"A chair is still a chair
Even when there's no one sitting there
But a chair is not a house
And a house is not a home
When there's no one there to hold you tight,
And no one there you can kiss good night."
A very inebriated John Munch was trying to remember what to him was a very sad but very beautiful song as he made his way back to his apartment. Of course the fact that he was getting drunker with every swig of vodka he took made it hard for him to remember the lyrics, but it seemed to do wonders for the volume of his voice and his enthusiasm. He'd started his evening's festivities with the hope that he'd forget why he was singing sad love songs. Unfortunately he could still remember, it was such an innocent comment, made by a seemingly kind person, but it had skewered his heart or what was left of it.
"A room is still a room
Even when there's nothing there but gloom;
But a room is not a house,
And a house is not a home
When the two of us are far apart
And one of us has a broken heart.
Now and then I call your name
And suddenly your face appears
But it's just a crazy game
When it ends it ends in tears."
John reached his apartment building and struggled with the code for the front door. He started struggling both with the stairs and the final verse, but as his door came in view and he dug for his keys, he remembered.
"Darling, have a heart,
Don't let one mistake keep us apart.
I'm not meant to live alone. Turn this house into a home.
When I climb the stair and turn the key,
Oh, please be there still in love with me."
John opened the door as he finished the song and he looked around his apartment. Fin had teased him that he lived like a monk and he'd joked that he'd lost all the knick knacks in his divorces, it wasn't far from the truth, but what he hadn't lost he'd destroyed. He'd once told a department shrink that he was prone to fits of melancholy and he wasn't joking. It was another way he was like his old man. Let someone say or do the wrong thing and he could spiral down into a real fugue like now. He wondered, if he and Gwen had been able to have kids like she'd wanted, would it have pushed him over the edge like it did his dad? Would he have eaten his gun a long time ago just like his dad? On nights like this his dad's solution looked more and more attractive.