Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong Clark TOC can be found
Here Part 18 Part 19Nibbling on a pencil, Cat stood in the bullpen, next to Jimmy, by Clark’s desk. Perry was praising Clark for his interview with Superman after a young girl almost got hit by a falling Daily Planet billboard that morning.
Mmmm-mmmm. That Clark was sure tasty looking. Even though she had more than enough men flirting with her the night before at the Metropolis University charitable function, Lex Luthor donating money or art or a wing to the medical center, same old – same old, she had gone home alone. She wanted to concentrate on Clark Kent’s bare chest, his bare chest with the cape, and then the whole man in that skintight blue Suit and red cape while the memory was still fresh. Yes, sirree, he was one hunk of man, and he flew, too.
Cat had dressed to get his attention in her body hugging, sleeveless, leather shirt with buttons that almost looked like a military uniform. No man could resist looking at her in that top. Case in point, Jimmy had just glanced away from Clark to caress her chest with his gaze and then returned his eyes to the boring subject at hand: Clark’s interview with himself.
“Just in the right place at the right time, I guess,” Clark was saying modestly.
Yeah, right. Cat grinned knowingly at Clark. He sure knew how to work the system. If she could find a way to live the life she did and
write about it as if she were another person, hell, she’d do it in a snap.
“You keep it up,” Perry praised, patting Clark proudly on the arm with a rolled up newspaper.
“Thank you, sir,” Clark responded.
Perry started walking off but then turned back to Jimmy and demanded, “Where in the hell’s my fish?”
“I’m working on it, Chief,” Jimmy responded, doing nothing of the sort. Instead, he picked up one of the newspapers with Clark’s front page headline on it and started reading, “‘Let there be no mistake, Metropolis is my home now. I am here to stay.’ That should make life pretty interesting.”
Clark nodded innocently.
“Ummm. But where’s the story behind the story?” Cat said to Jimmy. “Where’s the…” She turned her eyes to Clark and winked. “… the
juicy stuff? Where’s the...” She turned back to Jimmy before she became too obvious that she knew Clark was also Superman. “… the dirt?” Cat asked, tapping Jimmy on the nose with her pencil.
“I think that’s coming in right now,” Clark said, pointing over their shoulders. There was a sharp edge to his voice that reminded Cat of when he had told her again last night that they could only be friends.
She and Jimmy turned to see Lois, clean and ready for work, hobbling in with a large black garbage bag in her hands. Cat’s brow furrowed. Why was Lois limping? Why wasn’t she covered in muck and slime and… oh my, Lois
did have bug bites all over her chest and throat.
The gossip columnist glanced back at Clark, and he was staring at Cat with a ferocity she had never seen before in his eyes. Oh no, he knew. He knew that she had sent a messenger over to Lois’ apartment with some bogus map on where to find Superman’s spaceship. Clark also knew that his ‘soul mate’ had gone on some wild goose chase because of her: Cat Grant. Yep, he knew all about it, and he wasn’t happy in the least.
Oh, crap, Cat had just ticked off the strongest man on the planet, who could blow her up with his eyes. If he hadn’t killed her for being the only person who knew his secret identity, he certainly looked as if he was reconsidering that decision. She swallowed, knowing that he wouldn’t dare do anything while they were in the office surrounded by people. Cat pulled her gaze away from Clark and returned it to Lois.
“Lois, what happened?” Jimmy asked, regarding her limp.
“Nothing. Nothing at all,” Lois denied in her regular holier-than-thou attitude. So much for her trip to Metropolis’ swampy side teaching her a lesson. “Oh, you’re referring to my limp, and to the fact that I am just coming into the office despite the afternoon edition already having hit the newsstands?” she snapped at the young man. “Well, I think after hours of trudging through the
mud, and the
filth, and the
frogs, and the…
things, I have a perfect right to be a bit late.”
As Lois turned to go to her desk, Cat could hardly resist the big grin blossoming on her lips. So, she
had gone. Sucker! Maybe she had learned her lesson.
“By the way, did you know it was possible to get completely lost at the Metropolis Sewage Reclamation Facility?” Lois continued on her rant. “
And did you know that there are billions of mosquitoes there? I do! Because I met them!” She pulled aside the neck of her shirt and showed what Cat already noticed, the welts on Lois’ chest and throat. Lois took a couple of steadying breaths, which seemed to increase her ire more than decrease it. “Of course, my trip to hell wasn’t a total failure. I found…” She tore open the garbage bag and pulled out the Super Godzilla doll Cat had asked an old friend of hers to drop off where she had indicated on the map. “
This!” Lois glared at Cat.
Oh, God! She knew. Lois knew that Cat had set her up. Had Clark already ratted her out? Lois Lane knew taekwondo and Cat had ticked her and her super powered boyfriend off. Either way, Cat figured she was dead.
Lois marched straight up to Cat who was standing frozen in front of Clark’s desk, and plowed her and Jimmy aside to get to Clark. She set the Super Godzilla doll on Clark’s desk and pulled from her pocket the map Cat had badly mimeographed from the phonebook the previous afternoon after Lois had stolen Jimmy’s idea. Lois shoved the map at Clark. “You wouldn’t happen to have any idea who sent me this, would you?”
Clark shrugged, gave Lois his best innocent look, and shook his head. Oh, man, was he a horrible liar. They could all tell that he really knew. Here it was, he was going to tell Lois that she, Cat, was the culprit in this whole game of retribution. Lois was right to go to Clark; he was definitely the weakest one of their bunch. He would do anything to make Lois happy, even if it meant he would serve Cat up on a silver platter.
Lois glanced down and noticed Clark’s headline on the afternoon edition. “
You got the interview? You?”
“Yep,” Clark didn’t deny it.
“Uh-huh.” Lois glared at Clark like he was dead to her as she wadded up the newspaper with his headline on the front page. She turned on her good heel and limped back to her desk.
Jimmy picked up the Super Godzilla doll and stared at it with admiration, before wandering off.
A Cheshire cat sized grin slipped onto Cat’s lips. She couldn’t help but laugh. It certainly had been worth it. She turned to gaze at her new friend, who hadn’t ratted her out to Lois. “Clark…” Poor Clark looked like he had lost his best friend. “You look like you could use a little pick-me-up,” she purred, leaning towards him.
He sat down in his chair and didn’t look at her. “I’m not talking to you,” he murmured.
Or not.Cat decided it was a wise move to return to her desk and let him cool off.
A little while later, Cat saw Lois with a determined tension to her jaw, stand up from her desk and cross over to Clark, her limp very pronounced. He glanced up from where he was writing down some notes, and stood up – always the gentleman.
Oh, no, this was it. Clark may not have caved the last time, but he was sure to this time. One-on-one with Lois Lane, his self-proclaimed ‘soul mate’ – Cat would be toast. She gulped.
“You set me up?” she heard Lois accuse Clark.
Cat winced in anticipation.
Clark put his hands on his hips, in a very heroic stance. “Yes, I did,” he told her.
Cat’s jaw hung open. He threw himself under the bus for her!
Lois took a deep breath. “Congratulations, Clark. You win.” She held out her hand to her partner.
Say,
what?Clark hesitantly shook Lois’ hand. “I didn’t
win.”
Hell, yeah, he did! That was a once in a lifetime lotto, big guy, and he won, hands down.
“Yes, you did. You got the interview, and you took me down a peg in the process. I guess I deserved that,” she admitted.
What in the hell? Lois wouldn’t have been so accommodating if Cat admitted to being the perpetrator to the whole scenario, would she have? Oh, no. She would have raked Cat over the coals, dragged her out of the newsroom by her hair, and tossed her down the stairs. Could Lois actually have a soft spot for Kent?
Cat’s heart fell, as she blanched. Maybe there wasn’t a chance for her to ride Clark’s super powered machine after all. Maybe Clark was right, and he and Lois
were soul mates.
Clark actually had the gall to look sheepish as if he really did blame himself for Lois’ downfall. Oh, God! He
did blame himself. Cat’s heart cracked for him. No matter how much she wanted to save Clark from this moment with Lois, she couldn’t move; she loved living more.
“You worked hard, and you earned your success,” Lois was telling him.
Clark’s shoulders fell down even further. He knew that he hadn’t worked hard for his Superman interview. It was written all over his face. Cat was surprised that she was the only one who could see the ink.
“Thank you, Lois. That means a lot to me,” he said with truth.
Cat guessed that any praise that Lois gave to Clark
did mean a lot to him. She rolled her eyes. He was such a puppy for that harpy.
The investigative reporter nodded. “Well, I hope so,” Lois conceded with a smile. “Cherish this moment because, Clark, you’ll never experience this again.” She turned away from him.
Clark exhaled and shifted his intense focus over to Cat. She gulped and felt like the room was getting extremely hot. Would anyone notice if she ducked under her desk?
“Lane! Kent!” Perry called, coming out of his office, causing Clark to turn his gaze away.
Cat exhaled in relief.
Clark stepped out from around his desk and met the Chief at Lois’.
“I’ve been thinking about those guys from the other day,” Perry went on, as he had both of their attention. “I want you to check to see if they might have something to do with Project Blue Book.”
Cat could see that Clark had no idea what Project Blue Book was, which was okay, because neither did she.
“Wasn’t that a group of UFO hunters sponsored by the Air Force back thirty, forty years ago? Weren’t they shut down in 1969?” Lois Lane, Daily Planet know-it-all, replied, glancing up at her boss, before returning to shuffle through her papers.
“Supposedly disbanded,” Perry corrected, and then turned to Clark with a two-finger point. “Kent, go check the archives, and see if you can find out more information. See if we can tie any of those guys to our visitors with the phony warrants.”
“Yes, sir,” Clark replied with a nod.
“Lois! Henderson, line two,” called Joe from the reception desk.
“Thanks!” she responded.
Cat watched as Clark walked over to the stairwell. He stopped at the doorway and glanced over to Lois on the phone and sighed with longing. Then his focus shifted to Cat, and he caught her staring at him. With a jerk of his neck he indicated she should follow him. Cat stood up and walked toward the ladies room near the stairs, before making a course correction to the door marked ‘Stairs’. She found Clark leaning against the wall, one flight down, waiting for her.
“Are you going to kill me?” Cat asked in what she hoped with a teasing manner.
Clark’s stern expression faltered as he shook his head. “No, Cat. I don’t kill people; no matter how angry I get or how tempting it might be, that isn’t who I am.”
She gulped. Yep, he had been tempted. “Thank you for covering for me. You didn’t have to do that.”
“I promised that I would run interference between you and Lois, didn’t I?” he stated.
Cat winced; she hadn’t meant to the detriment of his goals. She felt ashamed that he had sacrificed his relationship with Lois to safeguard her, and it wasn’t a feeling she liked. Clark had been very lucky that Lois was still talking to him, let alone respected him for standing up to her. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m not taking you to Paris,” he replied curtly, and turned to go down the stairs.
Yeah, that isn’t a big surprise.*********
Bureau 39*********
Clark stared at the Project Blue Book photo on the microfiche machine. When he had first started realizing his running ability, his folks had sat him down and told him about the day they had found him out at Shuster’s Field. They had informed him that some government men had stopped by a few days after they had found him, claiming they were searching for a downed Chinese satellite. His parents hadn’t believed them, but that had been the first and last time they had told him they always worried about someone taking him away and dissecting him like a frog. A month later they were dead.
The man in the middle of the picture was the man from the raid: Jason Trask. Clark wondered if that man – or his dimension’s equivalent to that man – was one of the men who had been searching for his spaceship, the men who had written the file on Smallville, Kansas 1966, the men who had scared his folks. They had scared him too.
“Hey, Chuck,” Lois said, placing her hand on his shoulder and pulling him from his thoughts. “I’ve found George Thompson.”
Clark glanced at her. He wondered why she hadn’t bragged about
her interview with Superman. He had expected it to bump his story to below the fold or to page three, otherwise he never would have included that quote about Metropolis being Superman’s home now. Had she not turned it in? Was that why she had forgiven him for her trip to the Metropolis Sewage Reclamation Facility? Because it was her fault for not turning in her interview yet? Or had she forgiven him, because Clark had supposedly gone out searching for her and had sent Superman her way the night before? Either way, Clark was lucky Lois was still talking to him. “That’s terrific, Lois. A lead! Where?”
“City morgue, coroner’s got him. His body was discovered floating down in Metropolis harbor this morning, shot,” she replied. “What did you find?” She looked over his shoulder at the photo that he had up on the screen. “Hey, that airman in the middle. He’s the piece of work that raided the Planet, isn’t he? Jason Trask, that’s our man.” She patted him sympathetically on the back. “Almost missed that one, partner.”
“No, I didn’t,” he said, standing up. “I was about to tell you that, but you didn’t let me get a word in edgewise.”
“Yeah, I bet you were,” she scoffed in disbelief. “Hindsight is 20/20, and so is my vision, newbie. Superman doesn’t see like I do. Don’t be so macho, and own up to your mistake.”
“You’re always right, aren’t you?”
She grinned, patting him on the chest. “There you go. That wasn’t too hard.”
Clark gazed down at her hand, instantly forgiving her, and at the same time hating himself for being such a pushover. When it came to Lois Lane he didn’t need Kryptonite to be knocked flat on his back.
***
Clark turned the knob on the combination lock on the security door inside the Bessolo Furniture warehouse that Lois had tailed Thompson to two days earlier. He was both thankful and surprised that General Burton Newcomb had found Jason Trask so repugnant that he had been willing to discreetly, and in a roundabout manner, give them what they needed to get into this warehouse. Clark pressed his ear to the door to better hear the click-clacks of the lock over Lois’ yammering.
“This is no time to get smug, Kent,” Lois said, in response to suggestion that the lock was new since Newcomb retired. “Don’t tell me you’re a safe cracker. I wonder what happens if you don’t crack the code…” At that moment the next door opened, and Lois gazed at him in astonishment.
“Well, the General said: August 2, 1947. Eight right, two left, forty-seven right,” Clark explained. That and a little extra help.
“You are so …” Lois paused, her brow furrowed.
“What?” he asked, curious.
“Weird,” she admitted slowly. “Are you getting a feeling of déjà vu?”
“Déjà vu?” Clark repeated. “You said that I was a ‘weird one’ the other night before we had dinner, but then you said ‘it works for you’.”
“It works for you,” Lois said at the same time as him, a vacant expression in her eyes as if she were far away thinking of something else. She shook her head, and then her whole body shivered. “I’ve just got strange sensation that we’ve been here before, in this warehouse, and that we’ve done this already. Doesn’t it feel familiar to you?”
“No,” Clark answered honestly, following her into the main room of the building. “I know I’ve never been here before.”
“Clark,” she said, turning towards him and taking hold of his solid maroon tie. “We should call Perry
now! Tell him what we’ve found, call in the lawyers and the SWAT team, or we’ll lose the story forever.”
“What have we found, Lois?” he inquired skeptically, glancing around the dusty warehouse with some filing cabinets and a bunch of objects under drop cloths. It looked more like somebody’s abandoned garage workshop or a yard sale of eclectic art more than the ‘find of the century’.
She was still holding on to his tie, and he made an obvious look towards it to draw her attention to that fact. Actually, he didn’t want her to let him go. He wanted to draw her closer, cup her jaw with the palm of his hand, and kiss her until kingdom come. Unfortunately, this was neither the time nor the place.
She looked down at her hand gripping onto his tie and opened it up, letting the tie escape. Conscious of what she had done, she straightened the tie out by pressing it against his chest. “This tie is lacking personality, Chuck. You need one with more…” She flipped her hand into the air and circled it around as she searched for the correct word. “Umph.”
What was wrong with his tie? Lana had picked out this tie. She had said it was classic, yet serious, perfect for an up-and-coming newsman, but also good for fading into the background. Had she steered him wrong? ‘Lacking personality’? Could ties have personalities? What was a tie with ‘umph’ anyway?
Lois took a deep breath and then exhaled. “That feeling’s gone. Look, stick close, I have a bad feeling about this.”
Clark nodded. She wouldn’t need to ask twice for him to stick close, especially if
she had a bad feeling. He wondered if that was another one of her non-psychic sensations she had mentioned to Superman, when they had talked about her knowing his title off the top of her head.
“I don’t know, Clark, where is everybody?” she said, walking past some shelves with dusty book, scrapbooks, and odds and ends.
“The thing about luck, Lois, is you don’t question it,” he replied. If this really was the modern day equivalent of Project Blue Book, now called Bureau 39 according to the sign by the combination lock, he might be able to find some answers about how much they knew about Kal-El.
Lois approached a filing cabinet and started riffling through it. Clark did likewise, several drawers over.
She pulled out a blurry photo that looked like a popsicle with four sticks. “Give me a break, I’ve seen this movie,” she scoffed, shoving the picture back into the drawer and slamming it shut.
Clark looked at the photos that he had pulled out of his drawer. “I don’t know, Lois, these look
real.” Of course, him knowing that people from other planets actually did exist, had come here from other planets, and on spaceships, gave him more of an open mind that he might not be alone here. Well, alone from Krypton, but not from the universe at large.
“Oh, they’re too good. It’s gotta be a set-up,” she responded.
“But what if it’s not. What if people really traveled in these things? People from far away?”
Like me, he added silently.
“Well,” Lois said with disappointment. “There might be a story here, Clark, but I don’t think it’s UFOs.”
Clark opened another filing cabinet and started flipping through the different files. “You know, I thought you were the one who said, ‘If it looks like a duck…’” He stopped speaking as he came across the same file, or another copy of the same file, that George Thompson, ombudsman for the government, had tucked away in his briefcase: Smallville, Kansas 1966.
“Don’t you quote me to myself!” she reprimanded. “How did you know that I said that anyway?”
“I read lips,” he murmured, opening the file. He read quickly through the pages.
So, Project Blue Book had definitely been in Smallville, Kansas in 1966. They had found the area where the spaceship had crashed, the empty spaceship, where someone had buried it six feet underground out in the woods near Rocky Cove. There was no mention of baby Kal-El or the globe. Maybe Clark should have taken H. G. Wells literally when he had said that ‘the Kal-El of this dimension had died
before the Kents had found him’. Had the Kents still found him? He breathed a sigh of relief at that thought, glad to know that this dimension’s Kal-El wasn’t languishing in some scientist’s lab in a jar of green liquid as some sort of trophy or decoration.
“You read lips? What can’t you do, Chuck?” She laughed, moving closer.
“Make the blind see,” Clark mumbled, zapping the file with his heat vision to darken the case file name, and shoving it back into the cabinet. He turned around to find Lois standing two paces behind him. He slammed the drawer shut and pulled her away from the filing cabinet.
“What are you doing?” she said, protesting his arm around her waist. Oh, so she was allowed to touch him all she wanted, pat his chest, play with his tie, but he couldn’t even nudge her along?
Hypocritical there, Lois?“Well, you don’t like their pictures. Let’s see what else they have,” he suggested with some annoyance.
“I suppose you think that I’m going to lift up one of these tarps and find a UFO,” she mocked.
“I don’t know what we’re going to find,” Clark admitted honestly. Bureau 39 had Kal-El’s spaceship, and if this was their warehouse, it was possible that it was here in this very room.
“Eenie, meenie, miney, moe,” Lois said, pointing at several different drop cloth covered objects.
Clark decided to go with the more scientific approach. He scooted his glasses down his nose and scanned the room. With one object in particular, he instantly felt a connection, a familiarity, and he was drawn to it.
Lois lifted up the cloth on her ‘moe’ object and rolled her eyes. “This is just an unidentified salvage yard,” she complained.
“Good thing we called in Perry and feds on our big find,” Clark teased, and Lois shot him a glare. The cloth covering the object that had attracted Clark was splattered with blood and there was a dark stain on the concrete floor beside it. “Lois.”
“Clark, do you think…” she said, approaching him. “Is that blood?”
He nodded.
“Is this where Thompson died? Is this why he never returned to his car?” she said, and he felt her shiver as she clutched his arm. “Do you think Trask or one of the other guys killed him, while I was waiting outside in my cab?”
“I don’t know, Lois,” he mumbled, taking hold of the blood splattered cloth.
“Clark! No! Evidence…”
It was too late, nothing was going to stop him, Clark had pulled the cloth away revealing a small dirt and dust covered vessel. He ran his fingers over the strange markings.
“Clark,” Lois whispered. “This one looks real.”
Clark continued to pull off the cloth and found a dusty ‘S’ crest at the front of the ship.
This was baby Kal-El’s ship. He swallowed, and unconsciously wrapped his arm around Lois’ shoulders; this time she didn’t flinch.
“Is that?” she mumbled pointing at the ‘S’. “Is that what I think it is?”
“Uh-huh.” Clark dusted off the ‘S’, his jaw hanging open, and him unable to speak. This was the equivalent of his own spaceship. This was the last thing his birthparents touched before sending him on his way to Earth. The familiarity with the ship was just that, a feeling; he had no memories of it.
“It looks like it’s been here a long time,” Lois continued. “But there’s no way Superman could’ve ever fit into that thing. It must be research drone or a supply vessel or a reconnaissance ship. Maybe he or other Kryptonians had done their homework before he decided to come here.”
Clark felt more than saw, Lois glance at him, but he couldn’t take his eyes or hand off the ‘S’.
“Who’s doubting my ‘big find’ now?”
There was a sound of the warehouse door opening and closing, but he ignored it being so in awe of being able to touch his history for the first time.
“Clark!” She tugged at his arm. “Clark! Somebody’s coming,” Lois hissed.
Clark grabbed the tarp and re-covered the spaceship, hoping to hide it in plain sight again, until he could come and rescue it. When he got to the back end of the ship, he noticed an identification tag on which was written: Smallville, Kansas 1966. He super-sped the tag off the ship and slipped it into his pocket unbeknownst by Lois.
From around the filing cabinets, Jason Trask came into view. Gone was his business suit, he now donned military fatigues.
“Now how did you two manage to get in here?” he asked them. He was joined by five others from the raid, dressed similarly and carrying guns.
“That’s
your problem,” Lois retorted, moving away from the ship and crossing her arms.
“That’s correct. Getting out, however, is yours,” Trask replied, tossing the verbal ball back to Lois.
Clark decided to intervene, stepping between Lois and Trask. “Hey, people know we’re here.” Well, General Newcomb did, but Clark doubted that man would tell anyone if they disappeared.
“Like… Superman!” Lois interjected with pride.
Clark wanted to cringe.
Wrong answer, Lois.“He’s going to come looking for us,” she continued smugly.
“Oh, I do hope so,” said Trask. “Actually, I’m counting on it.”
Lois glanced at Clark with an ‘oh, crap!’ expression.
Yep, thought Clark,
that pretty much summed it up.***
Lois and Clark sat next to each other inside Bureau 39’s military jet. These guys weren’t some fly-by-night rogue group; they must be funded by the military or the American government or one big benefactor.
She felt Clark’s fingers brush hers, in a pathetic attempt at trying to reassure her. She let him. She wasn’t scared, nervous perhaps, but not scared. She knew Superman would never let anything happen to her. She needed to distract Clark so he wouldn’t panic. She decided on some tit-for-tat.
“It’s a romance novel,” she admitted with a sigh. She knew she would never finish the novel now that Superman had come into her life, either that or she would change its plot completely.
“What?” Clark sputtered, turning his focus away from Trask’s men and facing her.
“My novel. It’s about a woman who dies without ever finding her true love,” Lois confessed. “Well, actually, that’s not quite true. She does find him, but he’s dead. He died before they ever met. She and his ghost try to find a way to change the past so that they can be together, but instead the world ends and they are forever separated.” She sighed, her heart aching once more for her characters. She had always felt such a kinship to her main character, Lola, like their destinies were tied together somehow. Her brow furrowed. She had named the ghost character Charlie. She looked at Clark again. Charlie and Chuck were both nicknames for Charles. No, she shook her head; it was just a peculiar coincidence. She was certainly not in love with Chuck.
Clark’s jaw hung open at her plot description.
“Hey, my story!” She pulled her hand out of his and pointed at him. “You better not steal it.”
He laughed, albeit uncomfortably, as she knew he would. Her distraction was working. He was relaxing.
“That’s not going to happen to you, Lois,” he reassured her.
She swallowed. How did he know that was exactly what she had feared? She set her hand down again, next to his, and let him take hold of it once more. Maybe there was a connection there, not as strong as the one she had with Superman, but Clark could be a good friend if she let him. He had the guts to stand up to her when she did something stupid, like steal someone else’s idea. She could use a friend every once in a while. Still, she needed to get off of the topic of her love life.
“Yeah, well, check it out, Clark, these guys look serious. They know that we know what happened to Thompson. They’re not going to let us go easily.” Lois glanced towards the tail end of the plane and rolled her eyes at herself.
Great job on undoing all your distraction there, Lane. “Okay, I’ve told you mine, you tell me yours.”
“Tell you what?” he asked.
“What really happened between you and Cat the other night? Not that I care, but it’s probably the best secret you’ve got going,” she probed.
Clark smiled at her. Terrific, he thought she did
care. Hello, practically Superman’s life partner here, Chuck. Get real!
She shot him a calculated stare. “When we get out of this, you have got to raise your standards.”
He chuckled as if what she said was funny. What was so funny? Like there weren’t better women out there besides Cat Grant? Hello, even Lois herself was a better… no, that was not what she meant… of course, she was a better person, better partner material, better writer, better investigator, better woman in general than Cat Grant. She had meant, if she were hypothetically available that was, which she wasn’t. She was with Superman. Yes, Clark needed someone like her, only not her, because she wasn’t available.
Clark went to open his mouth as she stared at him, expecting an answer. What that answer would have been, she didn’t know, because Trask – the jerk – picked that exact moment to interrupt.
***End of Part 19*** Part 20 Will she or won't she? Tell me your guess.
Comments Many thanks to Christina for giving me the brilliant idea that Lois’ novel should be about the plot of Book 1:
Another Lois.
