Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong Clark TOC can be found
HerePart 122Part 123Clark glanced up as Lois marched down the ramp into the bullpen and slammed her briefcase down next to her desk. She appeared as if one should only approach her with a chair and a whip. He sighed as his heart sank. The plea deal meeting must not have gone as well as they had hoped.
“Hi, Lois,” he said casually, drawing near to the lion’s den. “How did it go?”
“How did it go?
How… Did… It… Go?” she growled. Her rising voice drew Perry out of his office and Jimmy away from his desk with curiosity. “I got community service!”
Clark hid his relieved smile behind his hand. His guts had formed knots since Lois left that morning for her plea deal meeting with the Daily Planet lawyer and the Assistant District Attorney.
“That’s terrific, honey,” Perry said, patting her supportively on the back. “That’s showing them.”
“Terrific?
Terrific?” she hollered, swinging out her arms in an erratic manner, and causing Jimmy to jump behind Clark. “I’m being punished for harboring an innocent man!”
“Darlin’, community service is better than prison,” their boss reminded her.
“Not only is this on my permanent record, Perry, that I was guilty, I have to pay a fine. Eugene was innocent. They only found the gun in my briefcase because I took it away from him! I wasn’t ‘concealing’ it; I just forgot it was there,” she grumbled. “And they said that the only reason they reduced my sentence was because of my help in the capture of Henry Harrison and assisting Eugene to create the antidote, which saved the country from the Ides of Metropolis virus. If it weren’t for me, we’d all be totally screwed and living in the early 1800s for the foreseeable future, but
nooooooo. It was only enough to reduce the charges to a misdemeanor ‘hindering a prosecution’ charge. Please! I
solved the case!” Lois punctuated this statement by throwing her hands into the air. “Keep in mind; they arraigned me for hindering the prosecution of an innocent man! Is that really obstruction of justice? They should be thanking me for doing their job for them. Moreover, I saved the infrastructure of the friggin’ country! I should be getting Keys to the City, a commendation from the president, a Pulitzer Prize, not community service. Eugene was found innocent, so I should be too!”
Well, at least she learned her lesson, Clark thought wryly.
“So, you’re going to trial?” Jimmy wondered.
“No,” Lois grouched. “My lawyer said that there was a fifty-fifty chance I could see actual jail time because Eugene Laderman was technically an escaped felon at the time I harbored him. That his conviction was overturned later, by my hard work no less, might not be admissible in court, as it legally had no direct bearing in my case. So, I took the deal.”
“Do you know what you’ll be doing?” Jimmy asked.
“That’s another thing,” Lois roared, clearly not over her rant. “They wouldn’t accept working at the Daily Planet as an investigative reporter as ‘community service’. If the Daily Planet doesn’t help the community better than anyone, I don’t know who does.”
Clark glanced at Perry with a knowing look. They both could list a few charitable organizations, as well Metropolis’s emergency personnel, who could be considered more helpful, but why poke a stick at the raging lion?
“How many hours did you get?” Jimmy asked. He was certainly the bravest of the three of them, or the stupidest. Perry and Clark knew better than to ask probing questions until Lois had calmed down. Clark would make sure to thank his friend for sacrificing himself for the good of the team later… if either of them survived that long.
“How many? One hundred hours! If I do two hours every day, that’s two months! That’s how long,” she yelled. “It would have been one month or fifty hours, but I protested the attached rider, which said that I couldn’t converse with criminals. I think that A.D.A. added that out of spite. How am I supposed to find a place to do community service, which hasn’t hired any other criminals of my ilk to do community service? It was ludicrous. I had to remind them that I’m a reporter. It’s my job to speak with criminals, known or otherwise, on a daily basis. I talk to sources, snitches, witnesses, not to mention elected officials and crooked D.A.s!” Lois counted off these various ‘criminal factions’ on her fingers.
Perry winced. “And
that’s how you got your sentence doubled,” he said more than asked.
Lois scoffed. “As if they thought their office was squeaky clean.”
“I could have put you on the dog show circuit, Lois,” Perry reminded her.
Her eyes narrowed. “With my luck, I’d discover an illegal drug ring using dogs as mules, which I couldn’t report on out of fear of having my ‘community service’ revoked and my butt thrown back in jail. At least, now, my community service doesn’t come with the ‘no conversing with criminals’ rider, so I’ll be able to do my job. I’ve got bills to pay, you know, I told them.”
Clark decided not to mention that she could have taken two weeks of her vacation and done the community service all at once instead of piecemeal, but that was probably a conversation for another time… or day. He didn’t want to pick another fight with Lois.
Perry patted her on the back. “Well, I’m proud of you, honey. You did a good job.”
“Yeah, well, thanks,” she grumbled, dropping into her seat.
Clark sat down next to her desk after the others had wandered off. “So, it looks like everything’s getting back to normal again. Power’s on, phones are working, planes are in the air, Mad Dog’s back…”
“Very funny,” Lois retorted. “I should have let Lex’s lawyer defend me, instead of the Daily Planet attorney; maybe then all the charges would have been waived. Actually, what I really should look into now is A.D.A. Drake and how corrupt
she is. Schwartz said he had talked to her and that she was willing to give me a pass on all the charges, but as soon as I show up with a Daily Planet attorney, instead of some highly-priced one, she’s singing a different tune, saying that she never accepted that deal with Lex’s lawyer. Ha!”
“Do you really feel as if you should have kept Luthor’s attorney as your representation?” Clark asked with a sinking feeling.
“What are you implying?” she snapped, pouring her cold coffee into the plant on her desk. She rose to her feet and headed to the coffee station. “That I don’t deserve to have
all the charges dropped?”
Clark couldn’t help but follow. “Lo
is, that’s not…”
“You know
why I wanted to get off scot-free, Clark,” Lois continued grumbling in a lower tone so that nobody could overhear her. “Community service is like parole. I’m not allowed to leave the state of New Troy until I’ve completed it without written permission from the state, and, personally, I’d rather not have them dictate my private life.”
Earlier this morning, before her plea meeting, Lois had told Clark about her wonderful idea for a trip to Kansas that weekend. From experience, he had learned not to let his hopes get too high, knowing that was the surest way to have them dashed against the rocks. As his luck would have it, it now sounded as if the trip was officially off the table for the time being.
Good thing I have something else to occupy my time this week, he thought glumly.
Clark’s date with Linda had been informative more than fun. Apparently, he had been Linda’s pseudo-date and Preston Carpenter her official date. That was the real reason Linda had sounded relieved that Clark couldn’t pick her up at her apartment the night before. He didn’t really mind, being that he wasn’t interested in Linda in that way, but it was beginning to feel like the start of a trend. Women made a date with him, only to have it be a ‘fake date’ because they brushed him aside for a wealthier man. Understandably, it wasn’t a feeling he enjoyed, and it was hard not to take it personally. He knew that if he ever desired to do so, he could use his powers to become rich, very rich indeed, but that had never felt honest to him.
While Clark was growing up with his folks, he never wanted for anything. The Kents had provided for his basic needs and then some, and he always had an overabundance of love. It wasn’t until after they died that he learned that the farm wouldn’t be sustainable without them. His father had taken out a mortgage on the farm he had inherited from his folks, during the time Jonathan had wrenched his back and Clark’s mom had to take a job in town. The Kents had little savings, except the equity built up on the farm. Clark had gone into foster care with a suitcase of clothes, a couple of photographs, and a couple of books. After a few years, all he had left was that one photo of his folks, which he had guarded with his life. Sure, the Irigs had copies of photos they had taken of their two families at picnics and Corn Festivals and such, as Barbara Irig had been an avid photographer, but that photo had been the only one of just his folks. Clark had taken it himself on their last anniversary before their deaths.
Even before his Clark Kent’s self faded into solely being Superman back in his old dimension, Clark had little personal money to his name. Lana had definitely been a material girl, so often Clark had spent much of his money on gifts for her. “Personal means pricier,” he had once overheard her complaining to one of her friends over the phone. “You’d think he’d know that by now.”
Clark had planned to use what was in his National Bank of New Troy account for his and Lana’s lavish Parisian honeymoon, by airplane of course. Why save on airfare just because they could? He had stashed a little away to grow into a nest egg they could eventually use for a down payment on an apartment or townhome in the city. Lana didn’t want a house in the suburbs, and she certainly didn’t want to be a stay-at-home mom. She was a social and party person, and needed to be around the movers, shakers, and the influential, not to mention the shopping. She liked to live in the “now” and not plan for the future, which was why Clark had hidden the money away where she couldn’t find it and insist he spend it on her, or – more likely – just take it to spend on herself.
Actually, now that he thought about it, Clark hadn’t accessed or even considered that account in the little Bern, Switzerland bank that he had set up while traveling as a freelance journalist, especially since meeting that Lois from the other dimension. To him, that nest egg had always represented his future with Lana, and when that possibility crumbled away, he had just forgotten all about it.
A small smile tugged at the edge of his mouth. He was happy that a tiny part of himself remained, which Lana hadn’t been able to find and take when she had sued him for ruining her life. Clark could now use that money as a retirement fund of sorts, should his secret… The smile faded. The money was in a bank in his
old dimension, where his secret was already well known. Fat lot of good it would ever do him here.
Lois tapped her spoon against her mug, and the clanging noise brought Clark back to the present.
“Do you think he might still…?” she started, making with her spoon the interdimensional signal for flying.
“No,” Clark said. “He was very clear, Lois. If legally, you're not allowed to leave New Troy until you’ve completed your community service, he will not be party to you breaking that condition of your deal. Do you want to chance having your community service revoked?”
“No.” She pouted, and then mumbled under her breath, “Goody, goody, two shoes, Boy Scout.”
Was she talking about him or Superman? “Tell you what. Why don’t you take a couple of weeks of your vacation time, and do all the community service at once, and then we’ll go?” he suggested. Clark figured she had calmed down enough to broach this idea.
“But, Clark, I
can’t take time off. Not
now. I…
we’ve got too much on our plates,” Lois insisted.
“Such as?” he asked, crossing his arms and waiting. Clark knew what he was working on, but her last assignment was freeing Eugene from wrongful imprisonment and saving the country from the Ides of Metropolis virus.
“Other than all those follow-up articles on how the Ides of Metropolis virus is still wreaking havoc across the country, we need to find a way to save the Daily Planet. Did you see the bulletin board?” she asked, and then plowed on without giving him a chance to answer in the affirmative. “Expense accounts have now been cut.”
“I saw,” he replied. At least, Perry’s prediction of the elimination of paid sick leave hadn’t kicked in yet. Of course, Clark had used up most of the little he’d earned during the time he had amnesia.
“If I go on vacation right now, there might not be a Daily Planet to come back to when it’s over,” she reminded him. “Anyway, I have that other thing I’m working on.”
His brow furrowed. “What other ‘thing’?”
“Didn’t Superman tell you?” she inquired, taking a sip of her coffee and looking at him from over her mug.
Right, the EPRAD Nightfall Virus. Clark recalled Superman’s conversation with Lois from the night before. He could just picture Jimmy suggesting that they should rename it the Daitch EPRAD Nightfall Disaster. Then they could use the acronym ‘D - E.N.D.’, which Jimmy would then consider quite witty, and Clark would probably laugh, if it wasn’t so accurate.
“Oh, that’s right, you were busy with your date,” Lois continued sourly, when he didn’t respond right away. “What’s that smile for? Remembering fondly dancing with the slut?”
A picture of him and Linda from last night’s party had been on the society page of the Metropolis Star that morning, and Jimmy had showed it to Lois before she left for her meeting, which probably hadn’t helped any. “Lois, you’re being unfair to Linda. She hasn’t done anything to warrant being called that,” Clark scolded.
“She…
she hasn’t… hasn’t done
anything to… What is wrong with you, Clark? Do you need a new prescription for your glasses?” Lois rebuked. “Tell me. Did she, or did she not, make a pass at you?”
He cleared his throat and adjusted his tie. “Not in so many words, no.”
She looked him up and down as she gestured with her coffee spoon. “Are you sure you were on a date with
Linda King? About yea-high, with brassy colored hair down to her shoulders, and stuffed bra?
That Linda King? And she didn’t make a pass at you?” Lois shook her head. “I guess the world is about to end again.”
“Well, there had been a misunderstanding. Apparently, she thought I was bringing you as my date, and she had made other arrangements with Preston Carpenter,” Clark explained.
“I knew it!” she crowed gleefully. Then, more softly, she asked, “Why would she think we’re dating?”
He shrugged sheepishly. Was there anyone in Metropolis who hadn’t been able to tell that he and Lois belonged together? It seemed quite obvious to him, Perry, and Inspector Henderson, and who know how many others. Well, Lois wanted to pretend that their relationship was a ruse for a while longer, so he figured he’d play along; although, he doubted they were actually fooling anyone. “Not as a ‘date’ date, but attend the party as partners at a business networking function. Mr. Carpenter had nothing to say but raves about you and your dedication to your journalism, Lois. He was disappointed he couldn’t meet you.”
Lois rolled her eyes. Evidently, the feeling wasn’t mutual.
“Which reminds me,” Clark said, glancing at his watch. “I better get running. I’m meeting Linda for lunch, and then I have an interview.”
He had decided he needed to dig further into how the Metropolis Star’s reporters always seemed to be on the scene of crimes lately
before they occurred. Between Lois’s rant from the day before and Linda’s flirtatious idea of her and Clark joining forces, he had a good idea how to get the ‘inside scoop’. He had already discussed his plans with Perry about trying to become a mole over the Met Star, and the Chief was all for it. ‘Anything to save the Planet,’ Perry had said, before reminding Clark that he wanted him to come back. Clark had reassured him that it wouldn’t be a problem.
“Interview? Who are you interviewing?” she snapped.
Clark leaned in and kissed her cheek. “Who said I would be the one doing the interviewing,
minha?” he murmured.
“Clark!... Kent!...” Lois sputtered, before exploding, “What the…? Did you just
kiss my cheek?”
It had seemed like the natural thing to do. Still, Clark wasn’t sure why he had done it, especially here, in the middle of the newsroom. Lois’s face turned red with fury. He could understand that. They hadn’t discussed or agreed upon revealing their romantic relationship to the office, yet. Moreover, it would make it more difficult for him to get a job over at the Metropolis Star, if news of that kiss reached Linda King or Preston Carpenter’s ears.
Lois and Clark were standing between her desk and Perry’s office, in the middle of the bullpen, and Clark knew they now had everyone’s attention, thanks to Lois’s outburst. He needed to make the most of this opportunity and hoped Lois loved him enough to forgive him later, should he rescue the Planet from financial ruin.
“Good bye, Lois,” Clark said, trusting he had made it sound final enough as if the kiss had been one of departing… as in leaving the Daily Planet for good.
“Damn straight, good bye, Kent!” Lois retorted, throwing the contents of her hot coffee in his face. “You better get out of here after kissing my cheek without my say-so.”
“Lois! That was uncalled for,” he gasped, soaking wet. He wiped his face and glasses, and shook the liquid from his wet hands. Great. That was what he got for teasing her about being all Mad Dog again. Now, he’d have to fly home and change his clothes, and he had specifically worn his good grey suit…
oh, crap. The grey suit he had bought for his first date with Lois. He hoped she hadn’t remembered that. By the fiery expression in her eyes, he guessed that she had.
“You just kissed our partnership goodbye, and
I was ‘uncalled for’? You’re lucky I didn’t toss my mug as well,” she screamed, shaking said mug in his face. “Grab your stuff and… no! Don’t take your stuff, you… you, Benedict Arnold. We’ll have it delivered, C.O.D. Get out of here!” She pointed to the stairwell door.
Well, on the bright side, Lois had just validated his undercover assignment. “I had hoped we could still be friends,” he said.
“Friends?
Friends? Are you daft, Chuck? I’ll
never be ‘friends’ with you.
Never!” she roared.
Clark nodded, hoping that her use of the endearment ‘Chuck’ meant that she didn’t mean what she was saying. Had she figured out he was going undercover at the Metropolis Star? It had been her idea after all, in a roundabout way. He wondered if Perry had mentioned it to her. Clark shook coffee from his hands again and headed for the stairs.
*
Lois turned and marched into Perry’s office, slamming the door behind her.
“Alice, honey, I’m going to have to call you back. Yes, well, it seems like a tornado just blew into my office,” Perry said to his wife on the other end of the phone. “Love you, too, darlin’.” He hung up. “What in the Sam Hill, Lois? That door has my name on it. I’m the only one who gets to slam it!” he said, standing up.
“Is there some logical reason that you and Clark saw fit not to inform me that he was going to go undercover with the Metropolis Star?” she hissed. “Do you two think it’s funny that he’d just march over there and get a job with our competitor and not let me know? We’re supposed to be partners, Perry!”
“How? What? My God, girl, how do you know about him being undercover?” Perry asked softly.
Lois stared him in the eye and didn’t dignify that question with a proper response. “Why do you
think?” And she tilted her hand skyward. Superman might lie to her to protect his secret identity as Clark Kent – or was it the other way around? – but, she knew, he would never cheat on her or the Daily Planet. He had too much integrity for that.
“That was quite a show you two put on out there. Did you discuss the particulars beforehand?” he asked.
“No, we didn’t discuss the particulars beforehand,” she repeated back to him with amazement. “We were talking about his date with Linda King, and then all of a sudden he said he was meeting her for lunch and he had an interview. Then… then…” She flung her hand towards the door. “The lunkhead kissed my cheek, and I just
knew.”
Perry’s jaw fell open. “From
that you just knew? How could you get here from there?”
Lois shrugged. “I don’t know. I just did. Reporter’s intuition, I guess,” she said modestly, knowing that it was something a little more than that. “It felt like a goodbye kiss, and there wouldn’t be a need for such a kiss and for him to
be interviewed, unless… well, he did what he must’ve done.”
“Any particular reason you threw your coffee into his face?” he asked.
She sucked on her front teeth. “He’s not supposed to keep secrets from me, Perry, and here he is going so deep undercover that he’s lying to me about it,” she said, plopping into a chair. “I wanted him to know that wasn’t acceptable.”
“So, you threw your coffee in his face?” Perry sat back down and made a teepee with his fingers. “Lois, aren’t you still lying to him? Have you even let him know…” He coughed. “That you know?”
“That’s different,” Lois replied, stiffening at his implication that she and Clark should treat each other the same. “I’m me, and he’s
him! I lie all the time. He
never does. Well, he’s not supposed to, but he still does, especially to me apparently.” She harrumphed. “His secret is one thing, but I never thought that he’d keep a story from me. From
me! That’s just crossing an unforgiveable line. When is it going to stop? We’re supposed to be partners.”
“And does he know about everything you’re working on at the moment?” Perry asked.
“Well, no,” Lois grumbled. “But that’s different. He’s supposed to share everything, and I never share anything!”
Perry put a hand to his forehead. “I’m just not going to touch that one.” He cleared his throat again, gathering his thoughts. “Darlin’, Kent knows you’re busy dealing with this whole arrest and community service thing, right now, I bet he just didn’t want to pile your plate with more stuff.”
“But I
like a full plate!” Lois insisted, punctuating her thoughts with a slap on the desk. “I like stuff!”
“I know that, Lois, but Kent, well, honey, he was raised differently than you and I were. He sees the world through rose-tinted glasses. He probably thinks he’s helping, being gentlemanly, by holding onto those extra burdens for you,” Perry explained.
She had to admit that made sense, in a very logical male way. Wait. Was that an oxymoron? She decided it was. “Perry, could you please explain to Clark that he’s lying when he holds onto burdens that I don’t know about yet, so they don’t stress me out? Because in the end, I’ll usually find out about them on my own, thus increasing my stress level over what it would’ve been if he’d just been honest with me to begin with.”
Her boss stared at her for a moment, before shaking his head. He picked up his editing pencil and pulled a stack of stories towards him. “Sorry, Lois. No can do. Kent no longer works for the Daily Planet. Don’t you have something you should be working on, instead of whining to me about your boyfriend?”
“He’s
not my boyfriend!” Lois reminded him, rising to her feet. “And I’m not whining!”
“Oh, that’s right, you’re dating Lex Luthor,” Perry said, lifting up a folded inside out copy of the Daily Planet so that the photo gracing Cat’s Corner was sitting on top. He tossed the section towards Lois.
“Chief, you know I don’t read… That little tramp!” Lois roared. “What am I talking about? She’s a
huge tramp!”
“I thought you might enjoy that,” Perry said, not able to hide his chuckle. “Any comment, Ms. Lane?”
“Yeah,” she returned in a low tone as she headed for the door. “I’m not responsible for what happens to Cat Grant. She brought this upon herself. Consider it suicide by Mad Dog.”
***
“So, Lois Lane isn’t abandoning ship with you?” Preston Carpenter asked Clark during their interview after Clark’s lunch with Linda.
“Lois?” Linda gasped, until silenced by a firm glance from Carpenter. It was Clark’s interview after all.
Clark was also surprised that any publisher would want to hire someone who had just been arrested for helping out a murderer. “No. She’ll stay at the Daily Planet until the end, fighting for its survival. She’s a terrific reporter, but a bit volatile for a partner,” Clark acknowledged. He loved every other minute of working with Lois. She kept him guessing, which, he had to admit, was not only highly intriguing but kept life interesting. Therefore, he might not live worry free, but he was never bored. He would never return to live in his old dimension.
“That’s a pity,” Carpenter said with a sad shake of his head. “I would’ve loved to have someone with her dedication to a story working for the Metropolis Star.”
Linda gripped both of Clark’s shoulders with her hands. “
I’m dedicated.”
“Of course you are, Linda,” Carpenter replied smoothly. “It’s one of the reasons you’re my star reporter.”
Clark shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Lois’s description of Linda doing anything to get to the top, to get access to power, flashed through his mind, but he pushed it back into the shadows. Lois was jealous of Linda, after all. It was entirely possible that Carpenter hadn’t meant his words as a double entendre.
Carpenter picked up a folded copy of the Daily Planet’s morning paper off the corner of his otherwise neat desk, and laid it in front of Clark. “While both our papers had photos of our reporters in the society pages, only the Daily Planet’s photo was an actual news item,” he reminded his ‘star’ reporter with another fixed look.
Cat’s Corner and the photo therein, which the fold in the Daily Planet emphasized, showed Lois sitting at the Centennial Garden’s restaurant with a sunglasses-wearing Luthor, who had his hand very tenderly over hers. Clark’s partner was looking at the billionaire with concern.
Thankfully, Clark had already seen the photo that morning with his coffee and it no longer had the shock value it had then. He pushed down his natural reaction to set the paper ablaze and returned to the topic at hand. “It’s becoming very difficult, working with Lois,” he confessed dryly.
Although, the difficulties Clark had didn’t lie with Lois’s fiery temper or her tendency to blur the lines between legal and not, but with her steadfast belief that Lex Luthor was an honest, law-abiding business man and philanthropist, an all-around good guy, instead of what he really was, which was the complete opposite. Clark felt that addendum to the conversation wasn’t needed.
Linda set her hand on Clark’s shoulder. “Tell Preston what you told me at lunch, Clark,” she insisted. Linda had enjoyed the dessert of Clark’s recent interactions with Lois more than the food on the table.
“I… I don’t think that the particulars are germane. Let me just say, that Lois’s obsession with Linda is affecting her performance,” Clark replied. He didn’t want to bash Lois too badly behind her back. He had only mentioned the coffee incident at lunch because he was sure it was already a fixture on the press corps gossip circuit.
Linda jumped on the bait and did it for him. “You’re being too modest, Clark. When he left the Daily Planet to meet me for lunch today, Lois threw a mug full of hot coffee in his face.”
Carpenter raised a brow at this bit of gossip.
Clark tried again to return to his reason for coming there. “Now, I also have to think about my future. The Daily Planet is a dying paper,” he said, and he was here to see if the Metropolis Star had anything to do with that. “And I don’t want to have to be the one to turn out the lights.”
Carpenter leaned forward over his desk as Linda let go of Clark’s shoulders and walked around to stand behind her boss. “We don’t pull any punches here, Kent. We make things
happen!” Carpenter said, slapping his desk with emphasis.
Clark wondered exactly how literal the publisher of the Star was being.
Carpenter pointed at him. “I want you to go all out.”
“Yes, sir. That’s what I intend to do,” Clark replied.
Carpenter stood up and held out his hand. “Then welcome to the Metropolis Star.”
Clark shook his hand with a smile. “Thank you.”
***End of Part 123*** Part 124 Comments welcome.
