Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong Clark TOC can be found
HereWhere we left off in Part 163 …Lois leaned back, and he opened his eyes to find out why. She was staring at him. “Don’t make this into a competition, Kent, because you’d soooo lose.”
His heart felt full of sunlight and his smile increased. “Would I, then? I doubt that, Lane,” he replied, leaning towards her again.
“Prove it,” she challenged.
Clark pressed his lips to hers and did just that.
When the washer with her whites in it beeped a few minutes later, he stepped back to move the load into the dryer. Lois swayed and appeared a bit star struck. He couldn’t help the gloating smile of victory, which crossed his face.
Five seconds later, he was popping quarters from her coin purse into the dryer and starting it, having already shifted the whites. She hadn’t made a comment about him touching her underwear or even opened her eyes from his kiss. Challenge fulfilled.
He leaned back against the laundry room table and grinned at her with his arms crossed as he waited for her to regain her equilibrium.
Lois’s eyes opened and she looked him up and down. Grabbing the front of his t-shirt, she pulled him towards her and said, “Nice effort, Chuck. Now, let me show you how it’s done. You better start working on your concession speech.”
No chance of that happening, Clark thought as her body melted against his. It was a good thing he could hold his breath for a long time.
That long list of things that they still needed to discuss started to gather dust in his mind.
***
Part 164*************
Back in Town*************
Herb Wells raised his hand to knock on Clark’s door. Before he could, a behemoth with a mess of blond hair under a red cap wearing a black leather jacket opened the door from the inside, jingling the most obnoxious Superman key ring Herb had ever seen.
“Pardon me,” Herb said, tipping his bowler. “Does Mr. Clark Kent still live here?”
The man grinned, took Wells’s hand into his, and vigorously shook it. Then, exiting outside, he shut the door behind him. “Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?” the tall man said. “I hate to do this to you, but I was just about to deliver a pizza. Can you come back in an hour or maybe this evening? I’ll have more time to speak to you then. I may have to pop off to the opera, for a few minutes, but otherwise I’m free.”
Herb’s mouth fell open with surprise at the familiarity this stranger gave him. He quickly shut it. When he took a closer look at the man, it fell open again. “
Mr. Kent!... Clark? What? I say, what has…?”
“I’d really love to stay and chat, Herb, but I have to deliver a pizza within the next half-hour. I’d invite you in to wait, but Jimbo… uh… This dimension’s Mr. Olsen… er… Jimmy lives with me now and it’ll cause too many questions. Tonight!” Clark patted Herb on the back and jogged down the stairs, leaving the time traveler in quite a befuddled state.
“I say…” Herb mumbled to himself.
Things had certainly taken a turn for the worse over the last three months. In his entire life, Herb doubted he had ever seen a Clark Kent who had come unhinged in so short a time. Delivering pizzas? Cohabitating with young Mr. Olsen? Dyeing his hair. Herb’s brow furrowed in puzzlement.
He heard the roar of a motorized bicycle start behind the building. Walking to the other side of the alcove, where he and Clark had spoken in February, Herb glanced over the wall and down into the alley. Clark was strapping a protective helmet to his head.
Oh, dear. Had Clark lost his powers? Was that how he was able to dye his hair? How had the great Superman been reduced to this? What had Herb done to the poor man, bringing him to this universe? Herb wandered back to the café table outside of Clark’s front door and sat down to think about his own actions in the matter.
Herb had felt so guilty about what he had discovered regarding the Miss Lane from this Clark’s home universe. Certainly, her circumstances prior to her death had been dire; there was no doubt about that in Herb’s mind. She hadn’t followed quite the same path as the Lois from Herb’s home universe, or even this universe’s Miss Lane, but he had witnessed good in her. Had he been too hasty in dismissing Clark’s ability in redeeming her? Herb considered again everything that he knew concerning that Miss Lane and decided that ‘no’ his decision regarding her had been the correct one. She would have done nothing, but bring ruin upon Clark’s life, his emotional well-being, and upon Superman’s reputation had they figured out a way to bring her forward in time.
Alas, they would not have been able to do so without revealing to her about time travel. Doing so would have been too complex, and would have most likely started a chain-reaction of horrible events. Therefore, it was impossible. Herb so hated that word. Certainly, it was doable, but since the consequences of such a transplantation made it impossible for Clark to have his Utopia, his happily-ever-after life with Lois, what would be the point. Mostly, it had been impossible, because it wouldn’t have taken long for
that Ms. Lane to figure out what happened, even if they had come up with a viable plan to bring her forward in time without her knowledge. Yes, allowing fate to continue its course in that instance was still for the best for all involved, no matter how difficult and heartbreaking a decision it had been for Herb to make.
Herb had witnessed her final minutes and knew that there was no way he could ever bring Clark to know about them or see them for himself without causing the man to change the course of history in his old universe, a history which Clark himself had insisted to Herb could
not be changed. That wasn’t even bringing into consideration the time paradox, which would occur if Superman first appeared in 1993 instead of 1996.
Not that this Clark would ever had been able to have a relationship with the Lois from his home universe either, let alone consummate it. The same fracturing of timelines that had occurred here also happened in that other dimension. Here, it had occurred when Tempus had killed off the baby Kal-El in 1966. There… well, Herb still wasn’t definitely sure what exactly had happened in that universe, but the fracturing had happened at least a hundred years earlier than that. Still not early enough to stop Baron Tempos from having his sorcerer enact true love’s curse. Herb sighed.
He knew that he couldn’t return Clark back to his former universe without powers, not when everyone knew there that Clark Kent was Superman. Herb wasn’t sure what to think about this new unimproved version of his friend. Perhaps it was only a temporary status of being. The man seemed happy enough, but delivering food, riding around on motorized bicycles, and cohabitating with young Olsen and thereby risking exposure of his secret? Had he taken to heart the news about the curse and broken all ties with this universe’s Lois Lane?
There was also the awful possibility that Clark’s secret had been exposed in this dimension as well. Perchance he hadn’t lost his powers and dyed his hair, but was merely wearing a wig to disguise himself. Was he experimenting on ways to change his appearance in order to return to his old dimension a “changed man”? If so, why would he stay in Metropolis? Perhaps he was giving the apartment to young Olsen and would be requesting Herb to return him to his home universe, but if that were the case, why would the delivery of one pizza matter so much to postpone their meeting? Then, again, Clark had always been a man of honor. If he had promised to deliver a pizza, deliver it he would.
Herb considered his efforts on Clark’s behalf to find a cure for the curse. He had owed the man that much. While a mere three months had gone by for Clark Kent in this universe, over a year in Herb’s internal clock had passed. He had traveled into his home universe’s past, but the sorcerer wouldn’t give him the antidote to the curse. Herb had traveled into the future… well, he tried to travel into the future where he had met Tempus, but since the man had changed the Utopian future from whence he had come by changing the past, it was no longer there to travel to.
While this new future, to which Herb had traveled, had Lois and Clark happily married to the end, not to mention national as well as international heroes as it had before, crime had no longer been wiped out. In spite of the good works done by the descendants of Superman and Lois Lane, weapons remained to plague the populace, and, worse yet, over seventeen hundred channels on that infernal box Tempus hated and still nothing to watch, or so he had been told. His work in repairing his timeline from his costly and time-consuming mistake of taking Tempus out of the future and into the past was far from over.
He had traced the genealogy of Tempus’s direct family back through to modern times. Unfortunately, it would take an even deeper examination of each of the lives of Tempus’s ancestors to discover which of them Superman, Clark, or one of his descendants had saved. Herb’s cursory examination didn’t reveal any direct rescues at all.
Therefore, Herb hadn’t exhausted all of his avenues for exploration, but he decided to check in with this hero and discover if the man truly wanted him to continue searching for the link between Superman and Tempus to fix the broken timeline, or a cure to the curse. Herb was no longer so certain such a cure could be found, let alone existed. Even the sorcerer who had cursed Sir Charles and Lady Loisette claimed that there wasn’t an antidote, but Herb found it difficult to take the word of a person who turned his wife into a rat merely because Herb had accidentally tripped and fallen against her.
During these last few months of research in the future, Herb had begun to wonder if it was even necessary to find a cure. Clark had said that he had discovered the reincarnated soul of this universe’s Kal-El in a Catholic priest down in the Brazilian rainforest. If
that Clark, or Padre Carlos as he was known, had ownership of
this universe’s Clark-soul, it was possible – although, not one hundred percent certain – that the curse was tied to
his and
this Miss Lane’s souls. Then again, how different were the souls of this universe’s Clark and that of the man whom Herb had brought here to find love? Did it make a difference? Was it enough of a difference that if this Miss Lane married a Clark from
another dimension that they would be able to consummate their relationship without worry?
Perhaps, too, the search for an answer was moot. It was entirely possible that Miss Lane had never forgiven Clark for whatever liberties he had taken while she was drunk on the pheromone perfume and she had decided to fall earnestly for Lex Luthor. In his depression, Clark quit the Daily Planet to deliver pizzas on a motorized bicycle. He then exposed himself to Kryptonite, dyed his hair blond, and moved into his apartment the Jimmy Olsen he had befriended in his home universe, to be able to afford the rent while he waited for Herb to return to take him back to his home universe.
Herb reconsidered the scenario he had created to explain Clark’s odd behavior and decided that it was highly implausible. Instead of speculating on what had happened to his friend, or worse trying to fix it, Herb decided to wait for Clark to tell Herb himself what had happened.
A part of the time traveler wondered if he should have done the same when he had discovered that Clark and Miss Lane had married on Valentine’s Day and checked into the Lexor Honeymoon suite. Instead of jumping back in time to stop the event from happening, perhaps he should have checked the Daily Planet’s February 15 edition to verify that Miss Lane…er…Lois Kent would, in fact, die. Yet, another part of him, felt that would have been a cruel newspaper to present to Clark as a wedding gift as neither of them would have been able to do anything about it, except have Herb go back to early February and stop the event from happening as he indeed had.
He rubbed his temples as he was starting to develop another one of his temporal headaches from thinking too much about Clark’s conundrum.
The sound of footsteps approaching caused Herb to look up. A thin, young man carrying a yellow Superman lunchbox hesitantly approached from the stairwell. He stopped short of the steps to Clark’s front door and eyed Herb warily.
Herb ignored the young friend of Mr. Olsen, and pulled his pocket watch from his vest pocket. Did he really want to wait for at least an hour for Clark to return, or should he just pop forward in time with his machine? He decided on the latter and stood up, moving past the young man towards the stairwell.
He heard the young man knock on the door, and he paused to glance back at the scene.
“Coming!” a voice from inside called. “Coming!”
Herb heard the door open behind him. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, he continued onwards.
“How can I… Hey! You’ve got my lunchbox!” Mr. Olsen exclaimed.
Herb turned to look over his shoulder in time to move against the wall so the young visitor of Mr. Olsen didn’t knock him down the stairs as he bolted past.
“Stop him!” Mr. Olsen screamed, chasing the boy down the stairs. “Stop him!”
It was too late for Herb to react in any helpful capacity as the young man with the lunchbox had already passed by him.
By the time Herb reached the main door to the building, Mr. Olsen was limping back inside.
“Any luck?” Herb asked.
“No,” Mr. Olsen grumbled. “I stubbed my toe and he got away.”
Herb glanced down and noticed that Mr. Olsen wasn’t wearing shoes. “Better luck next time.”
“Next time?” Mr. Olsen scoffed. “We’re not likely to see his face around here again. Either he was about to blow us to smithereens or he held the clue to my cousin’s freedom.” He shook his head as he started back up the stairs. “If only Superman had been here…”
“Where has Superman gone?” Herb asked with a sinking feeling his worst fears were about to be confirmed.
“Superman’s not gone,” Mr. Olsen said, turning back around to defend the hero. “He still helps out, just not as often as before LNN started their all-out war on him. With talk of Congressional hearings, he’s been sticking with helping mainly the big stuff, natural disasters, fires, and such, where there’s lots of casualties and nobody can complain he isn’t doing good.” He sighed. “It’s almost as if when the Daily Planet blew up, he lost his best friend.”
“Oh, dear. Oh, dear. I had forgotten about the Daily Planet,” Herb said. No wonder Clark had lost his bearings.
“Where have you been, man, living in a cave?” Mr. Olsen gaped.
“In another universe, in the future, actually,” Herb replied.
“Yeah. I get what you’re saying. It’s no fun living in the present with the way the world’s going,” Mr. Olsen said with a nod. “Gosh, I wonder who I’d be in another universe?”
“Software millionaire and owner of the Daily Planet,” Herb said.
“Wouldn’t that be great?” Mr. Olsen laughed forlornly. “If only we could find a way to clear Superman’s name, maybe that could still be me.” His laughter became scoffing. “Of course, now that Mr. Luthor has canceled my scholarship, it’s unlikely. I can’t afford to return to M.U.T. in the fall and with the economy the way it’s going, I’ll be lucky if I can get a job hustling guys in to see a peep show in Suicide Slum.” He shivered in disgust. “I’m fortunate my friend CK let me move in with him or I’d be out on the street.” He paused, as he seemed to be lost in thought, a frown marring his expression. “Really lucky.”
“But how great is life in that other universe with Superman here?” Herb wondered aloud.
“Man, that’s a stumper of a question! Would I rather be a software millionaire in a world without Superman or be the man I am today but have Superman around to help out?” Mr. Olsen scratched his head. “Can’t I have both?”
“Apparently not.”
“How safe is a world without Superman?” Mr. Olsen asked.
“Everyone carries weapons. Muggings happen on every street corner. Robberies, burglaries, and gunfights are a common occurrence. Fear is a way of life,” Herb said, thinking back to when he and the Lois from his universe first arrived in this Clark’s home universe.
“I think I’ll stick to this universe, then,” Mr. Olsen replied. “Better be safe, than sorry, but, man…” He grinned, patting him on the arm. “That money sure is tempting.” He started back up the stairs. “Hey, thanks, man. You really made me put my life in perspective.”
Herb smiled and tipped his bowler. “My pleasure.”
***
Lois dumped her pizza box down the chute with more than half the pizza in the box. It had tasted good, but she hadn’t been hungry. She would be lucky not to get a stomachache for forcing down the three slices she had. She glanced up and saw Clark standing in the stairwell, staring silently at her with anticipation in his eyes. She knew he would be there, but seeing him still made her eyes damp. After the door shut behind her, the first words out of her mouth were, “Have you found her?”
Clark shook his head.
She set her hands on his chest and leaned her head against his shoulder as he wrapped his arms around her, enveloping her in his protective invisible cloak. “It’s all my fault. I should have kept her out of this. It’s too dangerous,” she said.
“I’m glad you’ve finally realized what Luthor is capable of, Lois,” Clark murmured against her hair. “Maybe it’s time for you to disappear, too.”
“I can’t, Chuck. I
can’t. Jimmy needs me, and now my mother needs me. Have you learned anything?” she asked, wanting to look up at him but at the same time not wanting to step out of his embrace to do so.
“Her doorman picked Nigel St. John’s picture out of the photo array as the person who dropped her off after her luncheon with you and Luthor, but that he left shortly thereafter alone. With that note you gave me, Perry was able to convince her landlord to show him into your mother’s apartment on your behalf. He said that there wasn’t any sign of a struggle,” Clark said.
That was good news, but at the same time bad news. It meant that her mother knew the person who had abducted her. Having too much nervous energy to stand still, Lois nudged herself out of Clark’s arms and started walking down the stairs. He started to follow her, but stopped when she turned around on the landing half a floor down to march back up. “It’s all my fault. I should’ve taken her home after lunch that day. It was obvious that she was drunk, but Lex and I needed to talk about the damn wedding and the Daily Planet press conference, and everything. I was so humiliated by her behavior, I didn’t want to be near her and now…” She sniffled. “I’m such an idiot! I didn’t think Lex would do anything to her. She’s
my mother, for heaven’s sake!”
“We don’t have any proof that Luthor did do anything to her,” Clark reminded her in his ever optimistic way that made her want to push him down the stairs. “I interviewed another one of her doormen, who
thinks he might have seen her get into a town car the next morning with a suitcase, but he was signing for packages at the time and he isn’t a hundred percent certain that it was her.”
“She was so excited about working with Lex and me on the wedding. I can’t believe she’d just take off like that, without any word,” Lois said, pausing her pacing of the stairs to look him in the eye. “She drives me batty, Chuck, but I still love her. She’s my mother.”
“I know, Lois,” Clark said. “You said that she had plans to go to a spa this month…”
“Yes,
this month, not last month, and certainly not the day after I had lunch with her,” she snapped, before starting to pace up and down the stairs again. When she returned to the top floor landing, she sniffled and removed an envelope from her pocket. “You’ll make sure that Lucy gets this? Did you talk to her?”
“Jimbo called and left a vague message on her machine about Jimmy and moving in with me,” Clark said.
Lois’s eyes widened as she gripped his arms. “Has Lex gotten to her too? Oh, God! You’ve got to fly out to California…”
“If you’d give me a second, Lois, I’d explain,” he replied in a calm soothing tone. “We’re playing phone tag. Lucy called back and left a message on my machine. She said that she’s worried about you, because you haven’t returned any of her calls about Jimmy or the wedding.”
“How can I call Lucy back, Chuck? How can I tell her that it’s my fault that my in-depth investigation has caused Mom to be kidnapped and who knows what done to her because she spilled wine in my psycho billionaire stalker fiancé’s lap?” Lois set her hands on his chest again, just to feel his arms around her. “How can I tell her that Lex has framed Jimmy for blowing up the Daily Planet, because I accidentally told him how much you all mean to me? How can I tell her not to come out to the wedding, even though I’ll be sending her an invitation? How can I tell her any of that over the telephone? Lex would hear everything!”
Clark lifted up his hand with the letter she had written to Lucy, explaining to her sister that the Voyeur was back and stalking her again in Metropolis. Lois wrote to her sister that she and the MPD had a plan to capture the Voyeur, but it included a fake wedding to Lex Luthor to draw him out and for Lucy’s safety, she must remain in California and decline the invitation.
“Okay, then,” Lois said. “We’ve got Lucy covered. You’ll still keep an eye on her?” She gazed up into Clark’s face.
He pocketed the letter before caressing her cheek. “Of course. I’ll fly to L.A. every day, if you want. Lois, you need to know that it’s…”
“My dad’s already phoned to tell me that Luthor couldn’t pay him to attend the wedding, and that I’ll never have his blessing to marry a man who shot me,” Lois said, running her words over Clark’s reassurances. It was just like her unsupportive dad, predictable to a T. He didn’t know that she didn’t love Lex; he just refused to get off his high horse and side with her, even though, in this one case, she agreed one hundred percent with him.
Anyway, she knew what Clark was going to say. It was what she would say if their positions were reversed.
It isn’t your fault. If Lex had done something to her mom, then
Lex did it, not her. No matter what Clark said, it still felt as if she had let it happen. She had introduced them.
“I’ve spoken to your Uncle Mike and he’s…”
“How do you know about my Uncle Mike?” Lois demanded. She
never talked about her family, especially her extended family. “I’ve never told you about him!” If Clark knew about him, then it was possible that Lex wasn’t far behind. Would she have to write to her cousin Cindy Whatever-her-last-name-was-now, too?
Clark took a deep breath and exhaled. “Perry.”
“Right. Perry. Sorry. Go on,” she said, waving her objection out of the air.
“Your Uncle Mike has agreed to meet with your father and talk to him. He’s going to try to convince him to call back and leave another message, apologizing,” Clark went on.
“Good luck with that one,” Lois scoffed. “I doubt my father has ever apologized in his life.”
“Mike knows that your father doesn’t have to mean it, he just has to say it,” Clark reminded her. “For Luthor’s sake.”
“Right. Of course. Daddy’s good at saying things he doesn’t mean,” she said with a nod.
Clark tilted up her chin and leaned down to kiss her. Instead, he whispered, “You need to tell Luthor about your mother.”
Lois stepped back aghast. “Are you nuts?”
“No, Lois,” he said, but she saw a sharp wince cross his expression as if it hadn’t been the first time such an accusation had been thrown at him, even though she hadn’t meant it seriously. “Maybe he’ll admit to something that will help us find her. He’s going to find out eventually that you know that she’s disappeared. Play up your emotional wreck side and let him know how much you don’t want your mother hurt.”
“I’m not an emotional wreck over this, Chuck,” she snapped, knocking his hand from her face.
He smiled, never letting go of his hold of her waist. “Hence the ‘play it up’ suggestion.” When she didn’t pull further away, Clark ran his hand over her hair. “If Luthor was involved with your mother’s disappearance, perhaps he would be less likely to hurt her if he knows it’s distressing you.”
She nodded and laid her head on his shoulder again. She didn’t want to lean on Lex. Lois only wanted to lean on Clark.
“We’ll find her, Lois,” Clark whispered, kissing her hairline. “It’s not your fault.”
Lois only wished those two statements were true.
***
Lex arrived punctually as ever for their date to the opera that evening. Lois had already put Clark’s suggestion into play by calling her mother several times from her home phone after Clark left and leaving ever-more frantic messages. She even called her sister Lucy and asked
her… well, her machine, if she had heard from their mother. Lois had driven herself into a frenzy for Lex’s viewing benefit, the bastard, so much so she needed to run some of it off on the treadmill to calm herself down before he arrived.
“Darling, did you forget we were going to the opera tonight?” Lex asked, looking her up and down, after she opened the door.
She was still dressed in track pants and a t-shirt and had a towel around her neck to wipe off the sweat from her face. “Oh, Lex. I’m sorry. I just haven’t been able to concentrate on anything these last couple of days. I think something has happened to my mother.”
Lex stepped inside and kissed her cheek. “What do you mean?”
“She said that she was going to contact me to discuss ideas for our wedding after lunch last week and I still haven’t heard from her. I didn’t think much of it at first. Mother’s flighty and forgetful about such things at times, but it’s been over a week now. I’ve tried to call her and I keep getting her machine,” Lois said in a huff. She tried to force herself to seek Lex’s comfort, but she knew she couldn’t pull it off. If he really had something to do with her mother’s disappearance… She started to pace her living room instead.
He glanced over at her treadmill and then back to her. “So, you decided to go running?”
“I had to do something to occupy my mind while I waited for her to call back,” she said and flounced down upon her settee, burying her head into her hands. “I’m so glad that you’re here, Lex. Do you think we could drive over and check on my mother? I don’t think I could enjoy the opera, not knowing if she fell in her apartment and is lying there, bleeding to death.”
These words dredged up dark memories from Lois’s childhood of finding her mother passed out in the living room or at the kitchen table. Lois remembered checking her mother’s neck on occasion to see if there was still a pulse. The first time had been shortly after Lois’s eighth birthday. The tears, which trailed down her cheeks, turned to sobs as Lois realized how genuinely scared she was.
She could take care of herself. She knew that. It was easy. Lois had always been able to do that and rarely feared for her own safety, but Lucy and her mother were another story altogether.
Lois had been forced to take care of both of them from an early age. It had been Lois who woke up first in the morning and prepared breakfast for her and Lucy, and coffee for their mother. Then she had woken them both up. Before she walked her sister to school, she would make sure her mother was out of bed and headed for the shower, so Ellen could make it to her twelve-hour shift at the hospital.
As the true head of the household, Lois learned quickly how to sneak money from her mother’s wallet to make sure that there were TV dinners in the freezer to feed her and her sister. Her mother accused her more than once of stealing. Lois assured her that it wasn’t true, making a convincing argument that it had been her mother herself who had brought them home fast food or gone grocery shopping, when it had actually been Lois who had fed them from the money she had taken. Lois would show her a discarded receipt from the grocery store or fast food restaurant to validate her claims, and her mother usually figured that she must have forgotten it.
After her mother ‘forgot’ to pay the housecleaner a couple of times, Lois taught herself how to do laundry, vacuum floors, and run the dishwasher. Often she did these chores late into the night after completing her homework. If she hadn’t done it, it wouldn’t have been done, and the façade of their perfect home would have crumbled down around them. Despite her father’s cheating and her parents’ arguments, Lois didn’t want to be one of those kids from a broken home.
The first time her mother had gone on a ‘spa vacation’, Lois and Lucy had moved in with their father, which had been an unmitigated disaster. Lois had been so used to being in charge that she clashed with her father often over how things had to be done and by whom. After several more of her mother's ‘spa vacations’, at seventeen, Lois finally moved out of her father’s house to live on her own. It had been the first time since she was a child that she could remember not having to take care of anyone but herself. The freedom from the responsibility had felt like paradise.
“Calm yourself, my dear. I have a little confession to make,” Lex said, sitting down next to Lois and setting his hand on her knee.
Lois dropped her hands. Lex
was involved with her mother’s disappearance? Was he admitting to it? The shock silenced her sobs as she stared at him.
“After lunch and the press conference last week,” Lex continued. “I saw how troubled you were by your mother’s behavior. Due to this, I telephoned her and offered my assistance in getting her into a recovery program. I suggested that it might be the best wedding gift she could give you.”
“Which program?” Lois demanded, fighting the feeling of relief that his words sent through her. The last thing she wanted was to feel gratitude to this man. “Why didn’t she call me or tell me she was going away?”
“I thought she had, darling. I’m sorry. Perhaps she was embarrassed that your fiancé had noticed her behavior at lunch and needed to intervene on your behalf. Maybe she merely wanted to surprise you. I don’t know,” he said.
“Where is she?” Lois insisted.
“She chose a private hospital. They’ll take good care of her,” Lex said, taking her hand and rubbing it between his.
“Where is she? I need to see her and know that she’s okay,” Lois repeated.
“Darling, they don’t allow visitors,” Lex said, before cocking his head and studying her. “Don’t you trust me, Lois?”
She pulled her hand out of his and jumped to her feet. “And
why should I trust you, Lex?” she asked. “After you went against my wishes and served wine at lunch. And then on top of that you blindsided me at the press conference.”
“I’m sorry. How did I do that?” he asked.
“You dumped the Daily Planet in the trash without trying to rescue it!”
“Lois, darling. What did you expect me to do? There isn’t an advertiser in this city that I can count on for revenue. Besides, the Planet was woefully underinsured. Rebuilding makes no economic sense.”
She swung around to face him. “Well, you should be thinking about the Daily Planet employees. People like Perry, Cat, and Eduardo would rather you
tried, Lex, instead of just giving up. When you bought the paper, you promised them ‘no layoffs’ and paychecks that wouldn’t bounce and, now, you’re forcing them to look for other work in a tight job market. You said that you bought the Daily Planet because it was a ‘grand ol’ paper’, historically significant to Metropolis! How has that changed?”
“I offered jobs to those I could and severance to everyone else, Lois. I have the other stockholders to think of, darling,” he said, before clarifying, “The LexCorp stockholders.”
He spoke as if Lois hadn’t known that the newspaper that she had worked at for ten years had been privately owned, or that if the Daily Planet
had been a publicly traded company, its stockholders wouldn’t be up in arms over this tragedy.
At her lack of response, he added, “They shouldn’t incur a loss in dividends to rebuild a failing company. It wouldn’t be fair to them.”
“Fair?” Lois retorted. “Don’t talk to me about fair! First of all, the stockholders already incurred a loss, Lex. You spent millions of dollars of LexCorp’s money to purchase the Daily Planet, only to have it destroyed… and not by Jimmy, I might add… days later. If
that isn’t a loss, which will show up on the LexCorp bottom line, I don’t know what is! Wouldn’t LexCorp stockholders want to make sure that those millions weren’t poured into a mud pit, and will want see that you have a plan to recoup those losses?” She crossed her arms. “And here, I thought you were the third richest man in the world worth
billions of dollars; money you could use to save the Daily Planet?”
As he studied her, she tried to keep her anger in check, so that Superman wouldn’t be forced to rescue Lex from strangulation.
“Ah…” Lex finally said with a nod. “I see what this is really about.”
“The ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ order against the Daily Planet,” she spat out, stating the obvious.
“No, not exactly. It’s true, although I’m embarrassed to admit it, I bought the Planet not only because it was failing and you seemed to love it so, but out of some love-sick attempt to bring us together, bring my life in tune with yours. I wanted to help you by helping it. Then, ironically, it wasn’t necessary. You quit just as we were in final negotiations, and it was too late to back out without killing the paper instantly. I can see now that you didn’t leave because you hated Perry’s management style or your co-workers at the Daily Planet, nor because it was holding back your career. You quit as a form of protest,” Lex said, pointing at her as if trying to get her to deny it.
She shrugged. He was way off base, but she wasn’t going to let him know that. Additionally, she doubted he had ever been love-sick except that day Miranda had sprayed him with Revenge.
“You were hoping that the loss of their premier investigative reporter would cause them to back down and give you whatever it was that you wanted, so that you would come back to work for them. When that didn’t happen, you started interviewing with their competitors in hopes that you could show them you were serious about quitting and make them jealous. You wanted them on their hands and knees, begging you to return. Unfortunately, you hadn’t realized in what dire straits their economic situation was.” He smiled at her in a way that made her feel as if she was a little child. “When we got engaged, I promised you ownership of the Daily Planet after we were married. I can see that you still love the paper, and hate to see it die. Now, you’re worried that I’m going back on my word or, worse yet, that I’m going to dump you in the trash, too? Well, I can guarantee you, Lois, I am not.”
“I’m also mad that with no thought or care for my feelings, you went behind my back and sent my mother away,” Lois announced, flinging a hand in his direction. “Didn’t you know I would be worried?”
“No,” he sputtered, probably because of how quickly she shifted the topic back to her mother. “Frankly, Lois, by how little you speak of her, I didn’t think you’d notice.”
“Not notice? She’s my
mother,” Lois hissed. “I
love her, and now you’re accusing me of being a bad daughter. You don’t know, Lex. You don’t know what I’ve gone through with that woman…”
“I’m quite sure I know better than you think,” Lex said softly. “My father used to come home drunk and beat my mother in front of me.”
“I… I… What?” Lois stammered. Had Lex just told her something private and personal about his childhood?
“I know firsthand the toll an alcoholic parent can have on child,” he said. “I never told you how I was orphaned, did I?”
***End of Part 164*** Part 165 Comments
