It was Monday morning following their show for Mister Smith. It was time to put the jigsaw pieces together and make sure they fit the picture on the top of the box.
It was past time, actually. The stress of their marital pretense was getting to Lois. She’d started thinking of – and occasionally voicing – snide little comments about Clark’s actions, or lack thereof, and his reasons for doing or not doing something. Carol King’s song “It’s Too Late, Baby” kept coming up in her mind, and she couldn’t help but fear that the end of the assignment would be the end of their relationship.
As she and Clark stepped through the front door of the Daily Planet, Lois’ pang of nostalgia and regret hit her harder and sooner than she thought it would. Harder because she recognized so many of the people around her but who now gave her a surprised nod or wave before hustling on their respective errands; sooner because she thought her emotions would give her the chance to get to the news floor before kicking her in the heart.
She must have hesitated, because Clark reached out and gripped her hand firmly but not tightly. A quick glance up at his face confirmed her assumption that he was feeling the impact of coming back to the Planet just as she was.
“Come on, let’s go find Jimmy and Perry,” he said aloud. “That interview won’t write itself, and those turkey Super-Subs won’t wait for us.”
She forced a laugh. “Knowing Jimmy’s appetite, he probably ordered extra sandwiches so he could eat them and not let them go to waste.”
“At least, not to anyone else’s waist.”
Despite her apprehension, a small smile spread slowly over her features. If he could behave like a gentleman here, she could play the part of his lady. With the information they had now, the show the previous Saturday night for Mister Smith might pave their way back to deadlines and intrigues and shared bylines and arguments over spelling.
Maybe they could eventually learn to share more than bylines. Of course, they’d have to learn to share bylines again first.
She desperately hoped it wasn’t too late.
*****
Clark allowed Lois to exit the elevator first, if only to keep her from knocking him down in her haste to find Perry. He was, of course, sitting at his desk, marking up the front page of the next morning’s edition, frowning at it as if attempting to force it to conform to his exacting standards. Lois tapped on the glass in the door – the one installed after Franklin Stern had bought the paper and remodeled the entire building’s interior – and opened it without waiting for a signal to enter.
Same old Lois, he thought.
“Hey, Chief, haven’t you heard about this new thing called a computer?” she called out. “You can lay out the front page with a mouse instead of a blue pencil.”
Perry redirected his frown from the paper on his desk to her. “Young lady, I’m gonna ignore that heinous and heretical statement in the interest of keeping my stomach settled and my blood pressure down.”
She laughed more freely than she had for weeks. Even the tension in her stride seemed to have melted away. Being here at the Planet might be partly very difficult and partly a joyous occasion for Clark, but apparently Lois needed this place almost as much as she needed to breathe.
It was easy to see that she needed the laughter, given the stress and tension that was between them.
Perry stepped out from behind the desk and opened his arms. Lois flew into his embrace and returned it, even giving the gruff editor a kiss on the cheek.
“Hey! You better not do that when Alice is around!”
She almost giggled. “Don’t worry, Perry, you’re safe from me on that score. I’m just happy to see you!”
“You sure you’re not just happy to be gettin’ a free meal?”
She tapped him lightly on the upper arm. “Oh! You’re a meanie!”
“Got to keep up my reputation as a hard case. Clark, it’s good to see you too. I’ll hug you if you promise not to kiss me.”
All three of them laughed at that, and Clark gave Perry a quick man-hug, complete with two almost-simultaneous back-pats. As he stepped back, Clark said, “Not that I don’t enjoy seeing you again, Chief, but I make it a matter of policy not to kiss other guys.”
“Smart policy. Dagnabbit, where is that young Olsen? He’s supposed to be back with those subs by now!”
Clark heard the elevator door open and he turned to look. “There he is now. Hey, is that Cat – it is! Cat’s walking with him and laughing.”
Lois gave Clark a long look, then said, “They’re probably talking about the last show they saw us do and laughing at the jokes again.”
He knew he shouldn’t have been able to hear the elevator through the clamor of the newsroom and Perry’s closed office door, so he tried to re-route her train of thought. “They’re probably talking about how funny I was that night.”
Her expression shifted into mild exasperation. “Right. I’m sure that’s it. In fact, people all over the city are probably tripping over themselves because they’re laughing so hard at your attempts to be funny.”
He couldn’t tell if it was friendly sarcasm or friendly fire. Either way, he was surprised to feel the sting in her words.
Cat opened the door for Jimmy, who was laden with food and unable to grab the doorknob. “Soup’s on,” he called. “Where do you want this, Chief?”
“Conference room, and I’d like for Cat to join us.”
The redhead’s eyebrows rose in surprise, then she smiled and nodded. “Thanks, Perry. Come on, Jimmy, let’s get this feast arranged for our guests of honor.”
Lois held her smile as she watched them stride across the big room to the glass conference room door, then she turned back to the editor. “Perry?” she said, still smiling. “I thought we were going to sum up everything we had and figure out if it added up to a printable story.”
Perry stepped between Clark and Lois and loosely put an arm around their shoulders. “We are, Lois. But I want Cat in there with us when we do. She’s grabbed a bigger piece of this than I thought she would.”
Lois glanced up at Clark with real surprise. He didn’t know how much his expression gave away, but he too felt surprised. Maybe Cat was a far better reporter than he’d thought. And he’d never thought of her as a bad reporter, just one with misplaced professional priorities.
*****
Cat tried not to show her excitement, but she could tell that Jimmy was very curious about her lunch with two former reporters and the paper’s general editor. She turned to him and, as calmly as she could, asked, “Are you going to join us?”
He shook his head. “Haven’t been invited. Besides, I’ve got a lot of work backed up in my inbox, so I’m just gonna eat at my desk. I’ll probably be here late tonight.”
“Okay. Hey, thanks for the research on that free clinic over on Barton Street.”
He paused at the door, a sub in one hand and a can of soda in the other. “No problem. Looks like you’ll get a nice feel-good story out of it.”
She smiled. “Yeah, I’m glad I was wrong about them.”
“Me too. You guys enjoy your lunch.” He pushed the door open with his hip. “Remember me as you chow down with the soon-to-be rich and famous.”
As the door opened, Clark pulled it from the outside and Jimmy nearly took a tumble. Lois grabbed his arm and held him upright. “Easy, Jimmy, I’ve got you.”
He regained his balance and blushed a little. “Isn’t the brave knight supposed to rescue the damsel in distress and not the other way around?”
Clark snorted a guffaw and Lois gave him a hard look. “What’s so funny?”
He grinned at her. “I just can’t see you as a damsel in distress, Lois. The role just doesn’t suit you.”
“Well, thanks, I think.” She turned and waved at Perry to precede her. “Come on, ex-boss, let’s eat. We have a meeting with our manager at two this afternoon.”
“Oh?” said Perry. “What about?”
Lois pulled the door shut behind her. “Our three-week gig in Gotham coming up. I think Louie wants to make sure Clark doesn’t sneak out on a Batman hunt after our late show.”
“Har and har. We’ve also got a show at a youth center tonight at seven. I don’t think we’ll need a code phrase for that venue.”
Perry and Cat both smiled. Perry moved to the seat Cat indicated and said, “Then let’s get this lunch started. I want to hear all about your new careers. Cat tells me that you two always leave the audience laughing and wanting more.”
“That’s the plan,” Lois answered.
*****
Clark slurped the last of his soda and set the empty can down on the table. “Well, that hit the spot. I know I feel better.”
Lois pushed the last of her sandwich in her mouth. “Mph tmph.”
Cat frowned at her. “How rude, speaking with food in your mouth.”
“It’s okay, Cat,” said Clark. “At least this time she kept her mouth closed while chewing.”
He thought for a moment that he’d gone too far as Lois gave him a glare, then she swallowed and finished her own soda. “Just remember whose meals I’ve been eating lately.”
Perry and Cat chuckled, then Perry leaned his elbows on the table. “Okay, people, we need to summarize what we’ve got on this story. And let’s not write anything down in here. I don’t think we have any loose lips in the newsroom, but it’s better not to take chances.”
The other three nodded. “Cat, let’s have your info first.”
She picked up a pencil and used it to play with her hair, then leaned back in her chair and behaved for any watcher to see as if she were flirting with Clark. “We’ve got the goods on Roberts and Benton, the guys who threatened Clark and Lois. We’ve tied them to their boss, the guy who calls himself ‘Mister Smith.’ His real name is Alberto Meucci, first generation Italian-American whose father was one of the top bosses in the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, and he’s bad news.”
Clark frowned at her. “Is he tied up with Intergang?”
“In Boy Scout merit badge-quality knots.” She spun in her chair and gave Clark a hooded look, one which under other circumstances Clark feared would make Lois doubt Cat’s intelligence and taste in men. “His latest wife is a Scots-Irish ex-hooker named Stephanie McCain, but she’s been calling herself Angelique Amato for the last few years. As Angelique, she ran a modeling and escort agency that’s a front for prostitution, gambling, running numbers, and a little bit of judicious blackmail to keep the doors open and the cash flowing in. Just let me clarify things a bit – she doesn’t run the agency directly any more, but she does drop in to check up on them from time to time.”
Clark sighed. “And she was so nice to Lois, too.”
“Yeah, but at least now we know how she knew about dirty bus station bathrooms.”
Perry’s eyebrows rose. “Say what?”
Lois waved him off. “Nothing important. Cat, what else do you have on Roberts and Benton?”
She shook the pencil at Lois as if admonishing her. “Roberts is, as lawyers and the talking heads on TV like to say, a ‘person of interest’ in five mob murders over the last three years. As far as I could find out, Benton hasn’t killed anyone, but he likes to beat up guys. And he’s very good at it. His opponents usually spend a few days as guests of the hospital of their choice with a couple of broken bones and assorted contusions. And if they file a police report, nothing comes of it.”
Lois blinked. “Wow. Clark, I’m glad you flipped him as hard as you did.”
“I’m glad Roberts wasn’t armed. Cat, does Benton beat up women?”
“Only once that I found, and that was personal. She was his girlfriend at the time, refused to press charges and moved to Oregon, I think, as soon as she could travel.”
“Good. That’s one we won’t have to worry about coming after Lois.”
Lois sighed. “Sure. Then all we have to worry about is Roberts shooting me.”
“That’s not happening. Not ever.”
Clark’s iron tone startled the rest of the group for a moment, then Lois asked, “Do we have a line on the top boss?”
Cat said, “We have a couple of strong candidates. One is a slimy lawyer named Sheldon Bender, but I like the other guy for that role.”
Perry glared at her. “Cat, we don’t have proof—”
“Chief, Jimmy and I traced the money trail ourselves. It all leads back to the executive offices of Cost Mart.”
Lois’ eyes bulged slightly. “Are you talking about Bill Church?”
Clark put his hand out, palm down, and said, “Let’s keep the volume down, okay? Loose lips still sink ships.”
Perry shook his head. “I just can’t believe that Bill Church is Intergang’s top dog. I play golf with that man. He gives millions to any number of charities, and his companies pay good money to their employees.”
Lois lowered her gaze to the table. “Lex Luthor did too, Perry.”
No one spoke for a long moment, then Clark asked, “How strong is this proof, Cat?”
She sighed and tapped the pencil on the table. “It’s not ironclad. We don’t have any documents with his name on them, not even in the stuff you and Lois got over the weekend, and we can’t get any of our snitches to roll over on him. Even Bobby Bigmouth isn’t talking about this guy.”
“You’re working with Bobby?”
Cat smiled. “When I can, yes. And I found out that he likes my fried chicken with black-eyed peas.”
Lois returned a half-smile. “Just think of the money I could have saved if I’d known how to cook.”
Clark said, “We can still publish the story as long as we don’t name Bill Church as head of Intergang, can’t we?”
Perry nodded. “We can and we will. These guys are bad news, and this story is going to be bad for their business. With everything you and Lois brought back from Saturday night, we’ll have to coordinate with Bill Henderson on this. It’s gotten too big for just an exposé – the cops have to be informed.”
“And Henderson will make sure nobody tips off the bad guys,” added Cat. “Still, it’s a big operation, and they won’t have much time to plan it.”
“The bad guys won’t have much time to react, either,” said Lois. “That’s the most important part. If a few foot soldiers slip through the cracks, no big deal, but we’ve got to pick up as many of the thinkers and planners and bankers as we can.”
Clark shook his head. It was a lot to learn, and he was once again very glad that he could protect Lois as no other person on the planet could. “I saw some really interesting people in the audience last Saturday, too,” he said. “There’s a list of their names in your email inbox. I know some of them were mobbed up, and there were even a few from our side of the street there. What I didn’t learn is whether that last group is in on the illegal activities or not.”
Perry tapped the table. “It wouldn’t look good for, say, the Police Commissioner Thomas Prescott to attend that kind of function, but remember that Ronald Reagan palled around with Sinatra and some of that bunch before he was President Reagan. No one ever had any evidence that he was dirty, so just being there doesn’t put anyone on the wrong side of the law.”
“No,” Lois said quietly, “but it could be politically damaging. You could use that inference to push them further away from the Dark Side if you needed to.”
Clark blurted out, “The Dark Side has good cookies.”
The other three looked at him as if he’d just suffered a psychotic break. “Sorry,” he chuckled. “Lois’ Dark Side reference reminded me of a poster I saw the other day. It had Darth Vader and Cookie Monster in the same shot, and the caption read, ‘Come Over To the Dark Side – We Have Cookies.’ I couldn’t help it, honest.”
The others grinned back at him. Lois patted his shoulder and said, “We understand, partner. You just don’t have any self-control.”
Clark deliberately didn’t look at Lois as he thought, Partner, you have absolutely no idea how much self-control I have.
*****
There was much more, and Perry began making cryptic notes in a small notebook. There was no way he’d remember all that they’d talked about. Not only the volume of data but the quality of it impressed him. He wished Franklin Stern were with them so he could hear in person just how good Lois and Clark – for that matter, his entire reporting team – really was.
But Perry was worried. They had a great story, a Kerth nominee for sure, maybe even a Pulitzer candidate. But it was the kind of story that had gotten people killed in the past, and he didn’t want to attend any funerals any time soon.
“I wonder – look, you two need to tell me if we need to pull you back in now.”
All three of the others looked at him as if he’d spoken in an obscure Martian tribal dialect. “Pull us back in?” hissed Lois. “Are you nuts? We’re about to break the biggest story this paper has published since Stern bought it and you’re talking about shutting us down?”
“I’m worried about you two being out there alone, no backup, no paper to lean on, no support staff on this end of things. I don’t want to publish your obituaries.”
“Perry, no! We’re too close to the end to quit now!”
“Lois, honey, I just don’t—”
“You can’t cancel the assignment, Perry.”
All three looked at Cat, amazed at her firm tone. It took Perry a moment to find his voice. “Since when do you make those decisions, young lady?”
Cat leaned forward and glared at her boss. “Do you really think Mr. Stern would hire them back if they stopped now? If you pull them out, it’ll be like saying that you don’t think they can hack it anymore, that they can’t face real danger to dig out the truth! Who’d hire either one of them after that? What real newspaper would take on an investigative reporter who quits short of the finish line?”
“You know it’s not like that!”
“Of course I do, but no one outside this room will know! And when you defend either of them – especially Lois – people will just say that Perry White has gone soft for a pretty face and ignore all she’s done for this story! It’ll look like you’re covering for her! You’ll destroy her reputation and her effectiveness as a reporter! Not to mention that it would do the same thing to Clark!”
“I don’t want them hurt, Cat!”
She took a deep breath and continued with less volume but the same intensity. “They don’t want to get hurt, Perry. But they’ll risk that to get the story. You pull them back in now and no one will know if they’d do whatever was necessary to find the truth – and neither would they.”
Cat let her last comment hang in the air for a moment, then added, “Lois taught me something she didn’t know she was teaching me when I was here before. Half of doing this job is knowing that you can. You and I know they can, Chief, and intellectually so do they, but they must know that they actually will do it because they already have.” She put her hand on Perry’s and quietly begged, “Let them finish the course.”
He opened his mouth to protest, but didn’t speak. Cat was right – at least, she was right enough about Lois’ prospects anywhere else. Maybe she could still make a go of it at the Planet, assuming he could convince Stern to hire her back, but it would be harder for her all around if he pulled her in now. And, he had to admit, Cat was right about what calling off the assignment might do to Lois’ self-confidence.
It wouldn’t devastate Clark to be pulled back in now, but it wouldn’t do him any good, either. And both of them would forever wonder if Perry would trust them to finish a job.
He nodded and slumped forward. “Okay. This is against my better judgement, but we keep going.”
Cat threw an unreadable glance at Lois, who said, “Thanks, Perry. We won’t let you down.”
“I know. Just be careful out there.” Perry lifted his hands from the tabletop. “Anything else?”
Cat frowned at him. “Don’t you think that’s enough? We could cripple Intergang ourselves with just what we have in the newsroom.”
He frowned back. “Yes, but we’d also be painting a bulls-eye on every one of us, the Daily Planet, even Louie’s pool hall. I want to round up every one of these clowns before anyone tries to get frisky.”
Lois shook her head. “That’s all we have, Chief, unless Clark hasn’t shared everything.”
Perry thought the young man’s reply had more of a bite to it that was needed. “I’m not holding anything back, Lois. Besides, I thought that was your department.”
Lois didn’t say anything, but her brows drew together and she looked away from her partner. Perry sighed silently. He’d thought that their sham marriage would cause problems, and it appeared that he’d been right.
He would’ve preferred to be off on that prediction.
He sighed and pulled them all back to the task at hand. “Okay, folks, here’s the plan. I’m going to write out everything we’ve talked about in longhand, and Cat is going to do the same. Then she and I are going to meet with Bill Henderson tonight and set up the mass arrests. Bill has to get all his warrants signed by honest judges, pull in the detectives he trusts, and get everything going at once. This won’t happen tonight, but hopefully it won’t take more than a couple of days. I know he has at least one judge who he’s been teasing about all the positive press he’ll get for this takedown. Same thing in Gotham City. They’ll execute their warrants the same time as we do ours.”
“I’m ready, Perry.” said Lois. “Just keep us in the loop, okay?”
He grinned at her. “Don’t sweat it, honey. After this story breaks, you can just about name your salary and benefits when you come back.”
Her eyes lit up like chocolate traffic signals. “Thanks, Chief. We’re both looking forward to getting our desks back.”
Perry stood and stretched out his arms. “Okay, let’s get back to work. Everybody laugh like Clark just accidentally said something funny.”
The other three stood and the two women laughed. Clark threw him a “why me?” look and said, “You shouldn’t pick on me, Perry. I don’t work here.”
He smiled, stepped up beside Clark, and put one hand on his shoulder. Then he lowered his voice and said, “I’m sure hoping to change that real soon, son. Now your two go out on stage tonight and make those kids laugh for real.”
*****
Clark reached out and touched Lois’ hand. “You ready for this crowd?”
She nodded. “I sure am. Break a leg, partner.”
He smiled, encouraged by her attitude. Maybe they could get past the last few days of this assignment without killing each other after all. “You too.”
He listened as the Master of Ceremonies introduced them. Six months ago he wouldn’t have believed that he’d be standing up in front of an audience, letting Lois score funny points off him on stage, but he found that he loved it. Anything that brought them together was a positive in his book, and the creative process of learning how to make people laugh was almost as satisfying as seeing any story he’d ever written in print.
The way things were going on the investigation, this might one of the last shows they did together, if not the last one. They’d agreed to do their best and encourage these kids. For some of them, it would be the only chance they would have to laugh all week. They’d figure out how to tell Louie and Kim the truth later.
The audience of underprivileged junior high kids applauded wildly as they came out on stage. “Thank you, thank you all,” Lois said. “Clark and I are both thrilled to be here at Frankie and Johnnie’s Young Adults club.”
“That’s right, Lois, and we’ve got a terrific evening planned, but we’ve got to get this show over with first.”
She turned and backhanded him on the shoulder as the kids cackled at them. “Clark! This is a family-friendly venue! You can’t use that kind of material here!”
His grin morphed into surprise. “Family-friendly? Really?”
“Yes!”
“Excuse me!”
He turned and took a step before Lois grabbed his arm. “Wait a minute! Where do you think you’re going?”
“You said family-friendly, right?”
“Of course I did!”
“Then I studied the wrong script for tonight!”
They waited for the laughter of early puberty to die down, then Lois kept going. “It’s okay, Clark, you studied the right script.”
“Oh, no, I don’t think so. It said ‘Adults Only’ on the outside.”
“That’s because I switched the folders the scripts were in. I tricked you!”
“You did? Oh, so that’s why the sneezing powder bit was in there.”
“Oops! I forgot to mark that one out, so don’t throw sneezing powder on me.”
“Oh, it wasn’t for you, Lois, it was for the girl second seat from the aisle end of the third row.”
Lois pointed at the indicated person. “Her?”
Clark held his hand over his eyes to shield them from the lights, then nodded. “Yep. That’s her. Don’t be surprised if she has a sudden allergy attack in the middle of the show.”
Lois put her hands on her hips and glared at him as the girl, who was now blushing furiously, tried to push her laughing friends away. With nearly the entire audience’s attention on the young lady, one boy three rows behind her and a few seats toward the middle rose up and lifted a water balloon, which Clark quickly punctured with his heat vision so that he and the boys on either side of him were the only ones who got wet.
Lois snapped her focus to the drenched boy, who was now the object of the audience’s attention because of the yell he’d let out, then looked back at Clark. He could see the wheels turning in her head, but he knew she’d save any questions until later.
Of course, that might make them harder to dodge.
They tried to take the show back from the audience. “Hey, Clark, you were raised in Kansas, weren’t you?”
“I sure was. Smallville High. Go Fighting Crows!”
Most of the kids in the audience turned back to the stage and laughed. “The Fighting Crows?” Lois mocked.
“Of course! We were rough, tough, and used to hardships.”
“Yeah, please don’t tell that one or we’ll be here all night.”
“Okay, if you say so.”
“Well, other than telling twenty-minute marathon jokes that weren’t funny, what kinds of things did Kansas teens do for fun?”
“Oh, we were a rowdy bunch. Why, one Tuesday night, we went down to the soda shop and got nothing but glasses of water and sat on all six stools for an hour!”
“Wowzers!” Lois marveled. “All six stools?”
“That’s right! And one Saturday night we covered the Methodist pastor’s house with toilet paper.”
“Unused paper, I hope.”
“Of course it was unused paper! There was—” he waited for the boys to stop laughing and the girls to stop making gross-out noises. “Anyway, there was one guy, my buddy Pete, who had a four-pack of rolls, and he kept throwing it up in the tree in the front yard without taking the plastic off just so it would make noise when it fell on the driveway. He was trying to wake up the pastor.”
“Uh-huh. Did it wake up the pastor? Or worse, his wife?”
“No. The last time he threw it, the four-pack got lodged in the crook of a limb and stayed, and the next morning during his sermon the pastor thanked whoever had given them that generous gift.” Clark paused, then added, “He said it really came in handy.”
Lois waited for the giggles to damp down. “Wow. It sounds like you guys really lived dangerously out there.”
“We did, we did. And we liked to tell elephant jokes.”
The kids in the crowd groaned at them, but Lois was ready. “Are you telling me that elephants tell jokes?”
“Only to other elephants.”
The kids snorted with laughter. “Why don’t you give me an example of an elephant joke that humans can understand?”
“I’ll do my best, Lois, but these are somewhat intellectual. I hope you get them.”
She narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms. “Don’t worry, honeybunny, if I don’t get it on stage, you can explain it to me when we get to our hotel room.”
“Great! Okay, the first one – why are you glaring at me like that?”
The kids were all laughing as if they’d heard an off-color joke by accident. “Never mind!” barked Lois. “Tell us an elephant joke.”
He slowly took a half-step away from Lois before asking, “Do you know why elephants lie on the backs with their feet sticking up in the air?”
She gave him an I-don’t-believe-you glare. “No, Clark, why do elephants lie on their backs with their feet sticking up in the air?”
“So they can trip birds.”
The kids cracked up, so he kept going. “Do you know why elephants wear tennies?”
Wearily, Lois answered, “No, Clark, why do elephants wear tennies?”
“Because nineys are too small and elevenies are too big.”
Lois dropped her head into her hands as the kids exploded with hilarity. “Really, Clark? I mean, really? Elevenies?”
“Well, if you don’t like my humor, I’m sure one of these fine young people will!” He turned and pointed at a boy in the front row. “Hey, pal, do you know why elephants paint their toenails red?”
The boy lifted his hands to the side and shook his head. “So they can hide in cherry trees,” Clark informed him.
“Cherry trees?” the boy asked.
“Yep. You’ve never seen an elephant in a cherry tree, have you?”
He shook his head again. “No.”
“See how well it works?”
The boy waved one hand at Clark and fell back in his seat laughing.
“What a great crowd! Hey, Lois, how do you put eighty elephants in a Volkswagen?”
She lifted her hands as if pushing him away. “Eighty elephants? You can’t put eighty elephants in a Volkswagen!”
“Sure you can! Just put three in the front, three in the back, and seventy-four in the glove compartment!”
The kids roared with laughter as Clark stepped forward and gave them a quick bow.
Lois pulled him back. “Okay, smart guy, keep them coming.”
“Sure, Lois. Hey, did you hear about the two elephant seals on the iceberg?”
She gave him a how-crazy-are-you look. “Two elephant seals on an iceberg?”
“Absitively posolutely!”
She paused as some of the kids cackled. “Just where did this happen, anyway?”
“In Hob’s Bay.”
“There was an iceberg with two elephant seals on it floating in Hob’s Bay? You’re nuts!”
“No-no-no! Let me explain – no, is too much. I will sum up.”
“Stop quoting ‘Princess Bride’ in our shows! We’re gonna get hit with a copyright infringement lawsuit!”
“Lois, how many of these boys and girls know what copyright infringement is?”
One fifth-grade boy in the second row wearing glasses and a pocket protector holding four pens and two automatic pencils jumped up and waved his hands. “I do! I know what it is!”
Lois turned to him. “How do you know what copyright infringement is?”
“My daddy’s a lawyer!”
Before he could say anything else, the girls on either side of him grabbed his arms and pulled him back down in his seat, shushing him firmly. Clark smiled and said to the boy, “Are you going to be a lawyer too?”
“Oh, no sir!” he called out. “I want to be an astronaut!”
As his classmates yelled at him to be quiet, Lois put her hands behind her back and leaned forward. “You keep your dream alive, young man. I want to hear about your trips to space when you’re old enough to go.”
The boy didn’t speak, but his face all but glowed under the positive reinforcement. Lois gave him a smile that made all the other boys jealous, then turned back to Clark and stalked toward him. “Okay, smart guy, tell me about the elephant seals on the iceberg in Hob’s Bay.”
“Well, it turns out that they were both male elephant seals, and one said to the other, ‘Bob, we’ve been on this iceberg for over a week now, and I just can’t get my mind around that fact that it’s already Tuesday.’”
Dead silence reigned for a moment, then one of the younger boys whooped with laughter. After a moment, it began to spread from him like a puddle, until nearly all the students were laughing. The teachers didn’t seem to get the joke, but they did appear to be pleased that the kids were enjoying themselves.
Clark’s hearing caught part of an exchange between two of the adults. “I’m just glad they’re laughing and not throwing things,” one man said.
A woman in front of him half-turned and answered. “Yes, but now they’ll expect us to be funny in class, and I don’t know how a Hope and Crosby routine would work in my geography course.”
“Doesn’t matter,” the man said. “Just show them any of their Road movies and be ready to explain the cultural references to them. Might even make some of them think a little, too.”
He refocused his attention when his partner tugged on his sleeve. “Clark,” said Lois, “that wasn’t a real joke, was it?”
“Of course it was! The audience laughed, didn’t they?”
“Yes, but you fooled them. That was a fake joke.” She turned and faced the kids. “You guys be careful, okay? He has some more fake jokes I’m sure he’ll use later on, and you don’t want to get caught laughing at a fake joke."
They waited until the laughter died down a bit, then Lois crossed her arms and glared at him again. “I notice that you’re not carrying your bat and glove tonight.”
“I noticed that too.”
She sighed deeply. “Then how are we going to tell them about your new part-time job that you don’t have time for if you don’t have them in hand?”
“Uh – maybe I should step offstage and get them?”
“If we’re going to do the baseball routine for these folks, then yes, you should go get them.”
“Aw, they don’t want to hear that routine, do they?”
The kids clapped and screamed. After a moment, the clapping synchronized and they began chanting “Who’s on first! Who’s on first!” Lois tapped him on the shoulder and pointed offstage. Clark nodded, then slowly made his way to the side as the audience roared.
These were the moments he enjoyed the most, seeing young people respond positively to the two of them working in harmony. Maybe he and Lois really did have a future together, even if it wasn’t what he’d dreamed of for so long.
Even if it was just as friends.
