Mr. Monk Goes to Germany Lee Goldberg (my reading book .txt) 📖

was a souvenir shop a few doors down from the guard shack. I went inside, hoping to find something more authentic and interesting than a T-shirt, key chain, refrigerator magnet, or mug with a picture of the Brandenburg Gate on it.

On the back wall of the store, the shelves were covered with chunks of painted concrete glued to plastic stands. As I got closer, I realized they were pieces of the Berlin Wall, sold by size, from a pebble to a huge slab with rebar poking out of it.

Monk examined a chunk and then started rearranging the pieces that were on the shelf in front of him.

I picked up a blue-green painted bit of rubble about the size of a Ping Pong ball. It cost nine euros, which was cheaper than a mug and something I couldn’t buy anywhere else but Berlin—assuming it was genuine, of course. Even if it wasn’t, it was still the perfect souvenir.

“Put that back,” Monk said, still moving the pieces around.

“It’s okay. They’re for sale,” I said.

“They shouldn’t be,” Monk said. “What if someone wants to put it back together?”

“They won’t,” I said.

“But what if they change their minds? They’ll never be able to do it if the pieces are scattered all over the globe.”

“Good,” I said.

Monk sorted the pieces by size and tried to match them up. It was futile.

“None of these pieces fit,” he said with irritation.

“The wall was broken into millions of little pieces, Mr. Monk. You can’t honestly expect the bits of rubble on these shelves to snap together like puzzle pieces.”

“They could,” Monk said. “All we have to do is find all the pieces that are missing.”

“You want us to reassemble the Berlin Wall,” I said.

“They’ll thank us later,” Monk said.

“No, they won’t,” I said. “Besides, it would take us years.”

“You should have thought of that before you brought us in here,” Monk said miserably. “We’re committed now.”

I left Monk at the shelves, went up to the counter, and whispered a question to the female cashier. “Do they sell pieces of the Berlin Wall at the airport?”

“Yes,” the cashier said, “but they are much more expensive there and they don’t have nearly as wide a selection of colors and sizes as we do.”

“Thanks,” I said.

It might be pricier buying the piece at the airport, but it was the only way I was leaving Berlin with the souvenir. By then, Monk would be under the influence of his wonder drug and wouldn’t care about devoting his life and mine to recovering every piece of the Berlin Wall.

I went back to Monk, who was becoming increasingly frustrated at his inability to fit any of the pieces of the wall together.

“This is a living hell,” Monk said.

“You’d better take your pill now if we’re going to make our flight.”

“But what about this?” Monk said. “We can’t just walk away and leave chaos behind.”

“We’ll come back later,” I said.

“When?”

“When we have more pieces,” I said.

“Good idea,” he said and I gave him his pill.

Thirty minutes later, we were at Berlin-Tegel and all was forgotten.

I bought my piece of the wall at the airport gift shop and stowed it deep inside my purse where I hoped Monk would never see it.

Monk, meanwhile, settled in at an airport café, where he was sampling as many different German pastries as he possibly could, including at least four different kinds of streusel.

He wore many of those pastries on his shirt by the time we got on the plane, where he helped himself to a copy of each of the free magazines.

“You can’t read German,” I said.

“They’re free,” Monk said. Even on drugs, he was a cheapskate.

The plane wasn’t as crowded as our earlier flight. I took a window seat and Monk took the aisle, leaving the seat between us empty.

Before we took off, a stewardess came down the aisle, checking to see if our seat belts were fastened. It was the same stewardess who’d been on our last flight. She seemed shocked by the change in Monk, who was studying the Playboy centerfold.

“What do you think?” Monk tipped his head to the naked woman in the magazine. “Real or fake?”

“I’m not an expert,” she said.

“If you’re not,” Monk said, “who is?”

She ignored him and moved on. Monk showed the centerfold to me.

“You’re familiar with these,” he said. “What do you think?”

I yanked the magazine from his hands and shoved it into the seat pocket in front of me.

“Behave yourself,” I said.

The man sitting across the aisle from Monk leaned towards him.

“They’re real,” he said, nodding to underscore his certainty.

“If those are real,” the woman next to him said, “then I’m a man.”

“Are you?” Monk asked.

“That’s my wife you’re talking to!” the man said, his face reddening fast.

Monk shrugged. “This is Germany.”

The passenger in front of Monk peered over the top of his seat at him. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Before Monk could reply and things could escalate into a fistfight, the woman in the seat behind Monk tapped his arm.

“They’re fake,” she said.

“Real,” said someone else.

“Fake,” said someone else.

“One is real,” someone else said. “The other is fake.”

And so it went, up and down the plane. By the time we landed in Frankfurt, Monk had managed to poll all the passengers and the crew on this vital question, but they were evenly split