Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong Clark TOC can be found
Here Part 17 Part 18**********
Retribution**********
Clark fell and slapped his cheek against the hard floor. It didn’t hurt, but it had been darn uncomfortable. He must have been sleep-floating. What had woken him up?
The phone rang again.
Ah.
He rubbed his eyes, climbed to his feet, and stumbled into the living room. He had no idea what time it was, sometime in the middle of the night, he supposed, as it was still pitch black outside.
“Hello?” he mumbled into the phone.
“Clark?” Jimmy voice asked, sounding as tired as he felt.
“Jimmy?” Clark rubbed his eyes again. “What’s up? Emergency?”
“No. Well, I don’t know. I hope not. I’m down at the office; you know, my night to stay up all night. At least tomorrow I’ll have the day off and sleep all day,” Jimmy explained, doing an impressive impersonation of a Lois-ramble.
“Good for you. Can I go back to sleep now?” Clark asked.
“Oh, sorry. I forgot to tell you why I phoned. Lucy called the office,” Jimmy said with a sigh. “Gosh, that woman even sounds beautiful in the middle of the night.”
“Glad to hear everything is working out for you and Lois’ sister…”
“Oh, no. I haven’t asked her out yet. It didn’t seem like the right time. You know being like two in the morning and all,” Jimmy said. “I’m thinking about doing it face-to-face, though. I think it will be harder for her to turn me down to my face, you know. What do you think?”
Two in the morning and Lucy called the office. Clark was swiftly wide awake. “Jimmy! Why did Lucy call the office? Is Lois okay?”
“I don’t know, Lucy didn’t say. All she said was that she was looking for you and couldn’t reach you at the number that Lois had left her…”
“Don’t you think
that should have been what you led with Jimmy?” Clark snapped a little harsher than he might normally have. “Did Lucy say why she was looking for me?”
“Um… no. Sorry, man. Maybe you should call her back. It was about a half-hour ago, but it took me a while to track you down myself. I forgot that you said you were moving into your new apartment tonight, and you forgot to leave your new phone number with the night desk…”
“Okay, fine. Do you have Lois’ home number?” he asked.
“Yeah, here it is,” Jimmy said, rattling off the number.
“You should have paged me, Jimmy. I still have my pager from the other night,” Clark reminded him.
“Oh, you do? Sorry, man…”
“Goodbye, Jimmy,” Clark said, not waiting for the man to respond before hanging up.
Lucy called looking for him in the middle of the night; that couldn’t be good. Why would she do that? She was under the delusion that he and Lois were dating, so was she looking for Lois? Oh, God! Lois was missing and it was two in the morning? Definitely, not good! Why, oh why had he stayed home to scrub the bomb stain out of his blue Suit instead of going over to Lois’ apartment after he had flown Cat home to get ready for her charity event? Because he was a proud prima donna, who didn’t want to have his biggest cheerleader see him with a giant bomb stain on the front of his Suit.
He dropped his head against the wall as his shaking hand dialed the Lane’s apartment.
“Hello?” a very sleepy and feminine voice asked.
“Lois?” Clark guessed, but knew he wasn’t right. “It’s Clark.”
“Clark!” the sleepy voice was suddenly fully awake. “Finally, I thought that lunkhead at the Planet had forgotten about my message.”
Poor Jimmy. “No, I got it, Lucy. Where’s Lois?” he asked, wishing he had a cordless phone so he could already be getting dressed.
“I don’t know,” she sputtered. He could hear her elevated heartbeat over the line.
“It’s okay, calm down. Tell me what she told you,” he said, trying to keep his frayed voice even.
“Well, she was studying some maps and local street atlases, while I was getting ready to go out with my friends, see, and then when I went to leave, I found this envelope under the door addressed to Lois…”
“Envelope. Door. Got it.”
“Inside she found some kind of map. It was really blurry, but it looked to be pin-pointing where Superman hid his spaceship. So, she scribbled down your phone number and told me that if she wasn’t home by eleven that I should call you…”
Clark’s heart began to float into his throat with this announcement.
“…so you could contact Superman…”
“Superman?” His heart dropped back into the pit of his stomach again.
“Yeah, she said you’d know how to reach him, but that I was
never to tell another soul that, under torture of death, blah, blah, blah, and only use the information if she were to get in trouble,” Lucy continued.
“Uh-huh. Lucy, what happened next?” At least Lois let someone know she was going somewhere, where she might get in trouble, his conscience said with optimism the rest of him didn’t feel.
“Well, I… I went out with my friends, and one thing led to another and, well, I didn’t get home until after midnight. I figured Lois was asleep in her bed, so I got ready to crash, and then I figured since it was Lois and all, I should probably double check, because if she wasn’t there, and I didn’t call you, she’d be royally ticked off,” Lucy went on.
Yep, that sounded about right. “Uh-huh.”
“Well, it was a good thing I did, because she wasn’t there. So, then I called the number she gave me for you, and some goober answered and I kept saying that I was looking for you and he kept saying he would be whomever I wanted him to be, which I’ve got to tell you is just plain creepy. Anyway, by the time I got off the phone with that nut job, and tried some other combinations of the number, you know in case she had reversed a couple of the numbers, it was almost half-past one. I decided to check the Daily Planet, thinking maybe I was making a mountain out of a mole-hill, and she was down there writing up the story of how she had found Superman’s spaceship and would end up yelling at me for interrupting her.”
Clark was beginning to think rambling was a hereditary trait. “Uh-huh.”
“Then I got hold of that lunkhead at the Planet’s night desk who kept telling me that Lois wasn’t there and wouldn’t give me your home number,” Lucy said. “And then I’ve been waiting for the last half-hour for you to call me back.”
“Okay, I apologize about the whole phone number screw up, Lucy. I moved this afternoon, and Lois doesn’t have my new number, let me give it to you,” he explained, giving her the number. “I’m going to go out and look for Lois. Do you have any idea where she went?”
“Uh, no. I’m sorry, she wouldn’t tell me,” Lucy said, sounding very apologetic indeed. “You’re going to reach Superman, aren’t you?”
“I’ll see if I can find him, Lucy. In the meantime, if Lois comes home, have her page my beeper number,” said Clark, giving her the number.
“Okay. Thanks, Clark. I’m so glad you’re looking out for Lois. She’s never had a partner before, and I feel better knowing there is someone out there she can count on,” Lucy said, stifling another yawn.
“Me, too,” he replied, hanging up. Two seconds later, he was out the balcony door already in his uniform and in the sky.
***
Lois slapped another mosquito from her cheek and reached back into the swampy water surrounding her, searching once more for her flashlight. She stretched and dug through the mucky water until she could reach no further. Still no luck, but at least she didn’t come in contact with another frog. She shivered in disgust. She didn’t know why she was still trying, even if she found the damn thing it wasn’t going to work. When her foot had slipped off the log and gotten wedged between the rungs of the branches, she had dropped her flashlight and it had flicked off.
She tried once more to stretch down to where her ankle was caught between the branches of an old tree, but when she had fallen, she had landed on her chest. She couldn’t really maneuver to where her foot was stuck. Each time she tried to turn herself over, so that she was face up, her ankle would scream out in pain. So, here she lay, on the log, surrounded by foul swamp water, mosquitoes, frogs, and other assorted
things. She was wet, muddy, and half-eaten by bugs.
Lois had been stuck in this one spot for hours. She knew it had to have been hours because the sliver of the moon had started out there and now was already half-way across the sky to over there. She had stopped crying out of frustation a couple of hours earlier because she had run out of tears, and her self-pity expired after that. Now, she was at the point where she was sick of yelling at herself for being such a gullible fool.
At least, she wasn’t alone. Besides all her new blood relatives, namely the mosquitoes, she also had her new best bud, “Godzilla”. He wasn’t just any Godzilla doll though. He was a Super Godzilla, resplendent with a big gold “S” painted on his chest and a bright red diaper. Luckily, she had been holding the stuffed doll in her arms when she fell, otherwise she’d be harboring a bruise on her ribs as well. She shifted Godzilla to under her head and decided to try to get some sleep until dawn finally arrived and she could finally see.
She wasn’t quite sure
who the prankster who had sent her out to the Metropolis Sewage Reclamation Facility was, but she had a really good idea. Obviously, her partner had gotten wind of her doing some checking on Jimmy’s spaceship idea because otherwise Superman would have been here already. He had warned her never to steal another story again. Hadn’t he realized that being stuck with him as her partner had been punishment enough to deter her from ever doing that again?
“Ms. Lane? Lois?” a voice called to her out of the sky.
“Superman?” she whispered. Was it really him? Or was her head playing tricks on her?
“Ms. Lane? I hear you. Call out to me again, so I can find you,” he said again.
It really was him! Oh, thank goodness! “Superman!” she gasped, swallowing a mosquito that had gotten too close to her mouth, into her throat. She then coughed and coughed until she could spit him out again.
Lois heard a groan from the tree she was lying on, then a snap of wood, and suddenly, her ankle was free. She pushed herself up into a sitting position, pulling Godzilla to her chest. “I dropped my flashlight,” she mumbled, although she didn’t know why. This wasn’t exactly how she wanted Superman to see her. Here she was, once again needing him to rescue her. He was going to think that this was all their relationship was built upon.
“You can buy another one,” he suggested. “Are you ready to go back to your car?”
“Uh-huh,” she said with a nod a moment before she felt his arms surround her and lift her into the air. She closed her eyes and laid her head against his chest. “Thank you,” she murmured.
“Anytime,” he whispered, and Lois could have sworn that he kissed the top of her head. That little endearment was worth the hours out in the muck, and the swamp, and the mosquitoes, and the humiliation of being tricked by her partner.
Quicker than she expected, they returned to her Jeep Cherokee. She didn’t want to let go of him. In his arms she felt safe, protected, warm, and loved… not necessarily in that order. He tilted her out of his arms, so that her feet gently touched the ground. Her ankle screamed out in pain, and Lois clutched at Superman’s shoulders and cape, so that she wouldn’t fall.
“I don’t think I’ll be able to drive,” Lois told him.
Superman nodded and scooped her back into his arms, which was more than fine by her. “Where to?” he asked, shifting his cape so that it draped over her.
Soon, she felt the breeze of the cool morning air on her face, and she tucked her head into the nape of his neck. “Tahiti. I’ve always wanted to go to Tahiti.”
His warm and friendly voice, with just a hint of laughter, replied, “How about home? We’ll do Tahiti another day.”
“You know I’m going to hold you to that, don’t you?” Lois said, and she felt him adjust his hold on her so that she was closer to him, almost like a hug or an embrace. She would take that as a ‘yes’.
“Can I ask you a question?” he inquired softly, almost hesitantly.
Lois softly chuckled. “Aren’t I supposed to be the one with all the questions?”
“How did you know I’m called ‘Superman’?” he continued as if she hadn’t said anything.
She tilted her head up from his neck, so she could see his face, but he wasn’t looking at her. Like a good driver, he was watching where they were headed. So, she had been right about that. Lois had known it had been the right name or title, but it was nice that he confirmed it like this.
“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “I just saw you, and that name popped into my head. I knew instantly that was who you were. I take it I was right.”
“Yes.” Superman glanced down at her and asked in all seriousness, “Are you psychic?”
Lois laughed, a scoffing guffaw of surprise. “Uh, no. Do you think I’d have let myself get stuck out in the middle of the Metropolis Sewage Reclamation Facility if I was psychic?”
The line in his jaw hardened. “Is
that where you were?” Superman spoke with hardness she had never heard from him previously, but it was gone the next he spoke. “Why were you there?”
“I was looking for you,” she admitted. “You’re a hard man to track down.”
A flash of guilt crossed his face, and she instantly felt chagrined. It wasn’t his fault.
“I’m sorry, I should have…” he started.
“No, no, no,” Lois interrupted, unwilling to let him think she was blaming him for her gullibility. “My fault, completely my fault. I shouldn’t have gone out there in the middle of the night, in the dark.”
Superman glanced down at her, and she anticipated that he was about to give her a lecture or scolding like the ones Perry or Clark brought down upon her, but he didn’t. “Why did you think I would be there?” he asked.
“I got a lead that your spaceship was hidden there,” she replied. “A bad lead clearly.”
He sighed. “Ms. Lane, the spaceship in which I arrived to Earth is no longer viable.”
“Oh,” she breathed, feeling a tad bit foolish.
“There’s no way you could have known that,” he murmured, and their conversation eased into silence.
Lois was content to be in his arms. It was as if no conversation was needed, being together was enough. She was about to ask him about the Carlen Building explosion, but then saw that they were already approaching her apartment building. “There. That’s my fire escape,” she said, pointing. “I don’t think I could walk down from the roof.”
Superman nodded and tilted his legs down to land on the fire escape.
She glanced in the window and saw her sister asleep on the couch.
Asleep! Gee, thanks, Lucy. Lois pressed her lips together and knocked on the window.
“I should…” Superman started to say as Lucy woke up and looked around.
“Could you stay? I’m tired of chasing you down.” She blushed at her directness. “I mean, you could come in and…” Lois searched for a plausible reason for him to stay. ‘Meet my sister’? No, that wasn’t important. ‘Have a coffee’? No, that was silly. She couldn’t picture this man sitting down for… well, anything. “We could finally get that interview done.” That was the most plausible reason, but on the romance scale tipped down at nada.
“Now?” He seemed surprised. “Don’t you want to…” He cleared his throat. “Clean up and get some rest?”
“Now,” she insisted, knocking on the window again and waving at her sister. “I’m too wound up to sleep. Please.”
Lucy opened the window. “You weren’t kidding me, Lois. Wow! You really do know Superman,” she gushed, backing away from the opening.
Superman looked at Lois and then he gazed inside her apartment. With a resigned breath, he lifted her back into his arms and carried Lois inside.
Sensing his hesitancy, Lois remembered his nervousness about entering her apartment the other day and the illusion of impropriety. Of course, after the fake government interrogator had suggested that she and Superman had been intimate, maybe he had a good reason to worry. “I appreciate you helping me, Superman. We’re lucky my sister Lucy is here to chaperone us,” she teased, wishing her sister would leave the room, but probably just guaranteed her presence.
“Of course!” Lucy said, thrilled. “I’ll stay.”
“I’m glad to be of assistance, Ms. Lane,” Superman replied.
“Why do you need a chaperone?” Lucy asked, confused, glancing between the two of them.
Lois waved away the question. “It was just a joke, Lucy. There’s some crazy group out there who would do or say untrue stuff about Superman just to discredit him. Did you hear about our visitors at the Daily Planet?” she asked the Man in Blue.
“Yes, I saw Ms. Valdez’s article,” Superman said, carefully setting her down on the uncomfortable sofa that her sister had just abandoned.
Why, oh why, had she bought these uncomfortable things? Sure, they looked classy but they weren’t inviting. Oh, right, that was why she had bought them, to discourage dates from staying and trying to make out with her. Lois tried moving her foot off the sofa to make room for him, but just the little jolt caused shooting pains to radiate up her leg.
“May I take a look at that ankle?” Superman suggested, inching closer from his stance by the windows.
Not one to deny her true love anything, Lois did wonder how he could help. “It’s just a little sprain,” she said stoically in her defense.
He paused, and Lois wished her mouth wouldn’t speak before her brain thought. With more effort than she cared to admit, she raised her foot into the air. “But if you insist.”
Superman took her foot into his hand and their instantaneous connection made her flush.
It’s only a foot, Lane, she admonished herself, but a small part of her – a part that she would never in a thousand years, under the torture of death, ever admit to – acknowledged a kinship to Cinderella and her prince when he had slipped the glass slipper onto her foot.
With a small tug, Superman removed Lois’ muddy shoe with a broken heel and started to concentrate on her bare foot. Why in the world had she worn her heels to the Metropolis Sewage Reclamation Facility? She had been so excited about finding Superman, she hadn’t been thinking straight or even logically. Maybe she deserved this sprained ankle.
Lois was about to ask what he was doing, when Superman announced, “No broken bones.”
“Excuse me?” she sputtered. How could he know that? Most doctors – she knew from her vast experience – moved her foot around and judged by her screams whether or not x-rays were needed. His gentle touch on the other hand caused nothing but blissful numbness.
“Well, there is an old hairline fracture but it appears to be healed,” her hero continued with his diagnosis.
“Yes, how…? Do
you read minds?” Lois demanded, trying to empty all the impure thoughts from her conscious mind, but only being able to do the opposite.
It was kind of like that old mind control game she and Linda used to play before the story-stealing slut chose larceny over friendship. ‘Don’t think about bats’ and, of course, all the other person could then think about was what the first person had said not to: bats.
“No,” Superman admitted with a hint of a smile. “I don’t read minds.”
Lois exhaled with relief.
“I have the ability to… I guess you would describe it as x-ray things…”
“X-ray vision?” Lois said with awe.
“Technically, I can focus my vision through things, except lead, therefore I could see your bones or, if I were a lesser man, I could look through that wall and see what television infomercial your neighbor is watching.”
“That’s so cool!” gushed Lucy from behind her, startling Lois who had forgotten she was there.
Lois’ foot fell from Superman’s hand, but he caught it before it slammed down on the wooden arm of the sofa. She raised an eyebrow and challenged hopefully in a teasing tone, “If you aren’t looking through the wall, how do you know my neighbor is up watching infomercials?”
Superman tapped his ear. “I can hear it.”
“Right. Right. Of course,” Lois said, backtracking. “You told me that.”
“I can also focus my vision to see microscopically or into a low or high powered beam of heat, but what I recommend for that ankle is some cooling ice.”
Before her jaw could drop in astonishment, she heard her voice ask, “Like laser vision?”
“Essentially.”
“Ice! I’ll go get some from the freezer,” said Lucy as she ran into the kitchen.
“No need, Miss Lane,” Superman said. “I can freeze things with my breath.”
He took a deep breath, and Lois held up her hand. “You aren’t going to freeze my ankle, are you?”
“No, Ms. Lane, just a gentle cooling,” he reassured her and started to blow.
“Let me see if I got this straight. You’re fast and strong, and bombs don’t hurt you. You can fly, and you can hear great distances, but you’re not telepathic. You can see through objects, look at stuff on a cellular level, and burn things with your eyes,” she rattled off; her foot felt better by the moment. “And you can cool things down with your breath. Where are you from? Why are you here? How long will you be here?”
Superman retrieved a throw pillow off her other sofa and carefully set her foot down upon it. “I was born on the planet Krypton, and, Ms. Lane, I am here to…” He paused, gazing deep into her eyes, and it felt straight into her soul. “Help.” After a moment he blinked, breaking the connection. “As I informed your associate Mr. Kent earlier…”
“Oh, God! Clark!” Lucy gasped. “We totally forgot to call him. He’s probably out of his mind with worry and still out looking for you.”
Lois pressed her lips together, doubting it.
“Your sister is right, Ms. Lane. I should go. He would want to know that you’re home safe,” Superman said, moving towards the windows. “And you need your rest.”
“Wait!” Lois called out to him, trying to figure out a way to stall him. “Do you mind if I write some of this up as an interview? My boss has been riding me because I haven’t nailed the exclusive after I promised I would the other day.”
“Of course. I trust you,” he replied with a nod and slight smile, stepping onto the window frame.
“Wait!” Lois called again.
He paused and looked back at her.
“You came here to ‘help’? I need a little bit more of a quote than that,” she explained, hoping he bought her reason to delay him. “Something like, ‘I have not yet begun to fight!’ or ‘Damn the torpedoes!’, something like that. I mean, if you said ‘I am here to fight for truth!’ or ‘justice’...”
“Well truth, and justice, that… that’s exactly right,” he said, looking at her with slight surprise, as if it had been
her who had read
his mind. “You can use that.” He nodded and turned to jump out the window, but paused.
Was he going to stay? Would he kiss her goodbye? Why had he remained?
“Ms. Lane, the next time you’re in trouble, a simple ‘Help, Superman!’ will get my attention faster than trying to find Mr. Kent to relay a message.”
“Right,” Lois said, with a blush at the obviousness of his statement. “I’ll try that next time.”
“Ms. Lane, I hope the next time our paths cross, it is on a more social occasion,” Superman replied, jumping from the window – only he didn’t go down, he went up.
“I’ve got it!” Lucy said, rushing into the room. “Clark’s beeper number. He said I should page him when you came home, so he knew you had made it home safe.”
Lois hadn’t even realized she and Superman had been alone, without a chaperone for the last few minutes. Ever the gentleman, Superman hadn’t even tried to kiss her goodnight. Sure, some women might consider that a big ol’ flashing light of a clue that a guy didn’t like her, but Lois knew otherwise. She could tell by the way he looked at her, at how worried he had seemed, when he called for her while she was stuck on that log, the way he had kissed her head and held her tighter while they flew, and how he promised they would go to Tahiti someday. Mostly, she knew that Superman loved her just like she had known his name – the knowledge was just there.
***End of Part 18*** Part 19 Do you know who was behind Lois' trip to the Metropolis Sewage Rec. Facility? One hint, it wasn't Clark.
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