Mr. Monk in Outer Space by Goldberg, Lee (best sci fi novels of all time .txt) 📕

the Fisherman’s Wharf sign to prove to everybody back home that they’d actually been there. I wasn’t sure why they bothered. I didn’t think there was anything worth visiting, much less remembering, on the wharf besides the bakery.

The wharf hadn’t been a real shipping or industrial spot in decades. It had degenerated into a brazen touristtrap, a storefront shopping center with a seaside motif and a carnival midway feel. It was all schlocky souvenir shops, dreary fast-food franchises, and tacky seafood restaurants that put more effort into covering their walls with fishing nets and seafaring knick-knacks than making decent food. The wharf had very little left that was authentic or charming, and even less as time went on. That sad state of affairs seemed to be true of just about everything these days, including a lot of people that I knew.

It was a nice, clear day with a crisp, salty breeze blowing off the water, so rather than go back to the car, I wandered up to Victoria Park, which is right below Ghirardelli Square and has a great view of the bay.

The park is also the turn-around point for the cable cars. The tourists line up there in droves waiting for a ride, so there are plenty of street performers, caricature artists, and sidewalk vendors hoping their captive audience would rather spend money on crap than do nothing.

I sat on a bench and looked out at the nineteenth-century schooners permanently docked at the Hyde Street Pier, the sailboats skipping over the whitecaps, and the ferry on its way to Alcatraz. It was nice, and I zoned out for a while.

Before I knew it, I’d absently finished off the entire loaf of bread. So much for watching my weight.

I got up and browsed the jewelry that the vendors were selling on card tables and apple crates. I bought a necklace and some earrings for Julie so she’d know I’d been thinking about her while she was away. I wondered if she missed me. She was probably glad to be on her own for a change, just like I was. I never got the chance to sit in the park, eat bread, and mock tourists. I was having a grand time.

I walked over to Ghirardelli Square, a shopping center in what once was a famous San Francisco chocolate factory. The chocolate is made in San Leandro now, but Ghirardelli doesn’t make a big deal about that. Nobody ever left their heart in San Leandro.

There’s a bookstore in the square devoted to art and architecture books. I browsed through a big book on tiki and Hawaiian style and remembered my trip to Kauai with Monk. I recalled it with far more amusement and affection than I’d felt at the time, but the past is like that sometimes. You remember what you want to remember.

I wondered how Monk was getting along with Ambrose. Were they having fun? Were they fighting? Or were they off in separate corners of the big house, barely acknowledging one another’s presence?

I was tempted to drive over and see for myself. I shook off the thought and called Firefighter Joe, my friend-with-benefits, to inquire if he was free for dinner. Unfortunately for me, Joe was at the firehouse, two days into a four-day shift.

So I tried Dr. Polanski, a dashing dermatologist and recovered leper whom I met on one of Monk’s cases. I struck out with him, too. He was at a leper convention in Miami. Lucky him.

I started to call Scooter, but I came to my senses halfway through keying in his phone number.

What the hell was wrong with me?

I glanced at my watch. Two hours of my first afternoon of freedom had passed and I already didn’t know what to do with myself.

And that’s when I realized that I’d sat down to make my calls on a chair in front of one of those caricature artists. The guy was older, maybe in his fifties, and looked like he’d eaten something so sour it had permanently puckered his sun-beaten face. His would be an easy face to caricature, even for me, and I can’t draw.

The artist was already busy immortalizing me in charcoal by the time I realized I was sitting there, so it was too late to apologize and walk away. I was stuck, in more ways than one.

What had happened to making a change in my life? To taking some chances? To making new friends? San Francisco was full of nightclubs, galleries, and cultural events.

So what was I doing sitting here?

I wondered if Julie and Monk were as lost without me as I apparently was without them. I doubted it. It made me wonder who really needed whom. Maybe Scooter was right about me.

The artist finished my caricature, slipped it into a cardboard frame shaped like a cable car, and proudly presented it to me like it was a priceless heirloom.

I gave it a glance. I suppose the drawing could have been me. It also could have been Barbara Bush, Nicole Kidman, Eddie Murphy, or any of the tourists waiting for the cable car. The face was characterless and unmemorable.

Maybe that’s how I really looked to him. It was certainly how I felt. Perhaps it was my soul and not my face that he’d captured.

I wondered if I looked different when I was with Monk or Julie. I’d have to come back sometime and see Mr. Puckerface when I was with one of them.

I gave him ten bucks, walked back to Boudin Bakery for another loaf of bread, and then drove home.

I did laundry, paid some bills, and for dinner I made myself a tuna fish sandwich and had a glass of white wine that cost almost as much as my caricature.

Do I know how to live or what?

I refilled the wineglass and took it with me for a