PSOH 'WAITING'

"What are you waiting for, Count?"

"…Nothing, sorry."

"Then let's eat!"

Berlin was sunny and cabbage-crisp. Spring had finally come, and the trees in the parks and the thorofares sprouted baby leaves and the rustle of new growth. Vastly different from the cold, steel-grey prospect of Beijing in early winter. But there were far too many tea cups on the table. Two too many. And only one person to blame.

"Are you not hungry, Count D? You haven't eaten much."

He was thinner. His clothes, which had fit his slight form so perfectly, drifted away now from a slightly shrunken frame. Not so much as to be noticeable to any of the others, but he certainly saw the change in the dressing room mirror. And he thought he seemed tired, and sometimes very old. Spring's rising sap was slow to start, this year.

"May I have that last pink-iced cake…pretty please?"

"Of course, my dear Pon-chan. I don't want it."

Silence, filled with the quiet sounds of eating and drinking. The Count sipped tepid Oolong and stared rather blankly at the settee, eyes unfocused. It was unworn, the watered silk that stretched across the cushions like a thin skin, though very old. Tufted buttons dug into a person's spine if they weren't sitting properly upright; bolsters on either end contrarily allowed for a guest to slouch in comfort. Georgian, actually, and perhaps a fitting and kind gesture of his nostalgic Shop. But there was no dent worn into the end cushion. The lacy antimacassars that decorated the arms were undisturbed.

"I—believe I'll partake in a short stroll."

"I'll come along with you, Count. You need protection in the city," T-chan offered immediately, polishing off his tea.

"And I," growled Norman. He frowned fiercely, belying the soul of the pussycat who lay under that impressively stripy pelt. "It's not safe, Count."

"No, I'm sorry, my dear. Not during daylight. People might notice a tiger, especially one so handsome as yourself."

"Then me." Norma fluttered down to his shoulder, a comforting weight eerily reminiscent of Q-chan. "I could use a good excuse to get out of this damned Shop and it's been absolute ages since I was visited Berlin. Wonder how it's changed? Count, aren't you curious?"

D smiled, nodding, but he wasn't, not really. He didn't much care, to be honest. He only needed to move—to be active again, after so long a time spent drifting.

But the stroll down the busy boulevard and through the small gem of a city park did little to ease the restlessness that filled the Count's heart. It only served to remind him sharply of what he was really doing. Just as New York. As Paris. Like London. And Beijing.

Hidden in plain sight and waiting…for something – someone! - he absolutely would not admit he waited for.

Returned to the Shop, settled in his bedroom, he switched his garb for the second time that day. A quick glimpse in a patisserie's plate glass windows had reflected a pale, chill-bitten ghostly figure, clad in a light green that had washed his natural colour completely out. It was abominable, that. He resembled nothing so much as a corpse, strolling, D concluded, and pawed though his capacious closet a tad frantically, searching for an outfit that would suit him better; one that fit, in a fabric that would lend him false color, a satiny sheen to overshadow the faint, telltale lines of care on his immutable face.

"We have customers, Count!"

"Just coming, T-chan. Do please bid them sit," Count D replied. "Offer tea, if you would, please?"

"But of course, Count. Was just going to, in any case."

T-chan's voice interrupted his rather bleak examination of his own mirrored image—to the Count's secret relief, perhaps, though he not be admitting that. He hastily threw on a deep violet-hued cheongsam that lay discarded over his dressing table chair and went out to greet his new vict-clients.

It might perhaps be time to move again, find a different place, the Count mused, as he made his clients welcome, offering tea, cakes and a variety of furry and feathered options for companionship. Berlin was not working out terribly well: too many blond men strutting the streets, going about their business, far too many blue eyes blinking at him from a variety of faces, young and old. And there was a preponderance of youth; young girls and in particular, young boys, like the tyke occupying his Shop's most comfortable sofa at this very moment, gamely attempting to pet T-chan under the watchful eyes of his doting mamma. He was Chris's age, perhaps, this one…oh, yes, he would be older now. It had been…a long time, hadn't it?

He dealt kindly with the people; the parents wanted a hamster or maybe a gerbil, but weren't too certain, in the end. The little boy begged fiercely to take home T-chan, but the Toutetsu only growled a bit sulkily, turning away. They'd come back tomorrow, which was more than agreeable to the Count. He was tired. Weary to the bone, as he'd not been for ages.

He sought his bed early again that night, as lingering over a novel or late tea in a desperate attempt to tire himself out had not been successful thus far. But sleep was elusive, or at least, the sound variety, in which he did not dream or toss restlessly in the wee hours of the morning, consumed with a ferocious impulse to move—somewhere, anywhere, that memory didn't already occupy. And he didn't get enough rest this time, either, waking wide-eyed in the dark peaceful silence before the first creeping fingers of dawn. He wrapped his arms around himself instead and rolled into a protective ball under the comforters and quilts, trying not to imagine that the hands he felt embracing him were any other than his very own.

He could feel the ridges of his individual ribs, and the smooth skin that covered them, sliding supple. The muscles of his back, rippling as he gripped his own self all the more tightly. Were they still attractive? he wondered idly. So thin; so frail, he felt. Would someone still want him, even like this?

But this was monstrously foolish, to think such very silly thoughts. And pointless. It mattered not if he was wanted—he was always wanted, after all—that was the least of his many concerns. The Shop…Grandfather. There were so many other things that claimed his attention, he'd no time to lay about and contemplate his own sorry state.

Even now, if he listened very carefully, he could hear the faint hum of the refrigerator, a vintage machine of swooping lines and chromed white bulk that graced the kitchenette. The rustle of many small songbirds, shifting on perches, fluttering across the seed trays. The faraway sound of the bread vans delivering their fragrant wares; the sound of beastly king-sized snores issuing from the lions on the veldt, behind the ninth hallway door. The milk train, arriving at the station with a whistle and an eldritch screech of pneumatic brakes. An ormolu clock, on his desk…and the growth of the bud-laden trees in the park. His own ancient blood, flowing sluggishly, never quite warming him through.

But no little boy breathing. No scent of aftershave and cigarettes. No human sounds.

The Count would not think of those gaps. He knew precisely where that path led. He did not wish to go there, nor consider it further. L.A. was over. He was quite finished with the noise and smog of that great, sprawling metropolis. He'd no use for unwanted visions of an overzealous brute of a scruffy out-of-uniform policeman, who barged in all too often uninvited, drank his tea like a heathen and routinely accused him of terrible crimes.

No need.

He did need a distraction, though—even the Count could allow that. Something to heat up the cold loneliness of the pre-dawn hours, jolt him into a better state, because he didn't feel well at all.

Lately, whenever he'd woken this early in the day and could find no comfort in the sounds of his Shop, he had touched that place. For a simple distraction, nothing more. It ached and throbbed beneath his fingers now, that construct of rushing blood and swollen cartilage, so he stroked it gently and sucked in his breath.

But the pleasure of the flesh was bleakly empty, tasteless and flat. Like the blank faces of the new concrete buildings of Berlin, soulless and staring—the blue eyes staring at from too many unfamiliar people. Like his very own pillow, which held no warmth but his own.

D hunched around it, unsatisfied, pulling his hand away from himself.

It was not what he wanted, that solitary release. He wanted the old worn-out sofa—the one he'd been forced to leave behind him-and the man who habitually sat there, making it his own. He wanted to see the small blond boy who brought the man to his Shop every day for visits and hear the shared laughter those two conjured between them—experience once more the special brand of trouble they always caused, Leon and little Christopher.

"Ah!" T-chan exclaimed, over a late breakfast. The Shop was closed on a Sunday, generally. "How about we visit the Zoo today, Count? I've got some old friends…maybe they'll be out and about?"

No. No more cages.

"Idiot beast of a T-chan!" Norma scoffed, flying down from her perch to flap noisily. "You are in one of the world's most cultured places, are you not? Count, perhaps we should pop by Vienna? There's operas and Mozart. I'd love to see the old city once more."

"Munich," lobbied a stray young lion, passing through. He stopped, rubbing his belly and grinned at the little gathering in D's parlour. "Beer! Mmmmm!"

"No…I don't think so, LeRoi," the Count replied politely. "Not today."

He was really quite fatigued, D allowed, and for no apparent reason. Bored to tears with constantly moving, consumed with ennui at the thought of yet another day, chock full of more of the same. But the Shop bell jangled and he donned his best face, smiling mysteriously at the young girls who entered, poking their heads in despite the 'Closed' sign, all adorable curiosity and apologies. He charmed them with no effort at all, as usual. They would most likely be disappointing as customers – young girls often were – but he would at least attempt to take an interest. He owed it to his Pets, did he not? A decent home was nothing to sneeze at, and the prospect of fulfilling a client's wishes was never to be so lightly dismissed, yes?

Love…

"Count! Count D! Count D, wake up!"

A concerned T-chan peered down at him, having discovering D napping on the couch. He'd been dreaming; a lovely one and he'd tried so hard to hold onto it as it fled, smiling at familiar faces, laughing delighted at the brash idiot's comments, the giggles of a small blond boy, busy with crayons…but it slipped into nothingness like so much cigarette smoke.

"Wha-what's the matter, T-chan?" Count D demanded, sitting up with a start. "Whatever is wrong with you? Where's Chris-?"

He rose to his stocking'd feet, swallowing back his unthinking question, and T-chan lightly grasped his shoulders to steady him.

"Oh. Oh, never mind, T-chan; never mind, of course. Ah? Was there something you needed, my old friend?"

Disoriented still, the Count blinked at the bare chest in front of him and then blearily lifted his mussed head to focus on the Toutetsu's frowning face above. Curly horns spiraled up into the shadows; for a moment the Toutetsu's dark eyes glinted sea-blue and that mass of touselled mane was sun-gilt blonde. That expanse of skin was very…tempting.

D could perhaps slump against it—go back to sleep.

"No, Count," T-chan rumbled, giving the Count a tiny shake to draw him back to the present. "Of course there's nothing wrong. It's only that it's past the time we usually sit down to dinner. I thought perhaps you might want something to eat?"

In D's dream, he'd been eating as well…éclairs, that was it, correct? A surprise gift from the bakery in Little Tokyo, back in L.A. They were the best in the world, those pastries – not even the finest of Parisian establishments had been able to match them. D missed them, as he missed so many things from other locales—other lives.

But, here in Berlin, in the deepening dusk, he wasn't at all hungry. Something as mundane as food held no appeal. He shook his head at Tetsu in a silent negative, his grumbling stomach firmly rejecting the thought. T-chan released him at the slight movement and stepped back, allowing the Count to straighten his narrow shoulders, though he did assume a rather frightening and beetle-browed black scowl over D's quiet 'No, thank you'.

"Ah," he remarked. "No appetite still, Count D? How odd. Tell me, if you please, are we to depart Berlin soon? You've had that look in your eyes for quite some time now. Wanderlust, I think the humans call it."

"Mmmm." The Count shook his throbbing head again, still hazy. "Perhaps we may, indeed."

He sat back down on his sleep-dented sofa cushions with a decided thump, putting a sleep-creased hand on his brow to sweep away the ruffled tendrils of his midnight hair. He blinked at T-chan, confused by the sudden query—he'd said not a single word about leaving Berlin, where'd they just gotten comfortable. His Shop was doing well. But the necessity was there, once again.

Leon Orcot had been on the milk train. The dawn's sparrows had said as much. Even now…even now, he was somewhere in Berlin, casting wide and far his net.

The Toutetsu hunkered down by the settee and put a questing hand out to touch lightly upon D's shoulder, forcing D to meet T-chan's piercing gaze.

"We are concerned for you, Count D, you realize? You're not yourself."

The faint flush that spread across the Count's high cheekbones was not all sleep-derived. He smiled, pleased despite his distraction, and patted T-chan's hand.

"Oh…well, thank you, T-chan. Perhaps you are right. I am a little…off, shall we say? I don't believe the salubrious air of Berlin agrees with me…we need a warmer place. A different place."

He came to his feet with that comment, brushing down the wrinkles in his cheongsam and then frowning in sudden irritation at the vibrant lavender reposing under his pale hands. This shade, too, left him sallow. He should not have worn it.

"Then we are leaving, Count? When?"

T-chan gazed up at him from his station on the floor, clearly curious and not at all taken back by his master's abrupt decision to move. He was used to the Count's rapid departures; it made no difference to any of the Pets, really. They had no ties to bind them…none but the Count's care. It must be that the pesky human detective was getting closer again. T-chan could almost smell him, even if the Count could not.

Perhaps he'd arrived on the night train from Munich, even, and was on his way to the Shop as they spoke. Then there's be all manner of fireworks, wouldn't there?

T-chan grinned at the idea. A spot of verbal scrapping would be a pick-me-up after all this waffling, here and there, to and fro.

"Soon, I think," Count D replied, somewhat meditatively. "Tomorrow or the next day, perhaps. Or sooner. I've had some unsettling news quite early this morning—a little bird-so…my dearest T-chan, do inform the others for me, if you would be so kind. We must be prepared, as usual."

"Of course, Count," T-chan nodding, regaining his cloven toes. He turned to go, with one last reassuring glance over his shoulder. "We'll be ready as soon as you say the word, never fear. We go where you do, do we not?"

Distracted, the Count lifted his fingertips to the bridge of his nose, frowning. What precisely pained him more – his head or his unruly stomach—or the unwieldy ache in his thin chest?

"Yes, yes, " he smiled, pleased nonetheless. "And it is my pleasure to keep you company, my very dear Toutetsu, Now, I must be off to bed—truly, this time. I am tired, and perhaps I have caught a touch of that little boy's odious sniffles."

Count D wandered off to his rooms, still with that faraway look in his odd eyes, leaving T-chan to tend to the others and deal with a light supper. Good thing the Toutetsu could cook and was highly responsible – the Count always relied on him rather heavily whenever he…he was out-of-sorts, like this.

A new place would be much better, D decided, lying awake once again, staring at his ceiling. Different; not the same. The concept was reassuring, even slightly refreshing. There'd be new shops and new clients and new memories to overwrite the old.

And he'd be quite, quite safe from Detective Leon Orcot, were they all to decamp to another city. He'd have no reason to be constantly scanning the passing crowds, hoping for just one glimpse of that dearly beloved face—that specific shade of sun-bleached blond, those exact baby blues. There'd be no awkward meetings he was entirely unready for, no sorry excuses to invent on the fly for leaving the detective so rudely and abruptly behind.

Eventually, his detective would have to give up—'call it quits', as Leon liked to say. Human nature was not so constant, not in the Count's experience. Eventually, too, it would cease to be so very tempting just to stay in one place and wait for him.

Something new, something different. That's what he needed. 'Old and blue' wasn't cutting it, as his detective often remarked, though usually he said such things when contemplating the odd behaviour of some human sports team or perhaps his Chief, a notoriously volatile man.

But, and most definitely, Berlin would not do. Leon was likely already before the gates of the City Zoo, prowling—or he would be, in the morning. D would pack up the Shop and depart once more, in a hurry—

Just as soon as he woke fully from this last pleasant dream.

END