Lois kicked off her heels and stripped out of her suit, sliding into black leggings and a long sleeved black t-shirt instead. She was lacing up her running shoes when the phone rang, and she hopped toward it awkwardly while she finished tying the bow.
She snatched up the receiver as it began to ring for the third time, eager to catch Jimmy before the answering machine picked up and he assumed she was already gone for the night. She had spent the last four days digging into the Church family and their new Costmart location in Metropolis, becoming more and more convinced it was the headquarters for Intergang.
Today her investigation had centered on Bill Church, Jr. and she was becoming more convinced by the minute that it was him – and not his father – who was the mastermind. She’d had Jimmy running background research on him all afternoon while she worked her sources, and she was hoping for something interesting to dig into while she sat undercover outside the warehouse store after closing to watch for comings and goings.
“Please tell me you found something good on Junior,” she said. There was a long pause, and Lois pulled the phone from her ear and looked at it briefly before returning it to her ear. “Hello! Jimmy? What did you find?”
“Lois?” The voice was deep, and the butterflies it awaked were immediately familiar. “It’s Clark. Clark Kent.”
“Clark! Hey! Hi. Sorry. I thought you were… never mind.” She closed her eyes and cringed.
“Is this a bad time?” he asked.
“No! I mean, actually, yes. I’m about to walk out the door. I’m in the middle of… it’s a whole thing, but I need to be on a stakeout. I thought you were my coworker with the research I asked for.”
Lois glanced at the door, knowing she needed to leave soon. It was already dark and the store closed in twenty minutes. She wanted to be parked before the last of the shoppers left for the day. But his voice on the other end of the line was so warm and friendly that she found herself tempted to skip the stakeout for one night. Costmart and Intergang would be there tomorrow.
“That’s fine,” he said. “I understand-“
“I have a few minutes,” she said impulsively.
He paused for a second. “Great,” he said softly.
“You made it back to Kansas? You didn’t decide to defect and stay in Miami?” she teased.
“It was tempting,” he said with a chuckle. “I could get used to 90 degree weather in April.”
“You’re a fan of tropical weather?”
“I don’t mind the cold,” he said. “But I definitely prefer the sun.”
“Mmm, same,” she said. “I was kicking myself the whole plane ride home. I don’t know what I was thinking, booking a red eye after the ceremony. Who goes to Miami and doesn’t even spend one day at the beach?”
He laughed. “It sounds like you’ve been busy since you got back though. I tried calling earlier this week and you weren’t home.”
Her eyes went automatically to the blinking light on her answering machine.
She cringed. “Sorry, I’ve been working the stakeout every night this week.”
She waited for him to complain or lose interest, the way so many of the past men in her life had done when they realized they came second to her job.
“Don’t apologize,” he said easily. “I know you’re busy.”
“I really need to go,” she said reluctantly. She thought again about abandoning her plans for the evening. In that moment, she wanted nothing more than to talk to him. “Can we try this again another time?”
“Sure,” he said easily. “Is there a time that would be better to call? Maybe tomorrow?”
“I have taekwondo tomorrow,” she said. “Friday?”
“I’m chaperoning a school dance,” he said. “Saturday?”
She laughed. “I’m covering a political fundraiser. This is ridiculous, Clark. I’m sorry.”
He laughed too. “There has to be a day that works for both of us.”
Suddenly, she had a brilliant idea.
“We could email?” she said. “Until we can find a time to call? I can’t talk on the phone at the office, but I can check my email. Do you have email?”
“Sure,” he said quickly. “That’s a great idea.”
“Great! My email address is on the card I gave you,” she said, thankful in that moment for the paper’s new owner, who had insisted all reporters have access to email and had printed all new business cards with those addresses.
When Franklin Stern had bought the paper the previous spring, it had been a godsend. The circulation numbers were down and there was talk of layoffs and even bankruptcy.
Perry had called in a favor and secured a private meeting with Stern. Lois didn’t know what was said in that meeting, but Stern had bought the paper, saving it from almost certain destruction.
Just a month later, her reporting had brought Luthor down. Her resulting Pulitzer – and the Public Service Pulitzer the paper received for her reporting – had gone a long way to restore The Daily Planet’s reputation, and Stern had decided to make it the crown jewel of his media empire, dumping loads of money into modernizing the operation.
“I see it here,” Clark replied. “I’ll email you.”
She hesitated for just a second. “Thanks, Clark. I’m sorry. I really have to go. But I’m glad you called. I’m sorry we couldn’t talk longer.”
“It’s okay,” he said again. “I’m glad I caught you. I’ll send you an email soon. Good luck tonight. Be careful.”
She waited for the familiar prickling at that last sentence, the frustration she felt with men who patronized or infantilized her. But it didn’t come. He wasn’t telling her what to do or coddling her. He was just being Clark.
“I will,” she said. “Good night, Clark.”
“Good night, Lois,” he said. She hung up, his goodbye lingering in her ear, the same quiet intimate tone he had used when he said goodbye after kissing her outside her hotel room last week.
***
Lois walked down the ramp into the bullpen, coffee in hand, scowl on her face. The stakeout last night had been a total bust. She had sat there for hours yet again without seeing any movement. She knew that was how stakeouts worked. The vast majority were long and boring and pointless, but you had to put in the time because you never knew which long, boring night would result in the big break. Still, four nights in a row of sitting alone in her Jeep for hours on end had left her tired, sore, and frustrated.
She took off her coat and tossed it on her guest chair, and slid into her seat.
“Late night?” Cat asked from her seat across their desks, raising her eyebrows suggestively.
Lois rolled her eyes. “Isn’t it a little early for you to emerge from your lair?” she asked.
The question was snarky, but it had no bite to it. Her relationship with the gossip columnist had been acrimonious once upon a time, but they had built a grudging respect for each other last year when Lois had recruited Cat to help build her snare for Luthor, relying on her for inside information about the man’s social circle and personal dealings.
After their reluctant partnership resulted in a major breakthrough, the antipathy between them seemed to fade away. And when Lois’ Pulitzer had resulted in raises and promotions for those who had facilitated her work, Cat and Jimmy in particular, she had earned Cat’s appreciation as well as her respect. They were never going to be close friends, but they worked together peacefully and the barbs they exchanged now were done in fun. More or less.
“Incoming,” Jimmy said, dropping a thick stack of papers on her desk. “More research into the Costmart board of directors.”
“Anything exciting?” Lois asked.
Jimmy shrugged and she sighed. She braced herself for another morning of reading boring financial documents looking for a needle in a haystack.
“Oh, and I emailed you that profile you asked for,” he added. “That puff piece we did on Bill Church, Jr. when he hosted the charity auction.”
Across the desk, Cat snarled at Jimmy’s use of the term puff piece to describe the types of articles she wrote on a daily basis. Jimmy raised his hands in surrender and beat a hasty retreat.
Lois eyed the stack of financials and decided to start with the puff piece. The rest could wait until she finished her cup of coffee. She booted up her computer, listening to the familiar tones, and launched her email program.
She logged in and saw she had five new messages waiting for her since she had checked it before leaving last night. She opened her inbox and saw Jimmy’s message with the attached puff piece on top, then scanned down to see what else. The next three were messages from various listservs she monitored for story ideas. But the fifth stopped her in her tracks. She had been so focused on her stakeout that she had forgotten. She sat up straighter in her chair and darted her glance around to make sure no one was close enough to read over her shoulder, then she clicked on the message.
From: Clark Kent <cjkent@aol.com>
To: Lois Lane <lane.lois@dailyplanet.com>
Subject: Hello
Date: April 26, 1995, 12:58 am
Hi Lois,
I’m so glad I caught you tonight before you went out. It sounds like you’ve been busy since you got back from Miami. I hope the stakeout went well last night, and I hope the weather isn’t as bad there as you were predicting before you left. I can only imagine the freezing slush would make a stakeout more miserable.
Not to rub it in, but you definitely should be kicking yourself for not extending your trip through the weekend. The weather was glorious. We spent most of Saturday at the beach, and my students were in heaven. And then we found the greatest little hole in the wall restaurant in Little Havana, and I had the best Ropa Vieja I’ve ever had outside of Cuba.
We arrived home to fresh snow on the ground and no one was amused. Hopefully that will be our last snow of the year.
It was a little difficult coming back to real life after being in Miami, but we’ve settled back in. My sophomores started reading Catcher in the Rye this week, and as I led our first discussion yesterday, I was thinking to myself that you probably have some strong opinions about Holden Caulfield. I’d love to know if I’m right on that front.
Also, you’ll be pleased to know that every sentence out of the mouths of my newspaper staffers now starts with “Ms. Lane says…” So you seem to have knocked me right off their pedestal. Of course, I can’t blame them. I know I’ve already said it, but I really appreciate you spending so much time with them last week. It really did mean the world to them. I don’t know if you have an official fan club, but if so, Sarah may be running for President.
I should probably wrap this up, but I’d love to hear back from you whenever you have some downtime. Exchanging emails was a great idea – I’m glad you suggested it.
Take care,
Clark
She read the message three times, soaking in his casual, friendly tone. The stress of the stakeout melted away as she imagined him on a beach in Miami, and then in front of a classroom full of his students thinking of her.
“What’s going on with you?” Cat said suspiciously. “Did you get a big tip?”
Lois closed out of the email immediately, trying to wipe whatever look Cat was seeing from her face.
“No,” she said. “Just checking out this article.”
She double clicked quickly on Jimmy’s attachment, pulling up the piece on Bill Church, Jr.
Cat rolled her eyes, and Lois wasn’t sure if that was a sign of her disbelief or a commentary of the types of things that made Lois smile. Either way, Lois ignored it and began to read the article.
She read the article all the way through twice, barely retaining any information. Thankfully it was every bit the puff piece Jimmy had described, and there was nothing of any use to her in it.
She closed out the article and found herself opening the email again. His email. She skimmed it again, smiling at his description of his students quoting her. And Catcher in the Rye. She scoffed silently. She certainly did have opinions about Holden Caulfield.
Her cursor hovered above the reply button.
“Conference room, people! Move it!” Perry bellowed from the doorway of the room where she should already be seated. Ugh. She was not looking forward to admitting she still had nothing on her article. He was going to tell her to put it on the back burner and give her some waste-of-time article to write. She sighed. Might as well get it over with.
****
She had been right about the morning meeting. As soon as she admitted she had nothing to print on her current investigation, Perry had assigned her to cover the latest in a string of fires in the warehouses down by the docks. The fires were obviously arson, but police had yet to identify a suspect and were still dancing around calling them arson officially while they waited for the report from the arson investigators.
Lois had spent all morning working sources in the police and fire department to get a couple of exclusive quotes, and then had gone down to the scene after lunch to take a look at it herself and talk to investigators working the scene.
Now she was back in the office ready to type up her story, the smell of charred wood clinging to her hair. She swung by the coffee pot on her way to her desk, wrinkling her nose at the cup of lukewarm coffee.
Back at her desk, she gave a quick look over the new stack of research waiting for her, dropped off by a research assistant while she was out at the scene of the fire with Jimmy along to take photos. Jimmy was still her primary research assistant, but since his photo of Luthor’s arrest had been printed on the front page of the Daily Planet – and then reprinted in papers worldwide – he had been spending more and more of his time taking photographs and even writing up small notices rather than acting as the office gopher.
She leafed through the thick print out that listed all the Costmart locations worldwide with a brief timeline sketch that included land purchase date, the date they broke ground on the building, and the date the store opened. She flipped through the stack, not sure exactly what she was looking for, and eventually set it aside to work on the arson story.
She slid her story in right before the six o’clock deadline and then grabbed her coat and headed for the elevators. On Thursdays she had taekwondo at seven, and if she was going to swing by her apartment and shower away the stench of smoke before her class, she needed to get moving. She was halfway home before she remembered his email. She felt a pang of regret that she had been unable to reply right away, but shook it off. She would get an early start tomorrow and reply before the morning meeting.
