of him anymore—he was taking care of me, too. I had come to rely on Monk, and he on me, in ways that went beyond employer and employee.
 
 
If you set aside Monk’s phobias and hang-ups, we had a lot in common. We’d both lost a spouse to a violent death— my husband, Mitch, was a Navy pilot shot down in Kosovo. I never found out exactly what happened to Mitch and Monk is still haunted by his wife Trudy’s unsolved murder.
 
 
When Monk and I met, we were both reeling from our losses and trying to cope. We still were, but at least we had each other to lean on. We understood each other’s pain without having to explain a thing. It was nice to know that
someone
did and that meant a lot to me. It made me feel less alone and I think it did for him, too.
 
 
Monk had also become the only dependable, constant man in my daughter’s life since Mitch was killed. Sure, I’d dated some men, but there hadn’t been any real romances (though I almost fell for a firefighter once, a guy named Joe Cochran, who still pursues me. Sometimes I wish I’d let myself get caught, but I was afraid I’d lose him to a fire the way I lost Mitch to a war). I didn’t introduce Julie to many of the men and I never brought any of them home to spend the night. I didn’t want Julie to get attached to a man only to have her heart broken when he left.
 
 
I never thought that she’d see Monk as anything but my strange boss or that she would come to care for him so much. I guess that, despite all his eccentricities, Julie knew she could count on him.
 
 
Monk was the ultimate creature of habit and a man who strenuously resisted change. Sometimes, where kids are concerned, that can be a good thing.
 
 
The three of us spent a lot of time together doing mundane, domestic things that had nothing to do with my job. It was comfortable, and it was safe, and I didn’t want to lose it.
 
 
And I knew that I would if Monk fired me and gave Sharona her old job back.
 
 
But Sharona had a big edge over me. She was the one who’d saved Monk and she always would be. No matter how long I worked for him, or how close we became, I couldn’t beat that. He’d forgive her for just about anything. I would always be in second position.
 
 
It scared me.
 
 
But like Julie said, I’m a Teeger. I wasn’t going down without a fight. And I’d pretty much decided at the hospital that my relationship with Adrian Monk was something worth fighting for.
 
 
I would have gladly let Julie stay home from school on Monday but she insisted on going anyway. I think she wanted to show off her cast and prove how tough she was, which was fine by me. I promised to take her around our bohemian Noe Valley neighborhood that night to offer the merchants along Twenty-fourth Street the chance to advertise on her arm. In the meantime, Julie was going to give some thought to the advertising rates she wanted to charge.
 
 
I thought she had a pretty good chance of finding some takers. We were living in San Francisco, after all, where people enthusiastically embraced the weird, the radical and the crazy. It was no wonder that Monk was so comfortable here and found so much around him that needed straightening, balancing and organizing.
 
 
San Francisco. Home of the crookedest street in the world
and
Adrian Monk. Somehow that just seemed right to me and was proof that God has a terrific sense of humor.
 
 
I dropped Julie off at school and headed straight to Monk’s apartment on Pine. There was an old, beat-up Volvo station wagon in my spot with a hospital-employee parking permit stuck to the windshield.
 
 
I found the symbolic value of that very unnerving. Sharonacertainly hadn’t wasted any time moving in on me. This was going to be war. I could see that now.
 
 
I flung open Monk’s front door and marched in like a jealous wife hoping to catch her husband cheating on her.
 
 
The two of them were sitting at Monk’s dining room table, eating bowls of Wheat Chex, without milk, of course. Monk was afraid of milk, even when it was in someone else’s bowl.
 
 
“Perfect timing, Natalie,” Monk said. “Sharona just stopped by with breakfast. She brought Chex!”
 
 
“How nice,” I said, meaning, of course,
How terrible.
 
 
“I was on my way home from work and thought I’d drop in and say hello,” Sharona said. “I know Adrian can always use more Chex.”
 
 
“You just finished work?” Monk asked. “But it’s nine a.m.”
 
 
“The Sunday hell shift was the only one I could get,” Sharona said. “All the good ones were already taken by nurses with more seniority than I have. But what could I do? I needed the job.”
 
 
Which I was sure was her oh so subtle way of saying she wanted her old one back. It was bad enough she was bribing Monk with Chex.
 
 
“So who got Benji off to school?” Monk asked.
 
 
“My sister. We’re living with her until I can get on my feet again,” Sharona said. “But with Trevor’s legal problems, that could be a while.”
 
 
“I thought you’d turned your back on him,” I said.
 
 
“I did, but we still have a joint bank account and he’s already taken what little we had left in our savings to pay his defense lawyer.”
 
 
“I’m sure Mr. Monk could help,” I said.
 
 
“I couldn’t borrow money from Adrian,” Sharona said.
 
 
“No,” Monk said, “you couldn’t.”
 
 
“What I meant was that you wouldn’t have to live with your sister, or pay any legal fees, if Mr. Monk gets Trevor out of prison,” I said, turning to Monk. “You don’t have any cases right now anyway.”
 
 
“If Sharona says he’s guilty,” Monk said, “then I’m sure he is.”
 
 
“How do you know?” I said.
 
 
“Because the police arrested him and he’s in jail,” Monk said. “That means he’s guilty until proven innocent.”
 
 
“It’s the other way around,” I said.
 
 
“Not in this case,” Monk said.

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