Note: Bear with me, folks. We'll return to the familiar (sort of) soon. We need to see what Perry has been up to in San Francisco first, since we've just been introduced to Asher.

Thank you for reading and commenting. It means the world to me because I probably take fan fiction a little too seriously, but it sure is a blast to write. ~ D

TCOT Absurd Assumption C6

Perry watched Della climb the stairs with the poise and grace that had captured his heart instantly thirty years ago, and only when he heard the door to the bedroom close did he return to the kitchen. He hastily cleaned up their meal, pausing to feed a bit of Della's unfinished burger to Chief, who pushed his way through the cat door and meowed loudly with what Perry could only assume was utter starvation by the way the cat frantically clawed at his pant leg. He then wrapped the remainder of the meat patty in foil for later, since it appeared the cat had no intention of leaving. It followed Perry around, snaking its long, slender body (he had always thought Della resembled a cat in that way) around and between his ankles, purring louder seemingly by the second.

He was grateful for the task of cleaning the kitchen as well as for the distracting antics of the cat, so he wouldn't think too much about what was taking place upstairs. Della would be in the bath by now, hair held back from her face with an ancient green headband atop which a blue butterfly had once landed and enchanted him as in a fairy tale. She would recline, her neck supported by a rolled up towel, and she would close her eyes with a long sigh of contentment. In that other time they kept referring to, a.k.a. 'when they were together', he would have brought her a glass of wine and sat on the vanity stool, talking to her about everything or merely nothing, watching as the fragrant, steaming water breathed new life into her incredible body. Showers were fine as far as they went, Della claimed, but nothing cured what ailed you like a good, long, hot bath. Wherever she lived she made certain that the bathroom contained as large a cast iron claw foot tub as possible, and Perry had always meant to put one in his apartment for her, but as with tearing down the wall that separated the kitchen from the living and dining rooms in this house, he had never gotten around to it. And Della, trusting in his insistence that he would do it, had never gone ahead and done it herself.

Regrets were beginning to choke him.

He had tried to live his life with as few regrets as possible, making a pact with himself that a few regrettable circumstances prior to meeting Della would not color his life with her, even though they most assuredly had. And in his attempt not to regret anything in regard to Della all he had managed to do was rack up an alarming number of scenes that plagued him day and night, and colored his life without her.

The kitchen tidied, and Della safely upstairs out of earshot, he decided to do something that was sure to be the very definition of regrettable.

It was time to make a phone call to San Francisco.

If anyone asked, he could honestly say he felt deep affection for Robin 'Bird' Calhoun, Emmy award-winning actress and owner of the apartment building in which he lived, and enough of an attraction to allow for a close relationship with her that the tabloids had begun categorizing as 'long-term' after barely six months. What the tabloids didn't know was that while he was assuredly a physical presence in Robin's life, his emotional center remained untouched by the actress, no matter how hard she tried to grab hold of it. When she'd made it clear she desired him, Perry had warned her that he wasn't sure he wanted to be in a relationship, let alone an exclusive relationship, and he couldn't love her how she wanted or needed, something she seemed to have forgotten – or chose to ignore. He didn't regret deciding to avail himself of Robin's willingness, but he did regret that perhaps he hadn't made the situation perfectly clear to her; because he didn't love her the way she wanted, and the relationship hadn't been exclusive, at least not in the beginning, when pain and guilt nearly drove him mad.

But Robin was there, next door to him in San Francisco, a part of his life he couldn't ignore even if the intimate aspect of their relationship was to his mind, extemporaneous. He had left a note for her, but she deserved an explanation directly from him, especially since he knew she would have heard more about his resignation and Della's arrest than he put in the note.

Perry almost hoped she wouldn't answer as the phone rang once, twice, three times, but on the fourth ring she picked up. He drew in a deep breath. "Hi, Bird."

"Hello."

The vocal inflections in that one word told him this call was not merely a bad idea, but a supremely bad idea. "I take it you've read my note. Have you seen the newspapers?"

"I read your note. I watched the television news after reporters started calling. That was a thrilling way to find out what had been happening in the world while I slept. You could have woken me up." Robin kept late hours and habitually slept until after ten a.m.

Of course a well-known television actress would be hounded by the tabloids, a reality of Robin's life she strove to maintain. "There wasn't time. I had to make a snap decision, Bird. I'm not a judge. I'm a criminal attorney. It's what I've always done and I miss it." And I miss Della, he added silently, and we've both been regrettably aware of that from the beginning.

"Don't give me that. Della called and you couldn't get to her side fast enough."

"Bird, she's accused of murdering a man. She needs me."

"I need you too, Perry." Robin inhaled from a cigarette and exhaled directly into the phone. "Is she innocent?"

"Of course she is! But she still needs a good attorney."

"There are plenty of good attorneys in the state, Perry. You could hire one for her and she'll be okay if she really is innocent. Just admit you saw an opportunity to be with her and jumped all over it."

Perry rubbed his free hand over his face tiredly. He'd thought being honest with Robin about his self-imposed romantic limitations would absolve him from guilt and regret when their relationship ended – and he'd known it would end eventually – but such wasn't the case. "I have to do this. It's already done." She wouldn't appreciate his reasoning that he had grown tired of writing opinions as Della had, so he kept that particular gem to himself.

Something Della said years ago played at his mind and made him grimace. "You're a cross between a saint and a devil." He had given her a flip reply, something along the lines of "All men are." At this moment he clearly saw her point – to Della he was a saint for rushing to her side when she needed him, and to Robin he was a devil for rushing to Della's side when she needed him; damned if he did by one woman, and damned if he didn't by himself.

Robin was silent on the other end of the line, save for the occasional intake of air as she sucked on a cigarette. He knew she had likely been chain-smoking, and more than likely drinking. "Tell me, Perry, if you had extended me the courtesy of talking about this before you ran back to Miss Perfect would you have listened to anything I said?"

"Being a judge wasn't something I ever aspired to," he said, swerving off his course of total honesty. A direct answer to her question could only result in something much less civil than their current exchange. "I only became a judge after promising my oldest friend on his deathbed I would sit out the remainder of his appointment. I never intended to be a judge all these years."

"That sounds like a big fat no. I wasn't talking about your judgeship. I was talking about us."

"Bird…our relationship was non-committal…"

"It may have started out that way," Robin interrupted, her incongruously childish voice suddenly harsh with emotional pain, "but it I committed to it wholeheartedly the first night we spent together. Am I really just a woman you slept with sometimes, Perry? How can you make a snap decision and walk out on your life here like this?" Snap decision my ass.

"It wasn't an easy thing to do. I have feelings for you, Bird." That even sounded lame to his own ears.

"As they say, you have a funny way of showing it."

"We shouldn't be having a conversation like this over the phone. Once Della is cleared, I'll come to San Francisco and we'll talk face-to-face."

"That's something to look forward to." She lit another cigarette. "Wasn't I good enough in bed for you? Is she better?"

"Really, Bird, we shouldn't talk like that over the phone."

"Then why in hell did you call me?"

"Right now I'm not sure," he snapped, instantly regretting it, and tossing that regret onto the ever growing pile. "I called because I wanted to know how you are and explain why I..."

"How am I? How am I? Let me tell you how I am, you prick! I'm hurt and I'm pissed. I've loved you and slept with you for two years and you crept into my apartment in the middle of the night to leave a note! A note!"

"I left at eight-thirty in the morning, not in the middle of the night, and you were sound asleep. There wasn't time to wake you up and explain." If he had woken her up, he would still be there, trying to explain why he had to leave. "I do have feelings for you, Bird. But I made a promise. I told you about –"

"Yes, you told me all right," she interrupted, hoping not to hear one more time that he had promised never to love another woman after Della Street. "I thought I could convince you it had been stupid to make such a promise, especially after what she did to you."

"Bird, if not for you, I might have become a hermit shut up in my apartment. I'm very grateful for that."

"If she hurt you bad enough to make a hermit out of you, then why on earth did you give up your entire life here and run back to her? She doesn't deserve that kind of devotion, Perry, no matter what kind of trouble she's gotten herself into." She was crying now and he could tell it was genuine and not one of her emoting exercises. "For no reason at all she stomped on your heart and all I get is a lousy note and an even lousier phone call to tell me you're grateful I was willing to spread my legs so you could forget about her for a few minutes a couple times a week?"

"I never said that," Perry said stiffly, ignoring Robin's vulgarity. Robin flat out blamed Della for everything, but he'd had a lot to do with whatever it was that went unforgivably wrong between them. "She had a reason." She must have had a hell of a reason.

"Sure she had a reason. The reason was she never really loved you. She took all she could from you, then spit in your face and never looked back."

"That's not true. Della and I parted on amicable terms." Sort of…

"Stop talking like a lawyer with a corncob up his ass. Parted on amicable terms. I was there, Perry. I saw what she did to you, but since you hardly ever talked about her I had to fill in the gaps myself. What kind of a woman suddenly turns her back on a thirty-year relationship?"

The only woman I've ever really loved, that's who, Perry thought, agony fresh and new over what he'd lost, Della's current proximity a reality he shouldn't think about, but couldn't stop thinking about. "The kind of woman who put up with a lot of crap in those thirty years," he heard himself say aloud. "The kind of woman who gave me everything she possibly could and accepted my faults with grace until she finally had to say 'enough'." It had to have been his fault she could no longer be with him. He just didn't know exactly what infraction had finally broken Della's strong, pliable spirit.

"Hmmm. The same kind of crap I put up with? Let me tell you something, Perry. I would never have said 'enough'. Forever wouldn't have been enough for me no matter what you did. I loved you."

Her voice was so chilly Perry felt a rush of cold air through the phone line. Oh Lord. She knew. She knew about the other women. "Robin…"

"She should have come with you to San Francisco. What you do is so much more important than anything she could do and she should have recognized that. If she had children it would have been a different story, but she doesn't –"

"Robin! Don't talk about Della as if you know anything about her."

"Then come home and tell me everything," Robin begged, the pitiful weeping dissolving into huge, hiccupping sobs. "I'll listen and help you get over this obsession you have with her."

"I am home, Robin. LA has always been my home. Moving to San Francisco was a mistake and running for retention after Harvey's appointment expired was an even bigger mistake. If I had stayed in LA…"

"If you had stayed in LA we wouldn't have met." How could he be this mean to her? She had read about the great Perry Mason, had heard stories about his famous temper and suffer-no-fools personality, but the man she knew, while he could be gruff and grumpy, had never been deliberately mean to her, devotional transgressions aside. His silence following her statement only deepened the hurt and humiliation his hasty flight from San Francisco had caused her. Not to mention the fact he was now calling her 'Robin', which he only did when he was annoyed with her. Imagine someone being so boorish as to be annoyed with the woman he was in effect dumping over the telephone.

"Robin, what do you want me to say? What do you want from me?"

"I want you to go to hell, Perry."

Perry leaned his head in his hand, pressing the receiver to his ear as Robin's misery gripped him. "I shouldn't have called," he said quietly. He'd wanted her to hear from him why he had resigned and quit his life in San Francisco, but her reaction was more than he had bargained for. "I am glad we met."

"Tell the truth, Perry. You wish you'd never slept with me."

"I didn't wish it until this very moment if it would have spared you from being hurt. We both took a chance when our friendship changed, Bird, and I'm sorry it didn't work out. I belong in LA, not in San Francisco pretending that being a judge is what I want to do for the rest of my life. I want to be back in the courtroom. HelI, I never wanted to be out of the courtroom. I want to practice law again. I want –"

"You want to recapture the glory of your youth and bang your secretary again," Robin accused. "I thought men had mid-life crises in their forties, not their sixties."

"I'm not having any crisis. I'm an attorney. I've only ever wanted to be an attorney. It's taken me eight years to act on the fact I never should have become a judge. It was the worst decision I've ever made, no matter how noble the intent." He hadn't admitted that to anyone, not even Della.

"Well, I'm glad to hear that, because I was getting the impression I was the worst decision you ever made."

"That's not true. Our friendship means a lot to me."

Robin drew in a quick, insulted breath. "Friends don't do what we did, Perry."

Perry fell silent and Robin began to weep piteously again. Although he had been for the most part emotionally absent during sex, Perry was in all physical ways an extremely capable, satisfying lover. She craved his touch every waking moment, but settled for the one or two nights a week he sought out her companionship. In the beginning it had been she who initiated their coupling, but very quickly she realized that if anything were to continue between them, she would have to subjugate her desires to Perry's needs. He had told her from the start he had promised Della Street she would be the last woman he said 'I love you' to, but Robin would be damned if she'd let him off the hook because he'd put that warning out there when she'd shamelessly offered herself to him and he had so readily accepted the offer. If she did, it would excuse what he was doing now.

"I'm going to hang up, Bird. I'm not proud of this conversation and I think we both need time to think about it. I'll call when I can get away and come back for my things."

"I suppose you expect me to pack up everything." She'd be damned if she'd let him decide when it was time to hang up. Oh God, her heart hadn't been broken like this even when Vic had walked out on her and the kids for that tarty starlet and ruined his career, or when George had disappeared after six months of marriage with half of her bank account and sent divorce papers from Reno demanding half of her properties as well. Larry's death had made her sad, but it had been a relief considering the suffering he'd endured, and Harold's unexpected heart attack had negated the necessity of an inevitable divorce and given her more properties than she had given up to make George go away, including the one she live in now. How could this man, the only man she had slept with without the benefit of marriage; this man who kept himself physically near but emotionally remote; this man who had assiduously avoided defining and barely publically admitting their relationship, have such a hold on her? How could she love Perry Mason but apparently not know him at all?

"I would never ask you to do that. I'll hire a service."

"What should I tell the kids?"

Perry laughed softly, and another quick intake of her breath let him know it was the wrong reaction to her question. Her 'kids', thirty-two, thirty-four, and thirty-six, would not be surprised by his exit from their mother's life. "I doubt very much your kids will care one way or the other if I'm in their life or not, and probably thrilled that I'm not in yours."

"If you don't mind, I'd like the official story to be I ended things before you resigned. Last weekend. Last weekend I tossed you on your ear because you are an emotionless, cold-hearted son-of-a-bitch." They had spent only an hour together the past weekend, time enough for one of those early morning 'quickies' that left her nearly deranged for more of him, but she'd promised to take two of her grandchildren while her son and daughter-in-law celebrated their wedding anniversary. The children were to be dropped off at nine and Perry slipped out of her apartment just minutes before they burst through the front door and jumped into bed with their 'Mom-Mom'.

A great, heavy sadness crept into his heart. He did sincerely care about Robin, but he didn't love her in the way she wanted to be loved, the way he should have been able to love her if he hadn't given away his heart thirty years ago and never taken it back, truthfully had never wanted to take it back, or made a serious attempt to take it back. He had used Robin and the other women to exorcise demons, to beat back futilely at the loneliness of an empty heart, and it was shameful what he had done. "If it will help you get through this, Bird, I don't mind at all."

She couldn't pretend to be the true catalyst behind Perry resigning his appointment because the papers and news reports were full of the thrillingly romantic thing he had done for his former secretary and rumored long-time lover, but she could find satisfaction in telling her family and the tabloids that she had been the one to end their long-term relationship before Della Street's troubles began. Broken-hearted by her rejection of him, he had grasped onto the fortuitous coincidence of Della Street's woes as an excuse to leave San Francisco and help him forget. Yes, that would play well for her. She'd be damned if she wasn't going to capitalize on the current situation. Her publicist could get quite a bit of mileage out of it.

"When do you think you'll be back? I'll have to check my calendar to see if I'll be available. Or if I'll even want to be available." The publicity about Perry and the small part she played in his life might nab a commercial or a sympathy appearance on a local news show…maybe even a guest spot on one of those new risqué sitcoms that were so popular or on 'Remington Steele'. That would be something. She could swallow a lot of humiliation to be billed as a 'special guest' for the opportunity to meet Pierce Brosnan. She would call her agent immediately after hanging up. She just had to find the perfect moment to end the call to her advantage.

Perry really hadn't given a return trip to San Francisco the slightest thought since Della called that morning – actually not until the words had emerged from his mouth. There were so many more important things to think about. He had called Robin to clear his mind for what lay ahead. Della would be acquitted, he was confident of that, but as to where they went from there…well, wherever they went, it had to be with the knowledge that Robin Calhoun was part of his past. It sounded harsh now, but the truth was often harsh, as he was well aware.

"I don't know. I have to set up an office, chase down and begin deposing witnesses, get a handle on the evidence…" deal with an infuriatingly absent private investigator, and the fact that I will always be in love with my former secretary… "…push for an accelerated preliminary hearing…I'll just have to call you, Bird, when things settle down."

"Do you have enough to wear? I could pack up your clothes and courier them to you." She sucked loudly on her cigarette and noisily blew out the smoke before tagging on, "For a price."

Her words could have completely discredited his motives for making the call, had she not added that final zinger. "Thank you, but that's not necessary. I brought enough." He listened very carefully for a few seconds, but she was suddenly completely silent. "Bird, I'm sorry."

"Yeah, well, that's nice. I'm sure it makes you feel better to say it."

"It doesn't. I never meant to hurt you. I thought you understood…"

"I'm just a dumb blonde, Perry, remember? I won two Emmy awards because I'm so good at being a dumb blonde."

"You aren't dumb, Bird." Quite the contrary. Robin Calhoun was extremely sharp, which took people by surprise when they met her in person. Blonde, blue-eyed, and curvy in all the right places, with that girlish voice, she was expected to be the ditzy woman she had played so ably on television, not the savvy property manager that she was.

"Let me have my pity party, Perry. I'm hurt and humiliated and…will you marry her?"

Perry jumped in surprise at her question. "Marry her? I have to get her acquitted first. And even then…I don't know what we'll be after that." Because you see, I met the man who asked her to marry him, and he was a Class A ass, but there must be something redeeming about his character or she wouldn't have been with him for as long as she was. And he wants her.

"Oh God, are you telling me I was dumped for something that's not even a sure thing?" Her voice raised nearly an octave in stunned incredulity.

"Bird…" It wasn't a sure thing. There was a lot of water flowing under a bridge right now.

"Good-bye, Perry. I'll try to be civil until you move out of your apartment, but after that I don't want to have anything to do with you. You'll understand if I don't give back your security deposit. I'm quite sure the apartment won't pass final inspection. And on second thought, I will pack up your things after all so I can begin a complete remodel right away, which I will also charge to you. Carpet, fresh paint, new curtains, a stove...I think I'm entitled to something for letting you use me for your sexual gratification."

"That's fine."

"And maybe I'll have a dishwasher installed." It was getting close to hanging-up time…

"I'm sorry, Bird."

"Hang up the damn phone, Perry."

He did, knowing that in doing so Robin would think she had wrested the high road from him, and that helped.

And the phone rang almost immediately. He yanked the cord from the wall and slumped back in the chair, hands raking through his hair in frustration at realizing what a failure he had been all his life at being honest, and soundly cursing it as the best policy.

The doorbell pealed and he launched himself from the chair before it rang again and woke up Della. He reached the front door and pulled it open.

A young woman with glossy black hair cut into a sassy bob stood on the stoop, finger poised to ring the doorbell again. She raised brilliant blue eyes to his. "Mr. Mason," she said in surprise.

He blinked in foggy non-recognition, his conversation with Robin Calhoun still working its way through his brain like a Kudzu vine, its tendrils insidiously attaching to every thought, strangling logic and civility out of them as it spread.

The young woman smiled broadly, realizing the attorney seemed to be dazed or truly didn't recognize her. "Can I come in, Mr. Mason? I promise not to ruin anything."

Suddenly Perry Mason flashed a grin to match that of the woman standing before him. "Kay-Kay," he said.