TCOT Absurd Assumption C26

Note: Thank you all so much for indulging my quest to overhaul PMR; for reading, and for commenting. I hope you enjoy the last (I promise!) chapter.

~ D

The doorbell began ringing as Perry finished fastening Della's dress while she wrapped up a conversation with her Aunt Mae's nurse on the telephone. He had gotten around to telling her about his conversation with Mae and the ensuing hysteria mere moments before Betty called with a positive update. Della couldn't be too upset with him for not telling her sooner, because by not doing so he had accomplished what Mae would have wanted more than anything with what cognizance remained – for them to be together again.

And in her mind, Della knew they were together again, that what they felt for one another was deep and undeniable. There was still a lot to talk about, more explanations and decisions to be made, and they would handle it the way Perry wanted this time. Tomorrow they would tell Mae, and maybe, just maybe there would be a spark of recognition, possibly a smirk of satisfaction because Mae most of all had always understood exactly what it was that attracted her niece to Perry Mason, as well as what it was that sustained the attraction.

They tumbled and stumbled down the stairs like two guilty teenagers on prom night as the doorbell continued to ring, the finery of their clothing both containing and enflaming raging middle-aged hormones, the smiles on their faces softly reminiscent as well as slyly anticipatory. They had practiced making innocent faces with one another, because Perry said she looked well-loved, which she claimed was the height of conceit on his part, but because he had such a loopy grin on his face she let it pass with only a partially raised eyebrow.

Bart was leaning against the doorbell button, an enormous platter of sandwiches balanced across his arms, when Perry flung open the front door. "Took you long enough," he grumbled, pushing past his brother and entering the house.

Carter followed quickly behind, a boxed sheet cake in his arms. Henny and Valerie carried bowls of fruit and salad.

It took two more trips for the men to empty not only Bart's rental car but Della's car as well of platters of food and several gallons of alcohol for Della's 'official' acquittal party, an informal open house which Henny theatrically explained was being thrown because it hadn't been fair to exclude everyone from the celebration lunch after court adjourned. A round-robin series of phone calls and word-of-mouth invitations were begun by Gertie and Mildreth Tragg, and Della began to fear that half of Los Angeles might show up at her house that night, judging by the amount of food and alcohol being brought in by the men. She had to smile at a sticker on the plastic wrap covering all the food: California Cuisine Deli. Perry must have mentioned it.

It appeared Perry and Della needn't have worried about covering up the event(s) that took place while preparations for what might turn out to be the social event of the year were being made, as their in-laws squabbled about what was actually being celebrated and virtually ignoring the guests of honor. Bart and Carter insisted the celebration should spotlight Perry's triumphant return to the courtroom, while Henny and Valerie maintained it was an acquittal party, and the person who had been acquitted was Della.

There was a third option no one was discussing, and that was the fact Perry would be opening his practice again, a subject he'd broached with Della while they showered and dressed, and which she met with silence and sky-high eyebrows. He gamely tried to cobble together a cogent argument, but the fact he had attempted to present his case while she stood before him in nothing but black lace panties, a matching strapless bra, thigh-high stockings (quite arguably the greatest invention in women's fashion ever), and velvet evening pumps embellished with a starburst pattern of rhinestones over the pointed toe meant he was doomed to total failure.

It was difficult for Perry to think of anything but Della while Valerie and Henny ordered him around, placing the platters of sandwiches and appetizers on every conceivable surface in the kitchen; of how they had spent the past couple of hours, of how much he had always loved her, of how breathtakingly beautiful she was. What had Henny always said? It was unfair how naturally beautiful Della was, and tonight Perry thought that unfairness rose to new, unobtainable heights.

Her dress was one he remembered quite fondly, a black velvet Thierry Mulger stunner with drop shoulders and a petal-shaped skirt that fit like a second skin. The velvet portion overlaid a horizontally striped, stretchy knit long-sleeved 'shirt' with a short mock turtleneck collar that managed to cover but be sexy as all get-out. He called it the 'optical illusion' dress, and marveled how it could fit Della's curves even better now than when he had first bought it for her five years ago. When she wore it her gait changed from that of cat-like grace to snake-like undulation, and he knew she was completely unconscious of it.

That was okay, because he was conscious enough for both of them.

As was suddenly Henny, who paused in her activities to stare at her sister-in-law, slack-jawed, finally taking notice of more than preparations for the party.

"Too much?" Della fretted, smoothing elegant hands down the figure-molding velvet, self-conscious at the relative quiet surrounding her. The dress suited her much more than the drop-waisted flowered monstrosity she'd bought to make Asher happy, and she had chosen it specifically tonight because Perry had chosen it for her.

Henny gulped, tried to speak, failed.

Valerie patted Della's shoulder. "If you've got it, dear, flaunt it. It's your party. You should be the belle of the ball."

Della shook her head. "No, the party is for Perry and his –"

"The party," Perry thundered from the other side of the kitchen where he was assisting Bart with setting up a bar, jumping on the opportunity to make his opinion known, "is in honor of Della agreeing to be my secretary when I reopen my practice."

"Assistant," Della corrected with a charmingly impudent smile. "And I haven't agreed to a darned thing."

"Did I not, Miss Street, recently make you an offer you couldn't refuse?"

Della usually had the last word as the true boss in their working relationship, even though the offer recently made had nothing to do with work. "We'll talk." But she ducked her head to hide the blush that crept across her cheekbones.

Perry broke into the boyish grin that thirty years ago had very likely laid the foundation for the greatest happiness he'd ever experienced.

Valerie, an astute student of psychology, watched the exchange, head bobbing between her brother-in-law and, legal status notwithstanding, her sister-in-law. Her keen blue eyes narrowed as the air around her crackled with potent undercurrents, much like it had all those years ago when Perry showed up for a holiday dinner with his lovely secretary in tow. It was a phenomenon rarely experienced, indescribable, and highly enviable.

Something had happened while everyone was out of the house, and Valerie had a very good idea what the something was.

"Okay," she announced with a clap of her hands, "they're at it again. Who had five o'clock on the day of acquittal?"

Carter pulled a folded sheet of paper covered with a grid of squares out of his inside suit pocket and squinted at it. "Arthur Tragg."

Della gasped, appalled. "You took bets?"

"Better look at three o'clock," Perry advised, the picture of innocence.

Della sat down at the island and put her head in her hands. Everyone else swiveled their heads from Perry to Della, and back to Perry, who merely shrugged his shoulders, his face comically blank. Good thing he had practiced.

"Well I'll be damned," Carter said after another squint at the bet grid. "I won."

"I don't believe this," Della moaned.

"Well, we thought about betting on the time you would be acquitted, but that was so boring. Hardly anybody signed up until we spiced the pot."

"Were you surprised at how quickly the hearing was over, Perry?" Carter asked as he snuck a carrot stick from a tray. Henny slapped his hand.

"Not a bit," Perry claimed. "In fact, it would have ended before it began if Paul had gotten the information from Acton sooner." And that was all he would say about it. No use going over 'what if's' about the case. It was over. Time to move forward. In more ways than one.

"Were you nervous at all being in the courtroom again?" This from Val, who had been mesmerized by Perry's performance. "It didn't look like you were."

"He's never nervous in court," Della replied for him matter-of-factly. "It's a professional sport to him. Questioning witnesses causes his adrenalin levels to surge just like an athlete."

"Were you nervous?"

Della shook her head. "No. I just pictured Perry naked."

Val laughed first, quickly followed by Henny. It took the men a few seconds longer to figure out the joke, and once Perry began to laugh, Della finally gave in to her own laughter. Val coughed and quickly left the room, waving to everyone that she was okay.

No one could talk for several minutes, for every time someone tried, they would laugh again. Val re-entered the room, wiping tears from her eyes, after taking two doses from an inhaler and having what the doctors would term a 'productive' coughing session. She breathed with an audible wheeze, but couldn't have cared less.

"Well," Perry finally managed to get out, "had I known that, the winning time might have been noon on the dot."

"That was Gertie's bet," Carter chimed in and everyone burst into laughter again. Carter could barely control his laughter, which he knew probably surprised his sister, who considered him a stuffed shirt, humorless and rigid. He could be rigid, he knew that, but he wasn't humorless. As a matter of fact, he was appreciating his sister's sense of humor immensely at the moment.

"You people are ridiculous," Della said as the laughter continued. Of course, who else but hopeless romantic Gertie would have chosen the earliest possible time for them to...reunite?

Gertie was the first guest to arrive, on the arm of her new beau Albert Pajor. If she thought being greeted with chuckles and grins strange, she didn't let on, possibly because she was so pleased to introduce a handsome, successful man who treated her with kindness and respect to the famous Perry Mason and his former secretary, two of her favorite people on earth. Perry shook the man's hand with an overly firm grip, and to his credit Albert Pajor didn't flinch. He met the silent warning in the attorney's eyes with reassuring candor, and the grip relaxed.

The party had been presented as an open house from seven to ten, so a steady stream of friends, neighbors, former colleagues, as well as famous and not so famous celebrities passed through Della's front door. Arthur and Mildreth Tragg's daughter had been tapped to keep an eye on the food, assisted by Chief's little girl, Heather. Kay-Kay's sons were tasked with picking up discarded plates and napkins and stuffing them into trash bags, while Heather's older sister and another neighborhood teen ran a make-shift coat check operation out of the den. Mixing drinks was the grandson of a former client, watched like a hawk by Bart.

Della wondered why a banquet hall hadn't been hired, but as the evening brought more and more people over her threshold, she realized the informality and familiarity of welcoming those she cared for and who cared for her into her home was relaxing and enjoyable. Leave it to Henny and Val, expert hostesses, to plan the perfect party.

Still bathed in the glow of what Bart referred to in his deepest voice as their 'tryst' and pleasantly woozy after a couple of tasty margaritas, Della tried to stay close to Perry, atingle from every small touch, every tender look, every affectionate word, but as the crowd grew in size and people moved in and out of the house, the demands on their attention pulled them into different rooms. At nine Della escorted a few Gordon Industries colleagues to the door and after a quick stop in the kitchen to hug Lisa Tragg and Chief's little girl Heather, she headed to the dining room where several flickering pillar candles created a cozy, homey ambiance and where the remaining guests had gathered.

Perry was near the fireplace, talking to Fletcher and Everett McGreavy, twins who rarely went anywhere without the other, including on their honeymoons. Since they had managed to marry identical twins with a similar bond (and whose parents should be seriously taken to task for naming them Laney and Delaney), it wasn't as bizarre as it sounded, but they certainly received odd looks when it came up in conversation. Perry reached out an arm and snuggled Della close to his side, never breaking stride in his conversation with his law school buddies. Fletcher and Everett, possessing that undefinable twin telepathy, silently communicated their satisfaction to each other.

Others in the room didn't possess such highly developed communicative talents, including another of Perry's law school buddies Art Emmelander, who let forth a piercing whistle, which caused a chain reaction of applause and cat-calls. Della blushed becomingly while Perry just grinned, which was enough to confirm the results of what had become known as the 'nooky pool'. It was heartening to know their friends hadn't changed much in all the years they'd known them.

Paul Drake, with a sober expression on his face, excused himself from the group of ladies he was charming and extricated Della from Perry's embrace, ignoring the thunderous look Perry gave him, and escorted her to a quiet corner in the living room.

"So it really happened," he began the conversation. The buzz going around was that Perry and Della had recently reacquainted themselves intimately with one another. Just the thing he hadn't wanted to hear, for oh so many reasons.

Della willed herself not to blush again. "That depends on what you think 'it' is."

That's all the acquiescence Paul needed. He was getting better at reading between lines and identifying smokescreens. His father would be proud of him. "I hope you know what you're doing. I'm putting that guy on notice that if he does anything..."

Della laid her palm against Paul's cheek and regarded him with shining eyes. "Paul, I love you. You're the child I...never had. The child we never had."

Paul didn't need to follow the direction of those shining eyes to know she was talking to him but looking at Perry Mason. "I had a father. I don't need him."

Della's smile trembled. "I know you had a father. You had the best father in the world." She could not have predicted how readily Paul Drake, playboy extraordinaire, had taken to fatherhood, especially after his son came to live with him full-time. "But you're wrong about Perry. You do need him. And he needs you."

Paul snorted. He loved Della more than his own mother, whom he hadn't spoken to in months, and for most of his life hadn't understood how such a beautiful, intelligent, wonderful woman could waste her life on someone as full of himself as Perry Mason. "He doesn't need anyone but himself. He's a fully contained narcissist."

It saddened Della to realize Paul must have been play-acting during their lovely lunch, probably for her benefit, and that he still carried that Perry Mason-sized chip on his shoulder. "Paul, do you remember a long time ago when Perry called you Boo-Boo?"

Paul made a disgusted face and rolled his eyes. "I remember telling him to stop calling me Boo-Boo." He had forced Perry to spend hours watching The Yogi Bear Show with him when he was a kid, stretched out on the floor of Della's cozy apartment, usually using the big attorney as a pillow. The only nickname he disliked more than 'Deuce' was 'Boo-Boo'.

Della's eyes were now shining with tears. "Do you know why he called you Boo-Boo?"

"Because Boo-Boo was Yogi's simple little nobody sidekick."

"That's not how I remember Boo-Boo at all," Della said quietly. "I remember Boo-Boo being Yogi Bear's constant companion, and very often his conscience. Just like you were Perry's constant companions."

Paul cocked his head to the side, wondering where she was headed with this topic. Perry didn't have a conscience...

"I asked Perry why he called you Boo-Boo. He said it was because you were better than the av-er-age kid. It broke his heart when you told him to stop."

Wow.

Paul's swallowed with great difficulty as his eyes shifted from Della's exquisite face toward Perry Mason, who didn't even have the decency to pretend he wasn't blatantly staring at them.

Della's little story inflicted a serious blow to what Paul had thought was his new-found maturity. He wasn't quite sure how he felt about it.

"Perry doesn't wear his heart on his sleeve," Della continued. "And it isn't easy for him to tell someone how he feels. But when he does find a way to tell them, you can be sure he means it." She stepped up onto her toes and kissed Paul's cheek. "Talk to Bart, Boo-Boo. You two have a lot in common."

She tried to move away, but Paul grabbed her hand, his expression dazed and stricken. "Del, I had no..."

Della laughed softly. "You can't change Perry. He is who he is, and who he is...is the best man I know. She squeezed his hand. "I made a terrible mistake three years ago. It was me, Paul. I tried to change him even though I knew better."

Paul watched her walk away from him, more beautiful than any woman who could be his mother should be, toward the man she just admitted she loved in her wise, private way.

And he was mature enough to recognize it.

Wow.

Perry wasn't many steps away from her but Della found it difficult not to break into a run and launch herself at him. She realized in talking to Paul that while they had been more physically intimate than most people could ever hope to be mere hours ago, she shockingly hadn't told Perry something he had told her over and over again with words as well as with every single thing he'd done for her the past couple of weeks.

Fletcher and Everett had reseated themselves next to their wives and Perry was standing at the fireplace by himself, slightly removed from their group of friends and relatives, watching her every unconsciously seductive move as she advanced on him. He'd just shaken hands with Don Uptegraff, Evelyn's contractor husband, who had agreed to take down the wall separating the dining room and the kitchen. Perry would go to San Francisco the following Monday, return the same evening, and spirit Della away to his favorite desert inn for four days of relentlessly debouched assignations. And at the end of those four days, the wall would be gone and they could start part two of their life together with a clear view of everything.

Della felt giddy and oddly nervous, the power of his gaze an electrical current feeding her wildly beating heart. How could she have given up a man who looked at her like that?

She walked directly into his arms, snuggling against his broad chest, laying her head over his heart. A couple of heads turned toward them, but nothing was said this time about their display of affection. Everyone present had seen Perry and Della embrace over the years, and it appeared that they would see them embrace for many more years. It was good, it was normal.

Perry wrapped his arms around Della. "I missed you."

Della knew he wasn't talking about the few minutes she'd spent talking to Paul. "I missed you, too."

Perry kissed the top of her head, a deft, unobtrusive move perfected over the years.

"I love you," Della said.

Perry cradled her against him, one hand moving up to press her head more closely to his heart. He smiled. "I know."

THE END