My need for drama displayed here.

I still need R&R to pactise my English, and writing. And yes, I like the nitpicking, so please do if you feel like it.

Chapter 2

The rail of the balcony felt soothingly cool to her shaking hands. The curtains gently moved through the doorway and drifted back again, making the music and muttering from inside the hall come to her in waves.

Her anger had reduced and was replaced by the soft ache she had become familair with over the years. Her reaction to his words had been far out of place. After all, she herself also hadn't contacted him during that five years either. Not that she never had wanted to, but something had stopped her.

It was her deeply rooted secretarial way of coping with life and its twisting and turning. Filing all memories in boxes, and storing them, to be able to find them when it suited her. To be able to find specific memories when wanted, to relive them if she longed to do so, or to despise them if she had to, and all of this in a controlled manner. This struggle for control had haunted her this last decade. Her most violent struggle being the one to control her feelings for the man she had loved, cherished and honoured for better and for worse for almost thirty years. Three decades of feeling married to eachother and their jobs, both very contented without the actual vows spoken and without their confirming signature on a piece of paper.

The way they had lived in this unconventional relationship suited them well, yet it was this unconventional way that had allowed them to drift apart. Slowly but inevitably, they went their own seperate ways setting different priorities after he had decided to take the judgeship when he was asked. He hadn't talked to her first, hadn't given them time to find out what this meant for their relationship, and how they were going to cope. He had just answered instantly to his suffocating need for a huge and permanent change, at a crucial moment in their lives when all she had wanted was for things to stay the same for as much as possible. After a year of remoddeling, adjusting to his new career in San Francisco while her own life continued in L.A., they unspokenly decided to stop seeing eachother. Like they had unspokenly decided to be married before.

She knew when it had started. After the sudden deaths of both Burger and Tragg, and the ordeal of the terrible sickbed and death of their longtime friend Paul Drake, time should have had the courtesy to stand still. To offer them the crucial silence to shed their tears and to mourn. Three funerals in one year had taken their toll on them, they had not been able to put up with so much fundamental loss in so little time.

Suffering from their emotional state of mind, she had healed herself by concentrating on the practical details that had to be dealt with on a daily basis. She had hugged herself doing groceries, managing the daily business at the office, cleaning and clearing for long hours. He had fled from daily routine, and by doing so, he had fled from her. He had told himself and her he wanted more of life, allowing himself no time to grieve, considering it a waste of time. And at their age, he found, there was no time to waste. He considered taking the judgeship a very logical, if not a lifesaving step.

Their different ways of dealing with life at this stage divided them into the two individuals they were before living and working together as one.

What else was there to say? Memories filed away safely, she picked up another daily working routine in another job, ignoring the screaming voices in the back of her mind that yelled at her day and night that this was wrong. Luckily, the voices grew more and more silent over the years. As long as she didn't have to see him, as long as they didn't meet, as long as she didn't think of him, things were ' fine, just fine'.

Tonight just his eyes and the few words he had said, had tossed all memories on the floor and she desperately tried to pick them all up, experiencing the pain and grief that came with them, together with the joy, the thrill and contentment of the precious moments. So precious to her, she didn't want to lose them. While that probably was the best thing she could do right now, lose them. To be able to really start a new life, without him, without using her life with him as a measuring device to consider every single thing she did now, every change feeling odd, every other man a poor substitute for the one she had really ever wanted, and had lost.

She swallowed her tears, promising herself to shed them at a more convenient time. She had practised withholding tears over the years. They would ruin her make-up now anyway, and she had to face Arthur Gordon without having him worried about her. She'd tell him she wanted to go back to the hotel, and take a taxi to get there. She needed time to think and file what had happened tonight in the two minutes she had been standing closer to Perry Mason than during the five years before.

Inhaling deeply, she turned her weary body with the intention to walk into the hall again to seek for Arthur. The dark shape of Perry in the doorway of the balcony didn't surprise her but merely humoured her in a strange way. She turned around again to hold onto the rail of the balcony. For support or whatever it was that made her feel better touching the cold metal. Yet, the trembling started again.

His approaching footsteps sounded heavier than she remembered from years ago, earlier tonight she had already noticed he had gained weight. It kind of suited him like the beard did. It made his appearance even more powerful than it already was.

He took in a deep breath, before he spoke to her in a soft voice.

" I'm sorry, Della….I didn't mean to upset you...but it was the truth...I do miss you…."

His long strong fingers lingered to hers, gently, just to see if she accepted the intimacy of his touch. She didn't move, so he held her slender hand for a few moments, before turning it. He caressed her palm with his thumb. Letting out a sigh, she turned her gaze from the image of their hands together.

They both closed their eyes, but it didn't help. In the perpetual minute that followed, they had the same memories stabbing them, memories of their hands together, fingers entangled, strolling on the beach, enjoying lazy sundays in bed, leaving the office together at impossible hours, entering the office together at impossible hours, dancing the night away, watching sunrises, sunsets. His fingers on her heated skin, his fingers inside her, her soft hands on his chest, her hands running through his hair when he ravished her breasts, her fingernails in his shoulders, his hands holding her face, her hands holding his face at their countless moments of simultaneous release.

Fingers whiping away tears, hands slamming doors.

She didn't see what it was he left in her hand, before gently closing her fingers over it, squeezing them and then letting go, slowly, reluctantly. Noticing her trembling, he swallowed hard.

" Call me….we need to talk…. "

He placed his hand in her hair softly and drew her head to him to lightly brush his lips to her temple. The touch of his beard was soft, like the touch of the hairs on his arms and legs, she remembered dearly. She inhaled his scent, still the same, his cologne, mixed with some of his sweat, wine. But different because of a small wave of an unfamiliair woman's perfume.

" …..please… " his hoarse voice pleaded softly.

At the sound of his leaving footsteps, she sighed and opened her hand to see a little piece of paper. She unfolded it.

Written on it, in his handwriting, were two phonenumbers, both direct lines she could tell by the composition of them. He had signed with " P " , like he used to sign his little notes to her in the office, ages ago. Her hands shook less, untill she turned the piece of paper to see what it was he had written on. The sight of it caused her so carefully withheld tears to stream down her face.

It was a receipt of the purchase of her favourite perfume. It was dated April 17th, 1977. The last gift she had accepted from him.