You can find the
Another Dimension, Another Time, Another Lois[/i] TOC here.
Part 5 Part 6[i]Clark was dressed in a navy sailor’s coat and distinctive ‘man of the docks’ appearance. He was even sporting a mustache and goatee and different glasses.
This was his disguise?! Please. If Lois could see straight through it…
“I came to see the show,” was his lame excuse.
“You will ruin everything,” Lois said, pacing her small dressing room.
“It looks like you’re really close to the story,” he retorted, heavy with sarcasm.
“I am. For your information, I spent the entire afternoon with the leader of the Metros, in his inner sanctum…” Okay, she had been serving drinks and trying not to get her butt pinched, but still…
“Wearing this?” Clark asked softly, touching the yellow feathers around the neck of her chicken costume. She slapped his hand away.
“And who are you supposed to be? Popeye the sailor man?” she retorted. If he was going to make fun of her costume…
“Five minutes,” the stage manager called from out in the hall outside her dressing room. She rushed to the door and shut it, so no one would see her together with her partner.
“Go away,” she told Clark in a hissing whisper.
“I’m here to back you up,” he informed her.
“I don’t need back-up.”
“I think you do. I mean, how did you get so close to this guy anyway?” he asked, sounding distinctly jealous.
Great! Clark was the overprotective, jealous type. Just what she needed in a partner. If she made him think she wasn’t as sweet and innocent as he obviously believed her to be, maybe he would back off.
“He’s a man. I’m a woman. Do you want me to draw you a diagram?”
Whatever response was on Clark’s lips died, when the stage manager called to her again, “Places! That means you, sweet thing.”
“What did you find out so far?” he said instead.
“Johnny and his sister don’t actually see eye-to-eye. There’s some type of power struggle going on. Now, fly!” Lois told him, shooing him out of her dressing room.
“And miss your debut?” He chuckled. “I think I’ll stick around.”
“Clark, you will stick out like a sore thumb,” she warned him.
“Well, thanks for worrying, but…” Clark started.
He was interrupted by a knock on her door by the stage manager, “Let’s go!”
“I think you’re on…” Clark continued with a pinch of her cheek before leaving out the curtain. “Sweet thing.”
If Lois had time, she would wipe that smirk off his face with the floor, but she was wanted on stage, so it would have to wait. She shot his departing back one last growl before going to the mirror and removing her robe. She checked that her chicken’s head hat was on straight and her butt wasn’t showing too much out of the bottom of her leotard. Show time! God, sometimes she hated undercover work.
Dan caught up with Lois at a booth where she was knocking down milk bottles with a baseball. She was angry, angry at Dan for blowing her off, angry at Clark for thinking she wasn’t up for a little danger in her work, and angry for Superman for not existing in the real world.
“What are you doing here?” she snapped at Dan without giving him the regard of looking at him when she spoke.
“Are you mad at me, Lois?” Dan asked as if it were a new experience with him.
Oh, please. Why in the world shouldn’t she be mad at him? He sent her flowers to break their lunch date. A box of chocolates arrived after his last minute phone call to cancel their dinner date. Chocolates! And then he showed up here, at the festival, without prior notification that he would be coming. Right. She should be ecstatic. She threw one last baseball and stormed off. “Yes, I’m mad at you.”
Dan grabbed her prize and followed after her. “Me? Why me?”
“Because you showed up here unannounced and just assumed I’d be free to see you,” she growled.
“You are, aren’t you?” he asked, handing her the crab-thingy prize she had just won.
Gee, thanks. Just what every woman wants to hear – her lack of a social life stated so baldly. “And because you think gifts solve everything!” Lois pressed her lips together, shaking her toy. “And you won’t talk to me about your work,” she said, getting the crux of the matter.
“Hold on, Lois. You know that’s not personal. And I’m here because I want to be with you whenever I can,” he replied with his usual amount of Scardino charm. “It’s not some dumb guy thing, Lois. I’m a federal agent and you’re a reporter. Our professional loyalties conflict. Not to mention the fact that if you know too much about what I’m doing your life could be in danger.”
He didn’t just say that, did he? “Oh, so that’s what this is? You protecting the little woman?”
“Sometimes,” Dan admitted.
“I don’t need protecting,” Lois told him straight out.
“What do you need? What do you want, Lois?” he asked.
She threw up her hands and stomped off.
***
“What are you talking about?” Lois asked confused.
“Toni asked me to meet her at the club this afternoon,” Clark said, smiling nervously.
“For what?”
“Well, I’m a man. She’s a woman. Would you like me to draw you a diagram?” he retorted as his nervous smile turned beaming.
That line sounded familiar, Lois thought, pressing her lips together as she crossed her arms. He better not be implying that he would cross that line? He was her partner. Hers!
Perry came through the newsroom and passed by Lois’ desk. “Lois. How’s the…” Her boss paused as he took in her outfit. “… undercover work coming?”
“Fine, Chief…” Lois replied, lifting her raincoat up higher on her chest. “Fine… fine...”
“Well... I didn’t think you’d…” He chuckled with a glance at Clark. “… chicken out on me.”
Clark laughed with Perry as their boss walked off and Lois glared at her so-called partner. She owed him a good throw-down, but it would have to wait. She had a story to write.***
Lois’ home phone rang.
“Hello, Lois,” said Bobby Bigmouth’s voice in her ear.
“Did you get what I was looking for?” she asked him.
“I don’t see any duck. I wanted Peking Duck, Lois,” he told her.
“They didn’t have duck. You have to order it in advance.” Lois rolled her eyes as she dried her pots and pans. Once a month, she cleaned all her kitchen items to get rid of the dust so no one would notice she really didn’t cook.
“Oooh. Slippery Shrimp! I love Slippery Shrimp. Mmmmm. Nirvana.”
“What?” she asked, confused.
“It’s what you asked for. A code name. Project Nirvana. Hey, Lois,” Bobby continued. “Are you sure your boyfriend Scardino is with the DEA?”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” she corrected.
“All right. All right. It’s a figure of speech,” replied Bobby with a chuckle. “According to what I’m hearing on the street, he’s not DEA. He’s FDA.”
“What?” Had Dan been lying to her?
“Food and Drug Administration, Lois,” Bobby explained. “He’s one of those guys who can say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to guys who want to market new drugs.”
“Well, you must have the wrong Scardino,” she responded. Dan better not be lying to her.
“All right. All right,” Bobby said between bites. “If you say so.”
“Well, what else did you get?” Lois asked, picking up some sticky-notes and a pencil.
“Project Nirvana has something to do with Intergang. I don’t know what, and I’m not sticking my neck in that noose and you didn’t hear it from me, and that’s all I know. And you know what else: we’re even.”
Whoa! Bobby Bigmouth was scared of Intergang? “Bobby. Bobby. Bobby!” she tried to interrupt.
“Great dumplings, Lois,” Bobby said before hanging up.
“Bobby?”
Terrific. He was gone.
***
“Lois, I had no choice. Now, Toni will stop looking for a leak.” Clark turned and picked up something from the other counter to finish making his tea. “At least my cover’s still safe.”
“Well, Merry Christmas! And Happy New Year!” Lois threw up her hands in mock joy.
“Sometimes on a team, the person carrying the ball gets hemmed in and she has to hand off to another member of the team, who’s in a better position to score,” he said with a pleasant smile. He really liked tossing her words back into her face, didn’t he? And what in the hell did he mean by ‘score’?
A knock at his front door interrupted that very question on her lips and they both looked at the door.
“You better go. She’s here,” he told her.
“Who? How do you know who it is?” she asked incredulously.
“Because I’m expecting a… dinner date,” he said. Then he clarified. “Toni.”
“Oh.” So that was how it was, was it? Was that with whom he was going to ‘score’? Lois ground her teeth together. Was that how he did his undercover work, did he? “I get it. You don’t have to draw me a diagram.”
Toni knocked at the front door again.
Clark crossed his arms and smiled at Lois with satisfaction. “You’re jealous.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Jealous? Are you out of your mind?” Lois scoffed. She wasn’t jealous! That was ridiculous. She was in love with Superman. Clark wasn’t even a blip on her radar. Please! Ha! Only… Only… Only…
He grabbed her shoulders. “You better hide, Lois. She can’t see you here. You better hide, Lois.”
If he was going to blow her cover, maybe she should blow his! “I don’t want to hide!” She fought him as he pushed her into his bedroom.
“I’ll find some way to distract her and then you sneak out,” he suggested.
“No!” Lois continued to fight. “Ya!”
Clark held up a finger to her face in a warning to keep quiet.
Lois heard him go and open his front door as she simmered in his bedroom.
“Once again, I’m in your debt,” Toni told Clark. “I thought I’d pay you back with a home cooked meal. How does lasagna sound?”
“Delicious,” Clark responded.
Lois rolled her eyes. “Delicious!” she mouthed. Of course he would fall for a woman who could cook! Men! They were all alike. She heard the door shut and then their feet coming down the stairs.
“Nice place,” Toni said.
“It belongs to a friend of mine. He lets me stay here whenever I’m in Metropolis,” replied Clark, waving at Lois to stay hidden. She crossed her arms and glowered at the two of them.
Clark put his hands in his pockets and plied Toni with his charm. “You know you don’t have to do this.”
“I want to,” she told him, unpacking the bag of groceries she had brought with her.
“Do you always get what you want?” he asked.
“Not always. How about you?”
“Let’s see,” Clark said, turning Toni around, dipping her, and pressing a kiss to her lips.
The nerve of that man! Lois’ jaw dropped. He was supposed to have a crush on her! Then Clark waved for her to leave as he kissed Toni. Oh, so it was just a cover for Lois to escape. Yeah, right. Well, she knew when she wasn’t welcome, she thought and tiptoed out of the apartment. She stopped to take another glance at them and Clark, somehow knowing this, continued waving her out.
When she was at the door, Clark lifted Toni up from the dip.
Toni’s attention was glued on Clark. “You don’t waste any time, do you?”
Lois rolled her eyes. Clark wasn’t that good of a kisser. Then she softly shut the door behind her.
Yeah, he was.
She sighed as she recalled the kiss they had shared on Trask’s airplane. She stood at Clark’s door for a moment and remembered that kiss again. How Clark’s lips had felt against hers. How she had felt in his arms. How safe and protected. How treasured he had made her feel. She pursed her lips again. Now, he was kissing Toni Taylor – the head of the Metros – with those lips! The jerk! Those were her lips!
No. That’s not what she meant, Lois told herself, marching down the steps back to her car. She wasn’t jealous of Toni. If she was jealous of Toni, it would mean that she had feelings for Clark… And she most certainly did not have feelings for Clark!
‘Okay,’ Lois admitted to herself as she sat down in the driver’s seat of her car. She did have feelings for Clark.
She had angry, mad, fists of fury feelings for her partner, but certainly not romantic feelings!Lois sat up in bed, adrenaline rushing through her blood. “Oh, no. No. No. No.”
She pulled her knees up to her chest and ran her fingers through her hair. She had totally wanted to switch places with Toni and be the one kissing Clark.
***
Lois handed Sarah a bowl of chocolate ice cream. “I just want one man, one whole man. Is that too much to ask for?” she said, starting to pace her living room. “And what do I have to choose from? I have one man who’s really wonderful, but he’s a figment of my imagination. I have one guy who’s really exciting to be with, but he won’t talk to me about his work. What do people talk about if they don’t talk about what they did all day? And one guy who is out of this world – literally.” She plopped herself down on the sofa next to Sarah and started to dig into her own bowl of ice cream.
“I thought you had given up the Superman fantasy,” Sarah replied.
“Well… my head has, but my heart is… uh… conflicted,” Lois snarled with tight fists.
“So it would seem,” replied Sarah, taking a bite of her ice cream.
“Could we just go over my options?” Lois suggested.
“One wonderful guy, who doesn’t exist. One exciting guy, who wants to control the conversation. And one superhero who is unattainable – literally. Oh, should I throw in the dead guy, too?”
Lois rolled her eyes. “No. I’ve given up on him.”
“I thought you said that his body was stolen from the morgue. Maybe he’ll come back to life,” Sarah suggested with a eerie tone to her voice, wiggling her fingers. “Ooooohhh.”
Lois raised her eyebrow and pressed her lips together. Like
that would ever happen.
“Don’t look at me like that, Lois. It’s just as likely as you ending up with a man from your dreams, isn’t it?” the psychology student reminded her.
Sighing, Lois acknowledged nonverbally that once again Sarah was right.
“Or, it could be, that none of them is right for you,” Sarah recommended, thankfully getting back on topic.
“You know, you seem to have this new annoying little habit of repeating back to me everything I just said,” Lois told her.
“I just learned it. It’s called reflecting. Sometimes we can’t hear what we’re saying unless someone reflects it back,” Sarah replied, setting down her bowl of ice cream and holding up her hands to impersonate a mirror.
Lois gestured back to her in the same manner. “They make me really mad!”
Sarah chuckled, picking up her bowl again. “And what do you think you might want to do about that?”
Lois thought about that for a moment and then screamed in frustration.
***
There was a knock at her door. She approached it with her usual caution.
“Who is it?”
“It’s me, sugar blossom,” said a strange voice. “Dan.”
Lois opened the door with annoyance.
“Hello, I’m doing a survey of women who resent having gifts sent to them. Please answer True or False,” said Dan, pretending he was taking notes. “Wrapping paper offends me?”
Lois refused to answer.
“Uh-huh. I’m psychologically unable to receive gifts?” he continued with a big silly grin.
Still no answer.
“Gifts are okay, I just can’t stand the guy sending them?”
“It’s not about the gifts, Dan,” Lois told him, walking away from the door. “It’s about trust.”
Dan sighed, his smile falling from his face, and followed her inside.
“It’s not just dangerous for you to know what I’m doing, Lois, it’s dangerous for me,” he told her, sitting down on her sofa.
“That’s not what I’m saying, Dan,” Lois said, entering the living room with a tray of food. “I’m saying, you don’t trust me.”
Their conversation was interrupted by Dan’s beeper, causing him to growl in frustration. “I… uh…” Dan started to say as Lois looked over his shoulder at his beeper, memorizing the number of the person who just paged him.
Lois covered up her snooping under the guise of handing him a cup of coffee.
“You’re looking for something that doesn’t exist,” he said, pocketing his beeper again. He sounded distinctly distracted as he continued speaking, “The perfect man. The perfect relationship. The perfect life.” He stood up. “Excuse me,” he told her, heading for her phone.
She poured herself a cup of coffee and smiled knowingly to herself. “Nirvana?”
“What?” he gasped.
“The perfect life,” she restated. “Nirvana. Utopia. Camelot. Eden.”
“Yeah. Those places don’t exist, Lois. The real world is what we have to deal with,” he stated, being more serious than she had ever seen him before.
The curtains behind him fluttered in the breeze, causing Lois to look past him and into the darkness.
Dan looked down at his beeper with a roll of his eyes. “Super.”
Lois imagined Superman landing at her window and being annoyed at finding Dan in Lois’ apartment. A hint of a smile appeared on her lips. Would Superman be jealous of Dan?
***
Lois picked up the phone at work and dialed the number she had seen on Dan’s beeper the night before.
A recorded voice answered. “You have reached the office of Charles Knox, president of Omnicorp. Please leave your name and number and the purpose of your call. Thank you for calling Omnicorp.” Beep.
She hung up with pressed lips. Looking around the office, she saw Jimmy and Perry absorbed in some sort of nature program. She got up and approached them.
“Jimmy, I need you do to some research. I need you to find out everything you can about Omnicorp and Charles Knox. He’s the president.”
“Okay,” Jimmy responded, his eyes never leaving the television.
“I’m going to meet a source,” Lois told them.
“Okay,” Perry replied in the same monotone voice as Jimmy. He also was completely absorbed in the TV.
She looked between the two men and shook her head.
***
Dan walked down a dark hallway, late at night. He was dressed uncharacteristically in a suit and tie. Lois almost didn’t recognize him. Even his hair had been combed and was under control. He walked past and then turned back to a bespectacled, balding man in an adjacent hallway.
Dan held out his hand to the man. “Hi, Charles Knox, right? Dan Scardino: FDA.” When the man ignored his hand, Dan pointed at the man’s briefcase. “Is that…eh… the money?”
The man lifted up the briefcase, unfastened the locks and opened it up so Dan could see the bundles of money inside. “Let’s talk dates,” the man said to him.
Dan’s natural silly personality slipped out. “We hardly know each other, but hell, if you’re paying…”
Mr. Knox pointed his finger in Dan’s face. “Go be Chuckles the Clown on
your time. On my clock, shut your mouth.”
Dan took a deep breath.
“Now,” Knox continued. “We want FDA approval on the drug, and we want it by the first of the year, and we want it guaranteed.”
“You got it,” Dan agreed.
Knox set the briefcase down on the ground and left.
Dan rolled his eyes and picked up the briefcase. He turned and looked around the next corner of the hallway, before heading to the elevator. Had he heard her?
When she saw that Dan was alone, Lois made her move. She stepped up behind him and said, “So, this is what you didn’t want me to find out about?”
His eyes popped in surprise as the elevator dinged. Dan grabbed her arms and took her inside with him. Then he double-checked that no one saw them talking before the elevator doors shut.
“Lois,” he hissed, turning to her. “There are things going on that you can’t know about.”
“Really?” she replied, leaning against the wall of the elevator and glancing down at her notepad. “Like you posing as a corrupt FDA researcher and the man you just met with, is the president of Omnicorp, who wants you to push through a new pain killer called Nirvana that the DEA thinks might have mind-altering effects.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I’m a reporter.
A reporter! Remember?”
“Lois, I need you to stay out of this,” he insisted.
“So that’s why you won’t talk to me about your work? You don’t trust me,” she replied. “You think I’m going to print whatever I’m going to find out about this, don’t you?”
“Lois! Stay away from this,” he ordered.
“Excuse me?” Lois retorted, stepping out of the elevator.
“Stay…”
“What am I? A house pet?” she snapped as the elevator doors started to close on him.
He pushed his way out of the elevator, but not before the door shut on him and the briefcase.
“I want you to know I would never use someone close to me just to get a story. So, here, I want you to have these,” Lois said, throwing her notepad at him. “These are all my notes on your
stupid case. Good luck!” She turned on her heel and marched out of the building.
***
“Hi,” said Clark, coming up behind Lois in the newsroom.
“Where have you been?” she asked, filing some paperwork. “I’ve already finished the story.”
“Well, save room for a sidebar on Toni Taylor. I’ve just been saying goodbye,” he told her with a slight shrug.
“A touching farewell, I suppose,” she replied, heavy with the sarcasm, as she walked back to her desk.
“She wasn’t all bad.”
“Well, nobody is all bad, Clark, or all good,” she explained to her naïve partner. “Except Superman.”
“Naturally.”
“Superman, for example, would not have tried to cut me out of the story by ratting on me to the opposing team. It’s a good thing I got myself back into the game and scored the winning touchdown,” she gloated, crossing her arms in pride.
“Well, sometimes, the quarterback has to fake a throw to his primary receiver in order to free up his secondary target,” responded Clark, obviously a lot better versed in football jargon than she had expected.
“I’m getting really tired of fumbling around with all these football metaphors.”
“Me, too,” he agreed. “I pass.”
“Let’s drop the ball, okay?”
“Okay.” He grinned. “But tell me, honestly...” Clark continued, leaning against her desk so their faces were less than a foot apart. “You weren’t the slightest bit jealous of me and Toni Taylor?”
Lois grinned. Oh, he was going to play that card, was he? “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” she denied. “Me, home alone, in a shlumpy robe, crying into a tub of Rocky Road.” Ha! Showed him! It had been plain chocolate, not Rocky Road. “In your dreams, Kent.” As she said these words, Lois felt herself narrow the space between them by half.
For some reason, he kept smiling, as if he were perfectly at peace within her personal space.
“In. Your. Dreams,” Lois repeated.Lois pulled her Jeep Cherokee into her parking space under her apartment building. She sighed and leaned against her steering wheel. She had a real man interested in her for the first time in a year and all she could do was think about Clark… the man of her dreams.
***End of Part 6 *** Part 7 Comments
