Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong Clark TOC can be found
Here~~~~~~~~~
Where we left off in Part 156 …William Henderson flipped papers back and forth in his file. Perry White had asked to look through Kent’s file on Luthor one more time to see if they could use anything against the new owner of the Daily Planet.
Hunches. No facts. Very thin threads tying the billionaire to murder victims. Nothing concrete. Not even enough coincidences to bring to his lieutenant’s attention, let alone for a search warrant.
His phone rang. “Henderson.”
It was the desk sergeant. “Inspector, there’s a phone call for you.”
“About what?” Bill grumbled.
“An attempted murder.”
“Patch him through to Homicide,” Bill ordered.
“She says it’s associated to one of your on-going cases.”
Bill sat up straighter. “Which one?”
“She didn’t say,” the sergeant said.
Henderson gazed up at the ceiling with annoyance. “Did she give you a name?”
“Nina.”
“That name means nothing to me. How about a last name?” Bill asked.
“Hold on,” the sergeant said. A minute later, the sergeant was back on the line. “Sorry, Inspector. She says her name is Meena,” he spelt it. “Kent.”
Bill didn’t know if he would’ve associated the name with Clark Kent, if he hadn’t been looking at his name when the desk sergeant mentioned it. “Patch her through.” He hung up the phone, closed the file on Luthor, and walked over to his filing cabinet.
Chuck and Meena. He had almost forgotten about that note from his partner that Clark had gotten in his bag at the hospital. Had someone tried to off Kent again? He had better close that case soon or someone was going to start wondering why the Daily Planet reporter wasn’t able to die.
Bill’s phone rang with the transfer. “Hello?”
“Henderson?” a female voice asked over the line.
“Yes, this is Inspector William Henderson.”
“I need your help,” she said for the first time he could remember. “There’s been an attempted murder.”
“Who’s trying to kill you now, Lane?” he asked, amazed she had made it this far into the week.
“Not me. Superman.”
Part 157Henderson froze. Had Lois Lane just admitted that Kent was moonlighting in tights? “You want to run that past me again, there, Lane?”
“I’d rather not discuss this over the phone, Inspector,” Lane said. “Pick me up at the corner of…” She paused. “Eighth Street and Mullecky.”
Suicide Slum? Explains why she didn’t just take a cab. “I’ll send a squad car to…”
“No!” Lane exclaimed. “Just you, and don’t tell anyone. I’ve only got a short window of opportunity before he realizes that I’m missing, and I want him to believe for the moment that his plan worked.”
“Who?”
“The killer,” she replied, being her usual vague self.
“Any idea on who that might be?” Henderson asked wryly, knowing full well about Lois Lane and her hunches.
“The same man who abducted Clark. Now, he’s going after Superman,” Lane said.
A man in his position should really ask her how killing Superman would be possible, being that he was invulnerable and all, but Bill already knew the truth about the red and green rocks, so he let that one slide. “Do you have any proof tying this guy to an attempted murder?” he asked.
“In my hand,” she replied.
Henderson jumped out of his seat and pulled his jacket off the back of his chair. Someone got hold of some Kryptonite in his city and used it against Superman? This was bad. “I’ll be right there.”
“Bring a lead lined bag.”
“A what?”
“Never mind. We’ll get one at S.T.A.R. Labs,” Lane said.
“Is our favorite Man in Blue okay?”
“No, but he will be. Hurry,” Lane said, and then she hung up.
***
By the time Clark stopped leaping from building to building, he was back downtown again. As soon as he stopped moving, his mind focused on Lois using Kryptonite against him. Other than Cat, she was the only person in Metropolis who knew he was Superman. Out of the two women in his life, he never thought either of them would ever turn on him. He had
trusted her. He loved her.
He couldn’t go home. He couldn’t think about what Lois did to him. The pain was too fresh, too raw. He needed to distract himself. He took a shaking breath and tried to fly to the Daily Planet, only he couldn’t find the will to fly. He didn’t know what was to blame: his exposure to Kryptonite or his bereft sadness that Lois would turn against him so badly, when he had been riding high on hope again.
He felt so empty and alone.
At least in his old dimension, Clark didn’t have to worry about romantic entanglements. With Superman’s secret public knowledge, he couldn’t have any. For the first time in two years, he saw his lonely isolated life as it had been in his home dimension as a positive, rather than a negative. Maybe it was better not to feel happiness, then he never had to worry about feeling as he did right now.
His ears perked up as his hearing improved. He could hear a woman crying.
Cat!He leapt and bounded from building to building until he closed in on Cat’s tears. The Daily Planet, of course. He spun into his business suit and jogged down the stairs to the newsroom, heading directly to where Cat sat in the conference room.
“Is everything all right?” he asked, opening the door.
“No,” she said through her sniffles. “Phil’s left me.”
Clark knelt down beside her, taking her into his arms. “Why?”
“You,” she whispered and began crying again.
He stiffened. “Me?” Glancing around, he saw the photos on the table. “What’s this?”
“Photographic proof that I’ve been cheating on Phil,” Cat said, her voice rough though she was trying to make it sound light. “Someone sent them to him.”
Clark’s brow deepened in concentration as he moved the pictures around on the table. “You haven’t cheated on Phil and certainly not with me.”
“I
know that. I tried to explain that to him, yet…” She flung her hand over the litter of photographs. “I thought I had convinced him of that, and I could see that he wanted to believe me, but… No. It doesn’t matter,” she said, pulling Clark back into her arms.
“Did you tell him about the baby?” Clark whispered.
“No. If he can’t accept me for me, I don’t want him to accept me only because of that,” Cat explained. “This didn’t seem like the best time to bring it up. Anyway, I don’t know for sure that it is his.”
“I’m so sorry. I can talk to him and reassure him…”
“No! You can’t!” she insisted.
He leaned back to look her in the face. “I can’t?”
Cat shook her head. “He gave me an ultimatum, either our friendship or him.”
“And you chose
me?” he said in disbelief. “Oh, Cat, no.” He shook his head. “No. I can’t allow this.”
“With everything that’s going on right now, you need me,” she asserted.
Clark smiled weakly and ran his hand over her hair. “I do, but I still want you to choose him. You
love him, Cat. I’ve never seen anyone so in love. Choose him. I’ll still be your friend. I promise not to take it personally.”
“Not that this is even remotely similar, but would you have been happy, had Lois told you she wasn’t going to give up her friendship with Lex, just because you wanted her to? No, you wouldn’t have,” Cat retorted.
He turned away under the guise of picking up photographs off the floor. “Lois didn’t give me that choice, Cat,” he whispered. “She made her own decision.”
“I’m never going to be happy with either choice, Clark,” Cat replied.
“Sure, you will. In time, Phil will realize that those accusations were ungrounded and that there’s never been anything between us, but friendship. In the meantime, you’ll not have ruined your relationship. He’s just scared he’ll lose you, that’s all.” He remembered Lana and her Superman ultimatum, and he was flooded with guilt.
“Stop making excuses for him. What he did was unforgiveable,” she said.
I know. He picked up the photograph of Cat begging him to marry her if Phil didn’t. “I must admit this evidence appears pretty damning. If he had heard what you had said yesterday, he might not be in such a forgiving mood.”
“Don’t put this on my head, Bud. You and I both know you’d never accept,” Cat said. “Not while Lois still has breath in her…Clark, what’s this?” She touched the back of his neck. “Is this blood?”
He pulled up the collar of his shirt. “Oh, it’s nothing. I was shot earlier. The bullet grazed my neck.”
“
Claaaark.”
He closed his eyes and sighed, knowing he wouldn’t be able to avoid this conversation without flying through the window. “It’s nothing, Cat. I’m okay. It’s already healed.”
“We’ve been over this. You aren’t supposed to bleed,” Cat reminded him, standing up and moving around to the front of him. “What happened?”
***
Even if she hadn’t been able to see Henderson behind the wheel, Lois would have known it was him. His sedan just screamed ‘unmarked police car’. She climbed into the front seat next to him a second after he pulled up to the curb.
Henderson looked down at her feet and said, “Nice shoes. Where was the attack?”
Lois sneered in annoyance at his lame joke about her high heels being broken off and pointed down the street. “This is completely off the record.”
“If it’s not on the record, I can’t arrest anyone.”
“Fine, but I don’t want anything leaking until we know we’ve nailed him to the wall. If it can remain between us two, the better. Clark and I have full exclusivity of this. It’s
our story or no dice,” she insisted, and then waited for his nod, before launching into a rough summary of events, minus the kissing, begging for forgiveness, and pledges of love on her behalf.
Henderson pulled the car to the curb. “You’re saying that your
engagement ring is made of Kryptonite?” he said, turning to face her.
“No, it’s a diamond,” Lois said, holding it up for him to see. “But it’s coated in Kryptonite somehow. That’s why we need to get to S.T.A.R. Labs. We need to remove the Kryptonite and contain it in a secure location as evidence.”
“Against Lex Luthor?”
She nodded.
The inspector grinned. “Glad to have you on board, Ms. Lane.” He pulled back into traffic. “Where’s… Superman now?”
Lois shrugged. “I don’t know. He ran off.”
“You mean ‘flew’.”
“No, ‘ran’. He jumped from roof to roof.” She pressed her lips together. If she said too much, Clark would have even more reasons not to ever forgive her. “What I’m about to say isn’t common knowledge and for Superman’s safety, it needs to remain between us.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Henderson said.
Lois studied him, before speaking. “The Kryptonite temporarily knocked out his ability to fly; that’s why we crashed onto the roof,” she said. “The radiation from the Kryptonite weakens him, removing his abilities, including his invulnerability, which is how he can be hurt…” She swallowed, remembering the torn cape and suit. “… and killed. I don’t think Lex knows that’s how it kills him only that it does. Trask thought it would kill Superman instantly as high doses of radiation would do to us, but Superman isn’t built… isn’t
hardwired like us.”
Henderson raised a brow and she could see him swallow the smart aleck remark from his lips. For that, she’d be grateful.
“Pull over here,” she said, pointing to an empty spot across the street from the elevated train entrance. Then she ran through her story again and indicated the roof upon which she and Superman had crashed. “I took the fire escape down, since the roof access door was locked.”
He nodded in understanding. “Did you get a license plate or anything?”
“It all happened so fast. I doubt Ri… my source will ever speak to me again. He abhors violence, and that guy’s punch probably bruised his face pretty good,” Lois admitted sadly. Ricky was one of the only remaining sources she had since her trek to the dark side. She flipped down the visor of the patrol car, but it didn’t have a vanity mirror.
“How do I look?” she asked the policeman.
“I’ve seen you look better,” he claimed.
“Do I look like someone just beat me up and I crashed landed on the roof?” she asked.
“I’ve seen you look worse,” was all he would admit.
Lois set her hands into her lap and stared at the scene of her attack. “It isn’t going to be enough, is it?”
“What do you mean? If S.T.A.R. Labs verifies that your engagement ring is coated in Kryptonite, we’ve got him for two attempted murders: Superman’s and yours,” Henderson said.
“But it’s not enough. His lawyers will be able to convince the jury that
I could have coated the ring myself to incriminate him. I have had it in my possession this whole week. Even if we could get him dead to rights on the possession of a deadly substance…” She looked Henderson in the eye. “It
is that, you know. Even if we could… Lex could claim that he was protecting me, knowing how Superman’s such a risk or some other B.S. like that. On the other hand, he could claim jealousy. Everyone knows Superman and I are friends, and he could say he thought that little bit would make it uncomfortable for Superman to be around me, but he doubted that he could seriously harm the man.” She slammed her palm onto the dashboard. “Damn! He’s going to skirt this, isn’t he?”
“We don’t know that,” he replied, but Lois could hear his doubts. “The ring is enough to get us a warrant.”
“We
need this to be a slam dunk to freeze all of his assets and put him away for life... for longer than that. He tried to kill Clark and he tried to kill Superman, he deserves no less,” she insisted. “We need to know where we're looking, where Lex keeps his Kryptonite, before a search warrant would do us any good. We don’t even know if he would keep it in his office or his penthouse, or some other secret locale. If we don’t find it with the first warrant…” She gritted her teeth. “If we show our hand now, without real proof, he’ll shore up his defenses and we’ll never get him. We’ll have lost our advantage.”
“So, what do you want to do?”
Lois leaned over and looked at herself in the side view mirror, before turning to face him again. “Punch me!”
“What?” Henderson sounded startled.
“I want you to hit me in the face. I’m going to need to remain undercover and to do so, I’m going to play to Lex’s ego. For that, I need to look banged up more. Punch me,” she repeated.
“I’m not going to hit you, Lane. It’s against the law,” Henderson said, checking over his shoulder and pulling into traffic. “I’m going to have to bring you back here to go over your story again later, and call in the crime scene guys. Although, I doubt there’ll be any evidence remaining by that time. I’ll make sure to examine the roof myself. First, let’s get that ring into evidence.”
“I’ll sign a waiver.”
The policeman paused and glanced over at her. “I’ll believe when I see it.”
***
Jimbo stepped off the bus and started walking towards the Daily Planet. He
had to talk to CK. He had to apologize for coming between him and Lois and sending her into the arms of Lex Luthor.
No matter what Jimmy had said, Jimbo hadn’t been able to concentrate on his exam. All he could think about was how he had inadvertently interfered with a friend’s relationship. He felt horrible. CK had never been anything but kind to him and to Lois.
Jimbo figured that he understood Lois better than most, because Lucy had told him about their childhood. It was something he and Lucy had in common; their lack of a father figure. At least,
his father had the decency to let his mother go, instead of dragging the two of them through years of a bad marriage as Dr. Lane had done with Lucy, Lois, and their mother.
True, Jimbo’s mother had never gotten over his father’s abandonment of them, nor had Jack Olsen ever been the best of fathers, especially after he left. When his dad had left that summer when Jimbo was five, Jack Olsen had told him that he loved him and his mother, but that his work would take him away from them. His dad hadn’t wanted to force them to suffer through his long absences and inability to communicate from the far reaches of the world, which was why he had freed them to go on with their lives without him. While Mrs. Lane had fallen into a bottle, Mrs. Olsen had eaten her way through her misery. Jimbo always wondered if his father had chosen them over his career what difference it would have made in his life.
Lucy had told him more than once while they dated how she had wished her sister would fall for Clark Kent over Lex Luthor. Unfortunately, Lois and CK had fought over something and had a falling out for most of the summer. Lois had then spent the rest of the summer, until the man had shot her, dating the billionaire.
Jimbo had felt bad for Luthor that Lois had dumped him for accidentally shooting her. He could picture himself doing something like that, so ill-conceived and stupid, not actually shooting someone. Everyone made mistakes. Jimbo, himself,
had dumped Lucy Lane, only to have her hook up with his cousin. Even if she would’ve considered giving him a second chance, it was highly unlikely with his cousin standing between them. If that wasn’t analogous to shooting himself in the foot, he didn’t know what was.
That was the main reason Jimbo had nudged Lois and Mr. Luthor together at the Magic of the Night Ball. They were all ignoring the fact that it was obvious that Mr. Luthor had come to the charity event merely to see Lois, whom he evidently was still gaga for, and Jimbo thought he should be allowed to have a second chance. He figured Lois and CK bumped into one another at the event. She had seemed so miserable when they had met to discuss the Nightfall spreadsheet, as if her whole world had fallen apart. How was Jimbo to know it had to do with falling in love with CK?
He should have known. Love was the source of all misery.
Then, again, how
could Jimbo have known? Especially after Lois had said that she came to the Ball with Jimbo, when he knew that to be the furthest thing from the truth. Jimmy would’ve known she was covering for an illicit romance with her partner. He was much better at reading people than Jimbo was. That was why Jimbo liked computers so much. No facial expressions or emotional cues to read. One could fix a mistake on a computer much easier than one could fix a mistake in real life.
He’d apologize to CK about what happened at the Magic of the Night Ball, and insist that CK talk to Lois. She wasn’t married to Luthor, yet, only engaged, and engagements broke every day. Jimbo would even volunteer to speak to Lois on CK’s behalf, since it was all his fault. Anyway, he knew where Lois spent her evenings.
Jimbo would fix this.
If anyone deserved a happily ever after, it was CK.
***
“Can we get it off, Jonas?” Lois asked.
“I don’t know, Lois. It’s not quite my area of expertise. I’m going to have to call in someone else,” Jonas Peabody, PhD in robotics, replied, much to her annoyance.
Lois snapped her fingers. “Who is that man who works with Superman?”
“Dr. Klein?” Jonas guessed.
She pointed at him. “That’s the one. Can he help? He would also know the best way to secure the Kryptonite.”
“Dr. Klein is a Superman expert?” Inspector Henderson asked.
“Well, I doubt anyone is an ‘expert’, but Bernard Klein is as close as they come,” Jonas answered. “At least here at S.T.A.R. Labs.”
“Would he be able to verify Ms. Lane’s claims that Kryptonite is attached to her engagement ring?” Henderson asked.
“Nothing else would knock Superman from the sky,” Lois said.
Henderson held up his hand to interject. “That may be true, but for my case to move forward, I need something a bit more substantial than the word of a witness to what might be on your ring.”
“Fine,” Lois conceded, turning back to Jonas, but the man was already on the telephone.
When he hung up, Jonas said, “Dr. Klein has asked that I escort you to his laboratory. He’s just finishing an experiment, and it should be completed by the time we arrive.” He handed back to Lois her ring. She put it back on as he led them into the hall and down the corridor.
***
“What do you mean ‘Lois came after you with Kryptonite’?” Cat repeated back to him.
Clark didn’t want to think about it, let alone speak about it. “Superman,” he said, clearing his throat. “She went after
Superman.”
Cat waved away the difference.
“She went to Suicide Slum, alone and without her bodyguard. I don’t know why. Perhaps because she knew someone would attack her there and she could scream for help. She and Luthor probably set it up that way.” He stood up and started pacing. “I…
Superman zipped away, just for a few minutes… half hour, at the most… to help stop a robbery, and when he returned to LNN, she was gone. He looked everywhere.” Clark ran a hand through his hair. “I was over Suicide Slum when I heard her scream. Some men were attacking her on the stairs to the elevated train. I…
he snatched her away from them and took off. Just like old times.”
He stopped at the window and closed his eyes tightly. His traitorous mind replayed how good it felt to have Lois in his arms with her head against his chest, to smell her hint of perfume up close, to feel her hair whip his face… all those things he had taken for granted during those months that he had lied to her and continued to lie to her. If he had only known then what he was doing to her, to them. “The first thing I noticed was the silence.” Clark smiled weakly. “But I… anyway, the men started shooting a second later. When I felt the bullet graze my neck…” He moved his hand to the spot. “I knew something was wrong. That’s when I realized we weren’t heading up as quickly as we should; in fact we were falling… because I no longer could…” Clark cleared his throat. “I wrapped her in my cape and angled us, so that I would strike the roof first, taking the brunt of the fall.”
Cat set her hand on his shoulder. “Once a hero…”
“We rolled and slid across the roof, ending a good fifteen feet from where we landed,” he continued, not wanting to admit the truth that, even then, he hadn’t known what Lois was doing to him.
Cat moved her hand to his back, and he winced. Though healed, the memory of in the injury still felt tender there.
“When Lois touched my face it burned in a familiar way,” he went on. “I knew she had Kryptonite. I could hardly breathe, let alone speak. Then she started kissing me…”
“Hold on.
Hold on! Stop right there. She
kissed you?” Cat shook her head. “Clark, I told you she still loves you.”
Clark looked down at his shoes. “Yeah, she mentioned that as well as she pinned me to the roof with her body and stabbed me with a poisoned dagger.”
Disbelief covered Cat’s face. “She
stabbed you?”
“Metaphorically.”
With a glower, Cat pressed her lips together with annoyance. “Let’s stick to facts, shall we? The
literal facts, please.”
“Fine,” he snapped, crossing his arms. “It
literally felt as if she were stabbing me with a dagger dripping with acid. Happy now?”
“No, but go on,” she said. “Did she know what she was doing?”
“The pain made my ears ring, I could hardly hear her. She kept telling me that she was ‘sorry’; therefore, she must’ve known what she was doing,” Clark went on.
“She apologized for killing you?” Cat said skeptically as she walked to the other end of the room and back again. “That doesn’t sound like Lois. Maybe she was apologizing for her kisses. Did she say why she was killing you?”
“She didn’t have to…”
Cat rolled her eyes. “Yes, she does. You might never see it, but Lois has faults and one of her biggest is claiming credit for things. She’s definitely the type of person to tell you to your face if she was killing you and why. If she didn’t…” She raised her hands as if to say… actually, Clark wasn’t quite sure what the shrug meant.
***
Phil felt horrible. Worse than horrible, in fact downright miserable.
He loved Cat. She was sweet, loving, and knock down gorgeous. It was a miracle that she spoke to him, and, yet, according to Joe she seemed to like him as much as he liked her. Phil had spent most of his entire thirty-four years longing to meet such a woman, and he doubted he could find another one who made him half as happy.
Cat had promised him that there wasn’t anything going on between her and Kent, but how couldn’t Phil be jealous with the photographic evidence spread out before them? Kent was everything Phil wasn’t, everything a woman like Cat deserved. Kent was the epitome of tall, dark, and handsome, while Phil was out of shape, not so tall, and had thinning hair. The only things he and Kent had in common were that they were both male, both wore glasses, and both cared a lot for Cat. If Kent ever took up contacts, Phil hoped it was well after he and Cat had moved to Houston.
Phil groaned.
As if that would ever happen now. He could just kick himself.
Cat had insisted that she and Kent were only friends, and it did her credit that she wouldn’t abandon her best friend when he was going through a rough patch. Still, Phil had gambled his future on the hope that Cat would choose him and he lost. Of course, she would keep her best friends whom she had known… however long over her whirlwind romance with him. Especially since Phil had already floored her with the news that NASA hired him back and he was due in Houston by mid-summer.
He was the stupidest man in the world.
Phil rubbed his forehead and inched forward in the mid-day traffic. He knew he really shouldn’t take any more time off from work for this, even if he had already given a six-week notice to the guys at the copier maintenance shop. He needed the money to help with the move. Anyway, he wanted to square away his savings, just in case NASA laid him off again. Yet, his mind wouldn’t allow him to think about anything but Cat.
He recalled the day he had proposed. It was the craziest, most wonderful day of his life. He and Cat had just finished another marathon session in bed, cuddling in one another’s arms and trying to catch their breath. Phil smiled. He had been thinking about how he never thought sex could ever be so good. He knew it could be good, but with Cat it was beyond good. It was mind-blowingly amazing. Just thinking about how she screamed his name in pleasure and how good it felt to make her so happy, not to mention, how good she made him feel, he considered himself the luckiest man on Earth. He could die in her arms and never regret a moment.
He had been just drifting off to a well-needed nap, when he heard her murmur in his ear, “I love you.”
“Marry me,” he had replied without a second thought, without even realizing he was voicing his thoughts aloud.
“What?” Cat had stammered, sitting up. “What did you say?”
Phil couldn’t tell if she sounded frightened or excited. He took a chance and steamrolled ahead. He turned to face her. “I love you more than anything in the universe, and nothing would make me happier than spending the rest of my life, proving to you how incredibly special and wonderful you are.”
Her eyes had opened wider than he thought possible. Her mouth curved into an ‘O’ of shock. “I’m not all that special, Phil,” she had tried to correct him, fluffing up the pillows. “I’m not all that wonderful.”
“You are to me,” he said, wrapping an arm around her shoulder.
Cat had been hugging her knees, and her leg reached over and brought his knee between hers. “I’ve been with many men, Phil, so many men that I’ve lost count,” she said.
“So.” He wasn’t so naïve to think that such a goddess of love was still a virgin when she took him in the copier room.
“Probably in the hundreds, if not thousands of men,” Cat clarified.
“So,” he had said. “What only matters to me is from now on.”
“Are you serious, Phil? Because stop now, if you aren’t, because I don’t think I could handle it if you said these things and didn’t mean any of them,” she said, and he could see tears sparkling in her eyes. “Marriage is a lifetime commitment. It’s the good, the bad,
and the ugly, twenty-five hours a day, eight days a week, and three-hundred sixty-six days a year. Keep in mind, I’m more than just fantastic sex, you know.”
He had grinned. “I know. Who else could beat the pants off an aeronautical engineer at strip Trivial Pursuit? Twice. We’re trivia junkies, you know. While all others are off carousing in college, we’re studying books brushing up on our little known facts.”
She had shrugged modestly. “I find intelligence sexy.”
He had kissed her shoulder. Her words had made him more sure of his choice. “Who else could argue political history with that jerk at the mayor’s thing the other night, and
win?”
Cat had smiled. “He was a jerk, wasn’t he?”
“Those pancakes with strawberries you made for breakfast this morning were out of this world,” Phil insisted.
“You’re just saying that because of how I fed them to you,” Cat murmured, kissing him.
“That hadn’t hurt,” he had admitted, a blush rising to his cheeks. “I don’t want to go back to not having you in my life, again, Cat.”
“And I don’t want to go back to living my life without you, Phil,” she had replied, deepening her kiss. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”
Phil had been in heaven.
Now, he was in hell.
What had he done? Two weeks later, and he had already broken his promise to make her the happiest woman in the universe.
He had given her an ultimatum.
How could he have been so stupid?
He was a jerk. He was worse than… he shook his head, trying to think of the worst thing out there… worse than whoever created that rumored Nightfall virus, which convinced Superman to destroy a harmless asteroid and endanger the Earth.
Phil turned right down a side street, and then another. He had to go back. He had to beg Cat to forgive him. He had to plead for her to take him back. He only prayed that he wasn’t too late.
***
Jimbo knocked on the conference room door and peeked his head inside. “CK, oh, good. There you are. Do you have a minute?”
“This isn’t a good time,” Cat snapped.
Clark set his hand on her shoulder to calm her. He, personally, could use a break from thinking about Lois. “Is this about the Nightfall virus?” he asked hopefully.
Cat threw up her hands in annoyance, knocking his hand free. “I’ve got some calls I need to return anyway.” She marched to the door before turning back. “Someday, you’ll see I was right about this, and you were wrong.”
“It would take a miracle,” Clark murmured.
“What, for me to be right, or for you to see how very wrong you are?” Cat scoffed, slamming the door behind her.
Jimbo winced. “Ye-ouch! Sorry, man. Maybe she was right, and I am interrupting.”
“Don’t worry about it, Jimbo. What have you learned?” Clark asked. Then, noticing the blackmail photos were still spread across the table, he started to clean them up.
“Whoa, man, what’s this?” Jimbo asked, picking up a photo of Clark and Cat outside the Metro Diner.
“You don’t want to know,” Clark said, snatching the photo away from Jimbo and adding it to the others. Jimbo had already picked up another photo. Clark held out his hand. “It isn’t what it looks like.”
Jimbo handed him the photo. “It never is, is it?”
“What do you mean?”
“In TV shows and movies, whenever someone gets caught in a compromising position, they always say ‘it isn’t what it looks like’ and, yet, it always
is what it looks like,” Jimbo replied.
“Thankfully, real life isn’t as cut and dried as that, Jimbo,” Clark said. “What did you want to talk about?”
“I came here to apologize for pushing Lois at Luthor at the Magic of the Night Ball…”
Terrific. Out of one minefield and into another. “You didn’t push,” Clark corrected, refusing to meet his gaze, and hoping he would change the subject.
“I totally blocked you. Jimmy said that you and Lois were...” Jimbo’s voice faded as he picked up the picture where it appeared Cat and Clark were kissing. “Jimmy said you were ‘the King’ when it came to women, but
Cat? She’s engaged to another man now, CK. She and Lois are friends. Well, maybe not friends per se, but colleagues. Anyway, I came here to tell you to fight for Lois, to tell her how you really feel, because I thought you were a stand-up guy and deserved better…”
“Lois is engaged to another man, too. Maybe my relationship with her is exactly what I deserve,” Clark murmured, ignoring Jimbo’s accusation regarding Cat. “Perhaps it’s the universe’s way of telling me I don’t belong here and should never have come.”
“Well, CK, I doubt the universe speaks to us quite as directly as…”
An explosion from below shook the floors and walls of the newsroom.
***End of Part 157*** Part 158 You can place your
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