Again, thank you very much to Datasprite12 for her wonderful translation, and to my beta reader VirginiaR. Without them, I'm just a French girl with a useless story.
Part 2
Baffled, Clark raked a hand through his brown hair completing the tousled look. He harbored a hint of innocence that you wouldn't normally find in a man of his stature. A smidgen clumsy, he was attractive although not overly aware of it – an asset that would have soothed many women, but Lois Lane could not be considered the most representative sample of her sex.
“So?” she resumed with impatience.
“A pencil,” he conceded finally, raising his useless one in a sheepish gesture.
Rising, Lois rummaged through a drawer, grabbed a fistful of pencils, and shoved them coldly at him.
“Is that all?”
“Uh, yes.”
He started to walk in the direction of the exit, but then turned back, faltering.
“What now?” She sighed, exasperated.
“You’re not coming? You’ll miss the champagne…”
She puffed at the strand of hair, dark as ink, which grazed her forehead.“Come on, Boy Scout; mind your own business, would you?”
He stared at her at length. Rudeness did not seem to faze him, but he was quickly discovering that Lois Lane possessed endless reserves of it.
“I wouldn’t want to leave you in this state.”
Before even finishing his phrase, he realized that he shouldn’t have started it at all.
“In this state? In this state …?”
All traces of sadness gone, she reminded him of a lioness ready to pounce, and he was surprised to find the spectacle fiercely graceful. He felt like a thief, robbing Lois of that impromptu beauty that she didn’t know she offered, touched by the fragile force betrayed by her set jaw and her trembling lips. She had to be one of those forces of nature, he mused, that nothing can touch and that all can reach. Without a doubt, each and every one of her movements could teach to the intuitive observer hints of her history, dreams, and burdens. Already, he sensed that she would be his most passionate, difficult, and heartbreaking investigation.
“I only wanted to…” he tried to explain.
“Out.”
“But…”
“Out!”
Her tone was no-nonsense and Clark dashed out without a word.
***
Daily Planet, the next morning
Eyes glued to his computer monitor, Clark raised his coffee cup to his lips and grimaced when he realized it was cold. He glanced right, then left. Satisfied that no one seemed to be paying attention to him, he lowered his glasses and reheated his beverage using his infrared rays. The coffee reached a perfect temperature but it was all for naught – Perry White, appearing suddenly in front of Clark, startled him so badly that he dropped his mug on his desk.
“Oh, Mr. White, I hadn’t heard you come by,” he embarrassingly spluttered, rising to attempt to save his files from the soggy mess.
Perry gave him a friendly slap on the shoulder. “You are one nervous boy, Kent.” He brandished the morning edition in the face of his journalist. “Excellent, your article on Denis Carrigan. Brilliant, even! His lawyer just called; he’s furious. Do you know what this means?”
“Uhh… that I should hire a lawyer as well?”
“No, it means you hit a bull’s eye! Carrigan is a real scoundrel, a rotten soul of the worst kind. You’ve ever seen an ecstatic Editor in Chief, Kent ?"
“Uh, no.”
Perry opened his arms wide. “Well, take a look! I had more or less the same expression during my second Elvis concert. And there had been three encores. Three encores! During the second, a woman threw her…”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Anyway, forget everything you were working on; I want you on the 13th Avenue murders. They found another body this morning; it’s the sixth one this month.”
“Yes, sir.” Clark breathed in slowly. “Sir?”
“Yes?”
“I may need some help.”
“Sure, sure,” answered Perry with an evasive gesture, his thoughts already somewhere else. “Take whomever you want.”
“Lois Lane?”
Perry regarded him a moment, his attention on Clark once more. “Son, you have flair. When I hired her, I thought I hit the jackpot. A clear and bright mind, always at the limit of impudence, perfect to force through the toughest, most barricaded doors.”
“Why didn’t you assign her the story?”
“Because here at the Daily Planet,” replied sharply the Editor in Chief, "we do not require raw potentiel but results. Last month, she swore she was on the trail of something big and I never saw heads or tails of it. It's like promising a kid French fries and serving him spinach. But partner with if you wish. In hindsight, this sounds like a great idea. Shake ger up a bit. The young woman's going through a rough patch." Perry glanced pointedly at Claude, who was moving towards them. "Ah, women", he sighed. "Parade a pretty boy in front of them and they morph from lioness to lamb."
Clark couldn’t restrain a smile. “With all due respect, sir, I don’t think Lois Lane is anything like a sheep.”
“Let her prove it then. Enough small talk, back to work!”
