Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong Clark TOC can be found
HereWhere we left off in Part 149 …“Well, your recent suspension hints at follow-through problems, so I’ll be approving all your stories from now on,” Chip said. “Before you do anything, it needs my ‘okay’.”
“That’s not going to work,” Clark said.
For me or Superman. “Reporters can’t function if they need approval to go to the bathroom, let alone follow their hunches or talk to their sources. News doesn’t wait around for approval. It just happens, and reporters need to be ready to fly, with or without prior approval from management, or they miss out on the story. The Planet isn’t in the business to write up other media’s scoops. If that happens, and there aren’t any original stories to print, the Daily Planet will fold, and we’ll both be out a job.”
“Tell me about your follow-up story, the one Mr. White brought you back for,” Chip insisted.
Clark was about to set his elbow on his research folder, and then realized that would be giving himself away. Instead, he set his arm from his elbow to his hand down on his desk; his elbow was on his Dylan Gilbert research he’d spent all weekend digging up and his hand on the background information on Fuentes and his gang. “If you want to know what I’m working on, ask Perry. He assigned it to me.”
“Perry left fifteen minutes ago, Kent. He wasn’t feeling well.”
I bet.“From now on, I’m in charge,” Chip announced, grabbing the Fuentes file out from under Clark’s hand. “And we’re going to do things differently around here, so you better get used to it.”
Clark’s jaw dropped. This guy couldn’t be serious. He had no idea of how to run a shoeshine stand, let alone a major newspaper. A business degree would only get him so far. No experience was still no experience. So much for Perry’s pep talk yesterday at the bar. It looked as if both the Daitch investigation and saving Lois from Luthor fell directly on Clark’s shoulders now… if Lois wanted to be saved, that was.
***
Part 150“And while most of our copy writers work in the newsroom…” Erica droned on. She was a junior reporter stuck with the position of giving Lois her tour of LNN headquarters. Erica lifted her arm to indicate the room they had just entered full of tall grey cubicles that would ensure the lack of collaboration between employees.
Lois could just picture Clark describing the environment as sterile… well, with the grey carpet, the grey walls, the grey cubicles, and the grey metal desks he would have a point. It was just so lacking in… color.
And warmth.
And Clark.
“Due to your… uh… unique qualifications and expertise…” Erica paused and gave Lois a plastic smile, which told Lois exactly what rumors her co-workers were already spreading about how she had landed the job.
Lois would be sure to smack that smile off her face as soon as Lex was behind bars where he belonged. Until then, she’d give Clark Kent the run for his money on winning ‘Nicest Person in Metropolis Award’… well, at least, within the walls of LNN.
Her tour guide opened a door off the cubicle graveyard, and announced, “This will be your office.”
It was a small non-descript room with an empty bookshelf, a wooden desk with a computer and telephone already set up, and a couple of chairs. At least the room had a window.
“Thank you, Erica,” Lois said, dropping her briefcase down onto one of the chairs.
“There’s an LNN directory in the top drawer. I’m sure you can figure out everything else on your own. Do you need me to point you in the direction of the supply closet again, or do you remember?” Erica asked.
Lois held up her hand. “I’ve got it,” she said, shutting the door with Erica on the outside. She exhaled. Removing her nameplate from her briefcase, she situated it at the front of her new desk. She’d bring in her non-personal personal items tomorrow to make this office her own... or appear as if it were her own. She would never be the real Lois Lane here.
As she went to sit down in her chair, she saw a piece of paper that someone had left there. Only one word had been written on it.
Whore.That was a new angle, uncreative, though concise. ‘Mad Dog Lane’ had so much more panache to it, though. She guessed it was just another demonstration of the differences between the Daily Planet’s staff and LNN’s.
Lois wondered if she could find a photo in archives with her and Lex to put up on her bookshelf. Not that she’d want to look at such a photo on a daily basis, but it would stop the spread of any further titters of malicious gossip. They may think of her as the woman who slept her way to the top, but bashing the owner’s friend within the building was a sure way for someone to get fired. If she knew Lex… and she did. She turned around and looked at the bookcase behind her desk. She didn’t spot a camera lens gazing back at her, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t find one installed by tomorrow.
Someone knocked on her door, and she called for whoever it was to enter.
“Ms. Lane?” a man in grey coveralls asked.
“Yes.”
“Todd from Maintenance,” the man announced before wheeling a big ficus plant into her office. It was decorated with a pink bow. He set it down against the wall on the far side of the window and adjusted it so that it sat ‘just so’. “A welcome gift from Mr. Luthor.”
Or maybe Lex wouldn’t wait until tomorrow.“Thank you, Todd. Where would I be able to get a recycling can for my office?” she asked, holding up the ‘whore’ sign she’d been left in plain view of the ficus.
Todd appeared aghast at what the paper read and snatched it out of her hands, wadding it up. “Don’t you worry about that, Ms. Lane. I’ll take care of it for you.”
There was her Team Lex player if she ever saw one.
“Thank you,” she replied with a smile, and sat back down as he left. She took this time to go through her desk. Not finding a pencil or notebook within to write up a list of supplies she would need for her new office, she headed out to search for that supply closet Erica had briefly mentioned on the tour.
As Lois passed through an alcove filled with muted televisions, she paused and stepped back to look at the televisions again. All of them showed news stories from around Metropolis and the globe. As far as she knew, LNN was the only twenty-four hour news station in the world.
A man standing near her hung up his mobile phone. “Excuse me,” she said. “Can you explain…?” She pointed to the televisions.
“Those are the live feeds, which we can switch to at any moment should anything interesting occur,” the man replied. He gave her a nudge, and lowered his voice. “Truth be told, it rarely happens. They are usually just recorded to be broadcast later on.” He nodded to the television in the corner with LNN anchor Sandra Ellis reading the news. “That one there with Sandy is what’s actually being broadcast. You can always tell by the LNN logo in the corner.” He nodded and headed off down another hallway.
Lois studied the different feeds.
One was at the Metro subway station, where crime scene tape had cordoned off a stop, probably due to an accident on the rails.
Another was at the Metropolis Palladium Theatre. Lois had read about this in the Daily Planet that morning. The theatre was holding a Charlie Chaplin film festival that weekend in celebration of the actor’s 105th birthday. She thought that was too local of a story for LNN to broadcast, but that wasn’t her decision.
A reporter stood in a rain soaked and somber crowd near the Space Needle in Seattle. Lois nodded.
Right, that singer, what’s his name?... Cobain died this past weekend. Apparently, his form of screaming was popular with some people. She shook her head in disbelief.
She saw a reporter outside of the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, Ohio, where Lois had spent ten days the year before covering the prison riot. That was about a month before she started working on the sabotage of the Messenger, when she had met Clark… and then Superman. Had she really known him less than a year? It seemed so much longer than that.
Lois glanced at the television next to Sandra Ellis’s live broadcast, which showed a fire at some old factory she didn’t recognize. She was about to move to the next screen when a familiar streak of blue and red caught her attention. No one appeared more surprised than the reporter on the scene did. Lois didn’t know him, but he was clearly thrilled that his bland fire had turned into a Superman ‘saves the day’ story.
She looked around to see if there was a remote somewhere, so that she could turn up the volume and figure out where Superman was. Unfortunately, knowing the Man of Steel’s penchant for disappearing soon after he was needed, she doubted she could be down there, wherever there was, in time to speak to him.
Lois could feel the adrenaline pumping through her veins at her excitement at seeing Superman again. How she had missed him. She watched the feed as the reporter flagged Superman down to question him. Clark appeared more drawn than usual, almost as if the fire had gone out in his eyes. She didn’t know if that was because of the factory fire, what was happening over at the Daily Planet, or her.
She sighed, knowing it was probably a combination of the three.
The man with the mobile phone returned and failed to suppress a chuckle. “You’re still here.”
Lois nodded to the screen where the LNN reporter was now interviewing her man. “Superman.”
“Oh, him,” the man said casually. “I’ve met him, you know.”
She couldn’t suppress a grin.
I love him, you know. “Oh?”
“I interviewed him after he stopped a bank robbery once. He’s nothing special,” the man said, shrugging.
“Oh?” Lois replied, trying hard not to laugh in the man’s face.
“Sure, he can fly,” the man said as Superman took off into the air on the screen. “But it’s surviving in the concrete jungle, which really separates a real man from those called ‘super’.”
Deep, Lois thought wryly. Under that definition, Clark must be ten times the man this guy was because he could do both.
The man held out his hand. “Reggie Blankenship.”
“Nice to meet you,” Lois said. “Lois Lane.”
The flirtatious smile dropped from his face. “
The Lois Lane?”
“Uh-huh,” Lois said, not really paying attention to Reggie any longer. On the television behind him, she saw what looked to be a press conference at Fort Truman with Secretary of Defense John Cosgrove. She hadn’t spent more than a second looking at the screen before, but something in Cosgrove’s shocked expression after a reporter asked a question drew her focus. The rest of the press corps exploded to their feet at both the question and Cosgrove’s reaction.
“The woman who first flew with Superman?” Reggie stammered. “The reporter with more Superman exclusives than any other?
That Lois Lane?”
Lois grabbed a nearby chair and placed it under the television hanging high up on the wall. “Excuse me,” she said, stepping upon the chair and setting her hand on Reggie’s shoulder to balance herself as she turned up the volume of the Fort Truman press conference.
“
Pardon?” Secretary Cosgrove sputtered all too loudly as Lois misjudged the volume of the television.
“
I said do you have any comment on the reports that Nightfall Major never would have hit Earth without your, EPRAD’s, and Superman’s interference?” the reporter on the screen asked again. Lois instantly recognized the slimy voice as Ralph’s.
“Holy crap!” Reggie said, taking the words out of Lois’s mouth as he spun around to face the television.
“Story stealing cretin,” Lois roared, jumping down from the chair for a better view. “I’m going to get him for this.”
“
Uh… unsubstantiated rumors,” Secretary Cosgrove answered unconvincingly and pointed to the LNN reporter. “
Let’s return to the topic of new housing opportunities for military families.”
“
The way I heard it, Secretary, other astronomers, namely Dr. Martin Solsvig of LexLabs, stated unequivocally that Nightfall Major had less than a thirty-five percent chance of striking Earth. Yet, you, EPRAD, and Professor Daitch all told us it had less than a ten percent chance of missing us,” said a LNN reporter with whom Lois was unfamiliar, continuing on in the same topic. “
That’s a difference of over fifty-five percent. Care to explain?”
“
I have nothing more to say,” Cosgrove announced and walked off the dais.
“And this, people,” Lois said, turning to the crowd which her switching up the volume on the television had drawn. “Is why you don’t ask stupid questions at press conferences without knowing all the facts; it makes the story available to everyone else.”
“What are the facts?” someone asked.
“Does anyone have a copy of yesterday’s Metro section of the Daily Planet?” Lois said, ignoring the question. It was still her story, and she was going to spin it so hard to save Superman’s reputation, if it was the last thing she did.
“Don’t you? You used to work for them,” someone called back snidely. Lois thought it might be Erica.
“I do!” another, more friendly, voice said, and she saw a young man bolt out of the room. He returned with the folded newspaper.
“Thanks,” Lois said, taking the paper and heading for a side table upon which to open it. She flipped to the second to last page and skimmed the articles as she had yesterday morning over coffee. A two-inch article, clearly written by Clark and buried in the ‘notable police calls’ column, announced that Superman had taken Stephen Daitch, PhD. to the hospital with carbon monoxide poisoning and that police were investigating. She tapped the article with her finger, and rushed back to her office to grab her briefcase.
“Lane!” a rough voice called to her when she emerged. “Where are you off to?”
“I’m going to get my story back,” Lois announced to Robertson, a linebacker of a news director who was blocking her path.
She could hear Sandra Ellis on the live broadcast, announcing, “
Professor Daitch, head scientist at EPRAD and the astronomer who brought the Nightfall asteroid to our attention, was taken to hospital on Saturday by Superman. Unconfirmed reports state that the scientist had attempted suicide using the exhaust from his car. While still alive at this time, his current condition is unconfirmed and the hospital representatives refuse to disclose any information with the press at this time, stating doctor-patient confidentiality.”
Robertson ushered Lois back into her office. “Your story? Do you know what’s going on with Nightfall?”
“It was something I was working on before I left the Planet,” Lois said vaguely. The story was already out there. It was too late to bury it. All she could do was lay out the facts and spin them in the right direction. “Don’t worry, Mr. Robertson, I’ll get to the bottom of this.”
Robertson grinned. “Mr. Luthor was right about you. You are the best of the best.”
Lois raised a brow as if there could be any doubt.
“When you’ve got the story written, give it to me to polish, and I’ll pass it to Christine Radner,” he told her.
She crossed her arms. “Excuse me?” This was
her story; she wasn’t going to pass it over to someone else to screw up.
“Christine is one of our copy writers. She brought me this story Friday night. She’s been working with her on-air reporter Joy Cardinal on it all weekend. If that…” Robertson took a breath rather than speak the best word to describe Ralph. “
Other reporter hadn’t brought up the issue, she was planning to hit Cosgrove with all she had. Instead she ended up throwing it out as follow-up question.”
“There’s more to this than either of them know,” Lois told him. Like someone had sent the bad data to Daitch at EPRAD.
“Like what?”
“I have to go check some facts; then I’ll give you what I know. Unlike your junior reporters, I don’t lead with unsubstantiated reports. I lead with facts,” Lois said, reaching into her pocket for her car keys. “Then we don’t have to go back and print retractions.
I had the lowest retraction rate at the Daily Planet.” Well, until Clark Kent started working there.
“We don’t do ‘retractions’ in television news, Lois. We just say that our information has changed,” Robertson said, crossing his arms and still stubbornly blocking her path.
Lois had to bite her tongue not to remind Mr. Robertson that LNN led with Superman being the bad guy until
her interview with Superman revealed that he had saved the Messenger from a bomb. The Daily Planet wouldn’t have led with shoddy guesses and bad hunches. It was one of the reasons she hated LNN; they had twenty-four hours of blank air to fill and they were willing to say whatever their commentators had on the tip of their tongues whether there was any honest data behind it or not. “It’s still
my story.”
“Not any more, Lane. We’re a team here at LNN. If you care about the story, you’ll work with Radner and Cardinal about getting the truth out as quickly as possible,” Robertson said.
“I’d hate for LNN to look bad by continuing,” Lois said, flipping her hand back at the television where Sandra Ellis was talking to, Lois guessed, Joy Cardinal about the Fort Truman press conference. “To give the general public incomplete data and assumptions not based on fact.”
“What assumptions? What facts?” Robertson insisted.
“Well, we could just stand around all day chit-chatting about it, or you could get out of my way so that I can go talk to my sources and get the confirmation you want,” Lois said, not waiting for a response as she barreled past him.
“Lane!” he called. “Wait!”
She grit her teeth and turned back to look at him.
He tossed her a mobile phone. “Call us as soon as you have confirmation.”
Lois caught the phone and nodded, heading back on her way. Until she spoke to Clark, she wouldn’t have confirmation. He was the only source she cared about at this point. At least, she now had a mobile phone. She tucked it into her briefcase and continued on her way.
***
Lois stormed out of the elevator and into the Daily Planet newsroom.
The more that she had thought about Ralph’s question at the Fort Truman press conference, Perry’s request for information on the Daitch/Nightfall virus story on Friday night, and Robertson announcing that Christine Radner also knew about the Nightfall story since Friday night, the more she realized what must have happened. Somehow, Ralph must have gotten hold of Lois’s story notes and done something stupid, which alerted LNN’s Christine Radner to the story.
Lois didn’t know for a fact that Ralph knew about the Nightfall virus, but her gut was telling her that Fort Truman had just been a fishing expedition. Maybe he hadn’t mentioned it, because he hadn’t found any more information about it than the brief mention of it in her notes. She doubted Jimbo or Laderman told Ralph about it. Perry must’ve known it was about to blow, which was why he put Clark on the case. At least, she hoped he had put Clark on it.
Because Lois hadn’t planned her exit from the Daily Planet properly, or at all, leaving in a huff with her mind only on her Luthor investigation, she only had time to grab her nameplate and stomp out. Because Perry knew that she was going undercover, she had assumed any story notebooks she had safely locked in her desk would be treated with kid gloves, kept in Perry’s protective custody, or given to Clark to guard. She had completely forgotten about her investigation on what happened during Nightfall, since Clark refused to fly her to London. It was a stupid and very costly mistake.
“Ralph Spagoda! I’m going to tear you to shreds and bury the pieces in the four corners of the Earth, so that you cannot be reborn!” she screamed, marching down the stairs and into the bullpen. “Where is that spineless story-stealing rodent?”
She could have heard a pin drop in the office after her exclamation as her former co-workers turned to face her.
“Isn’t anyone going to speak to me? You all know as well as I do that Ralph doesn’t have the brains in his rear-end to discover, let alone write up this story on Daitch and EPRAD. So, I hope none of you are hiding that bald, incompetent bastard under your desk, because when I find him I’m going to…” An image of a disemboweled Ralph hanging upside-down, naked, and covered with rats came to her mind. Her hand came to her mouth as she felt the blood drain from her face. She reached out with her other hand and set it down on the cubicle wall next to her old desk. She had seen this image of Ralph before and knew in her gut that it was something other than wishful thinking.
Oh, God. She hated Ralph, but no one deserved that kind of death.
A young blond man, looking overdressed in a three-piece suit, approached her. “He hasn’t returned yet from the press conference, Miss. May I help you?”
Lois swallowed down the bile that image of Ralph had induced and growled, “Where’s Jimmy? Where’s my stuff?”
“Jimmy? Oh, do you mean James Olsen? He’s been moved to the Printing Department,” the man replied.
“Printing Department? He’s a researcher and a damn good one. I’ll get to the bottom of this. Where’s Perry?” she demanded, taking a step towards the Editor-in-Chief’s office.
The man blocked her path. “Mr. White went home early. He wasn’t feeling well.”
“Early? Perry doesn’t get sick,” Lois said with a sinking feeling. Perry had once come straight into the office after being released from the hospital with double pneumonia. He never took sick days. He might grumble about his stress and blood pressure, but he was as fit as a horse and loved this newspaper more than his own health. She looked around, her brow furrowing. “Where’s Clark?”
The silence to her question was deafening.
“Clark went to meet a source,” Joe finally called from the Information Desk. He smiled at her and she knew someone outside of her old team was happy she was back. “And I think Jimmy put your stuff in the storage room. I’ll get it for you.”
The blond man glanced over to Clark’s desk and scowled. “He wasn’t supposed to leave without informing me.”
Lois looked more intently at the interloper in the suit. “Who
are you?”
“The more apt question would be, who are
you?” he said, crossing his arms and standing his ground.
“Lois! Darling, I thought I heard your voice. What are you doing here?” Lex said, exiting Perry’s office. “Weren’t you supposed to start your new job at LNN today?” He wrapped an arm around her waist and kissed her cheek.
The blond puffed pigeon lowered his head and took a step back.
“I did. I’m researching something, double-checking some facts,” Lois said, stiffening. She hadn’t known that Lex would be here and she hated that he was being so possessive in front of her colleagues. This was exactly why she hadn’t wanted to return to the Daily Planet. At least Clark wasn’t here to witness it.
“Why don’t you come in my office…?” Lex said, leading her towards Perry’s office.
“That’s Perry’s office,” Lois corrected.
“Perry lent it to me. It’s only my
temporary office…” Lex said. “Come, and we’ll discuss this in private.”
“Who
is that?” Lois heard the new guy ask someone.
“
That is the formidable Lois Lane,” Cat answered.
Lois glanced over her shoulder and saw Cat descending the stairs and heading over to her desk.
“I recommend that you don’t get on her bad side,” Cat continued. “She’s liable to eat you alive.”
Lois shut the door of Perry’s office behind her and Lex. “Who in the hell is that new kid?”
“Chip Peterson,” Lex said, letting go of Lois and going to sit down in Perry’s chair. “I hired him to help take some of the pressure off Perry.”
“Is he Perry’s new assistant, or secretary, or something?” Lois asked.
“Not that it should matter to you, because you’ve moved on, Lois, but no. He’ll be taking on some of Perry’s management duties,” Lex explained.
“Perry is a damn good manager, Lex. He doesn’t need any help. That kid looks younger than I am, and I’m only twenty-six. What right does he have coming in here and managing people who have worked here for years? What experience does he have in the news business? I’ve never heard of him.”
“I hired Chip straight out of Harvard Business School. I assure you he’s more than qualified,” Lex clarified.
“What in the hell is going on here?” Lois demanded, setting her hands on Perry’s desk and leaning towards Lex. “I went to LNN because you said that you loved the Daily Planet and that it was ‘a grand paper worth saving’. It might not be the best fit for my career and me any more, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t care about this paper or the people who work here. How is sending Jimmy to the Printing Department, taking away Perry’s duties, and micromanaging Clark going to make this a better paper?”
Lex laced his fingers and leaned back in Perry’s chair with a satisfied smile. “Let me do things my way, Lois. As you know, I have some experience in turning companies around. There’s always an adjustment period as new policies and management techniques take hold. I’m not coming down to your place of business and telling you how to do your job, am I, Lois?”
Lois couldn’t hide her exasperation. That was exactly what Lex was doing.
“So, why are you really here?” Lex continued.
Her fury at Ralph returned, but before the words could cross her lips that bloody image of Ralph came to the forefront of her mind again like a warning.
Lex would kill Ralph. She knew this to be a certainty.
Lois straightened up as a sudden chill trickled down her spine. One wrong word from her, and Ralph would be dead. She swallowed. She hated and despised the twerp, but he didn’t deserve to literally die, only figuratively and career-wise. “I left some things here when I quit. I came to collect them,” she said softly.
Lex was all smiles and charm, but his expression was edged with that of a predator. She knew down to her marrow that if she crossed him, he would be deadly.
Clark had always claimed Lex was the evil mastermind behind half the gruesome murder stories that had crossed their desks even though no evidence ever connected Lex, other than circumstantially, to many of the murders. Lois had a strange feeling it wasn’t just something that Lex delegated down the chain of command, but something he enjoyed taking care of personally.
Lex stood up and came around the desk to where Lois was standing. He cupped her jaw in his hands and kissed her gently on the lips, freezing her with shock. “Join me for dinner and we can discuss, then, what you think I shouldn’t change around the Daily Planet. I’d love your input,” he suggested. “Seven?”
“I have to work at the Mission,” Lois replied weakly.
She was trapped. Lex had tied a noose around her neck, and they both knew it. She had slipped up and shown her hand, allowing Lex to see what she held most dear to her heart. She could feel the ice crystals forming inside her inner fire as he kissed her again.
“Skip it,” he murmured. “We both know you don’t really need to go.”
“Eightish,” Lois whispered, stepping out of his embrace before those soul-sucking lips touched hers again. “I’d promised to be there. They’re expecting me.”
“All right, darling. Eight o’clock,” Lex conceded, sliding his hands down her arms to her hands and bringing them to his lips. He kissed the back of both of her hands before letting go. “I can’t wait to hear how your first day at LNN went.”
She walked out of Perry’s office in a daze. Sitting on her old desk was the box of stuff that Joe had said he’d retrieve for her. She shifted through it and, sure enough, her notebooks weren’t there. She swallowed down the tears forming in her eyes, willing them not to fall, and picked up the box.
It was her fault. She had done this to herself.
At the stairs, she literally bumped into Wally, who was blocking her path. “You’re friends with Ralph, right?” she asked, and Wally shrugged his assent. “Tell him not to go anywhere alone and not to head down any dark alleys. He should watch his back and be extra careful. In fact, it would be best for him to leave town until this blows over. His life depends on it.”
“Whoa, Lane, is that a threat?” Wally asked.
She looked him in the eye and stated, “It’s a warning, if he doesn’t want to die.”
Wally’s eyes widened and he raised his hands as if in surrender before stepping off to the side to let her pass.
The tears pooled in her eyes again as she approached the elevator. She needed to get out of here before Clark returned. She couldn’t face him, not now.
“Here. Let me get that,” Cat said, pushing the ‘down’ button.
“Thanks. I hear you’re to be congratulated. You? Getting married?” Lois scoffed, trying to get her emotions under control. “Maybe the world
is coming to an end.”
“Phil’s amazing,” Cat replied, ignoring her barb. “And
I hear you’re the biggest idiot in the universe.”
“Not the biggest,” Lois grumbled. That title went to Clark’s ex-fiancée. “He shouldn’t have proposed. It was too early.”
Cat’s eyebrows raised in what appeared to be surprise. “He doesn’t know it’s fake.”
Lois raised her gaze, glanced over her shoulder to see if anyone could hear them, and then tried to refocus on Cat. “What?”
“The tight-end doesn’t know you’re faking a pass.”
Lois blinked, causing the tear to creep down her cheek, as the elevator chimed and opened. Thankfully, it was empty. With a sniffle, she shifted her box to one arm and wiped her face as she entered the elevator.
Cat joined her. “You know, if you leave a delectable morsel like that on the market, someone else will gobble him up.”
“Marriage isn’t a race or a competitive sport, Cat,” Lois said with annoyance. “Either he loves me enough to wait until I’m ready, or it wasn’t meant to be because he doesn’t.”
“Oh, please! With men, you have to be upfront with your feelings or they’ll never catch on. They’re ‘tell it like it is’ creatures.”
“Except when they’re lying,” Lois replied.
“Well, yes, except then,” Cat conceded. “I’m just saying that if you attacked your private life as you do your stories and took a chance, instead of constantly pushing him away, you might actually be happy for once in your life. It’s not as if anyone better is going to come along. Come on, we both know it.”
Lois shrugged in agreement.
“You know he’d do anything for you.
Anything.”
“I’m not interested in him because of what he can do for me, Cat; I like him for him, all that other stuff aside.”
“Riiiiiiight,” Cat said slowly, and Lois rolled her eyes in response. “After what you did, you need to give him a big gesture.”
“
I need to give him a big gesture?” Lois scoffed. “What in the hell do you think I’ve been doing? Do you think I’m doing all this for, kicks and giggles?”
“Maybe. Or possibly another Kerth,” Cat guessed.
Lois glared at her. Clark was worth a hundred Kerths, fifteen Meriwethers, and two Pulitzers, combined.
“You need to get on your knees, beg him for forgiveness, and tell him you’ll marry him,” Cat said.
“Not happening, Cat.” Anyway, if anyone should be begging for forgiveness, it was Clark.
“You need to talk to him.”
Lois nodded, and hissed through her teeth, “Don’t you think I know that? It isn’t safe… for either of us.”
“Hey, hey,” Cat said, pulling a tissue out of her purse and wiping Lois’s cheeks dry. Lois hadn’t realized that she was still tearing. “You’ll be back here someday, Lois. It’s not the end of the world.”
“It might be,” Lois replied, looking at Cat. “I have to accept Lex’s proposal tonight.”
Cat’s jaw dropped. The elevator chimed and Lois stepped out.
***End of Part 150*** Part 151 Comments
