Watching two lovers run toward each other in slow motion had always seemed like the worst of clichés to Lois. It was silly and melodramatic, and her cynical side had always sneered a little when she saw it. It wasn’t realistic; none of the people she knew would ever act like that.
Yet time really did seem to slow down as she saw him. She felt like she was having a moment of perfect clarity, in which she was aware of everything. She could smell freshly cut grass, the smell of lilacs in bloom, even the smell of rain from the night before.
Colors seemed more vivid; the grass was greener, the charcoal of the suit Clark was wearing, the blackness of his hair; it all seemed brighter and yet at the same time a little diffuse, almost as though she was in a dream.
Tripping a little as she rushed down the stairs, she felt herself almost flying into his arms. He caught her, and ignoring the watching people below took her in his arms.
He kissed her despite the people watching in the distance.
For the first time in her life Lois felt as though fireworks were going off in her head. She saw stars.
************
How they got to his room, she couldn’t remember. This wasn’t the room he’d been in before, but somehow she couldn’t make herself care about why. All she could do was stare at him. It was as though there was something magnetic about him; no matter how she tried to look at anything else her eyes always seemed to gravitate back to him.
One kiss turned into another, and before she knew it, he was carrying her to the bed.
He reached over to extinguish the lamp beside the bed, but she gently grabbed his hand. The thick curtains on the window weren’t blackout curtains, but she didn’t want to miss anything.
There were no guarantees that they would be able to remain together on their trip forward. For all she knew he would be flung a hundred years ahead of her time, or he would land in her time and she would go forward.
For all she knew this was the only time they would have together and she didn’t intend to waste it.
He hesitated, and then turned back to her.
From the uncertainty in his expression, Lois suspected that she was going to be the more experienced one in this, at least.
She pulled him back to the bed.
************
She traced her finger idly over the expanse of his chest. Although he’d initially seemed uncertain, it hadn’t been long before he’d proven himself to be almost superhuman.
Yet it wasn’t his virility that had impressed her; it was the tenderness. Making love was a very different experience than having sex; it amazed Lois that she’d never realized that before.
“I thought you’d left,” Lois said.
“I was torn,” he admitted. “Saving the world, or saving….my world. If something I did were to cause your parents never to meet, or even your grandparents…I don’t know what I’d do.”
“It wouldn’t happen,” Lois said. “If I wasn’t around to warn you…”
“I thought of that, and when I did, it felt as though a great weight had lifted off my shoulders. I came to see you, but you weren’t on the grounds…I thought you might have…”
“Gone on without you?” Lois asked.
He nodded soberly. “You made your world sound impossibly difficult for someone of my era, and I was afraid that you’d given up.”
Lois hesitated, considering. Was Clark less at risk knowing that a man was out there who meant her harm or not knowing?
If he knew would he try to find the man?
Yet if he didn’t and something happened to him because he wasn’t prepared…
“I was kidnapped and taken to a barn off the island,” Lois admitted. “By one of the men from my time; the one who’d given me the bruises.”
Clark stiffened. He was silent for a moment, and Lois felt herself tensing. This was the point where most of the men in her previous relationships would have insisted that she go to the police.
“I would imagine he didn’t let you go.”
“I’ve had some experience escaping from that kind of thing,” Lois admitted. “It’s an occupational hazard.”
“Do you think he will come for you again?”
“It’s been…longer for him. He came out forty years before I did. If he’s been willing to wait all this time, I can only assume that he won’t quit until we are gone.”
“Surely he can’t mean to continue his mission after all this time?”
“He thinks I have a plan to get back,” Lois said. “Which, coincidentally I do. He’s got gold buried somewhere nearby and thinks he’ll be rich when he goes back.”
“I won’t let him hurt you,” Clark said. “I know my promise may not seem worth in light of last night’s events, but…”
“You said no one would hurt me as long as you were with me,” Lois said. “But it’s not like you can watch over me twenty four hours a day.”
With a strange expression on his face, Clark opened his mouth to speak.
Lois put her finger to his lips. “I’m not sure I’d want you to. I’m a modern woman, and that means that I have to be free to take risks. I want a partner, not a protector.”
“I’m…” Clark hesitated. “You can understand that this is foreign to me.”
“You’re a man ahead of your time,” Lois said. ”Any of the other men I’ve met in this time would never stand a chance in my time, but I think you just might fit in.”
“I can try,” he said. He was silent for a long moment. “But I won’t let you get hurt if it’s in my power to stop it.”
She let her fingers drop back to his chest.
“You were ok with this…”
“It was a revelation.” He smiled slightly. “If you were a woman of my time I’d feel obligated to ask you to be my bride.”
Lois stiffened. “And you don’t now?”
“You aren’t the kind of woman who would do…this casually, even if the people of your times don’t take it as seriously as we do in mine. I certainly don’t.”
He reached down, took her hand and brought it to his lips. He kissed it.
“I’ve made…mistakes,” Lois admitted. “But it was never casual.”
A man of his time should have been horrified by her admission, but Clark only smiled sadly. “I’d tie my future to yours in an instant if I was sure we had a future together. But there are no guarantees that we will be together when we come to the end of our journey tonight.”
His expression turned grim.
“I would not make you a widow, or worse, not free to find love again because you were waiting for me to return when it might not ever happen.”
Any other man and Lois would have been horrified at even the mention of marriage within the first two days of knowing each other. With Clark, though, she found herself wanting to argue.
“If we get separated, I’ll find you,” she promised. “I’m good at finding people.”
He smiled sadly. “Don’t make promises you cannot keep.”
“Watch me,” Lois said. “I’ll find you.”
Kissing her hand again, he said, “I wish…”
Before he could say anything else, she pulled him down to kiss her again. If this was their last day together, Lois didn’t want to spend it talking.
***********
The notion of staying in his room throughout the day was appealing. Clark had seemingly unending amounts of enthusiasm, inventiveness and stamina, and between bouts of lovemaking they would talk.
She learned that he wasn’t just a gentleman, he was an artist. He showed her some of his work, and she had to admit that she was impressed. He seemed to have a knack for bringing out what was timeless and human. His work was like the farce of a play he’d been acting in. That had been sort of archaic and never would have passed muster in Lois’s time.
Showing her his plays and stories, though, obviously meant a lot to him.
In return, she shared with him the pain of her childhood. Her father had wanted a boy, and he had been critical. She’d learned that the only way to get his approval was to be perfect.
Sometimes she thought that it wasn’t that she was a woman fighting against a man’s world. It wasn’t all men who were holding her down, although there were still prejudices. It was her father.
Most of her friends would have told her to get over it, but Clark didn’t. He understood, in ways that no one else had.
Yet despite those idyllic hours, eventually Lois found herself becoming hungry.
Room service wasn’t as discreet as it was in her time, and Clark was afraid that they’d be thrown out of the hotel if it was discovered that they were together and unmarried.
Lois didn’t tell him that clandestine affairs were the bread and butter of hotels in her time, along with business travelers and vacationing tourists.
Eventually, despite the risks they both dressed. Lois was almost reluctant to give up Clark’s shirt. All she had was the dress she was in, and the dirty dress back in her room. Yet women didn’t wear men’s clothing in this time and Clark seemed to believe that her dress would still pass muster.
He seemed rather adept at avoiding people; stopping her several times around corners before people would come walking by.
It might have been safer to stay in the room, but Lois couldn’t remember what time the fire had started, and they couldn’t risk missing it for more reasons than one.
If they missed the tunnel, Clark would never become a ghost in time, and Lois would have never arrived. She would be erased from this time as though they had never met.
Even if it only meant that she reappeared back in her own time with no memory, Lois couldn’t bear the thought of losing the past couple of days.
Clark was supposed to save people; he had to be there to do so.
Lois felt frustrated that she hadn’t paid that much attention to the fire. She’d been more interested in Clark and the mystery of the dress. It would have helped to have known when the fire started, or where.
The kitchen seemed like the most likely candidate for a fire, as the rest of the hotel was outfitted with electric lights, but there was no guarantee. An electrical fire could occur anywhere in the hotel, and Lois suspected that fire safety wasn’t nearly as good in this time as it was in her own.
There were no overhead fire sprinklers in this time, whereas there had been many in her own time.
Still, the restaurant seemed like as good a place as any to spend their last hour together.
Lois did insist that they be seated away from the windows. With the lights inside turning them into darkened mirrors, she’d hate for the thug to be walking by and see them.
With any luck they’d be on their way and he’d be trapped here where he belonged.
Roll on antiperspirants wouldn’t be invented until the fifties, although according to Clark there were already a couple of products out there that were inconvenient to use.
It would be at least thirty more years before air conditioning became common.
Leaving the thug here would be better than prison as far as Lois was concerned.
Still, she couldn’t help but feel anxious as they waited for their meal. When would the fire start? What would happen? Would there be anyone Clark wasn’t able to save?
If she was to go through the tunnel with him, she’d have to stay with him as he went through the fire.
It was enough to make her stomach tight, and she couldn’t help but feel a growing sense of dread that something was going to go wrong.
