Free Mr. Monk on the Couch by Lee Goldberg Page B

nothing is.”
    “By that, you mean having sex.”
    Monk gave me a stern look. “Do you realize what that actually involves?”
    “I have a distant memory,” I said.
    “At least he had the good sense to do it in a shower,” Monk said, “where there’s plenty of soap, cleanser, disinfectant, rubber gloves, and scrubbing brushes.”
    I didn’t bother arguing any more with Monk. It was pointless when he was that distraught. Instead, I did as he asked and took him to Dr. Bell’s office. I didn’t think Dr. Bell would do anything about Ambrose, but I hoped that he could do something for Monk.
     
    I dropped him off in front of Dr. Bell’s office and sped away. I didn’t want to be around when the disinfectant wipes hit the fan.
    I found a parking spot a few blocks away off Columbus Avenue and walked down to Washington Square. It was a nice day, and I was happy to just sit there and watch the children play, and the couples make out, and the dogs chase balls, as if all of them were actors on a stage, performing for an audience of one.
    But after about an hour, my cell phone rang and a very irritated Dr. Bell insisted that I come get Monk immediately. I didn’t ask Dr. Bell how the session went and he wouldn’t have told me if I had.
    When I drove up to Dr. Bell’s office, Monk was already waiting for me, pacing on the sidewalk out front. He got in the car and slammed the door.
    “The planet has slipped off its axis and is rolling into the abyss,” he said.
    The fact that Monk was using a belabored metaphor like that could only mean that things didn’t go well.
    “I take it Dr. Bell declined to institutionalize your brother for falling in love.”
    Monk shook his head. “He wasn’t paying attention to what I was saying. He was too busy listening to the fatties in his compulsive overeaters group.”
    “You crashed their session, Mr. Monk.”
    “Oh come on. What do they have to talk about? So I told them: ‘Stop eating so much, you’re all fat enough as it is. If you can’t do that, simply wire your jaws shut until the tonnage is gone.’ There. Done. Problem solved. I assumed we were ready to move on to a real psychiatric emergency, like my crazy brother taking showers with a sociopath. But things inexplicably got ugly.”
    “I can imagine,” I said.
    “No, you can’t. They became an angry mob. They charged me like rampaging elephants. I wasn’t sure whether they were going to crush me, or eat me, or both. Those people desperately need help.”
    “Which is what they were trying to get from Dr. Bell when you intruded on their therapy session and ridiculed their problems.”
    “Ambrose is on his own,” Monk said. “There’s nothing I can do for him.”
    “He’ll appreciate that,” I said.
    “You say that now,” Monk said. “But wait until his heart is broken.”
    “It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
    “This isn’t love. It’s lunacy.”
    “Love is a kind of lunacy.”
    “I’m glad you’re finally seeing reason,” Monk said.
     
    We went back to Monk’s place, where he went straight to the refrigerator, took a drink of Fiji water right out of the bottle, and then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He looked me in the eye defiantly, as if I represented the conventions he was breaking. Maybe that’s because I was the only one around. It actually would have made much more sense for him to look defiantly into a mirror. I had no problem drinking out of the bottle or using the back of my hand as a napkin.
    “Am I shocking you?” he asked, then took another sip from the bottle.
    “Not really,” I said.
    “I guess there are no boundaries of human behavior left to cross after what we’ve seen today.”
    “You’re probably right,” I said. “I think I’ll go home and try to cope.”
    He opened the refrigerator again and tossed me a bottle of Fiji water.
    “Drink responsibly,” Monk said. “Don’t open that until you get