The pool hall had only been open for half an hour when Kimberly opened the front door and strode in as if she owned the place. She did have a quarter-interest in the business, but Louie never reminded her of it or asked her to participate in managing it. A billiards joint just wasn’t the place for his little girl, at least not according to her father, and she probably wouldn’t have come in had her dad not told her that Lois Lane would audition for him today. She’d had to convince him that her legal practice wouldn’t suffer much if she took an occasional long lunch.
“Hi, Dad,” she called out. “Had breakfast yet?”
“Yeah. ‘Bout eleven, I think. Had a nice yogurt with carrot juice on the side.”
“Very funny. How much beer did you drink?”
He lifted his hand as if testifying in court. “On my honor, honey, I had yogurt and carrot juice. My doctor told me last year that I had to reduce my cholesterol and lose a few pounds or I’d have heart disease or diabetes or something worse in another five years.” He smiled lopsidedly. “I gotta hang around for my girl, ain’t I?”
She smiled and poked him in the shoulder an index finger. “You’d better! Now, when is Lois coming by? I hope she’s off work later this afternoon. She and I haven’t had lunch together for ages!”
“She’ll be here soon. She and her partner are comin’ by to try out a routine on me. They’re lookin’ for standup work.”
Kimberly frowned at her father. “I thought you were kidding about Lois losing her job.”
Louie shrugged. “Nah. Wouldn’t kid about that. Had somethin’ to do with Lex Luthor takin’ a swan dive to the street from his penthouse a few weeks ago, but they didn’t give me no details and I didn’t ask.”
“Poor Lois.” She shook her head. “Do you think you can get them something?”
He shrugged again. “Open mic night for sure, but after that it depends on how they come across to the audience. An’ I don’t want you lyin’ to them about how funny they are. Worst thing you can do to someone like that is make them think they’re better than they really are.”
“I won’t do that, Dad. I don’t know her partner, but I do remember Lois having a really nasty bite to some of her jokes. She can be funny if she wants to be.”
“I hope so, for their sake.” He glanced at his watch. “They better get here quick. I ain’t got all day.”
As if to satisfy Louie’s impatience, the pool hall’s front door flew open to admit a smiling Lois Lane, followed by a sighing Clark Kent. “Hi, Louie!” she called. Then she saw the other young woman in the room and stopped in her tracks. “Kim! Is that really you?”
“Lois! It’s been too long!”
They all but sprinted toward each other and spun each other around, laughing and alternately embracing and holding each other at arms’ length. Clark edged around them and stood near Louie. Both men stared at the two twenty-something professional women who had suddenly reverted to squealing, chattering teenagers. Clark grinned at Louie and said, “Now there’s a side of Lois I never thought I’d see.”
Louie shrugged. “Those two used to do this when they’d been apart for a weekend. I watched ‘em act like this for three years while they was in college together. No surprise to me they’re doin’ it now.”
Clark crossed his arms and smiled at the women, and Louie wondered if he was more than the coworker and friend Lois assured him he was.
He looked up at the taller man. “What kind of stuff youse guys plannin’ to do?”
Clark frowned slightly. “Well, since this is the first time we’ve done anything like this, we decided to modify an old Burns and Allen routine to see if we work well together. Besides, we know that routine works, even if it’s a little dated, so if we fall flat we’ll know it’s not the material.”
“What routine did ya pick?”
“It’s called ‘Oh My Operation.’ We compressed it for just two people and took out the dead baby jokes.”
Louie blinked. “The – the what? Dead baby jokes? You kiddin’ me, right?”
Clark shook his head. “Nope. Apparently infant death was so common in those vaudeville and Depression days that people chose to laugh at it instead of crying about it.”
“That why you got that clipboard?”
Clark nodded. “It’s the only prop we need. I’m going to do George’s part, the guy in the hospital bed, and Lois will be nurse Gracie.” He looked down at the older man. “I want you to be encouraging but honest, Louie. If we have potential but we’re not ready for a long-term paying gig, tell us. And if we stink on ice, you tell us that. Capice?”
Louie goggled. He never would have thought that the upright and seemingly uptight Clark Kent would use Italian slang on him. He blinked a couple of times and said, “Sure, Kent, sure. I’ll be as honest as the day is long.”
“Uh-huh. And the Tooth Fairy still makes house calls.”
Louie snorted a laugh. “Not bad. Hey, maybe youse guys got potential after all.” He clapped his hands twice and raised his voice. “All right, you two girls, we need to get going on this tryout. Lois, you and the big mook show us what you got, okay?”
Lois gave Kim a quick grin and grabbed a chair. “Clark, we’ll use this for the bed.”
Clark looked at it and raised his eyebrows. “I think it’s a little short for me.”
Lois’ deadpan glare at Clark seemed to give Kim the giggles, but Lois didn’t waver. She pointed at the chair. “Sit. Now.”
“Yes, ma’am!”
They began the routine with Gracie’s comment that the chart said the patient was dead. Clark asserted that he was most definitely not dead. Lois smiled and told him that the doctor knew best. She mimed offering him two newspapers. When he mentioned that they were identical, she explained that she’d felt sorry for the out-of-work man who was selling them but who had only three copies left. When Clark asked why Lois hadn’t bought all three, she replied that she couldn’t because that would have put him out of work again.
Louie smiled at the old but familiar jokes. They weren’t bad, but something just wasn’t working and he didn’t know just what it was.
*****
When Lois turned and strutted out of the “room” at the end of the sketch, both Kim and Louie applauded. “That was good, guys,” said Kim. “I think you’ve got potential.” She turned to her father. “What do you think, Dad?”
Her father’s expression reminded her of the day she’d told him she wanted to play tennis to pay for part of her college. It was somewhere between constipation and a horse stepping on his foot.
“I dunno,” he muttered. “The timing’s pretty good for almost no rehearsal, and youse guys got some chemistry, but the whole thing just don’t quite work. And I dunno what the problem is.”
Clark stood. “Okay. Can you give us some specific pointers?”
Kim listened to her father speak as she watched Lois move slightly in front of Clark and cross her arms. “It ain’t just one thing, guys. It’s like you memorized a play in a foreign language. You know what to say and do, and you know when to say it and do it, but it don’t come natural to you.”
“Dad—”
“Hang on, honey. Look, I know youse guys need to make some grocery money, but this act ain’t gonna get you nowheres.” He sighed. “I sure wish you played piano, Kent.”
Kim nudged her father’s shoulder. “Dad! Listen, they—”
“I can’t learn to play piano in a week, Louie,” Clark said. “Standup comedy is our only real option.”
“It ain’t working right now, Kent. It ain’t awful, but it just don’t work. Sorry, but you said to tell you the truth.”
“Switch them!” hissed Kim.
The other three stopped in their tracks and stared at her. After a long moment, Louie said, “Do what?”
“Have them switch roles, Dad! Look at them right now.”
Louie did, then shrugged. Clark and Lois just frowned at her as if puzzled by a door in the hall where one hadn’t been the day before. Kim could tell none of them were getting it.
“Look at their body language, how they’re standing, how Lois is just a little bit in front of Clark!” she insisted. “What does that mean?”
Her father shrugged. “Means she don’t want him to be in front of her?”
“Yes!” exclaimed Kim. “Think about all those famous comedy teams. Lewis and Martin, Abbot and Costello, the Smothers Brothers, even Burns and Allen. The straight man was the one in charge on stage, fed the other member the setup lines, and the clueless one delivered the knockout. It looked like the funny guy was in charge but the straight man was the one who was really controlling the team.” She stood and gestured to Lois and Clark. “You two do that routine again, except you switch roles. Clark, you be the nurse. Lois, you be the patient. Try it again.”
Louie stood beside her. “Hey, youse guys game? Kim may have somethin’ here. It can’t hurt to try it that way.”
Clark and Lois looked at each other, then Lois spoke. “We’ll give it a shot, Louie. You sure you want us to do the same routine?”
Clark said, “We don’t have anything else memorized yet, Lois. It’s not like we have much choice.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Louie insisted, “same thing. Gives us somethin’ to compare it to.”
Kim sat next to her father and wiggled. “Great idea, Dad. I bet this is really funny.”
He sighed. “I sure hope so. And don’t blame all this on me. If this works, you’re takin’ some responsibility.”
She put her hand on her father’s arm and squeezed. “Gladly.”
“Okay, kids, from the top.”
Clark and Lois repeated the routine, beginning with Lois in the chair and Clark reading from the clipboard, and this time it not only flowed more smoothly, it was downright funny. Two older men came in to play pool as Lois and Clark began the bit, but ended up standing behind Louie, listening intently and smiling and elbowing each other. Twice they had to stop and wait for their small audience to finish laughing, just like the old Vaudeville comics did. And not once during the routine did Lois or Clark break the fourth wall.
When Clark flounced off with the clipboard after looking for the doctor’s umbrella, Kim applauded wildly and Louie added a few well-spaced claps of his own. “That was much better, guys!” Kim gushed.
The two older men nudged Louie and nodded. One leaned down and asked, “You gonna hire them, Lou?”
“What? This is a rehearsal, not a tryout! I’m just lendin’ my voluminous expertisement to this up-and-coming duo.”
Kim laughed. “The word is ‘expertise,’ Dad, as you well know. And they did a great job!” She stood and reached out to hug Lois. “Partner, if you can do that with other material, you can knock them dead on open mic night!”
Clark stepped around the two women and asked, “So, Louie, are you going to give us a helping hand? Or do you want to sign a contract to manage us now while the money’s good?”
Louie laughed and slapped his knee. “That’s rich, Kent! While the money’s good, yeah! Tell you what, let’s wait until someone actually offers you a payin’ gig, okay?”
“So when will that happen?”
Louie snorted. Kim locked eyes with Lois and smiled, drawing a smirk in return. Louie crossed his arms and said, “How about we start with Open Mic Night at the Improv, Friday night at eight? That gives you the rest of today and two more full days to smooth out any wrinkles in your routine.”
*****
Clark unlocked his apartment door and stepped back to allow Lois to precede him. She skipped down the steps and spun on her toes with her arms outstretched. “Oh, Clark, that was wonderful. You were so funny and I can’t believe the applause we got or that people wanted us to do an encore! This feels great! Almost like winning a Kerth!”
He smiled and nodded. “Yeah, it was fun, wasn’t it?” He shut the front door and locked it. “Hey, are you hungry? I can throw something together pretty quickly.”
She hugged him briefly and jumped back. “Oh, no, I don’t want you to cut yourself on the soup!”
They shared a chuckle. “Okay,” Clark said, “I’ll see if I can find some sandwich fixings.”
“Sounds great to me. Want to watch some TV?”
“Sure. Anything but the news, though. We should savor our triumph.”
Lois flopped down on the couch. “Triumph? I don’t know if I’d go quite that far with it.”
Kitchen clatter accompanied his reply. “Oh, I don’t know. We got an invitation to come back to the Improv next week, and there was that guy who wanted to talk to us about a weekend at the Stokes club next month. And the rep from Jackson’s seemed to enjoy it.”
She kicked off her shoes and leaned back. “Yeah, it could be the start of something big. As long as we remember our real purpose.”
He leaned out of the kitchen and shook his head, then spoke as if almost joking. “Of course. We’re out to make people laugh and earn a living.”
“Uh-huh. That earning a living part – I think we need to talk about that.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah.” She shifted uncomfortably and looked away from him. “My apartment lease is up at the end of next month and I need to tell Mr. Tracewski if I’m going to renew it but I really can’t afford it if I’m not drawing a regular salary even though I have some savings but I don’t want to run through all of it too fast and I was wondering if I could move in here with you?”
She didn’t dare look at him, even though she knew he was staring at her because he wasn’t making kitchen noises any more. Had she moved too fast? Had she crossed a line in their friendship over which she couldn’t retreat?
From the kitchen entrance, he asked, “Are we talking trading the couch for the bed every night?”
She exhaled in relief. “Yes. We’d keep the same schedule we’ve been on, unless you just really, really want to have the bed every night, and that’s okay with me because this couch really is comfortable and I can put my furniture in storage except for my dresser which should fit right next to—”
“Lois.”
He’d moved so quietly that she hadn’t noticed that he’d knelt down in front of her until he’d spoken. She lifted her head and cleared her throat. “Yes, Clark?”
“You can move in and stay as long as you want or need to. No pressure, no conditions, no expectations. Okay?”
Her smile sneaked out despite her efforts to restrain it. “Okay. Oh, I do have one condition.”
He almost frowned as if he were concerned with what she might say. “What’s that?”
“I just – I need to make sure – I have to be sure of something.”
He took her hands in his. “Anything. Just tell me what it is.”
She looked deep into his eyes and sighed. “Please – please don’t use my hairbrush.”
He blinked. “Wh-what?”
“My hairbrush. You left a little gel on it day before yesterday.”
She held her innocent expression as long as she could, which lasted all of two seconds before he snorted and sat down hard on the floor. Her laughter burst out as she fell over sideways on the couch, and they both laughed and chortled and chuckled and giggled until she was all but exhausted.
Clark finally propped his head up on his arm with his elbow on the floor. “Hey, you still want that soup?”
One last burst of guffaws came out of her chest, then she shook her head. “Not unless you want it too. I’m as tired now as if I’d just come off a stakeout.”
He stood in one fluid motion and offered her his hand. “I’m pretty tired too. I did, however, notice that we were a little short of ingredients for some of the dishes I like to make. Do you mind if I go get them tonight?”
Of course she minded. She wanted him all to herself, even if there was a bedroom door between her resting place and his. “Of course not. Just – just stay out of trouble, okay?”
He smiled and nodded. “I promise. Are you going to take a shower tonight?”
Her yawn and her nod fought for supremacy. The yawn won. “Wow! I was, but I’ve changed my mind. I’ll take one in the morning, or whenever I wake up, whichever comes first.”
“No problem. If I wake up before you, I’ll try to get a quick one in before brunch.”
She put her palms on his chest and lifted herself on her toes to kiss his cheek. “Don’t be long. You know I have a hard time sleeping when you’re not in the apartment.”
“I won’t be long. Good night, Lois.”
She lowered her heels to the floor and accepted his return peck on her forehead. “Good night, Clark.” She ruffed his hair with one hand and gently pushed toward the door with the other. “Get that shopping done.”
He smiled wider and all but skipped out the door. She hugged herself, content for the moment that they were making progress on all sorts of fronts.
She picked up a napkin to wipe Clark’s hair gel from her hand.
But her hand was dry.
She used regular hair spray, so she knew the gel wasn’t hers. It had to be Clark’s. How could he have left gel on her brush if he didn’t put it in his hair?
*****
Superman’s patrol was shorter than usual, but he still managed to apprehend two muggers and three armed robbers at a liquor store. As he landed outside the small all-night grocery store to buy the food items he’d mentioned to Lois, he mused that it would be easier for him if she knew the secret.
Maybe. At this point, he didn’t know what she’d do or say from one minute to the next.
The Korean woman and man behind the counter stiffened as he walked in. “Superman!” the man cried out. “What – why are you here?”
Brilliant. He was absolutely brilliant. Not only had he forgotten to change into his Clark clothes, there was no money in his super-suit. Lois was distracting him without even being around him.
“I’m sorry. I thought I heard something, but I suppose I misinterpreted it. Please, go on with your business.”
“Wait!” He paused instead of turning to leave. The woman who’d called out seemed even more terrified now than when he’d entered. “Su-Superman, would you like a – a snack? Some nice North Troy apples? Fresh today! Please, no charge.”
He tilted his head and frowned, then nodded at the counter. The woman lifted her right hand slightly, the hand that was not between herself and her husband, and extended two fingers. Superman looked through the counter to see two young men, one white and one black, each holding a pistol with one hand and holding one ankle of either the man or woman with the other.
He nodded. “Thank you. I think I will take a couple of those apples. They do look good.”
“Of course,” the woman said. “Let me get a bag for you. I will pick out my two best apples for you. I promise you that you will like them.”
She stepped away from her husband and tugged once, and the thug holding her leg apparently decided to let her go. She picked up the bag from the counter and stepped briskly to the apple rack as Superman talked and meandered toward the cash register.
“You know, there’s nothing on my home world like New Troy apples. They’re rich and juicy and have just the right amount of tangy sweetness to them.” He look through the counter again and saw that both thugs had their weapons pointed at the counter, and him, instead of at either of the shop’s owners. “I wish I could export them back to Krypton. Whoever had that concession would make a ton of money.” He leaned over the counter and snatched both pistols away before either man could react. “Don’t you think so, fellas?”
The black robber fainted. The white robber wet himself, curled into a fetal position, and started crying.
The Korean man behind the counter jumped away from them and ran to the pay phone on the wall near the water fountain. “Hello!” he shouted into it. “Hello! You are nine-one-one? Come to my store and arrest two men! Yes! They tried to rob me! Superman took their guns and they are too scared to move! Come get them quick! What? Yes, my address! I give you!”
The woman tapped Superman on the arm and handed him a paper bag full of apples. “I know that you do not do this for reward, Mr. Superman, but you must take this. It is our small thanks for saving us from those foolish boys.”
He took the bag, fully intending to quietly return it to them. “Thank you. I’ll wait here until the police come for them.”
She bowed to him and smiled. “Thank you again. My husband is very excitable. He was a small boy in Korea during the war there forty years ago, and he hates guns and people who carry them. He does not even like to see police officers carrying weapons. He says he has heard too many guns fired and seen too many people die from them.”
“I understand. But why do you stay open all night? You must know that this is the time when bandits most often rob hard-working people such as yourselves.”
She sighed. “It is to make money. We live simply, we work hard, and we have many good customers. Many of them work late shifts or at night. Some even walk or ride for blocks out of their way to shop with us. Much of our money goes back to South Korea to support our families who live in the south. We cannot send money to our people in North Korea. The government there will take it.”
“I’m sorry about that. I wish there was something I could do to change all that. But I’m glad I could help you tonight.”
As he spoke with her, he considered changing outside – once the police had taken away the robbers, of course – and getting the story as Clark. He could call it in to the night editor and let someone in rewrite—
No. He couldn’t do that.
He wasn’t working for the Daily Planet now. He wasn’t writing news stories. There was no one to call, no one to rewrite his story, no one to edit it.
He’d understood intellectually that he wasn’t a reporter now. He and Lois had just finished a comedy routine which they hoped would turn into a paying job. He’d known that there were no more checks to be signed by Franklin Stern and handed to him by Jack or Jimmy.
But he hadn’t grasped it emotionally before this moment. It hadn’t really hit him that he wasn’t a reporter any more until he realized that he couldn’t call in his story, that there was no one to whom he could call it in and have it published. And the rupture it left in his heart was surprisingly wide and deep.
He’d begun this risky assignment with the intention of supporting and comforting Lois as long as he could and as long as she’d let him. Now he wondered how long he could take not being a reporter. It was already eating at his gut.
It had to be killing her.
He might as well keep the apples. Who knew when he might get another paycheck from anybody?
