"You're back already?" Alan asked when his son came home.
"Yeah."
"So this hot shot PI…he didn't wanna help?"
"Yeah, but he's coming by car. I offered to pay for his airfare, but turns out he's afraid of flying. I tried to show him that the mathematical odds of dying in a car were greater, but he just erased my equations."
"Really?"
"He said that they weren't lined up enough" Charles rolled his eyes at the memory. "But he agreed that the car was at the wrong angle, just by looking at the pictures in the newspaper!"
"So you have faith in this guy?"
"Yeah." Charlie said. "He does consulting work for the San Francisco P.D."
"Really?"
Eventually, Monk and his assistant showed up at the house, and the sleuth started to straighten picture frames, and pick up dirty dinner dishes from the living room.
"Why is he cleaning?" Alan asked. "Look, Mr..um…"
"Monk" Charlie finished.
"There's no need for that. You're a guest." He started to get annoyed and be insulted.
"He has severe O.C.D" the mathematician told his dad, as he fastidiously cleaned the coffee table, the television, and dusted the sofas, as well as the recliner.
"So you're a mathematician?" the assistant asked to Charlie in the meantime. She found him attractive and nice
"Yeah. I'm a professor at CalSci" he told her "I also do some consulting work on the side." Charlie found her attractive as well.
"He's done stuff for the F.B.I" Alan boasted, sensing the mutual attraction.
"Cool" she said lamely.
Meanwhile, Adrian had found the cleaning materials and had started to scrub the kitchen sink so that he could wash the dishes. Of course, being him, the sink would be cleaned again when he finished. With a sigh, he realized that the dish rack had to be cleaned as well, and that he did. The sleuth's idea of a through wash on plates consisted of three rounds of scrubbing and rinsing. Also, he moved the scrubber clockwise (he found some unused ones). As for utensils, he scrubbed them in a left to right zigzag motion and rinsed them four times.
By and by, Alan checked on his guest. The idea of a visitor cleaning his house went against what he had been taught and the values he had tried to pass down to his sons. He noticed that only half the dishes (there had been some from breakfast) were finished.
"Need help?" he asked.
"No"
TBC
