If you've decided to brave my (ridiculously romantic, but hopefully entertaining!) foray into the Perry Mason fandom, I am grateful to you. I've loved the characters for a long time, and Perry and Della were one of my first ships before I knew what shipping was. Reading stories here has made me quite happy.

Thanks so much for reading along!

If he weren't completely exhausted, he would celebrate. Then again, the only person he had to celebrate with was just as exhausted as he was. Perry Mason wouldn't have won his most recent case - his thinnest-ice-skating work to date, culminating at the end of a nail-biting day in court with a spectacularly finagled confession made straight from the witness stand - without Paul Drake, private detective extraordinaire and Mason's right hand man. And Paul Drake wouldn't have managed to help save the day if he had given in to the urge to quit the fight and take a nap at some time during the previous night.

At this point, not even a steak dinner with all the trimmings would entice Paul Drake and his bicarbonate of soda-treated stomach. He was hearing the siren call of his bed, and was toying with the idea of unplugging the telephone, just in case his friend got any crazy, middle-of-the-night ideas. Again.

The problem was, Mason wouldn't be sleeping. Not right away, anyway. With adrenalin still coursing through his veins and unspeakable relief at saving his client from the irreversible injustice of the gas chamber, he needed a way to unwind.

He congratulated the freed man and his family, then made his way through the crowd of agitated spectators. He kept his head down - a rather late attempt at being humble - as the flash bulbs burst around him, and slipped through a side exit to avoid the reporters he knew would be swarming the steps of the courthouse. He was rapidly gaining a reputation for showmanship, and he wasn't normally one to shy away from the aftermath of publicity-garnering legal pyrotechnics; but today, he needed some air.

He left the courthouse and his car behind, pulling his hat low over his eyes and walking alongside the street that throbbed with rush hour traffic. It didn't always bother him - the honking and revving noises made by impatient drivers, the jostling bustle of pedestrians on their way to...where were they even going? Where were any of them going? He hadn't a clue.

That was just it. There was a restlessness underlying his exhaustion, an undetermined question casting a cloud over his victory, and his surroundings made him feel edgy.

Paul Drake had diagnosed him with loneliness. Mason had to admit it was a possibility, although he wasn't sure he and Paul were referring to the same brand of loneliness.

Mason wanted someone who shared his world view, his enthusiasm for mystery, his quest for adventure, his willingness to veer off life's beaten paths. Someone who understood his need to escape from the city every now and then. Someone who was equally comfortable with philosophical conversation and companionable silence. Someone who wasn't afraid of food with garlic and who loved the fox trot as much as he did. Someone who didn't mind risking arrest for a good cause, or even just for the fun of it.

Sure, Paul was supernaturally dependable and a great friend, but he didn't quite understand the things that drove Mason to stick his neck out the way he did. Besides, he was wary of garlic and he hated risking arrest.

Yes, his secretary was affable and trustworthy, not to mention efficiency personified, but the more she got involved with that dull-as-dishwater boyfriend of hers, the more interested she became in a job that let her open the office at ten 'til nine and lock it back up again no later than 5:31. Sadly, her divine dancing skills were wasted on her wallflower boyfriend. And she, too, had an aversion to arrest.

He did keep in touch with some of his friends from law school, who had settled in at respectable, well-established firms that operated in more conventional ways - the very definition of boring to Mason's mind. They had recognized when they were approaching the marrying stage of their lives; they all had wives and some of them had kids. Hell, one of the more successful ones even had a junior partnership and an ex-wife.

Paul Drake's interpretation of what ailed Mason differed significantly, and he was as convinced of the cure as he was of the condition. He frequently pointed out that a burgeoning fame enhanced Mason's peculiar combination of boyish charm and intense personality, giving him a surefire prescription for loneliness: his pick of pretty women. Mason couldn't deny that he enjoyed the company of pretty women, but beyond a dance partner for an evening and a few flirtatious rounds of drinks, his interest waned. There wasn't anything inherently wrong with pretty women. Pretty was nice to look at. Pretty was fun to spin around a dance floor. Pretty was no guarantee of captivating conversation. Pretty, on its own, didn't lead to the kind of relationship, romantic or otherwise, that could withstand Mason's dogged devotion to his vocation.

The wrong kind of pretty, he had learned, was how many of his clients got into such deep trouble. Pretty with a healthy dose of flattered male ego, to be fair. He seemed to recall that was the formula that had led to his one friend ending up with an ex-wife.

But in his brushes with fame (he believed the boys over at the DA's office referred to it as "infamy"), pretty was what sought him out, and he had a strong suspicion it was the calculated sort that assumed where fame went, fortune followed, or vice versa. Maybe that was true enough for famous businessmen, but he wasn't a businessman. He was a lawyer, and his own kind at that. Money was nice, but rarely did anything interesting come from being downright mercenary. For example, the client he had just left behind at the courthouse owned a little deli. Beyond a small retainer collected at the beginning of this mess, Mason didn't doubt he was going to be paid in installments of roast beef sandwich lunches.

That was just fine with him. The case had challenged him and had given him the chance to hone his craft. Also, he liked roast beef sandwiches.

His pace slowed. He reached up to push on his neck at the point where it met his tense shoulder. As he rolled his head from side to side and considered whether he had enough energy for a cigarette, he noticed he had stopped in front of a used bookstore. A slow smile took hold on his weary countenance. He pushed through the door, a little bell over the threshold ringing to announce his arrival in the hole-in-the-wall, literary treasure trove, and he breathed in the scent of old books shoved into wooden shelves already filled to capacity. Surely one of these would pair well with a generous tumbler of scotch.

"May I help you find anything?" The voice came from a wiry, gray-haired man behind a desk inundated with homeless tomes.

"Thanks, but I'm sure I'll know it when I see it."

The proprietor nodded his head in solemn agreement. Mason wondered if he had ever been able to turn away a book.

He strolled languidly through the aisles encroached upon by precariously stacked volumes, the unsettled feeling momentarily pushed aside. He paused to read the spines of bright, exciting covers as well as dull, worn, dusty ones. He wove his way from one genre to another.

Then he rounded a corner - carefully so as not to knock over a pile of mass market paperbacks - and found exactly what he had been looking for.

to be continued...