Just as Clark sat down at the kitchen table, he heard the phone ringing in the next room.
Couldn’t he just eat his breakfast in peace?, he thought with a chuckle. He was already a human answering machine as it was, constantly picking up distress calls from around the city. After waiting a few seconds, he finally went to answer it.
The voice coming out of the receiver wasn’t the one of usual suspects: Perry, Jimmy or a telemarketer. In a pleasant surprise, it was Lori.
“Hi there, Lost Boy,” she said.
He chuckled. “Well, if it isn’t the Last Atlantean,” he replied, referencing the name of her column, “How’d you get this number? I didn’t know we were in the phone book.” Lois hated those things, called them an invasion of privacy.
He could practically hear her shrug. “I guess you are… Well, anyway, I should probably get around to the reason I’m calling instead of just referencing our inside jokes. We should have some sort of proper get-together while I’m still in town. One where your editor isn’t gonna call you away in the middle of it. I would invite you and Lois over for dinner, but I don’t have a kitchen at the moment.”
“I’m sure we can handle the cooking this time. As long as nothing goes catastrophically wrong…” He was pretty sure that their last dinner party had ended in attempted murder. But it wasn’t their fault that their dinner guests were actually assassins contracted to kill them.
“If it does?”
“Eh, we’ll get some take-out. We know some good places in the neighborhood. So, what time should I pick you up?” He still felt bad about Lori having to fend for herself after their impromptu lunch yesterday. Metropolis’ public transit was not the best when it came to accommodation. She always took it like a champ, but you’d have to, spending your whole life needing a wheelchair. Come to think of it, he didn’t know how long she’d been in that chair or why. He’d just never asked. Not that it really mattered, but it made him realize how much they’d kept from each other.
“What time, hm…” The line was quiet for a moment. “How does seven sound?”
“Sounds good to me. Though, Perry might have us working late, so I’ll let you know.”
Lori chuckled. “Of course. I figured you’d say something like that. Hectic newspaper schedule and all that. Well, I’ll keep my ears open.”
“Great. I guess I’ll see you then.”
“Buh-bye, Clark.” With that, she hung up.
For almost the entire phone call, he’d been hearing Lois' heartbeat from the next room. Though, he wasn’t sure how much she’d heard, or if she even cared to listen.
He quickly realized she had been listening when she asked, “How far did things go between you and Lori?”
“Why do you ask?... Are you jealous?” he teased.
Lois crossed her arms and looked the other way, a weak attempt at defending herself.
“Just because an ex or two of yours turned out to be criminal masterminds doesn’t mean mine will. You have nothing to be jealous about, honey. It was years ago and besides, if it really makes you feel better to know, no, things didn’t go very far. She was really skittish about being touched. I think it had to do with her legs, but I never pressed her about it. Plus, I never even met her parents, but, from what I heard, they very openly hated me.”
“What for?”
“Honestly, I have no idea. Lori always said they were very overprotective when she was younger, so it might’ve just been that.” There was a silence between them. Lois watched him for a moment, eyes narrowing as if she were inspecting him with her own x-ray vision. “You happy now?”
“Yes,” she replied, her expression unchanged.
“Then you’ll be nice to Lori?”
“When aren’t I? As long as she’s no Lana Lang, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
* * *
That evening, Clark white-knuckled his way through the downtown traffic. Even with his super-reflexes, he'd never liked driving, especially in the city. Unfortunately, Superman couldn’t exactly pick up his friends for a dinner party, so Clark would have to manage like anyone else.
He pulled up in front of Lori's hotel, just as she was wheeling through the front doors. He chuckled to himself. It was almost like they were in college, again. Fitting Lori's chair in the trunk of Lois’ jeep was a little harder than it had been when he drove around his dad's old pickup. But before he knew it, they were on their way.
"I really appreciate you picking me up. The bus was a bit of a hassle the other day."
"It's no trouble at all. We're not far."
She nodded, before her gaze drifted out towards the window. Not exactly her usual, cheery self, Clark observed, but maybe she'd had a long day.
After a few minutes of silence and stop-and-go traffic, he attempted to rekindle the conversation. "You know, I don't think you ever said why you were in town this week. Is there a conference?"
"No. I was just passing through. I might try to go to the submarine launch, but I don't know."
"I thought you'd be more excited about that sort of thing."
She let out a tired sigh. “Ordinarily, yes.”
“So, why not this time?”
“Well, there’s a reason they call Dr. Timaeus a ‘crackpot.’ His theories aren’t well researched and his methods are dubious at best. In the event something major happens, I feel like I should be there. But another part of me is telling me that if I go, I’m making his theories seem legitimate.”
“Lois and I should be there. We can always give a first-hand account if you really need it.” Well, they hadn’t actually agreed to go, but he assumed they would. Regardless, he was sure Lois wouldn’t be thrilled.
“I suppose.”
Silence fell again. It was punctuated by screeching tires, when Clark narrowly avoided colliding with the car in front of them. God, did anyone know how to use a turn signal? His grip on the steering wheel tightened. He’d forgotten how much he took flying for granted.
A quick glance to his right showed that Lori was coping with the traffic better than he was. Though, she seemed to be watching him. Her expression hovered somewhere between concern and a sort of hollow sadness.
Much to Clark’s surprise, she said, “You don’t seem like yourself today.”
“I have been a bit stressed lately,” he admitted, “But it’s nothing I can’t handle.” Saying he’d been ‘a bit stressed’ was probably the understatement of the century. All the drama surrounding his and Lois’ wedding was enough to fuel a daytime soap opera for an entire year. But that wasn’t what was eating away at him. With that, there was at least a clear goal in mind. When Lori cast him a skeptical glance, he added, “Besides, Lois always has my back, so you don’t have to worry.”
Thankfully, before she could probe him any further, they reached their destination. He parked in front of his and Lois’ brownstone home. Then, he realized there was a slight problem—the front steps. This little dinner get-together was already flaring Lois’ jealous tendencies. Knocking on the door with another woman in his arms was certainly not going to help.
Unfortunately, as he discovered moments later, he was right.
Lois put on her best polite smile when she opened the door, but her displeasure with the whole situation was still apparent. She didn’t like sharing Clark with the world. She definitely didn’t like sharing him with his ex-girlfriend, as innocent as things may have been.
Lori seemed to catch on and tried to smooth things over by injecting a little humor. “Well, don’t just stand there, you too! Someone’s got to grab the chair and it’s not gonna be me.”
Lois quickly put her finger on her nose and yelled, “Not it!” Lori did the same.
Clark, of course, was holding Lori, so he was out of luck.
Bringing her wheelchair in became a shared endeavor for the three of them. Or, rather, he lifted it and they laughed as they watched him nearly trip up the stairs. As soon as the three of them made their way to the dining room, Lori and Lois were already bantering like close friends.
Soon the topic of conversation drifted to Lois’ own college experience. She and Lori bonded over competitive internships and intense classes, a far cry from his experience. He had been a bit of a homebody in college, due to his need to rush off and avert disasters. He just hoped that the two women continued to keep the topic of conversation off of him. Apart from a joke about him being ‘built like a fridge,’ they did.
From then on, dinner went off without a hitch.
Well,
almost without a hitch.
He’d underestimated how heavy their water pitcher was. When he passed it to Lori, it slipped out of her hand and shattered on the dining table. She rolled herself back haphazardly to avoid the splash and shards of glass. Coming around the table to help clean it up, Clark looked to the floor. Her wheelchair had printed its treadmarks in a wet trail on the carpet. He knew those treadmarks. He’d seen them on the floor of Dr. Timaeus’ lab, the day after the break-in.
At that moment, time seemed to slow down. Clark could feel his heart beating hard in his ears, so loud it could shake the room. Without knowing it, Lori had given him the final clue he’d been searching for.
Of course, he’d looked everywhere except right in front of him.
It couldn’t be her. He wouldn’t believe it. This was Lori, whom he’d known for the better part of a decade. At one point, he’d even called her his best friend. If they hadn’t been separated by circumstances, he might have even married her. She was a goodie-two-shoes to rival even himself. Even if she had done it, there was still one thing he didn’t understand.
Why? They needed to talk, alone. While yes, he loved Lois more than anything, she could be a bit… abrasive. Her interrogative style worked great with sources and evasive crooks. This situation was just more delicate. She could sit this one out, Clark decided, as long as she didn’t know what she was missing.
So, once they’d cleaned up the glass shards, Clark set off the car alarm. A quick shot of heat vision through the window down towards the street below was all it took.
As soon as she heard it, Lois let out a prolonged sigh. “I wonder what it is this time,” she groaned.
“I can go check it out,” Clark suggested, but she quickly shot him down.
“No, no, I’ve got it. I’m gonna give whoever’s down there a piece of my mind.”
Lori forced a smile, seemingly already sensing Clark’s tension, and replied, “Best of luck down there.”
“I’ll be right back.”
When the door shut behind Lois, silence fell over the two left sitting at the table. Clark couldn’t meet Lori’s gaze. He hated what he was about to do. He stood and made his way to the door, lingering there for a moment before locking it.
“Clark? What’s going on?”
He couldn’t help but think that she was looking at him like she already knew the answer. She always seemed to know what he was about to say. Though, Lois always said he wasn’t very good at hiding his intentions.
“We need to talk,” he said.
“I had a feeling you were going to say that.”
“Lori, I’d hate for things to go like this, but you’ve gotta tell me—was it you? The break-in at Dr. Timaeus’ workshop. There were no footprints, just wheel tracks. The same treads as your wheelchair.”
“Clark…” she said, in a warning tone, “You don’t want to do this.”
“People deserve the truth.”
“Sometimes, the truth isn’t good for them. You would know,
Superman.” The last word sounded like it was coming from inside his own mind, but it was Lori’s voice, he was sure of it. She hadn’t opened her mouth. She just looked up at him with resigned detachment.
“Lori?” he thought,
“Are you in my head?”“I’m sorry.”“Wait,” he spoke aloud again, “How can you do that? How long have you known?”
“The second question is a bit easier to answer, so I’ll start with that.” She sighed. “I suspected something was different about you as soon as we met, but I wasn’t sure what that something was. You left me a few interesting breadcrumbs in our first conversation. Well, I heard them in your mind. I didn’t mean to listen in, but I slip up from time to time.”
“What did I say, or uh… think?”
“It was when I ran over your toes with my chair. I was worried I’d broken them and you said to yourself that no one could break them, but it was cute that I was concerned. At first, I thought you were another disabled student like me and had a prosthetic. Then, there was a heat wave and I saw you running across the asphalt barefoot on a dare. No prosthetic to be seen.”
“Oh, I remember that. It was some stupid pledge thing.”
“I remember thinking that you were hiding the pain really well, but then I heard you as you got closer. Or more accurately, I didn’t. I touched the asphalt just to make sure it was actually hot. I got first-degree burns on my fingers. And you walked across it like it was nothing.”
“Maybe that wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done,” he replied, sheepishly.
“I didn’t know what to call it, but I knew you were different. Maybe even like me.”
“Well, just so you know, I definitely can’t read minds.”
Lori chuckled. “That’s probably for the best.” Then, she sighed, and continued, “I shouldn’t have gotten involved with you. I could tell that you weren’t ready to tell anyone about your powers. I should have gone home like my parents wanted me to and forgotten everything. I just thought… I thought you and I might have had a chance out here, together. You’d understand it—being different, keeping secrets from the world, from the people you love.”
“Well, you knew something was different back then, but when did you know for sure?”
“About three years ago.”
“When Superman made his debut?”
She nodded. “By that time, you’d moved to Metropolis and I thought I’d never see you again. And then, suddenly, you were on my TV screen. You weren’t wearing your glasses and you’d gelled your hair into oblivion, but it was you. All the little things I’d seen started to make sense. Why you never got hurt, never got cold, and could run faster than anyone I knew. You aren’t human, but neither am I, so I don’t mind. ”
“So—” He finally sat down, so they could talk at her level. “Now that my secret is out on the table, it’s your turn… Wait a minute, did you just say you’re an alien, too?”
“Not human, yes. An alien, no. You know how Dr. Timaeus claims there’s an underwater civilization? He’s not delusional. They’re really down there and I would know… because they’re my people. I grew up there.”
“But… how?”
“Much like you, I’m not how I appear. Let me ask you a question, Clark. Have you ever seen my legs?”
He gnawed on his lower lip as he thought for a moment, then said, “I don’t think so.”
“There’s a good reason for that.” She reached down to the hem of her long skirt, which reached all the way down to the footrest of her wheelchair. Pausing for a moment, she chuckled to herself and said, “I’ve always wanted to show you, just to see the look on your face.”
Where he had expected to see feet was a wide tail fin, covered in green scales and with ends tipped in short spines. “That’s a fish tail,” he said dumbfounded, “Well, that explains why you never let me see your legs… because you don’t actually have any.” And all this time, he’d thought the long skirts were just a fashion statement.
“Can you understand that I did what I had to do?”
“I’m beginning to… but it’s making me wonder, why were you up here in the first place? If your people want nothing to do with humans, how did you end up at a college in Kansas, the most land-locked state in the country?”
“To be honest, I don’t know whose idea that was. It definitely wasn’t mine, though. Every 100 years, someone is sent to the surface to check on human civilization—to see how they’re progressing and if they suspect our existence. I was chosen to go.”
“Like a spy?”
“Not exactly. We’re really just observers. And I was, for the most part.”
“Lori, you did break into a building and wreck a submarine.”
“I had no choice! I didn’t know that thing was being built until a week ago. I had to do something. Besides, I only got in because his assistant was fed up with working for ‘experience.’ Even I know that any decent scientist knows to pay their interns. So, we did each other a favor. Yes, I admit it, I broke in, but it was for the right reasons.”
“What would you have me do, then? I can’t support you interfering in a scientific expedition, but I don’t want this to start a fight between your people and mine.”
“Take me down to the city and we can talk to the Council. We can figure out what they want to do about the situation, before anyone does something they can’t take back.”
“How are we gonna get down there?”
Lori chuckled. “I don’t know about you, but I’m going to swim.”
