A friend had once described to Lois her experience of wearing glasses for the first time. She’d enjoyed mountains, sunsets, and paintings before she’d gotten them, but she hadn’t really known what she was missing. The moment she’d slipped them on, it was like a revelation. The entire world came into focus, and what she’d thought was pretty before became truly beautiful.
That’s how Lois felt now.
She couldn’t breathe, and her hands felt clammy, but she wasn’t afraid.
Wanting to experience what her friends did, Lois had tried to imagine what it would be like. She’d been attracted to men at times, and amused by them more often, but none of them had ever really affected her on a visceral level.
She hadn't realized that it could be a little painful.
Clark’s smile slipped and he rose to his feet immediately. “Are you all right?”
Lois forced herself to smile. “I’m fine. I’m just excited to see the show.”
For the first time that was actually true. She’d expected the play to be an old time, dreary bore, but now…
At the very least it would give her time to sort through her feelings before she had to talk to Clark again. He was far too perceptive, and if she wasn’t careful he’d be able to ask anything of her.
He took her arm and was speaking to her, but she wasn’t really following. All she could do was stare up at him dazedly.
Was this what it was like for everyone? How did the world keep from going crazy?
All too soon they were separated, and Lois found an usher leading her to her seat. Normally she hated waiting, whether it was for a play, a restaurant or even a source. She tolerated stakeouts because she had to, but they were never her favorite activity.
Now, however, she was almost grateful. She needed time to process.
She’d had to talk herself into the decision to tell Clark before, but now it was clear that she had no choice. She couldn’t allow him to be trapped in the time vortex, no matter what the cost to her.
The thought of him being trapped forever in a timeless void had bothered her enough before, now it was intolerable.
Even if the best outcome occurred, and he was ejected into her own time, how would he survive?
He was a creature of this time. In the future he would be as much a fish out of water as Lois was in this time. He’d find the future distressingly fast paced and confusing, a horror show of cars whizzing around at unimaginable speeds, of constant noise and smells.
She’d done a report on culture shock once. For the first few weeks, the new world was exciting, with fascinating differences and new things to learn. By the third month, the differences between the old culture and the new started to become apparent, and this often caused anxiety, frustration and anger.
The immigrant began to feel lonely and homesick.
It often took six to twelve months to adjust to the changes, and some people never did acclimate completely.
Unless he wanted to live with the Amish, Clark wouldn’t be able to find a group of like-minded people to live with if he couldn’t adjust.
There was a century of cultural references that he would have no way of relating to. He’d have no idea what television was, much less what the latest shows were about.
He’d have some advantages over the immigrants she’d interviewed. He spoke English fluently, even if he was more formal in his way of speaking than most people of her generation. He was able to speak multiple languages, although she had no way of knowing how fluent he was in them.
Many of the basic aspects of western culture hadn’t changed since Clark’s time.
Yet the technology would be bewildering to him.
Automobiles in this time were rare oddities. Computers hadn’t even been imagined, at least not in the mind of the average person. The internet was a little bewildering at times even for her; she couldn’t imagine what it would be like for a man of Clark’s sensibilities.
Airplanes now were even rarer than cars. The concept of giant planes carrying hundreds of people would seem ludicrous.
Even if he was more adaptable than she suspected, there were other concerns.
He wouldn’t have a birth certificate or a social security number. He wouldn’t have a college degree or even a high school diploma that anyone would accept.
Without a work history or documentation it would be very difficult to find a job even waiting tables, especially in a post 9-11 world.
He’d be lucky to get agricultural work by waiting in the parking lot of a Home Depot.
Unfortunately, he didn’t strike her as the sort of man who would be content to be a househusband, to stay at home and let her earn a living for the both of them.
His generation believed that men were supposed to be the providers, and she suspected he’d be frustrated and unhappy when he found that he couldn’t.
She felt torn. There was no scenario that she could see that would leave them both happy. If she stayed, she’d have to deal with sexism, racism, and the knowledge that the world was about to enter a century of disease, war and famine.
If he came with her, he’d die inside.
Yet somehow, her leaving him behind would feel like ripping the heart from her chest.
It didn’t make any sense; she’d barely known him a day, yet somehow he almost felt like a part of her. It felt like destiny, like he’d drawn her here to be with him.
Maybe staying wouldn’t be as bad as she feared.
*************
The play wasn’t terrible. It was an amusing farce, and whenever Clark came on stage it felt as though the room was brighter.
He’d found her in the crowd of hundreds of faces, and whenever he said a romantic line, it felt like he was speaking directly to her.
Although she might be biased, he seemed better at this than the actors around him. They weren’t bad, but he stood out like a rose among orchids.
In truth, the play flew by with Lois in a bemused daze.
She tried to reason with herself. It was stupid to fall for a man for a smile; she’d tried to talk friends in college out of similar stupidities. She barely even knew him, and even if what she’d seen had been very attractive, there was always a secret side to everyone.
On the other hand, he was guaranteed to have old fashioned values- he could hardly help it due to his upbringing. He wasn’t like Claude, likely to use and discard her without ever looking back. People put a lot more weight on relationships in this time. They committed in ways that Lois wasn’t even sure were possible for the people of her generation.
He wasn’t jaded and cynical like most of the men Lois met in Metropolis. Yet he wasn’t innocent because he was a rube. He was intelligent and Lois couldn’t dismiss him as some sort of country rube like she might have in her own time.
He wasn’t a person out of his time, she was.
Back home Lois would have sworn that there wasn’t a single man in the entire world that she could fall in love with.
Maybe she’d been right, which is why she had to find one in another world.
The thought occurred to her that she might be getting ahead of herself. Why was she already having fantasies of him being a househusband? Devastating smile aside, he hadn’t given her any real sign of wanting to go anywhere with her.
True, legend had it that he hadn’t been involved with anyone, but this wasn’t an era where people could look through your cell phone records. It was possible to keep secrets here, at least outside of the small towns.
If he wasn’t interested enough in her, she’d go home.
Was it crazy that her chest felt heavy? Everything was going to rest on his response to her tonight.
**************
“You’ve been quiet,” Clark said. “Didn’t you care for the play?”
Lois blinked. They were in the dining room in the hotel sitting next to large windows looking out into the darkness outside. She couldn’t see anything but their reflection in the windows now.
“It was nice,” she said.
“Words of faint praise often indicate subtle criticism,” he said, frowning.
“I liked it, really. It’s just…” she hesitated. “I’ve been a little distracted.”
“Oh?”
“I’ve been thinking about the future.”
He was silent for a long moment. “I must admit that I’ve been thinking about this as well. “
“You have?”
“We live very different lives. I travel constantly and have no home; you live in the city; you have family and ties to the world. It was an act of providence that we ever met at all. Under normal circumstances our lives would never intersect again.”
Lois found herself leaning forward in spite of herself.
“Yet I find myself drawn to you.”
Reaching out, Lois touched his hand. She wasn’t sure whether doing this in public was scandalous or not, but he didn’t pull his hand away.
“I feel the same way.”
“This isn’t how things are normally done,” he said. “Normally I would approach your father for permission to see you, and we would have time to get to know each other.”
“I haven’t depended on my father for anything for years,” Lois said.
The relief she felt was palpable. She’d hoped he’d feel the same way, but there had been no way to be sure.
“If we only had more time,” he said. “Our troupe is to move on tomorrow, and I can only assume that you plan to return home soon.”
“Tomorrow night,” Lois admitted. “Unless circumstances change.”
“Under normal circumstances, the woman goes wherever the man leads. In this case, though, that may not be wise.”
“Oh?” Lois asked.
“You have an exceptional job, an opportunity so rare for a woman that many wouldn’t believe it. I couldn’t ask you to leave that for an ordinary life as a housewife.”
Lois found herself looking at his hands.
Even though he had no idea about the unusual nature of their relationship, he had the same doubts she had. Maybe they weren’t meant to be together.
It would be nature’s cruel irony if she’d traveled all this way to meet a man like this only to lose him.
“It would be much more sensible for me to follow you,” Clark said.
“What?” Lois asked.
“I know this is sudden, and I am not asking you to make a decision immediately. We need time to see if this between us is truly what it seems to be.”
“You’d leave your job just for a chance to date me?” Lois asked.
“I’m not asking for your hand in marriage,” Clark said. “Not yet. It would be a scandal for us to marry after knowing each other a few hours, and rightfully so. But if we both go on, we’ll never get a chance to know if we might be suitable for each other.”
“I…I don’t know what to say,” Lois said. “Don’t you love this job?”
Clark shrugged. “It got me away from the farm. I couldn’t stay; I kept seeing the ghosts of my parents. Memories of our life together…I’d have gone mad if I’d stayed.”
“Your manager won’t be pleased.”
“I’ve returned his kindness to him manifold,” Clark said. “The troupe will do well enough without me.”
He was willing to turn his entire world upside down for her. Lois felt stunned again.
She’d grown up with a father who wouldn’t sacrifice even time with his mistresses much less his job for his family. His mother had been a nurse and had similarly sacrificed. She’d learned early on that career was everything.
The first thing a man was asked when meeting someone was what he did for a living. It was the lynchpin of his identity.
For a man to be willing to give that up for her…
If she’d thought she was in love before, it was nothing compared to what she felt now.
**************
She was holding him closer in the dance than was strictly appropriate, but she didn’t care.
Asking a man like this to give up everything for her, then watching him wither and die in her own time was more than she could bear.
She’d stay with him, but she’d tell him the truth. If she didn’t, he’d be expecting her to have a non-existent job, and he’d expect to meet her father.
There was no way to know how he would react, but as the last of the music faded from the last song, she sighed.
It was time.
Last edited by ShayneT; 08/24/14 10:50 PM.
