On the first Saturday morning of November, two weeks after the volleyball game and a little more than a year and a half since Lois’ funeral, Clark woke up smiling. After he made himself a light breakfast, he checked the weather forecast and saw that clear skies with above normal temperatures were predicted. Jeans and golf shirt today, he thought. Maybe a windbreaker, too.
He surprised himself by hoping that Bobbie liked him in blue jeans and a tan golf shirt.
He checked his watch as he entered the cemetery and was surprised to see that he was twenty minutes early, so instead of kneeling beside Lois’ grave as he usually did, he sat down cross-legged and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees.
He sat silent for a few minutes, then sighed deeply. “I miss you, Lois.”
He blinked and realized he’d spoken aloud. “Wow. I didn’t realize it until just now that – you know, this is the first time I’ve spoken to you since – since you died. Don’t worry, I don’t expect you to answer.”
He smiled as he envisioned Lois’ bemused reaction. “I still miss you. I still dream about you a lot, but not as much as before. Last night, I don’t think I dreamed about anything. And I slept at least nine hours, maybe a little more. That may be the longest straight stretch of sleep I’ve had in a year and a half.”
He shifted. “I don’t mind telling you that it was one of the few good nights I’ve had in that time. But none of that is your fault. It’s mine.”
He ducked his head and closed his eyes. “You probably know that I was planning to join you. Even had a couple of extra plans in reserve, just in case my first choice didn’t pan out.”
He opened his eyes and looked at the slight mound of earth, now covered with grass and barely discernible from the surrounding land. “But Bill Henderson sent a detective to keep me from hurting myself. I’ve never told her that if I really decided to kill myself, she’d have no chance to stop me. And I think Bill did it as much to keep her from hurting herself as he did to help me, because she was mourning the death of her partner and almost-fiancé, too. And, like me with you, she blamed herself for his death.”
He put one hand on the dirt, trying to feel some kind of connection. “It wasn’t her fault, Lois. From what Bill told me and what I read in the Planet’s files, if she had walked up to that car with Glen they probably would have killed her, too. And they might have killed more people before they were stopped.”
He stopped and took a deep breath. “And – and I’m almost to the point now where I can tell myself that I didn’t kill you either. Even Lucy has stopped blaming Superman, which makes me feel a lot better. Sure, I wish I’d managed to think of something else. In fact, I’ve thought of a whole bunch of other plans that didn’t involve you risking your neck. And I wish I’d thought of them back then. Or that you had. That was a pretty stupid idea, you know.
“But we didn’t come up with anything else. Superman froze you, then got trapped by Nigel’s Kryptonite, and then you – you wouldn’t wake up.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “And I’m sorry, Lois, so very sorry.”
He felt the burning in his eyes, but the tears still wouldn’t come.
He sat beside the grave, kneading the ground with his hands and digging small holes in the dirt, until Bobbie gently laid her hand on his shoulder from behind.
He didn’t care at that moment that he hadn’t heard her approach and didn’t know what she’d heard him say to Lois.
“Clark?” she all but whispered. He didn’t respond. He sensed her as she knelt beside him. “Clark, I’m here. Let me help you.”
He ducked his head and let her pull him hesitantly towards an awkward embrace. He lifted one hand to grasp her arm.
Still he didn’t cry.
“I miss her so much,” he moaned.
“I know.”
“It still hurts so much.”
Bobbie hesitantly stroked his hair. “I know.”
“I – I wish – she—”
“Shh.” She kissed the top of his head. “I know. It’ll be okay. I promise.”
The acid of his grief finally dissolved his steel control and the tears flowed. Some small part of his mind kept him from crushing Bobbie as he heaved with sobs. She accepted every lunge and wild cry and wrapped herself tightly around him.
After a long time, his chest heaved twice, then he relaxed. Bobbie slowly eased her grip and leaned away but kept one hand on his upper arm.
Clark took off his glasses and rubbed his face with both hands. “I – I’m sorry.”
Without letting him go, she gave him the tiniest shove on the shoulder. “Don’t be silly. Friends are there for each other.”
His breathing eventually returned to normal and he sat up. Almost as an afterthought, he put on his glasses and stood, then put his hand out to her and smiled slightly. “You ready for coffee?”
She was staring at him oddly, almost as if she were seeing him for the first time. She blinked twice and muttered, “Huh?”
“Bobbie? You want some coffee?”
“Coffee? Oh. Yeah, sure.” She grabbed his hands and stood. “My week to buy, right?”
He nodded. “I think so.” He turned towards Starways, then stopped. “Do you want to go see Glen first?”
She shook her head slowly. “No. I think I need to stick with you today.”
“Bobbie, I’m okay now. I’m not—”
“I don’t want to lose you, Clark.”
Her sudden statement startled him. It seemed to startle her, too. She took a quick breath and continued, “I mean as a friend. I don’t have very – I don’t have so many friends that I can afford to let one of them go.”
He nodded slowly. “Okay. I promise I’m not going anywhere.”
“Better not, Kent, or I’ll come find you and beat the snot out of you.”
That got a grin from him. “Okay.”
“And I expect you to wash your hands and face before I buy you anything.”
“What?”
“Sheesh, Clark, you’re a mess. I can’t take you anywhere.”
He glanced at his hands and was surprised to see dirt and grass stains. “Oh. I – didn’t realize—”
“Don’t worry about it. Just get cleaned up before someone wonders what you’ve been doing in your free time.”
He smiled down at her. She smiled back, then ducked her head and bumped his upper arm with her shoulder.
They started across the manicured lawn to the coffee shop and to their weekly ritual.
And it turned out to be a good day for Clark after all.
*****
It was an interesting day for Bobbie as well.
She’d almost said more to Clark than she’d intended when he helped her stand at Lois’ grave. There was something there, something inside her that wanted to come out, but she wasn’t ready for whatever it was to see daylight. Not now, not yet. She couldn’t be unfaithful to Glen.
And yes, she told herself, that’s silly and you know it. You can’t be either faithful or unfaithful to a dead person. No one can.
But the perception was still in her mind, lurking just behind her eyes. And she was pretty sure that if she’d hit Clark with her nascent, undefined, and uncertain feelings, he wouldn’t be able to make the choice to reciprocate without feeling as if he were being unfaithful to Lois. There was no way she’d put him in that position. Nor was she willing to risk asking too much from him. Driving him away by acting like an overly attached girlfriend would be stupid.
Besides, there was something about Clark she didn’t know yet, something important. When she’d looked up at him from the ground, she’d gotten a strong flash of déjà vu, as if she’d seen him recently in another context, one where he’d seemed upset. But she couldn’t think of what it was. Something about his glasses bothered her, too, but she couldn’t identify what that was either.
She’d known he was strong just by looking at him, knowledge that had been reinforced as he’d lifted her from the grass without exerting any discernible effort. His balance was that of a dancer, his agility that of an antelope, his upper body that of a serious weightlifter – but she knew from discreet inquiries she’d made that he didn’t appear to work out on a regular basis. Anyone with that physique had to spend significant hours maintaining it.
Clark didn’t. He simply was.
Maybe he did all kinds of calisthenics and isometric exercises at home.
Maybe not.
And she’d been distracted by the divots he’d dug in the ground where he’d been kneeling. His hands hadn’t just disturbed the grass – they’d dug holes deep enough for her to put her fist in past her wrist. Her hands were proportional to her size, but still large for a woman. As soon as they finished their coffee date – the term still made her slightly uncomfortable, but it bothered her less and less as time went on – she’d come back and fill them in. No sense in having someone else’s mind wander down the path hers was now surveying.
Not only that, she’d caught his comment to Lois that Bobbie couldn’t have stopped him if he’d really intended to kill himself. Was that bravado? Confidence? Something else?
He appeared to have mixed himself up with Superman, too. Maybe she’d heard wrong – it wouldn’t be the first time. Maybe he had a Superman complex. Maybe he was too emotional to keep everything straight in his head. Maybe she was chasing phantoms, facts that didn’t exist, coincidences that didn’t mean what they hinted at.
And maybe she was onto something after all.
*****
Bobbie met Clark at the Starways counter, happy that he’d cleaned up so well and still looked good in his casual ensemble despite the grass stains on the knees of his jeans. At least his hands and face were well-scrubbed. And he was smiling. It was a tired smile, one that still hinted at a deep loss, but it was there.
She didn’t know how to feel about the smile. She’d helped put it there, sure, but why did the thought please her so? And did she have a similar smile?
She shook those dangerous thoughts away as she paid for their drinks and pastries. The pastries were a new thing for their meetings, just as they were new to this Starways. For the past six weeks or so, they’d purchased turnovers or specialty donuts or cinnamon sticks or almost anything sweet and chewy to go with their conversation.
It seemed to help. She’d found that, in case of a lull in the conversation, she could take a small bite and chew it into liquid paste while she came up with another topic. She suspected that Clark had done the same thing a few times, although neither of them had ever fessed up to it.
Today, though, she knew what she wanted to talk about. Or, rather, who she wanted to talk about.
Lois.
Bobbie already knew Lois’ physical description and her appearance from department records, of course, a peek that she’d initially justified to Bill Henderson – and to herself – as necessary to the job he’d assigned to her of keeping Clark alive. She’d learned that Lois had been Clark’s partner at the Daily Planet. She also knew that Clark had loved her from afar for quite a while. She suspected that Lois had had a few bad experiences earlier in her life, and that was at least part of the reason she’d never told him that she loved him.
She and Glen had almost taken that step toward lifetime commitment. Apparently Clark and Lois had been at that same threshold, but had never stepped over it. Their situations were similar but not identical.
It was something she planned to explore, assuming she could get past the fact that while Bobbie knew she wasn’t a hag, that she didn’t have to put a paper sack over her head to keep from scaring little kids, she also knew that her looks couldn’t compare to Lois’. The woman had been stunningly beautiful, with a smile that covered her face and put Bobbie at ease even through the photograph. If Lois had had a sparkling personality to go with that killer body and gorgeous face, Bobbie knew she’d come in fourth in a two-woman beauty pageant against Lois.
Even dead, the woman was that intimidating.
“How’s your coffee?”
Clark’s question jerked her out of her reverie. “Huh? Oh, the coffee. Good, it’s good, just like usual.”
He tilted his head at her. “How do you know? You haven’t tasted it yet.”
“Oh. Right.”
She pulled the cover off the cup and inhaled the aroma. As usual, both the act and the aroma gave her great pleasure. She blew on the surface of the liquid and took a sip, then stuck her tongue out. “Bleah. Still a little too hot.”
He chuckled. “It is what it is.”
She glared at him. “That’s one of the dumbest clichés in existence. It ranks right up there on the ‘Duh’ scale with ‘Love means never having to say you’re sorry.’ If you’re sorry about doing something stupid, the person you love the most is going to be the one you should apologize to most of all.”
A mask seemed to cover his face and he looked out the window. “Yeah. I agree with you on that one.”
Uh-oh. She’d hit a nerve without aiming at it. She put her hand on his wrist. “Clark, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for that to hurt.”
He dropped his gaze to the table between them. “I know that. You couldn’t possibly have known that I—”
He didn’t speak for several seconds, so she gave his hand a quick squeeze. “You can tell me anything you want me to know, Clark. You have to know that by now.”
He lifted his head and looked into her eyes. “I – I have a secret.”
“Okay.” He didn’t continue. “Clark? What kind of secret is it?”
He leaned forward as if preparing to pass the plans for a new and improved starship-mounted phaser to a Romulan undercover agent. “One that no one else knows but my parents.”
She frowned a little. “Are you hinting to me that you never told Lois this secret?”
“No.” He sat back in the booth. “I’m saying flat out that I never told her. I tried to, several times, but – things just kept getting in the way.”
“Obviously it’s an important secret.” She paused to let him speak. He didn’t, so she quietly asked, “Are you thinking about telling me? Is that why you brought it up?”
This time he frowned. “I don’t know. It’s the kind of thing that – it might be dangerous to know this.”
“Dangerous?” He nodded to her. “How is your secret dangerous?”
He pressed his lips together for a moment, then said, “I can’t tell you that without telling you the secret. I’m sorry.” He turned in the booth as if he were about to stand up. “I shouldn’t have brought it up. I shouldn’t have tantalized you.”
She smiled a little. “That word ‘tantalize’ is interesting. And not a little provocative. It almost makes me think that you like to sing on stage in gay bars dressed as a drag queen.”
His eyes widened and his head twitched to one side. “What? Me, a drag queen? Singing in gay bars?” He laughed. “You’ve obviously never heard me sing.”
She giggled in return. “Yeah, that response isn’t revealing at all. You went right past my suggestion about a possible alternate lifestyle and focused on the singing part.”
“And what did I reveal, Professor Jung?”
Now he was teasing her, and it felt good, even if she couldn’t quite remember at the moment who Professor Young was. “That you’re very comfortable being a man. And that you’re very confident in your masculinity. And you – you are definitely a man, Clark Kent.”
That was close. She’d almost slipped again and said too much too soon. He was definitely cutting right through all of her defenses. And he wasn’t even trying hard.
He gave her that thousand-watt smile of his and broke through her last wall. “Drink your coffee, Detective.”
Whatever she’d planned to ask him about Lois fled from her mind. That smile – that fabulous, brilliant, open, warm smile – was all she could see.
*****
Clark watched Bobbie’s eyes as her smile grew. She reminded him of someone just then, someone he’d known well, but he couldn’t come up with the face or the name of the other woman. He lifted his donut stick and took a small bite as Bobbie took a deep breath, then sipped her coffee. He tried to think of other women he’d known who had shoulder-length brown hair, but no one resembled Bobbie, especially around the eyes.
He swallowed and said, “Didn’t you say you were having lunch with Lucy today?”
Her eyes blinked twice, then she said, “I thought we’d hit the Chick-Fil-A near her house unless she wants to go somewhere else. She gave me the option to choose, but I won’t force her to go if she doesn’t want to.”
“I just hope she doesn’t think you’re playing chicken with her.”
Bobbie frowned. “Why would she – wait a minute!” She thrust her face forward in mock anger. “I told you, puns are a felony with me! Jokes I can take, but puns are forbidden! They’re worse than somebody spitting on someone else’s kitchen floor!”
He raised his hands and laughed. “I’m sorry, I just couldn’t resist. You looked like you were a little worried about it, so I thought I’d get you to laugh. I promise you, Lucy won’t eat you, especially if you feed her.”
She shook her index finger at his face and growled, “I ought to arrest you! I wouldn’t even need a warrant!”
She held her fake anger for a long moment, then dissolved into laughter with him. As they laughed, he thought about how attractive she was.
Lois had been more beautiful than Bobbie. No question about it. Bobbie had a very nice appearance, especially when she smiled, but Lois had been beautiful no matter the expression on her face.
But Bobbie had something that Lois had also had. They each had a drive to succeed, a supreme confidence, and a heart for others, although with Lois he’d had to find the path to it. Bobbie’s heart was more open, more apparent, softer and gentler than Lois’ had been, although she could be just as tough when it was necessary.
The basis of their relationship was different, too. Clark had worked hard to overcome Lois’ legitimate fear of being used and abandoned, and getting past her walls had ranged from challenging to exhausting. They’d done it, though, and he believed Lois had known that he’d loved her.
The thought surprised him. The past perfect tense did, too. Clark had loved Lois. Of that there was no doubt.
Did he still love her?
That was a different question, with different permutations.
If he still loved Lois, did that mean he couldn’t love another woman just as much? That he’d always look to Lois as his ultimate soul mate? Or would always remember her fondly and miss her? Would his memory of her prevent him from committing to someone else?
He suddenly realized that Bobbie was sitting across from him, wearing a slight frown. He shook his head and sat forward. “Sorry. I got caught in a mental whirlpool for a minute.”
She looked into his eyes for a long moment, then sat back. “Maybe I’d better go.”
She looked hurt. The questions over which he’d been mulling were important, but he never wanted to hurt her. She was too important to him.
“Bobbie, I – I’m sorry. I just – I started thinking about Lois and I – fell through a time warp for a few seconds. I’m back now. Really.”
She looked at her coffee cup and sighed, then asked, “Were you comparing me to her?”
The fish-like alien starship commander from the Star Wars movies, Admiral Ackbar, leaned into one ear and shouted, “It’s a trap!” From the other side, Admiral James Kirk peeked around the far corner and yelled, “Kobayashi Maru!”
If he said he hadn’t been, she might not believe him. If he said he had, he risked hurting her yet again. There was no right answer.
So he decided to try the truth.
“In a way, yes, but not comparing you to Lois like she was better in this aspect and you’re better in that. It just hit me that you and Lois have some similarities and some differences. You’re different people, and not only is that a fact, it’s a good thing. If you want to ask me if we’d have this relationship if Lois hadn’t died, no, we couldn’t have, because me losing Lois and you losing Glen is a big part of what brought us together.”
Clark leaned on his elbows and lowered his voice. “But it’s not the only thing. Similar losses brought us together at the beginning, but I’ve learned a lot more about you than just that. I hope you’ve learned more about me, too.”
She nodded but didn’t look up. “I’ve seen her picture.” She stopped for a breath. “She was beautiful.”
“Yes. She was.”
Bobbie looked up, her lips pressed closed. “She was more beautiful than I’ll ever be.”
Clark bit the inside of his lip. “If you tied me to a chair, put a live hand grenade in my lap, and told me I had to decide which of you was the more beautiful or I’d regret it for a few microseconds, I’d ask for a recount.”
Her mouth opened and her eyes bugged out, then she chuckled. “You would, too, wouldn’t you?” She lifted her hands and put both of hers on his right hand. “Thank you. Sometimes I – I get too concerned about my looks. I had a couple of almost boyfriends in high school who told me I was too plain, that I should use more makeup, make myself prettier.”
“They were idiots.” She chuckled again. “Have I ever told you about Lana?”
Her head tilted and she frowned in apparent thought. “I don’t think so.”
“Lana was my high school girlfriend. I thought I loved her, like forever, ‘C+L=4Ever’ in permanent ink on her book cover kind of love. She was truly beautiful. Long beautiful blonde hair, a very nice petite figure, a smile that lit up the room, smart as a whip, head cheerleader for her junior and senior years, and she loved being my girlfriend. I was All-State as a safety my senior year and there was a full scholarship waiting for me at Kansas State. She was going to steer my life and make sure I was happy.”
“Hmm,” Bobbie said. “I can hear a ‘but’ coming.”
He nodded. “I found out – the hard way – that she was also self-centered and selfish. If we had plans for the weekend, or went to dinner after a game, or just hung out somewhere, it was where she wanted to be and what she wanted to do. If I expressed a preference, she’d try to cajole me into doing it her way. At first I thought it was cute, but it got harder and harder to be happy about what she wanted to do. They weren’t bad things, they just weren’t the things I wanted to do. It got to the point that we never did what I wanted.”
“Ah,” she replied. “So one day when you said, ‘I want to do this thing,’ and she said, ‘no, I wanna do this other thing,’ you realized that you were there for her but she wasn’t there for you. Right?”
“Pretty much. We broke up right before senior prom. She went as another jock’s date, and I took the county sheriff’s daughter.”
Her mouth quirked up on one side. “Tell me it wasn’t a pity date.”
He grinned. “No, not at all. Rachel is a very nice young lady who is now the duly elected sheriff of Smallville, Kansas. It’s what she’s wanted to be since she was about eleven. We had a good time and I took her home and kissed her chastely on the cheek and we said goodnight and I still don’t miss Lana.”
“That’s a nice story.”
“It applies here. If you put Lois and Lana against each other in a beauty contest, Lana might win – and I emphasize ‘might’ – but Lois would destroy her in a contest about personal integrity and character. It’s just the opposite with you. You’re very pretty and you have a great smile, but Lois would have the edge in pure looks. You and she are pretty even in the personality competition, though, and the character contest would be a dead heat. And ever since I broke up with Lana, I’ve stuck to the belief that true beauty comes from inside, from the heart.”
Bobbie smiled shyly. “You're telling me you think I have a good heart?”
He took her hands in his. “Yes. You have a good heart. It’s not just my opinion, it’s the truth. And I never – never! – look at you and wish you looked like Lois. That’s not fair to either of you. I just won’t do it.”
She smiled wider. “Thank you, Clark. Yours isn’t the only opinion on that subject, but I thank you for your kindness.”
“You’re welcome.”
And then her pager beeped.
She snatched it from her belt and looked at the display, then snarled. “Nuts!” She turned the pager so Clark could see the display. “Seven-two. Means my boss needs me on a case right now. I’ll have to call him for the address. Call me this afternoon?”
“Sure. Don’t worry about dropping me off. I can use the exercise.”
As she slid out and stood, she said, “Thanks for not asking to come along. Bill usually doesn’t mind, but I’d rather not hear the guys in the squad room chattering at me about my pet reporter.”
He stood and nodded. “No more than I want to hear about my pet detective from the other reporters.”
“I understand.” She took two steps toward the door as she said, “Tell Kendra bye for me. And wish me luck.”
“You just be safe, Bobbie. You’re good enough not to need luck.”
She forced herself not to turn back, grab him, and kiss him right smack on the mouth.
But it wasn’t easy.
