Janet, this is again excellent. This entire part is about how Lois is incredibly attracted to Clark, how her attraction makes her flustered, and how this is turn makes her feel threatened and scared:
She was so aware of the man she was ready to scream. How could Perry do this to her? She needed to… to… She didn’t know what she needed to do. She could feel her heart pounding, and wondered if her increasing discomfort was visible to anyone else. She was going to have to find a way to escape… No, to *leave* the meeting. Mad Dog Lane never ‘escaped’ from *anything*. Mad Dog Lane was intimidated by no one. Mad Dog Lane did *not* have panic attacks. Mad Dog Lane was –
“That’s it, people! Now hustle! Get me news!” Perry’s voice broke into her thoughts, and she took a deep breath, forcing herself to unclench her hands and slow her heart rate.
I love how you show that Lois is completely unable to hear even a word that Perry is saying during their morning meeting, because she is so busy fighting down a panic attack at how much Clark Kent affects her. He is really a menace to society, or at the very, very least to her:
The man’s smile ought to be outlawed. It was too unsettling, and she didn’t like the way it made her feel.
Luckily, Clark is wonderfully perceptive, and he knows exactly what to do to avoid scaring her. For example, she is dreading the prospect of having lunch with him, but then this is what happens:
“I have an errand I need to run,” he told her, “so I’ll see you here in about an hour, okay?” With a quick smile, he turned and headed up the ramp, replying pleasantly to those who spoke to him as he went.
Lois sat watching him, telling herself that it was relief she was feeling, not surprise. Absolutely not disappointment. The less she was around him the better.
Wonderful, Janet. She's not feeling disappointment. Right.
I loved your twist on the little "You like to be on top" business, too:
“Got it, Lois. *You*… like to be…”
He paused for a moment, and she bristled. If he said something chauvinistic and condescending, something totally Ralph-ish like ‘you like to be on top’, she wasn’t going to be responsible for her actions.
“… You like to be a leader,” he continued, apparently without any undertone of insincerity.
Clark Kent affects her so thoroughly that she feels she ought to have sensed his presence if he ever came within a certain distance of her, which happened when they were both at Met U for three weeks:
He’d been there only a very short time, yes – and he’d been an upperclassman, so they wouldn’t have been in the same classes. But still – he had been that close; somehow she should have sensed it. She knew how ridiculous that sounded - one man in a student population of close to ten thousand – but it still felt like she ought to have known. Ought to have somehow sensed he was there.
Then Lois is telling Clark to keep another set of clothes at the Daily Planet. I'm so wondering - will we soon see Superman make his debut? Surely Clark Kent is Kryptonian too, not just Lois? And then, will she officially be a superhero, too? You already showed us in this chapter how she had freed two workers caught in a conduit under a manhole.
We can feel Lois's panic at Clark's presence slowly subsiding through the course of this part. All in all, this chapter reminds me of a Swedish poem, which in English would go something like this:
Am I interrupting something? he said. Am I disturbing you? Should I leave? Of course you are interrupting something, she said. Of course you are disturbing me. You are turning my world upside down. Welcome. Your lonely, lonely Lois needs to have her world turned upside down. She needs to ask Clark Kent to come into her world, really come in. I do believe you are going to show us how that will be happening, and I can't wait to get to see it.
Ann
