Free Mr. Monk is a Mess by Lee Goldberg

toothpaste, bars of soap, and shampoos to get myself cleaned up.
    So I accepted his invitation but made a slight detour on the way to his place. There was a Marshalls at the corner of Fifth and Market and I knew I could pick up a cheap change of clothes there.
    I parked in the red zone, stuck my SFPD crime scene permit on the dash, and ran inside before Monk could start lecturing me about breaking the law.
    I’m not a picky shopper and I’m an easy size to fit. I went straight to the clearance racks and selected a pair of jeans, some T-shirts and a blouse, underwear, and socks. In less than ten minutes, I was out the door again with my purchases and I’d made only a small dent on my credit card. I got back in the car quite pleased with myself for being so swift and thrifty.
    “You forgot to buy pajamas,” Monk said.
    “I can sleep in my underwear,” I said.
    “Not on my couch you can’t,” he said.
    “Why not?”
    “Because I might want to sit on it again someday.”
    “You think I’m that horribly filthy and disgusting?”
    “No, of course not,” he said.
    “I’m relieved to hear that.”
    “I think everybody is,” he said.
    “Fine. I’ll sleep in my clothes.”
    “The clothes you wore on the plane, where you sat on a seat that thousands of other people have sat upon, sweated upon, and been airsick upon, and that you wore into your home, a palace of stained carpets and decomposing corpses?” Monk said. “Are we talking about those clothes?”
    I sighed. Turned off the ignition and ran back into the store, found a tank top and a pair of sweats that could double as pajamas, and went back to the car.
    “Satisfied?” I asked as I tossed the bag into the backseat.
    He looked over his shoulder at the bag, then back at me. “Were they out of bathrobes?”
    “And nun’s habits, too,” I said and drove off.
    The closer we got to Monk’s apartment, the more tired I became and the more alert he got, which made sense. His tranquilizers had worn off entirely and he’d gotten plenty of sleep, while I’d been wide-awake for a long and stressful day of cross-country travel, confrontations, and corpses.
    I was ready for bed. But as soon as Monk opened his front door and turned on the light he gasped in horror.
    “Oh my God,” he said. “It’s a hellhole.”
    I’d predicted his reaction but I hadn’t planned on being around to witness it. I’d forgotten that he hadn’t seen his apartment yet while he was wide-awake.
    “I think you’re overreacting, Mr. Monk. Your apartment is perfectly, antiseptically, freakishly clean.”
    “Compared to your house, of course it is. Then again, so is a public urinal,” he said, taking off his jacket and hanging it up in the closet. “It’s going to take us all night to clean this place, perhaps longer.”
    “I’m too tired to clean.”
    “You can’t sleep in this kind of filth.”
    “I think I could,” I said.
    “This is actually a blessing. Cleaning is exactly the therapy you need right now,” he said, carefully rolling up his sleeves. “You’ll thank me later.”
    “No, I’ll see you later,” I said and turned back to the door.
    “Where are you going?”
    “I don’t know, but I’ll figure out something,” I said and walked out.
    I just didn’t have the energy or patience to get into a fight with him that I was sure to lose. Even if I avoided the argument and simply refused to help him scrub, vacuum, polish, dust, and disinfect an already perfectly clean apartment, which would be rude considering I was his houseguest, he’d make so much noise doing his work that it would be impossible for me to get any rest.
    So I surrendered and fled.
    I got in the car and started driving toward the Bay Bridge. My initial intention was to go to Berkeley and crash with my daughter and her roommates in their apartment.
    But then I decided I didn’t really want to burden her with my problems, which might cause some awkwardness with her roommates. They probably