by Lee Goldberg
The works of art on the walls were in identical frames and arranged by size in symmetrical groupings. Even the images within those frames, whether they were painted, sketched, or photographed, were symmetrical.
It all felt manufactured and synthetic, as if I’d walked into a home designed, built, and occupied by androids.
It made that open house in San Francisco, the one dressed for showing, seem lived in and authentic by comparison (minus the dead Realtor, of course).
“You have a beautiful home,” Monk said, stepping inside. “So warm and comfortable.”
Only if you find the ambience of mausoleums, hospital operating rooms, and morgues relaxing, which Monk did, primarily because they were so stainless and sterile.
“Thank you, Adrian,” she said.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was as if she and Monk shared the same interior decorator, a supercomputer or perhaps some alien being that had never actually been in an earthling’s home before but was nonetheless trying to create one.
I’m sure he didn’t expect that. I certainly didn’t.
“It’s perhaps the nicest home I’ve ever seen,” he said, looking awed. You would have thought we were touring the Palace of Versailles.
“I’m truly flattered,” she said.
The décor had to be a show for Monk’s benefit. But if it was, she’d pulled off a monumental undertaking that was accomplished with extraordinary speed and care.
“Is this really how you live?” I asked her.
“Oh, of course not,” she said, closing the door behind her.
I sighed with relief. “I didn’t think so.”
“I stashed all of my coprolites and dung art away so I wouldn’t offend Adrian.”
“And the rest of this?” I said, sweeping my arm to indicate the entire house.
“I’m sorry I didn’t have a chance to clean up,” she said. “But I barely had time to hide the art and make dinner as it is. I hope you brought your appetites.”
She led us into the living room, where there was a bottle of white wine for us and a bottle of Fiji water for Monk, and some hors d’oeuvres, a bowl full of roasted almonds and an assortment of canapés—toasted squares of bread topped with minced olives, mushrooms, shrimp, deviled eggs, and slices of cheese.
Monk and I sat down on the couch and I gobbled up a bunch of the canapés. Once they were in my mouth, I realized I was ravenous. I’d never gotten that Hot Pocket I went into the mini-mart to buy.
“Delicious,” I said, and I am ashamed to admit that my mouth may have been full at the time.
It took all the self-control I had not to scarf down all the canapés then and there, so I reached for a handful of almonds to fill my hand and my mouth.
Monk eyed the food suspiciously, which Ellen noticed with obvious amusement.
“I assure you that nothing I will be serving you tonight was made with anything predigested, and that includes the dishware,” Ellen said, opening the wine and filling our glasses before taking a seat across the coffee table from us.
“Was everything washed with real soap, including the plates and the linens?” Monk asked.
She nodded. “With common, brand-name dish soaps and laundry detergents found in any grocery store.”
With that disclaimer, Monk bravely reached for an olive canapé and ate it. I took two more of the shrimp ones and another handful of almonds.
“Very tasty,” he said and took another, popping it in his mouth.
“I grew the olives and mushrooms myself in my own garden,” Ellen said.
Monk suddenly went pale. “Using fertilizer?”
She smiled. “They were grown in soil enriched by a compost heap made up of decomposed organic matter like banana peels, grass clippings, eggshells, leaves, potato skins, uneaten fruit that went bad in my refrigerator, coffee grounds, that sort of thing. No chemicals and no excrement were used.”
Then again, her coffee grounds probably included beans that had once passed through the intestinal tract of a civet, but I didn’t see any need to make that clarification. I took a sip of the wine and it was delicious, so I hoped it was covered in her disclaimer and wasn’t derived from rare grapes crapped by some exotic animal I’d never heard of.
“You’re obviously a woman who appreciates cleanliness, order, and balance,” Monk said. “So how can you possibly peddle poop, much less surround yourself with it?”
“That’s exactly why I can,” she said.
“That makes no sense,” Monk said.
“It does if you understand my approach to life. For one thing, I can’t stand waste.”
“Neither can I,” he said.
“I prize efficiency and order.”
“Me, too,” Monk said, then turned to me. “Now we are getting somewhere.”
“That’s why I believe that anything and everything that can be recycled should be recycled, and that includes the excrement from all living things.”
“Okay, now you’re talking crazy,” Monk said. “It’s sad because you were doing so well before.”
“I’m a big believer in the importance of symmetry and circles,” she said.
“Now you’re talking sense again. Hold on to those concepts and you’ll finally begin to see reason.”
“I try my best to lead a balanced life.”
“Of course you do,” Monk said. “It’s only natural. Balance is something we should all strive to achieve.”
“That’s exactly what I’m getting at, Adrian. When we use something and recycle what’s left of it, and then that product is itself recycled, and if that process is continually repeated, it creates a perfect circle and a natural balance. But when there is waste, when something is just thrown away, that circle is broken and an imbalance is created. And so it is with poop. If we can find ways to recycle it for energy, art, fertilizer, gunpowder, food, soap, paper, and other products, then that circle, and that balance, are maintained.”
There was a long silence, broken only by the sound of me eating the remaining canapés and washing them down with wine. Finally, Monk rolled his shoulders and spoke.
“You’re right.”
I stared at him now, shocked. “She is?”
“Her argument makes a kind of sense,” he said. “It would make perfect sense if it didn’t include one thing.”
“What’s that?” Morse asked.
“Poop,” Monk said.
“Don’t think of poop as something repulsive and unhealthy that was extruded by a creature,” Morse said.
“But that’s exactly what it is,” he said. “So if you want to keep clean, how can you have poop everywhere? It’s an untenable contradiction.”
“I’ve adjusted my thinking,” she said.
“You mean you’ve lost your mind,” he said.
I would have chided Monk for insulting our hostess in her own home, but my mouth was full, so speaking up at that precise moment wouldn’t have been too polite, either.
Besides, she clearly wasn’t offended by his remark. If anything, she found it compelling. She leaned forward, narrowing the distance between them, and looked him in the eye.
“Think of poop as a by-product in the process of manufacturing a product or creating energy, like sawdust or scrap metal or a banana peel,” Morse said. “If you do, you’ll see it as something left over, a part that no longer fits anywhere, that has to be organized and reintegrated in some way or the natural balance is thrown completely out of whack.”
Monk cocked his head and looked at her for a long moment.
“I’ll try,” he said.
22
Mr. Monk Changes His Mind
It would have been huge if all Monk had done was agree to consider someone else’s point of view on a matter that he’d already had a strong opinion about.
That alone would have represented a major breakthrough for him.
But what he’d done actually went way, way beyond that, because the subject he’d agreed to reconsider was…
Something that had to be at the top of his list of things that he reviled and feared the most.
The fact that he’d agreed to even consider adjusting his beliefs about something he found so repugnant was truly a miracle, one that probably never could have happened before Trudy’s murder was solved.
It was such a big moment, such a Monk milestone, that I wouldn’t have been surprised if Dr. Kroger, his late shrink, had risen from the grave and knocked on the door to congratulate him.
But if Monk recognized the profound significance of this moment, he didn’t show it at all. He sat calmly through dinner, politely complimenting Ellen Morse on her homemade ravioli and fresh asparagus, all the spears the same size and set side by side on our plates.
It was the perfect meal for Monk, who’d hated her so vehemently just an hour ago, and yet there he was, being slowly charmed by her.
Maybe she really was the devil.
Monk was now at ease around Ellen Morse but I was becoming seriously creeped out, not by her take on poop but by the obsessive-compulsive way she lived in her home, especially since she didn’t seem to express those tendencies in any other aspect of her life—at least not as far as I’d seen.
Who was this woman?
So I grilled her—politely, of course.
Under my relentless questioning, she told us that her parents were outspoken liberals with shared political views but sharply different personalities. Her father was a buttoned-down mathematician, very organized and rational, while her mother was a free-spirited dancer/performance artist/painter, notoriously flighty and disorganized. By all rights, their marriage should never have lasted.
But somehow it did. They loved each other as passionately as they fought, so they found ways to compromise, to strike a balance that allowed them to be who they were without driving each other crazy and to create a peaceful home for their four kids.
That dichotomy of personalities lived on in Morse. She had her father’s sense of order and organization to the hilt, but hated math. She had her mother’s love of creative expression, but did nothing creative to express herself.
So she bounced around aimlessly, trying to find herself, and traveling the world while she did it, taking on odd jobs and dozens of liberal causes along the way, before becoming an artist’s agent, then an art gallery owner, and finally the proprietor of Poop.
I wanted to ask her how she’d become fascinated with excrement, if for no other reason than to remind Monk why he’d been sickened by her to start with, but he interrupted me.
“Have you ever been married?”
“Twice,” she said. “Maybe three times.”
“Maybe?”
“I’m not sure if the second marriage was actually legal,” she said. “We took our vows in a tribal ceremony in Africa while I was in the Peace Corps.”
“Why didn’t the marriages last?” I asked, hoping to pry some deep, dark, disturbing truth from her that was deeper, darker, and more disturbing than her Monkish secret life.
She shrugged. “Why do any relationships fail? For me, it was never anything dramatic like betrayals or addictions tearing us apart. The splits were amicable. I suppose it was more about the compromises you have to make, whether it’s too many or too few, and not being able to achieve that balance.”
“Balance is everything,” Monk said.
“What about you?” she asked Monk. “Have you ever been married?”
“Once,” he said and he told her about it.
And as he did, I realized that the differences between him and Trudy, a newspaper reporter, were almost as big, perhaps even bigger, than the ones between Morse’s parents. And yet I have no doubt that Monk’s marriage to Trudy would have endured if she hadn’t been taken from him by a murderer.
“She sounds like an amazing woman,” Morse said.
“She was,” Monk said.
“I’m impressed that you two were able to find that rare and perfect balance,” she said.
“I believe that’s love,” Monk said.
“I believe you’re right,” she said.
We left at about ten p.m.
That’s not true—we left at exactly ten p.m. Monk announced at 9:50 that perhaps we should be going, and I’m sure he and Morse then carefully timed their parting pleasantries so we’d be outside the door by 9:59.
“What a great night,” Monk said as we walked to the car. “And what a beautiful home.”
“It was creepy,” I said. “Nobody lives that way.”
“I do,” he said.
“I rest my case,” I said. “There is something seriously wrong with that woman.”
“You didn’t think so before.”
“You did,” I said.
“But now that I’ve had the chance to get to know her better, I see that she’s a woman of startling intelligence and complexity.”
“She’s nuts,” I said. “Quite possibly a psychopath.”
“Ellen’s abiding sense of balance, of natural symmetry, is inspiring, and her attention to cleanliness and order is extraordinary.”
“It’s scary strange. I bet her husbands ran away screaming, if they aren’t buried in her backyard. What do you bet they’re in her compost heap?”
“You liked her fine when you thought she was simply a purveyor of poop products,” he said. “But now that you’ve learned it’s perhaps her only flaw, one born out of her deep and abiding dedication to maintaining the balance and order of the universe, you hate her.”
“She served me a cup of hot crap the other night,” I said. “And in some ways I think she served us another one tonight.”
“You’ve had a long day, you subdued two robbers—it’s no wonder you’re feeling cynical,” Monk said. “Everything will look better in the morning.”
He stopped and the sound of hammering drew him over to the Goldmans’ driveway. I joined him. We looked at the garage in the backyard. The lights were on and we could hear Joel Goldman working inside.
“The funeral is tomorrow,” Monk said.
“No wonder he’s working so hard,” I said.
“He should be getting some sleep.”
“Maybe he can’t sleep. Or he’s afraid of what he’ll dream about.”
“After Trudy was killed, I looked forward to my dreams, because there she was still alive and we were together. The hard part wasn’t sleeping. It was waking up.”
“It was like losing him all over again,” I said, and saw Monk looking at me strangely. “I meant her. I meant—oh hell, you know what I meant. And you wonder why he’s working?”
I turned and walked back to the car. Monk lingered for a moment longer, then joined me.
Sharona prepared waffles for the two of us the next morning for breakfast, which only added to Monk’s obvious good mood.
“I knew you liked waffles,” Sharona said. “But I had no idea they’d make you this happy.”
“I’m not happy,” Monk said, using an eyedropper to fill one of his waffle squares with maple syrup. “I am, however, significantly less miserable.”
“So, what’s put you in such good cheer?” Sharona set a plate of waffles in front of me and said, “And you in such a lousy mood?”
“You didn’t tell us that Ellen Morse has an obsessive-compulsive disorder,” I said.
“There’s nothing wrong with being neat and clean,” Monk said.
“I didn’t know she had one,” Sharona said. “But so what if she does? It’s not like it’s something new for you.”
“But she hid it so well,” I said. “Which makes me wonder what else she’s hiding.”
“Her poop collection,” Monk said. “Thank God.”
“So you resent her because she has obsessive-compulsive tendencies,” Sharona said, “that she controls so effectively that you were totally unaware of them until she invited you into her home.”
“It was creepy,” I said.
“It was impressive,” Monk said. “You two could learn s
ome valuable lessons from her.”
“Sounds to me like you could, too, Adrian,” Sharona said, then pointed her spatula at me. “And you, of all people, should hope that he does. Imagine how great it would be if Adrian achieved the same balance that Ellen has.”
“She’s got amazing balance,” Monk said in a far-off, dreamy way.
“Oh my God, Adrian!” Sharona said.
Monk jerked, startled. “What? Did I get syrup on my shirt?” He started patting himself down and searching his body for a stain.
“You’re attracted to Ellen Morse,” Sharona said.
He looked up again. “I admire her sense of order, that’s all.”
Sharona pointed her spatula at me again. “And you’re jealous.”
“Suspicious,” I said. “What if it’s all just an elaborate act?”
“To do what?” Sharona said. “Steal his millions?”
“Get him to like her despite her occupation,” I said.
Disher came in, wearing his uniform. “And that’s a bad thing?”
“It is if she’s only doing it to humiliate him,” I said.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Monk said. “I was born humiliated.”
Sharona handed Disher a mug of coffee. He kissed her on the cheek and sat down at the table. “Why would Ellen want to do that?”
“To get back at Mr. Monk for treating her like crap.”
“But she likes crap,” Disher said with a grin.
Monk shook his head. “Her lifestyle is genuine. You can’t achieve what she has in her home if it isn’t something you truly believe in and that comes naturally to you. There are too many tiny details to keep track of and get right.”
“Adrian’s right, Natalie. Could you do it?” Sharona asked. “Even after all your years with him?”
“I’d like to see her try,” Monk said. “God knows I have been begging her to.”
They both had a point. But if the way Ellen Morse lived wasn’t an elaborate ruse staged for Monk’s benefit, that meant she was a pathologically organized person with a raging dung fetish, which was not my idea of a mentally healthy person.