Cute story. Thanks for rising to the challenge.
My first thought, too, had been that the woman was Lois. The television interviews had me question that, and the mani/pedi made me reject that hypothesis entirely. I had also briefly considered and discarded Mindy Church, and then rapidly settled on Stride. Since you mentioned the context in which this story was written, I had immediately assumed that the man was Barry and not Clark. Had I not known the context, however, I would have been fooled by him for a while, as well.
Now I just hope that Barry doesn't get kidnapped (either by Stride and company or by someone else) and have a hard time convincing the perps that he really is just plain old Barry Letterman. ("So you can bleed. So what? You think we're stupid and we never heard about kryptonite? What do you think this little green insurance policy is here? Of course you can bleed!")
Joy,
Lynn
