Part 2Part 3Clark drove Lois home via her favorite Italian restaurant, where he picked up pasta for the two of them. He parked her car in the garage and accompanied Lois to her apartment where they ate their food and reminisced about the old times and Perry’s Elvis analogies. Clark didn’t bring up Luthor or the photographs and neither did she.
When Lois offered him a thermos of coffee to use on his outside stakeout, he didn’t refuse. She explained that the alarm on the back door was activated at ten p.m., so that the only way in and out of the building – by non-residents – was via the front stoop.
“Are you sure you’re going to be okay?” she asked as she handed him the thermos at her apartment door. “Outside on the bench all night without the protection of a car…”
“I can handle it, Lois, if the gangs don’t bother me,” he said.
“There aren’t any gangs in my neighborhood,” she retorted.
He gave her a ‘then, what do I have to worry about?’ expression. “At least, it’s summer this time,” he said, heading down the hall with a wave.
“Wait!” she called. “This time?”
Clark felt his cheeks warm. “After you were shot at last December, when Mr. Make-Up was after you.”
She leaned against her doorframe. “You stayed on that bench all night in the cold to look after me?” She said it in a tone that implied that she thought he was half-crazy.
He shrugged.
“It was just a car backfiring,” she said.
“I can tell the difference,” he reassured her. The bullets he had caught helped. Lifting up the thermos in thanks, he turned the corner out of her sight.
***
Clark shut the newspaper and folded it nicely, setting it down next to him on the bench. He had now read the entire Daily Planet, at human speed, cover to cover, including the want ads. Only three more hours, give or take, until sunrise.
Most pedestrians had gone to bed hours ago and the automobile traffic had dwindled to almost nothing. He’d been listening to Lois sleep since around midnight. First, she fell asleep on her settee, and then she woke up and dragged herself to bed twenty minutes later. The late night revelers had already wandered home after the bars and nightclubs closed around two. Occasionally, a drunk or a graveyard shift worker would come down the street, but overall it was quiet.
He leaned forward and rested his forearms on his knees to rub his hands together as he gazed unseeingly through the darkness at Lois’s well-lit front stoop. He had purposely not let himself think too much about his earlier conversation with Lois about Luthor and her crazy ideas about marriage. Clearly, she was scared. Clark didn’t know if what she had said was true about her marrying Luthor because she didn’t love him and was protecting her heart, or if she had merely felt angry that her fiancé hadn’t paid her heed when she had visited him earlier. Nor did he know if her cold feet were due to stress from being blackmailed or if she seriously had doubts on whether she should marry Luthor. Clark wished it was the latter, but wouldn’t be surprised if it were the former.
Clark hoped that his advice about not needing to get married at all hadn’t fallen on deaf ears. With Lois, one never knew if one’s words had an impact or not, because she would never admit it if it did.
Unfortunately, previous experience with his former partner told him that the more Clark pushed, the more she would dig in her heels to prove herself right.
She had to be one who decided that Luthor wasn’t good for her. It was the only reason he stopped trying to convince Lois that her fiancé was the criminal mastermind that Clark knew that he was. Lois being blind to Luthor’s faults would only make her declare that such flaws didn’t exist the more he pointed them out.
Lois and her friend Molly had drifted apart because of Lois’s negative views on Molly’s boyfriend. Clark hadn’t noticed until it was too late that his friendship with Lois was taking the same route. If he didn’t want to lose Lois forever, he needed to support her decision – no matter how idiotic and insane it was – either way. By staying her friend, through thick and thin or through Luthor and a publicity scandal, was the only way to guarantee that Lois might turn to him for help when she finally did discover the truth about her intended, as she had with this blackmail scheme.
Clark didn’t harbor any… or many… daydreams that Lois would switch her affections to him. She had already informed Clark that she only thought of him as a friend and loved him like a brother. Even if she did think he kissed better than Luthor.
His brow furrowed.
Lois had strange ideas about family.
Anyway, she was still quite enamored with Superman, even if she was in denial about it.
Clark closed his eyes and let his mind retrace those moments when Lois gushed about what a wonderful kisser she thought Superman to be, and how she wished he had kissed her at the airport after Miranda’s arrest. He had been seriously tempted to take that opening given to him to profess his love to Lois, but then his better judgment had gotten the better of him.
Had Superman told Lois how he truly felt would she have hesitated more before accepting Luthor? Clark didn’t want to dwell on what ifs. While Lois wanting a relationship with Superman was a million times better than her being in one with Luthor, it still wouldn’t have done Clark any good. And probably not Lois either.
His eyes flashed open. Lois’s heart rate had increased and he heard her gasp and sit up in bed. He took a quick look up and down the street to make sure that he hadn’t missed anything and then covered his eyes to reduce the temptation to gaze inside Lois’s apartment. Tuning his hearing away from her apartment was a little more difficult.
He heard her take and exhale a few deep breaths and then push back her sheets to get out of bed. Clark lowered his hand. She probably only had a nightmare. With everything that was going on in her life, Clark would’ve been more surprised if she didn’t have any. He heard her bedsprings creak lightly as she stood. He started humming to block out the sounds around him, not wanting to invade Lois’s privacy any more than he already had.
After a few minutes, he glanced up at her bedroom window, suspecting that she had now returned to bed. He knew how hard it was to go back to sleep after a terrifying nightmare and he guessed she was now taking further deep breaths to clear her mind and help her sleep. He wondered if she would be able to sleep. After all those times that he had dreamed that Superman had arrived too late to save Lois, Clark had been unable to go back to sleep. He usually donned his uniform and went for a late night flight. Saving people helped take his mind off his nightmares allowing him to sleep again.
Her curtain twitched and, tilting down his glasses, he focused more intently upon her window.
Lois wasn’t back in bed. She was standing at her window. Beside her window, actually, peering down at him. He shifted his gaze, bumping his glasses back in place, before she could realize that he could see her. If he had the vision Clark Kent supposedly had, he never would have been able to see her standing there in the shadows.
He leaned back on the bench and picked up the Daily Planet again. The next edition should be delivered soon. He tried to ignore Lois’s gaze burning through him and to act natural but it was unnerving. Why was she staring at him? It wouldn’t have taken more than a quick glance through her window to see that he hadn’t broken his word about his stakeout. Why continue to stand there and watch him?
Clark picked up the thermos and poured himself another cup of coffee. It had cooled down, despite the warm night and he was tempted to zap it with a little heat. With Lois watching him so intently, he had to settle for merely warm instead of his usually scalding coffee. He took a sip and tried not to outwardly wince. He should have added more sugar. At least, when it was extra hot, he didn’t notice the lack of sugar so much. How could she stand such bitter coffee? He glanced up at Lois’s window and wondered if she would mind if he buzzed her apartment and asked for a quarter cup of sugar.
He guessed ‘yes’. He was only there to blend into his surroundings and notice any suspicious characters. If the blackmailer was watching Lois’s apartment building, Clark really didn’t want to give himself away by approaching it.
Shame.
He might have been able to get away with super speeding to his apartment for some sugar, but not with Lois watching him. He glanced back up towards her window.
Was she mad at him? Why? What had he done this time?
Okay. He had suggested that she would be better off without Luthor. Clark might be a little biased, but it wasn’t as if he were lying or anything. He glanced up to Lois’s window under the guise of taking another sip of coffee.
Lois didn’t look angry, just perplexed.
Weird.
Maybe she wasn’t even looking at him, per se. Perhaps she was just staring unseeing out her window while she thought of something else.
Unable to pretend to drink this bitter brew any longer, Clark bumped up his glasses long enough to feign rubbing his eyes and used the distraction to heat up his coffee more. Only, now, the steam from the coffee fogged up his glasses.
He moved the cup further away from his face and allowed the steam to dissipate, only to have the coffee slosh, spilling on his knee.
Terrific. Super man he wasn’t. No wonder his glasses disguise was so convincing. Such a misnomer as Superman only helped him hide in plain sight more easily.
Clark gave up trying to drink the coffee and poured it in the bushes next to the bench before patting himself dry with yesterday’s Daily Planet. He returned the thermos lid and leaned back on the bench where he was able to look once more up at Lois’s bedroom window.
She was no longer there.
Tilting down his glasses, he peered pass the bricks into her apartment. She had gone back to bed, so he pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose.
Gosh, he hoped she had returned to bed before he had acted like such a goober. He exhaled his pent-up breath that he had been holding pretty much since he noticed Lois at her window.
Small miracles. He would take them every day.
***
Dawn burst around the edges of the building on Lois’s street bringing not only the energizing sun’s rays, but also a dusty pink glow to the sky. Just in time, too. Clark’s eyelids were starting to droop. This bit of sunlight was just the morning pick-me-up he needed.
“Clark?” a familiar female voice called out to him.
He glanced around and saw Linda King. She had emerged from the other side of the park behind him.
“Linda?” he replied, sounding just as puzzled. “Hi!”
Linda walked up the bench shaking her head and stealing the words from inside his head, “What are you doing here?”
“I’m… uh…” He didn’t want to tell Lois’s biggest rival from college about her current blackmail problem.
“Stalking Lois?” she suggested.
“Of course not!” he said, perhaps a tad too adamantly.
Linda sat down next to him. “Uh-huh. Clark, I think the world of you; I do, but don’t waste your life like this. She’s engaged to Lex Luthor now. She’s never going to dump him for the likes of you.”
“Thanks,” he said wryly through pinched lips. “I mean… We’re just friends.”
“Right,” she said, continuing with the disbelieving tone. “That’s why you’re out here and she’s in there.” She patted his shoulder. “Friends don’t let friends sleep on park benches.”
“I wasn’t sleeping!”
“This isn’t a trial, Clark,” Linda teased. “So, you became a little obsessed with your partner.” She shrugged. “It happens to the best of us.”
“I’m not…”
“Clark, it’s just after six in the morning, and you’ve clearly been hanging out on this bench across from Lois’s apartment all night. If I know Lois, she won’t be leaving for another hour. Isn’t it a little early in the day to start lying?”
“So, Linda, what brings you here? How did your movie deal go?” he asked, changing the subject.
“Ugh.” She shrugged again. “First, Superman refused to endorse the film, so it fizzled into non-authorized status. Then, it ended up airing as a made for TV movie on some forgettable cable channel. Finally, my role as Lois Lane was left on the cutting room floor. They
recast me!” She harrumphed. “It was
my story,
my script! They couldn’t even let me have that one teeny-tiny role!”
“Linda… um… Lois’s involvement in the Carpenter case was a little more than just a teeny-tiny bit.”
“Of course
you’d say that! You’re obsessed with the woman. My advice to you, Clark, is to go home and get some sleep. Quit your job at the Planet, if you haven’t been fired yet, and fly back out to L.A. with me tonight. Leave Metropolis behind you like a bad dream and be freelance for a while. Just sail on the wind and see where it takes you.”
He started to shake his head. He wasn’t going to give in, and let Luthor win, not yet. Anyway, he had already done that and the wind had brought him to Metropolis.
“Clark, I know you think the world of Lois, heaven knows why, but she isn’t this wholesome goody-goody that she pretends to be. She has a dark side and it isn’t pretty. One of these days, you’re going to wake up and realize that she’s only marrying Luthor for his influence and money. I recommend you leave her and this life behind before she dashes all your ideals.” Setting her hand on his, Linda ran her index finger across the back of his hand. “We were a good team once. I bet we could be better than before, if it were just the two of us.”
Clark took hold of Linda’s hand and pulled her closer, setting his other hand on her waist. His fingers dipped into the large pocket of her jacket and extracted a manila envelope. Gazing over the top of his glasses, he glanced through the outer wrapping to confirm the contents: a photo of Lois dressed only in a negligee. Holding up the sealed envelope, he shook his head. “Linda,” he scolded. “How could you?”
“How could I? That witch ruined my life! First, she told the Ethics Board at Metropolis U that I stole her story, which put a black mark on my career before it even started. I’ve had to work twice as hard as she has to make it in this business because I wasn’t Perry White’s little darling,” Linda snapped with a sneer. “The same Perry White whose job she stole, I might add. That’s gratitude for you. That job at the Star was my ticket to fame! Carpenter loved me; he gave
me all his choicest stories. They may have been illegally gotten stories, but they still put me on the front page. Lois accuses me of sleeping my way to the top and then what does she do?” She flicked her hand over to Lois’s apartment building. “She gets engaged to her new publisher and skyrockets up to the editor’s position in the same week. Come on, Clark. We
both know Lois didn’t get that job because of her grammatical skills.”
“Lois has worked hard for her accomplishments.”
Linda groaned. “Oh, please! She was on the front page her first year out of Met. U. I bet she’s never even seen the inside of the Wedding Registry’s office or had her byline on the Obits page.”
“And blackmailing her evens the scales?” he replied.
She shrugged. “It’s not as if it were her money. It’s a drop in the bucket to Luthor.” Linda looked Clark up and down. “How’d you find out anyway? Taking up stealing her mail?” She grinned. “So, is that why you’re here? Got a taste of her naughty side and now hoping you might get a glimpse of some more?” Her grin reminded him the Cheshire Cat’s. “Wait until you see today’s shot!”
“No!” Clark returned. “I’m here to catch you.”
“Me?” She tilted her head and stared at him. “Luthor hired
you to bodyguard Lois?
You? Isn’t that like hiring the fox to guard the hen house?”
“What?” He shook his head, completely perplexed by her analogy. “No! I don’t work for Luthor.”
“Really? Then who signs your paycheck at the Daily Planet?”
Clark’s spine stiffened. He hated being reminded of that fact.
“See?”
“Linda, Lois asked me to find her blackmailer.”
“
You?” she gasped. “Oh, no. Luthor’s not going to like that.”
“If you’re lucky, Luthor will never find out about your little money-making scheme, Linda. Why don’t you just hand over the negatives and we don’t have to involve him at all?” he asked, pocketing the newest manila envelope and holding out his hand to her.
“I can’t. I don’t have ‘em.”
“Fine. We’ll go to your hotel room or wherever you have them squirreled away, and then you can give them to me.”
“No, you don’t understand, Clark. I
can’t give them to you. It’s not that I don’t have them on me. I don’t have them at all. I’ve already sold them.”
Clark’s jaw dropped. This was his biggest fear. Lois was going to be devastated. “Spencer Spencer?” he asked.
“No,” Linda replied with a sly smile. “Lex Luthor.”
***End of Part 3*** Comments
