Natalie drove an hour and a half out to wine country to the Bed and Breakfast that she and Adrian had stayed at in 2005. It was the only time she had ever seen him drunk and Randy didn't let him live it down for nearly a year afterward. Leland, on the other hand marveled that even a drunk Monk had managed to solve a difficult murder, though it was only when he woke up in the morning on Natalie's couch that he was told about his victory. Adrian had been personally embarrassed about the incident so he and Natalie rarely talked about it; but she stored its memory back in her mind, keeping close watch that he was never around alcohol again.
It wasn't that he was a mean drunk. He wasn't, at all. He was quite jovial. It was that Monk on any sort of intoxicating substance became somewhat uninhibited – causing her normally gentlemanly boss to become a bit 'grabby'. He had only grabbed at her blouse, but for a moment she was concerned he might grab at something else and so, alcohol was off limits. Since it wasn't something that they discussed, she wasn't sure how much of the day he remembered. She only knew that from that day until now she hadn't known of him to ever go back to Sonoma, despite his promise to Trudy.
This made his current actions perplexing and a bit worrisome. Why had he gone there on this day and why was he asking for that particular wine?
Pulling up to the vineyard, Natalie saw that hers was the only other car in the parking lot aside from one from out of state, so she immediately worried that she had missed him. She got out of her car and looked around. It was so beautiful out there. She could see why Trudy had wanted it to be the place where she and Adrian honeymooned. Thinking back to his extreme modesty, she wondered silently to herself if maybe Trudy had chosen that place in order to ply him with a little wine to get him to relax. But Adrian never said anything about it to her and didn't seem at all against being there the one time they visited, so she was sure things went off without a hitch.
Walking through the front door, she went up to the registration desk and rang the bell. After a few minutes a young woman strolled up to the counter with a yawn and asked if she could help her.
"Yes, I'm here for Adrian Monk." she said.
The young woman gave her a funny look then looked at the guest registry. "Sorry, there's no Monk here."
"No. I know. You see, it's like this. I'm his girlfriend and he told someone that he was coming up here. Can I speak with your manager?"
The girl rolled her eyes and asked Natalie to wait.
A few minutes passed and a slightly plump elderly woman came forward. Seeing Natalie, the woman immediately froze. "Oh, no. He's not back!" the woman said, waving her hands.
"You! You're Sylvia. Sylvia...Willis." Natalie said. "Didn't you go to jail?"
"Ma'am. I'm sorry but I have nothing to say about the past. If you're looking for a room, we're all booked up." Sylvia responded.
"I'm sorry, but I don't believe that. You don't have any patrons at all. Me and another car are the only ones out in the parking lot." she replied.
"Be that as it may, we're all booked up. Have a good day." Willis said, walking away into another room and shutting the door. Natalie heard the lock latch behind her.
Natalie groaned and threw up her hands, checking her cell phone for the time. It was now 3:30 PM. She hadn't driven all of the way out there to just turn around now, so she decided to take a walk to see if there was anyone else on site that would be more helpful. She found such a man in George Babcock.
George had worked at the vineyard for nearly twenty years and knew all of the clientele. He knew Adrian Monk and had known Trudy as well. A gardener pointed Natalie his way and the man agreed to talk with her as he checked on the wine in the vats.
"Hello, Mr. Babcock. My name is Natalie Teeger. I'm here to inquire about my boyfriend, Adrian…"
"Monk." He said, finishing her sentence. "Yeah, he was here. Probably left about, oh, I don't know forty or fifty minutes ago." he said.
Natalie looked let down, but then returned her focus to Babcock since he was the last one to see Adrian. "Did he look okay? Was he acting strange?" she asked.
"More strange than usual?" he laughed. "No. Not really. Except he kept checking his watch and looking back towards the parking lot.
"Was there someone with him?" Natalie asked.
"No. He looked to be alone. He just stopped by and picked up a bottle of our Cabernet Sauvignon, bottled in January 2005. Oh, and another bottle of the Claret. Non-alcoholic. He made me check it four times." George replied.
Natalie thought for a few moments. "Did he say where he was going? I mean, Adrian doesn't really drink and it's weird he came all the way out here for a bottle of wine."
"No. He didn't say. And I don't think that was the only reason he came here." he replied.
"Why? Why do you say that?" she asked.
"Well. He bought a bathtub." George explained. "Clawfoot tub from room 204. It's funny. He always stayed in room 206. Don't know what he would want with the tub in 204. But, me and Enrique unbolted it from the floor and took it down to his truck."
"His truck? What truck?" she asked.
"Black pickup truck." he replied. "Looked new. Oh, and he grabbed that hanging plant that used to hang on the porch. Called it a kissing fern. If I didn't know better, I'd think he had been drinking. Hey, I hope you find him. I like that guy. Not everyone does, but he's seems like a good soul."
Natalie nodded. "He is. And, so are you, George. Hope you have a good rest of your weekend."
Natalie walked down to her car and immediately called Leland. She explained to him what she ran into and he was equally perplexed. Since Monk was an adult and had only been gone a few hours, there wasn't a lot that they could do about it, but he was happy to hear that someone had seen him recently and that he was okay. He told Natalie just to head back to town. The lecture was to start at seven and it wouldn't be like him not to show. She failed to remind Leland that he hadn't shown up for lunch that day and he was doing all sorts of things that "weren't like him." - such as driving out to wine country to buy a bathtub...and steal a fern...by himself...in a pickup truck. Needless to say, she was thoroughly confused.
Adrian Monk drove the black pickup truck up to a warehouse deep inside San Francisco's West Side. Honking the horn twice, he tapped his hand on the doorframe and looked at himself in the side window while he waited to be let in. He was struck by reflection that he saw. For so many years, Monk had looked at the same face seeing something haunted. - haunted by the ghost of his late wife and the opportunities that he had lost. Now, as he examined his features, he saw a very different man, a man for whom laugh lines were now a feature on his face, a man more relaxed, a happy man, a loved man. And he owed all of it to Natalie. She believed in him when he was still a wreck, and she loved him into being a man who wanted to live again. If you had asked him when he first met her that he would be dating her someday, he would have said you were nuts. But now, so many years later, he couldn't imagine them ever being apart. Oh, how he loved her!
Monk's train of thought was broken when the garage door opened and a man walked out. He was around Adrian's age, well dressed, and had a smile on his face.
"Adrian Monk?" he asked, not offering his hand. "Is it you?"
Monk grinned. "Yes. It's me. You must be Derek?"
"That's me. Come on in, Monica has told me so much about you." he replied.
Natalie arrived back in San Francisco about five-thirty at night and looked down at her phone. Still nothing from Monk. No messages. No calls. Nothing. In frustration, she parked her car outside the apartment building and walked inside. Climbing the stairs to the second floor, she stopped in the hallway outside Adrian's apartment. How many times had she made that same trek, in all sorts of situations? If you had told her all those years ago that she would be head over heels with this neurotic yet adorable man, she would have thought you were crazy. But here she was, happily enjoying her relationship with him and feeling safer and more cared for than she had ever been. She turned the corner towards his apartment and stopped outside the door. She had an idea.
But, of course! He was testing her!
They had been working on her skills as a detective and Adrian Monk had sent her on wild goose chase to see if she could find him. The only place she hadn't looked was his apartment. Raising her eyebrow, she reached for her keys and let herself in.
Everything was quiet and still in the apartment and not a sound could be heard. Since Julie was with Amy, not hearing signs of her daughter wasn't surprising – but other than the bubbling sound from Mr. Henry's fish tank, there were no other sounds emanating from the room either.
"Adrian?" she said softly, turning the corner and flipping on the light half expecting him to be sitting in his chair waiting for her. But he wasn't there.
Crestfallen, she looked around his place to see if she could find any clues as to where he had gone. Other than the fact that his wardrobe was left open and an out of place notepad sat on the counter, nothing seemed unusual. Things were nice and tidy as they always were except that Monk wasn't there.
She looked at her watch and realized it was now six o'clock. Maybe the commander was right and he would show up that evening. Regardless, she had to hurry if she was going to get to City Hall, park and be on time. She turned around and walked down the hallway and had just shut the door when she stopped. Her mind was churning. Where could he be?
Reopening the door, she rushed to the kitchen and picked up the pad of paper and held it up to the light. There were indentations there that she could already tell were from his pen. Looking around, she found a pencil and gently rubbed it across the grain of the paper and the message appeared.
MEET PRECINCT ROOF TOP, JULY 7th, 2012. 6:30 PM. SHARP.
What had he gotten himself into? Worried, she rushed out the door and ran down the stairs and was on her way to the precinct in seconds flat.
Natalie slipped into the doors of the precinct around 6:25 PM. Other than the night guard Jeff, the place was pretty empty. Jeff had been a beat cop who was close to retirement and knew Natalie and Monk quiet well. She asked if he had seen Adrian, and he told her that he had just gotten there at six-fifteen, but that didn't mean Monk wasn't there. Then he bid her a good evening as she made her way to the elevator at the end of the hall. Stepping onto the elevator, she pressed the button to the highest floor that the elevator would go then looked up at the numbers until they finally reached her destination. The doors opened on a floor that hadn't been used for anything other than storage for the past fifteen years and all she could see was darkness since the only lights around were those of the glowing red emergency exit signs that were required by code shining upon the cold tile floor. Walking out into the darkness, she knew that there were at least two more flights above her until she reached the roof. Taking off her jacket, she reached into her pocket and grabbed her cell phone, using its light in order to find the door to the stairs. Once she found it, she opened the door just a crack and was taken aback by an overwhelming smell. It wasn't a bad smell at all, rather it was a good smell. She thought for a moment and thought it smelled like roses, but it was the music that compelled her to move on.
Randy and Leland were finishing up their notes on the Menendez case when they received a call from the office building next door. It was an anonymous caller stating that she saw a person on the roof. Knowing the trouble that the police had earlier that day, she wanted to warn them in case the crazed assassin was still at large. Leland told the woman they would check it out and then grabbed Randy by the arm, telling him to put on his vest. They were going upstairs. It sounded like they had a visitor.
As Natalie climbed higher, the music grew louder and the roses smelled stronger. She reached the door, which was already ajar, and pushed it open.
She froze in place and her knees went weak as she gasped in surprise when she saw the magnificent sight. From end to end there were dozens and dozens of bouquets of roses, and candles, and beautiful music playing on an old-style record player, playing her favorite songs. But as amazing as all of that was, she was more taken aback by seeing Adrian. He turned around with anticipation the minute she walked through the door. He was dressed in a white tuxedo with a black shirt, tie, and pants and his eyes sparkled in delight the moment he saw her walk in.
"Adrian. What in the world?" She was astounded, but his eyes simply crinkled as he walked forward and reached for the jacket she had resting on her arm.
"May I take your coat?" he asked reaching out his hand. And so, she gave it to him and then walked forward into the night, into the beautiful spectacle of this romantic thing that Monk had done. Adrian draped her jacket gently over a chair the joined her and took her by the hand.
"I knew you would find me." He smiled. "Are you surprised?"
She stopped and looked around. "Surprised? I'm…flabbergasted… and confused. What? What is this for?"
He led her further out onto the rooftop, and rested his hand on her waist. "It's for all of that time over the past several months that we've missed out on, for all of those moments that I've not been able to show you exactly how much you mean to me, for all of the happy moments we've lost." He said, raising the back of his fingers up to her face to brush her hair away as her eyes began to glisten in the candle's glow.
"Would you care to dance?" he asked, lowering her hand and showing her to the center of the floor.
"I would love to." she said softly, following him where he led. She stopped for a moment and tilted her ear. "They're playing our song." She said quietly, smiling up at him with love in her eyes after she said it.
He laughed. "Yeah, they are. Wonder how they knew?"
She giggled and then looked bashfully in his eyes. "This is all so lovely." She said as he wrapped his arm around her waist and they started swaying. "But I have a bone to pick with you, Mister. You had me so worried all day long."
"I didn't mean to, really. But, let's pick up on that later." he replied. "Tonight's for you and me. Tonight, is for us. Just the two of us, together."
"Which way to the rooftop?" Randy asked as they reached the top floor.
"Over here." Stottlemeyer replied, taking the lead as they made their way to the steps.
The minute they opened the door they too smelled roses and looked at one another.
"Smells like Sharona's Mom's talcum powder." Randy quipped.
"Smells like roses. No wonder Sharona and you bicker so much. You don't even know the smell of roses?" Leland said as they began to climb the stairs.
The song came to an end and Natalie looked at the beautiful view that came along with this romantic night.
"You came up to the rooftop?" she asked. "Just for a date with me?"
"Well, we're not very close to the edge. But, I, um, thought it was really kind of appropriate with all things considered." he replied, walking over to a table that was set for dinner for two and retrieving a single rose. He returned to her side and then handed her the flower.
"It's beautiful." she said, smiling. "But why is the roof more appropriate for a date than any place else? I don't understand."
At that moment Leland and Randy reached the top stair. They looked at each other when they heard music, and Leland raised a finger to his lips motioning for Randy to be quiet while he opened the door.
As the scene came into view, both men stopped for a moment and looked at all the flowers, then Randy just rolled his eyes.
"Awe, Monk and Natalie have a date." he said, shaking his head. "I'm going back downstairs." He took a few steps more and asked Leland if he was coming, and Leland replied quietly. "Yeah. I'll be there...be there in a minute." At that moment, Leland was so happy that his friend was so much in love that he felt compelled to watch just a moment longer. This was the Adrian Monk he once knew. The guy who would go out of his way to make his woman happy, the man he thought was gone forever.
"Well, It's really just because of the expression." Adrian replied.
"The expression?" she asked, confused.
"Yeah, what better place to go to a rooftop when you're ready to take a leap?"
Natalie stopped and furrowed her brow. "Adrian, you're not..." But she was stopped when he reached forward both of his hands and untied a tiny ribbon from around her rose. As the ribbon loosened her eyes caught a beautiful sparkle reflecting the city lights against the blackened field of her dress. Her lips parted in shock when she realized what it was and her heart began to pound in her chest.
Leland turned to go but stopped when he saw Natalie take a step back and put her hand over her heart.
Adrian smiled softly and looked in her eyes. "Natalie Jane Teeger, I have loved you for longer than I even realized I was in love with you. You have been the light in my darkness and my joy when I felt like I had no hope. You have cheered me up and believed in me and supported me and showed me what it is really like to love life and to want to live again after I thought all of my living was gone. Because of you, I have done things I never thought I could, and you believed in me, when even I didn't believe in myself. You've become my everything, Natalie." he said, as a tear came down his cheek. "And, I don't want to even think of my future without you being by my side." He then dropped to one knee and Natalie began to cry. "Natalie, would you...could you...will you… marry me?"
From his vantage point by the door, Leland could see the entire scene unfold, and when he saw his friend drop to one knee, the tough old lawman had to choke back his own tears and smile. As he stood there, he had the joy of watching and hearing Natalie's squealed and enthusiastic, "Yes! Yes! A thousand times yes!" and he watched long enough to see Monk stand as his bride-to-be jumped into his arms and gave him a fervent kiss.
Adrian spun her around and the look of love and joy on his face was simply incredible; and, as he held her in his arms, Monk opened his eyes for just a moment and spotted his friend standing in the doorway. He stopped smiling for a brief second and then looked at Leland as if needing his approval. When Leland smiled and nodded, Monk smiled back, and then closed his eyes and cried as Natalie squeezed him tight.
Leland walked off the rooftop and turned and shut the door.
"Way to go, Monk. Way to go." he said quietly to himself as he walked down the stairs.
Randy was waiting and asked what they were doing up there, and Leland just patted him on the back. "Ah, that's just between them. You remember what young love was like, don't you?"
"Yeah."
"Well, it's kinda like that. Let's go downstairs and have a glass of scotch and toast to young love."
"Sounds good to me." Disher replied. "But hey, aren't we missing a lecture?"
"Yep." Leland replied. "Ask me if I care."
"Do you care?" Randy asked.
"Nope, not a bit." the commander replied as he stepped onto the elevator and the two officers went back downstairs.
"How long have you been planning this? It must have been months?" Natalie said, sitting down in her chair.
Adrian slipped the ring on her finger. "I picked out the ring late last year and had been saving since then."
"Gosh, honey, it is gorgeous." She blinked. "This must have cost you a fortune!"
"Only the best for my Natalie." he smiled. "I'm just glad I didn't have to wait to get it. If Powell hadn't waived his fee..."
"You used the engagement ring money to pay for Julie's legal fees?"
"Well, yeah. I figured it wouldn't be the wedding of your dreams if Julie wasn't there. And I really want to give that to you - the wedding of your dreams."
She pressed a rapturous kiss to his lips and held him tightly as tears flowed down her cheeks. "Adrian Monk, I love you so much." She said, keeping her cheek pressed to his own, never wanting to let him go. "It'll be the wedding of my dreams just so long as you and Julie are there. You're all I need to make me happy and you've honestly made me feel happier today than I think I've ever felt in my entire life."
"Just returning the favor." He replied.
A short time passed by and the two sat side by side looking out at the San Francisco skyline.
"This evening has gone so much better than I thought it was going to earlier today. You really scared me." She said.
He chuckled lightly. "Sorry about that. I wanted to surprise you."
"Well, you did that alright. I had no idea. I thought you were trying my skills as a detective."
He smiled. "I was. In a way. But each step I made had some significance. The museum, for instance… It was not only the first case we were ever on, but it was the first place you caught my eye. I wouldn't have admitted it at the time, but I think you had me smitten right from the beginning. And these roses, they come from the florist that is supplying that exhibit."
"The horticulture exhibit?" she asked.
"Yes. That's the one. There are one-hundred bouquets of ten flowers each." he said.
"Are you kidding me?" she asked.
He just looked at her with one raised eyebrow.
"Stupid question." She laughed. "Go on."
He smiled. "Then, the wine on your table, I went out to pick it up at the winery. You said you liked it, and I made him guarantee that it didn't contain Aqua Velva before I bought it."
"And you got yourself non-alcoholic, I see." she said, looking down at their table. "Wise choice."
"And, I got you your kissing fern." he replied.
"My what?" she asked, confused.
"Kissing fern. Don't you remember, the kissing fern song? You sang it to that couple." he replied.
Natalie bit her lip. She remembered. "Oh yeah, I almost forgot. But he said you bought a bathtub, and that you drove a truck."
"Yes. I borrowed Monica Water's husband Derek's truck to go pick it up. You wouldn't know her, but she reminded me of Trudy. He has a warehouse in town where he stores classic cars. He let me borrow his truck because he felt like he owed me for getting him and his wife back together. It was good to see them."
"But, why the bathtub?" she asked.
"Because, you said you liked it. Remember when we pulled up to the bed and breakfast? You mentioned never wanting to get out of that tub? I figured it might be something you would enjoy with...um...your bubbles." he blushed.
Natalie laughed and drew him into for another kiss. "You are so amazing."
"No. You are. You're amazinger." he replied. "As long as you're happy, I'm happy. As long as you're smiling, I'm smiling inside. You're my whole world, and now I get the thrill of being your husband. I can't wait until you are my wife."
