What kind of question was “Is it you?”
“Of course it’s me,” Lois said. “I’m not sure who you were actually expecting, but it’s definitely me.”
He made a faint noise deep in his throat and stepped back, almost as though someone had struck him. For a moment he looked almost afraid.
“Are you all right?”
Clark Kent flushed. “I’m sorry. That was rude of me.”
In Metropolis, a man who blushed would be a naïve rube. Here, though, it almost seemed charming. Being old fashioned wasn’t a sign of weakness, it was just…exotic. He hadn’t answered the question, though.
“Who *were* you expecting?” she asked.
His flush deepened. Before he could answer, an older man came up from behind Lois.
“There you are! You’re wanted in rehearsal.”
William Robinson looked a little younger here than the picture she’d seen when she was looking up Clark’s history, but he was clearly recognizable. The manager barely even glanced at her, but he seemed irritated.
He frowned. “I was given to understand that I was done for the day.”
The older man smiled grimly. “Plans change.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, turning to Lois. “Apparently the stage awaits. Perhaps we’ll meet again.”
“I’m sure we will,” Lois murmured.
He strode off in the direction of the theater. Lois watched him speculatively. If she was going to be with him whenever he made his jump in time, she’d have to get to know him.
The older man was still looking at her.
“Can I help you?” she asked, irritably.
“He’s not for the likes of you,” the man said.
“Excuse me?” Lois asked, focusing fully on the man for the first time. “What exactly are you trying to say?”
“You aren’t the first and you certainly won’t be the last woman to try to…lure him away from his true calling.” The man shook his head and smiled, although the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “It seems romantic; the life of an actor, but it is no life for a married man.”
Lois stared at him. “Who says I want to get married?”
If anything, the man’s expression darkened. “I think you will find that if you are not an honest woman he will have nothing to do with you.”
What was it with these people and prostitution?
“My interest in Mr. Kent is entirely aboveboard,” Lois said. “I’m a reporter for the Daily Planet and I’d like to do an article on him.”
From what she’d read of the man’s ambitions, that should pique his interest.
“That hardly seems likely. This doesn’t have anything to do with the society pages or female fripperies, and I’m given to understand that the Daily Planet hires men to do the real reporting,” William Robinson stared at her. “Also, if they’d sent a reporter several hundred miles, they’d have sent word in advance.”
Kicking him in the groin was looking alarmingly attractive, but Lois suspected it would get her kicked out of the hotel at the very least and possibly stuck in jail.
The last place she wanted to be was trapped while Clark Kent went on his little jaunt to the future. If she missed that window, she might be trapped here, and it was becoming more and more apparent that she didn’t belong.
There were two world wars coming, and Lois would never be able to stop herself from getting involved, any more than she could have not tried to stop the 9/11 terror attacks. Yet there was no way to know how any of that would change the future.
Would her parents have met each other at all if the massive displacement of people from world war two hadn’t happened? How much would what she did here affect the future?
Was the future immutable, or would stepping on a butterfly lead to Pat Buchanan becoming president? Was everything predestined?
Time travel made her head hurt.
Lois noticed a little girl pointing at her. Her mother shushed her and hurriedly turned her away. She’d known her hairstyle would stick out, but a bad haircut wasn’t any reason to point at a person.
It took her a moment to realize that no one passing by would look her in the eye.
She checked herself, fearing that her dress had been damaged in an embarrassing place. She didn’t feel any drafts.
Yet somehow people were still looking at her strangely.
Lois couldn’t understand why. It was like one of those puzzles where you looked at two pictures, with one only slightly different from the other. If the difference didn’t jump out at you, you had to painstakingly search detail by detail.
Everything she was wearing seemed to fit the period, although she didn’t know enough about current fashions to really tell.
It took almost five minutes to realize that it wasn’t what she was wearing. It was what she wasn’t wearing.
There were at least fifty people walking around, and with the exception of some of the children, everyone was wearing hats.
Lois scowled. If she’d known she was going to be stuck in the past she’d have bought a lot more period money.
Of course, if her hatlessness was what was making people call her a prostitute all the time, it needed to be corrected. Another dress might help. She suspected being seen in the same dress several days in a row wouldn’t help her prostitute reputation.
She’d have to gamble everything on following Clark Kent into the time stream. If she stayed even a day later, it seemed she’d be penniless.
*************
Lois felt exhausted and overwhelmed. Apparently finding an off the shelf dress was impossible and women changed hats more often than they changed shoes in her own century. Bras hadn’t been invented yet.
The woman hadn’t understood her adamant refusal to wear a corset. Even if she’d been inclined to wear a medieval torture device in the service of fashion, it didn’t seem like the kind of thing that would be easy to put on without someone’s help.
Fashion was, if anything even more complicated than it had been in her day.
Apparently the dress she was wearing was an evening dress; the fact that she was wearing it in the early morning probably wasn’t helping the impression she was making.
There were so many small rules in any society and it was easy to make social gaffes. If she didn’t get out when Clark Kent did, she’d be stuck here, a prospect that seemed less appealing every minute.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t just follow him around for the next two days. Although Lois had some experience in doing stakeouts, this wasn’t the kind of urban environment where you could blend in with the crowd until someone did something you could report on. He’d already seen her face.
She needed some kind of excuse to stay close to him.
At least she didn’t have to ask about asking around for his room number. That had been prominent in the information in the hotel museum; presumably so that guests could pay a little more to visit the “haunted” room. The last thing she needed was more scandal.
In her own time she’d have been able to threaten to sue for discrimination, or to write negative articles about the hotel. She had a feeling though, that the desk clerk would be more than happy to evict her if Clark’s manager complained.
She’d have to be careful.
***************
His door opened. In contrast to his wary expression the first time they’d met, he looked almost glad to see her.
“I didn’t get a chance to introduce myself,” Lois said. “My name is Lois Lane. I’m a reporter for the theater section of the Daily Planet.”
For some reason the pleasure in his expression smoothed into something more guarded and neutral.
“I’d like to write a profile on you…on the entire troupe, but most especially on you.”
“Why?” He asked. “I’m just an actor playing the circuit in the middle of the country. Shouldn’t you be writing about one of the real success stories in Broadway?”
Lois forced herself to shrug. “I’m a woman, Mr. Kent. Do you think editors would trust me to write about anybody really important?”
It galled her to say it, considering that she’d spent her entire career fighting to prove that not only was she just as good as any man, but better. Yet if the prejudice still existed in the twenty first century, how much worse must it be now, a hundred years earlier.
William Robinson’s assessment might be closer to accurate than she was comfortable with.
She didn’t want to spend the rest of her career reporting on flowers and women’s fashions, so she had to convince Clark Kent to keep her.
Something of her anxiety must have shown on her face, because he relaxed.
“What would you have me do?”
“Well, I’d like to write a piece about what an actor’s life is like. If it’s possible I’d like to shadow you for the next couple of days.”
“Shadow me?”
“Follow you around and write about the things that happen.” Lois smiled, hoping that it reached her eyes. In this situation her anxiety only made her story seem more plausible.
“I can’t imagine that anyone would find my life all that interesting.”
“You get to travel,” Lois said. “Pretend to be romantic heroes, villains. You get to meet people, live a life that most people never get to experience.”
At this time in history, if Lois remembered correctly, most people never traveled farther than twenty miles from home in their entire lives.
“It’s about the same everywhere you go,” Clark Kent said.
“My readers don’t know that,” Lois said. “At least not the less wealthy ones.”
Of course, people reading the theater pages were probably wealthier than most. She’d just have to push through and pretend that wasn’t a stupid thing to say.
“You’ve spoken to my manager about this?”
“He refused to believe that a woman could be a reporter for anything other than the fashion pages,” Lois said. “I’d like to prove him wrong.”
Hesitating, Clark said, “You aren’t intending to write a negative piece about the troupe, are you? William can be quite protective…”
“I swear I’m not going to write a negative piece about anyone,” Lois said.
That was true enough. She wasn’t going to write any piece.
“All right,” he said.
“Your manager might not approve,” Lois warned.
Shaking his head, Clark Kent said “I’ll deal with him.”
“One other thing,” Lois said. “What did you mean when you asked me if it was me?”
Clark laughed, uneasily. “It was foolish of me.”
Lois didn’t speak, just waiting expectantly.
He sighed. “I spoke to a medium once. She knew things that….she couldn’t know. She told me that I would meet a woman who would end my life as I know it.”
Lois froze. “And you thought that women might be me?”
He flushed again. “There were things she told me that led me to think so.”
No matter how she asked, he wouldn’t say more on the matter.
Last edited by ShayneT; 08/09/14 05:34 PM.
