“I have an apartment here in Metropolis,” he said. “Paid for with money earned at my job.”
She furrowed her brow. “What about all the money from people selling Superman dolls and comic books? From the deals that Murray Brown guy makes for you? Couldn’t you use that for a place to stay?”
Superman smiled and shook his head. “That all goes to charity. Superman wouldn’t dream of taking money from anyone. But the real me… I have to eat. I have to pay the electric bill. So I have a job.”
Lois found herself speechless for a moment. “The real you…?” she managed to say, though a thousand other questions suddenly leapt to mind.
“Has a name, a college degree, driver’s license, credit cards… a couple pieces from the Ikea catalog. The real me is a pretty decent chef, and fairly handy around the house. What, do you think I walk around in this outfit all the time?” he said, gesturing toward himself, his smile growing. “I’m a lot more normal than you think.”
She stared at him dumbfounded, as if she was seeing him for the first time. How could he be anything other than Superman? How could someone who could do what he could do pass as anything less than extraordinary? “But…I thought you were an alien, came from another planet.”
“When I was a baby,” he said softly. “I was found, adopted, raised by a great family. I was a pretty ordinary kid until around junior high, when my powers started showing up. The flying didn’t happen until I was almost out of high school. That was…something special.”
“But you never told anyone,” Lois said. Superman first appeared a couple years ago, but it didn’t take any special observational talents to see that the man in front of her, whoever he really was, had been out of high school for quite a few years. Lois liked to think that she had a nose for news, and even going back to her college years, she’s fairly certain she would’ve been interested if she had heard stories of a flying man, of someone so strong he could lift mountains, but she had never heard anything like that, not even after Superman arrived, when she had actively looked. So it stood to reason that he hid himself, his talents, from the world in that time. “God, you must’ve been so lonely,” she said, scooting toward him.
He shrugged, his expression becoming tender, but not sad. “I could…can always talk to my parents. They know everything. I told you that my mother made my suit, surely you remember.” Lois closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She had completely forgotten about that. In the excitement of the moment, it had been ignored in favor of the less mundane aspects of his appearance. “It always surprised me that you never looked for me after that, knowing there was a guy out there whose mother owned a sewing machine and bought several stores out of blue spandex.” He seemed amused at the fact, though Lois was still too surprised to know what to think or feel.
“This is…I mean, it’s…educational, I guess,” Lois said with a shake of the head. “And I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but…why tell me all this?”
His smile grew. “Because I want you to find me.”
