by Lee Goldberg
“All?”
I stood up and looked back and noticed, for the first time, that just about every kid in the plane was holding a balloon shaped into some kind of animal or wearing one as a crown.
So were a few of the adults. And one of the stewardesses.
I sat back down and stared at Monk. “Where did you learn to do that?”
Monk shrugged. “It just came naturally. Would you like me to make you one?”
“No thanks,” I said.
I made a mental note to tell Dr. Kroger about this. I was pretty sure that the sudden ability to make balloon art was one side effect of Dioxynl that nobody knew about.
Maybe Dr. Kroger could write a paper on it. Maybe that opportunity would make up for Monk’s unexpected intrusion into his vacation.
Maybe Dr. Kroger would eventually see what was about to come as a blessing in disguise.
Yeah, right. Even I didn’t believe that.
CHAPTER NINE
Mr. Monk Arrives in Germany
Ispent the rest of the flight reading up on Lohr in the Germany guidebooks while Monk roamed around the plane, mingling with the passengers like it was a cocktail party. He didn’t return to his seat until we were descending to Frankfurt.
We arrived at the airport at eleven a.m., right on time. The airline was cheap but punctual.
I stood up and pushed Monk into the aisle the instant our plane came to a stop at the gate.
“Relax,” Monk said. “There’s no hurry. Germany isn’t going anywhere.”
My friends and family mistake my mad rush to get off airplanes for joy at being home or eagerness to begin my trip.
It’s not. It’s what I call “situational claustrophobia.”
I don’t have any problems with claustrophobia except when I wake up in a sleeping bag or am in a plane at the end of a flight. In both situations, I feel smothered and cramped and have to escape as quickly as possible.
Weird, huh?
I even have nightmares sometimes about being zipped up tight in a sleeping bag on a plane when it arrives at an airport.
Everybody is probably a little bit crazy. Well, that’s my bit.
I pushed, elbowed, and squeezed my way through the narrow aisle and out of the plane. I didn’t see Monk again until I got into the airport, where I had to endure nasty looks from all the passengers I’d bruised and trampled and shoved aside in my rush to escape.
Monk was accompanied off the plane by a young woman who could have been a professional fashion model. She had an impossibly perfect body and eyes so radiantly blue that she could probably instantly hypnotize anyone she glanced at.
“If you’re ever in Berlin, give me a call,” she said as she slipped a piece of paper into Monk’s shirt pocket. “I’ll show you around.”
“I’d like that, Elke,” Monk said.
“I have to warn you, Adrian—we might not ever make it out of my apartment.”
Elke gave him a kiss on the lips that would have made most men spontaneously combust, but Monk took it calmly.
She looked at me as she did it, as if daring me to stop her, and then she hurried off.
Monk watched her go. “She must have a very nice apartment.”
“I don’t think that’s what she meant,” I said.
“What did she mean?”
“Never mind,” I said. “What’s the story with her?”
“She’s a photographer. We had a great conversation while you were asleep. She even invited me to join her club.”
“What is it?”
“It’s called the Mile High Club,” Monk said. “I asked her to send me an application and said I would think about it.”
I didn’t bother explaining to him what the membership requirements were. I was much more interested in what he’d said that would make a beautiful young woman want to throw herself at him. Maybe she just couldn’t resist a man in lederhosen.
We headed to customs. Monk went ahead of me and handed his passport to the agent in the glass booth. The agent wore an ugly green uniform that seemed to change the color of his skin. He looked like he was suffering from jaundice.
“What is the purpose of your trip?” the customs agent asked by rote in a heavy German accent.
“I have an appointment with my psychiatrist,” Monk said.
The agent looked up at Monk. “He’s in Germany?”
“On vacation,” Monk said. “He’s attending a conference in Lohr.”
“Is he expecting you?”
Monk shook his head. “It’s a surprise.”
“How long are you staying in Germany?”
“Until he comes back to Frisco or I am sane,” Monk said. “Whichever comes first.”
“Are you telling me that you’re crazy?”
“Hell no,” Monk said. “Just deeply disturbed. But it’s okay. I’m jacked up on mind-altering drugs.”
“You’re drugged,” the customs agent said.
“Who isn’t these days?” Monk said.
The customs agent studied Monk. The man was clearly trying to decide whether or not to let an insane junkie into the country. I felt a pang of anxiety. What if the agent denied Monk entry? After a long moment, the agent sighed and stamped Monk’s passport.
“Have a nice trip,” the agent said.
Monk walked on into the baggage claim area. I stepped up to the same booth. The agent glanced at my passport, then up at me.
“Are you with that last guy?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Lucky you,” he said and stamped my passport.
We collected our bags and went into the terminal. Near the exit to the street, there were several counters where you could rent cars, buy food, or exchange currency.
I went first to the currency exchange counter to swap Monk’s cash for euros. He took some crisp euros from me and went to a hot dog stand while I went to a rental car counter to arrange our transportation.
I got the keys and paperwork, then I found Monk, who’d bought himself six different hot dogs, loaded them up with condiments, and put them in a carryout box.
“They have an amazing selection of sausages here,” Monk said. “I didn’t know which one to pick, so I took one of each.”
I was astonished. Hot dogs were at the top of Monk’s list of hazardous foods that should be outlawed. They were right up there with mixed nuts, granola, and scrambled eggs.
“You know that a sausage is seasoned ground meat stuffed into animal intestine,” I said. “And you know what intestines are usually stuffed with.”
“I don’t see your point,” Monk said, taking a bite out of one of the hot dogs in his box and squirting sausage juice on his shirt.
“Forget it,” I said. Why was I looking for trouble? If Monk was happy, I should be, too.
We went outside to catch our shuttle to the rental car lot. On the way to the shuttle stop, we passed a row of cream-colored taxis. All of them were Mercedes-Benzes. I wondered where the cheap taxis were.
The shuttle came right away. It was a large Mercedes-Benz van. I’d never seen a Mercedes-Benz van before. As we drove through the airport, I saw several silver-and-blue police cars. They were all BMW 5 Series sedans. If the bus drivers and cops in San Francisco saw this, they’d all want to move to Germany.
“This must be a very rich country,” I said to Monk.
“They certainly make a hell of a hot dog,” Monk said, his mouth full. “Wanna bite?”
“No thanks,” I said.
The rental car company shared a portion of an airport parking structure. The shuttle dropped us off in front of a little car called a Seat. I thought it was a strange name for a car.
We put our suitcases in the trunk and got in. I briefly studied the road map. Monk belted himself into his seat in the Seat and immediately fell asleep. I hadn’t even started the engine yet. One second he was awake, the next he was in a coma.
I didn’t mind. It made it easier for me to concentrate on my driving in an unfamilia
r locale.
After a few minutes of driving, my initial impression of Germany was that it wasn’t so different from America. The portion of the airport we were in was brand-new and the surrounding buildings were contemporary as well. Except for the German language on the signs, we could have been at home.
Then I got on the freeway heading east and nearly got mowed down by the fast-moving cars. All the drivers seemed to be going blindingly fast and I could barely get my Seat to move faster than a sofa. So I got in the far right lane and just tried to stay out of everyone’s way.
Thankfully, I didn’t have to drive on the freeway for very long. I exited onto a back road that took me into the deeply wooded hills and that’s when things began to look very different from the world I knew.
The road narrowed and took us through the center of one ancient storybook village after another. The buildings were two or three stories tall at most. They were made of densely packed stones or half-timbered with exposed structural and decorative wood beams in the walls.
The villages were so well preserved and charming that they looked more like Hollywood sets or theme parks than real places that had existed relatively unchanged for centuries.
This was especially true of Lohr, which I found nestled between a curve in the river Main and the fabled Spessart Forest, where, if you believe the Brothers Grimm and Walt Disney, a runaway Snow White was taken in by the friendly singing dwarfs who worked in the mines.
In the center of town was a stone tower capped by a wooden cabin with a rounded, baroque top. It rose over the steepled roofs, the pointed spires of the three churches, and the turrets of the castle. It was as if some tornado had ripped a cabin off the ground, whisked it into the air, and then dropped it on the tower.
I drove into the town square and parked behind the castle, which was now a museum. There was still a drawbridge leading to the castle but it was only for show. The moat was dry and lined with freshly mowed grass. A banner draped over the drawbridge featured a haggard Snow White and seven rough-featured dwarfs who didn’t look like they’d ever whistled while they worked.
Despite this somewhat commercialized acknowledgment of its fabled past, Lohr still had such a fairy-tale quality to it that the cars and the thoroughly modern people talking on their cell phones seemed totally out of place on the cobblestone streets among the medieval buildings.
I spotted the town’s tourist center in a lopsided half-timbered building across the square. I glanced at Monk, who was snoring away, and decided to leave him behind in the car while I sought out some information.
I couldn’t help smiling as I got out of the car and walked over to the tourist center. Everything around me was so different from where I lived and yet, because it all evoked memories of so many beloved fairy tales, it was warm and familiar to me at the same time.
The tourist center was tiny, the walls filled with maps and brochures about Main-Franconia, the region Lohr was in.
The middle-aged woman behind the counter greeted me with a big smile as I came in.
“Hello,” she said. “May I help you?”
I was surprised that she’d instantly pegged my nationality and addressed me in English.
“Am I that obviously American?” I asked.
“Americans have a way of walking,” she said.
“What way is that?”
“Confident and bold. Not that Germans are meek, of course. And it’s also the way you’re dressed. We have the same brands and styles here, but you Americans wear them differently.”
“Confidently and boldly,” I said.
What she said was probably true for Germans, too. Monk looked silly in lederhosen but I guessed that a German wouldn’t because he’d know how to wear them.
“Is there something special you’re interested in seeing or learning about in Lohr?” she asked me.
“I’m trying to find a psychiatric conference that’s taking place here this week.”
“There’s only one. It’s being held up at the Franziskushohe Hotel.” She pointed to a spot behind me. “On the hill.”
I turned and looked out the window.
The hotel was a wide, three-story structure of stone and wood nestled high in the forested hills behind Lohr. The old building was so integrated into its surroundings that it seemed like a natural extension of the landscape.
“The Franziskushohe was built in the 1880s as a sanitarium for people with lung diseases, which is why it’s so far above the town,” she said. “Nobody wanted those sick people near them, and the patients, of course, wanted the clean mountain air to purify their lungs. It became a convent in the 1950s and stayed that way until the last nun died a few years ago. The hotel opened up shortly after.”
That was more than I wanted or needed to know, but I suppose it was her job to inject as much history and local color as possible into the answer to every question.
“How do I get up there?”
“Just keep your eyes on the hotel and drive. There’s only one road up the hill. You can’t miss it.”
“Can you recommend somewhere to stay if the hotel is booked up?”
She handed me a map and drew a circle around a building in the center of the old town. “There’s a bed-and-breakfast right here. It’s been operated as an inn almost continuously for centuries. Tell Heiko and Friderike that Petra sent you.”
I was about to thank her when we heard someone outside scream in sheer terror.
There are two instinctive reactions to a sound like that.
One is to take cover so whatever is terrifying the person outside doesn’t find you. The other is to go see what is so terrifying and then decide if you should run for your life.
I have a feeling that the old phrase “curiosity killed the cat” comes from that second reaction. And, for all I knew, the cat was killed here ages ago by whatever was terrifying the person in the street today.
But I walked outside anyway while Petra ducked behind the counter.
Perhaps on some subliminal level I knew who was doing the screaming even before I saw Monk hopping around the square in his lederhosen as if he was walking on hot coals.
People had gathered in a circle around him but were keeping a safe distance as I approached.
“What’s wrong, Mr. Monk?”
“What isn’t?” he shrieked while continuing to hop around.
The medication had definitely worn off. This was the Adrian Monk I knew.
“Give me the top five,” I said.
“I’m naked!”
“No, you’re not,” I said.
“I’m not wearing pants!”
“You’re wearing shorts,” I said.
“I’m so ashamed.”
“So you thought that jumping out of the car, screaming at the top of your lungs, and drawing a crowd was the best way to hide your shame.”
