“Clark,” she said as she came around to the sidewalk where he was now standing. “I’ve always wanted to know this. I just have to find out.”
“Why, Lois?” he put his hand on her arm and looked at her. “How will it change things? Have you thought about that?”
“Of course I’ve thought about this Clark!” Memories of Superman daydreams flitted through her mind.
He raised his eyebrows at her.
“Well, no, not really.” She admitted, walking toward the entrance and putting her hand on the door handle.
“Let’s talk about this, okay Lois?” Clark said, having regained his full stature and composure and getting in front to open the door for her.
“Two,” Lois said to the hostess.
“This way please,” the hostess replied, leading them through the busy restaurant. Dishes clattering and conversations set the tone. Good smells filled the air. Most of the patrons were dressed in business attire. The men wore suits as did some of the women. Light from the sun streamed through onto the table the hostess put their menus on. “Would you like anything to drink?” she asked, removing the two extra settings of silverware from the table as she spoke.
“I’d like a cream soda, with a bit of whipped cream and a cherry on top.” Lois responded, quite accustomed to changing menus to suit her taste.
“I’ll just have lemonade,” Clark responded, smiling as he took his seat.
The hostess left, her black gathered skirt swishing as she walked away. They looked at their menus for a moment before Lois laid hers aside. “What are you having Clark?”
“Umm, the hot roast beef sandwich with a salad.”
“That sounds good.”
“Lois, back to our conversation. Let’s talk about why you want to do this. Expose Superman, I mean.”
“Clark, I don’t want to *EXPOSE* him. It sounds so bad when you say it like that. I just want to find out who he is.”
“Okay Lois. Let’s say you find out what he looks like and you track him down. Then what do you do?”
“Well,” Lois began, not having really thought this whole thing through.
“Okay, say you find out he has a disguise, just for instance. You find out he has an apartment. You find out he has a name.”
Her eyes brightened as she hung on every word he said, imagining the implications.
“What are you going to do then, walk up to his door, knock on it and when he comes to the door say what? Hi, I have found out that you’re Superman. May I come in?”
Lois was pondering all this as she listened with rapt attention.
“Do you think the way he feels about you will change? I mean he likes you right now, that’s pretty obvious. You want him to keep liking you right? What if you barge in and expose him. Do you think he’s going to say thank you, take you in his arms and kiss you?”
Lois studied Clark. Had Superman told him they’d kissed? What had he said about it? Did Superman tell Clark everything? She did. He must know tons about what Superman thought of her. Was Clark jealous? She felt her cheeks heat up and knew she was blushing about their kisses.
“Well?” Clark waited for an answer.
Lois squirmed a bit. “I don’t know. No. I guess not. I mean, Clark I want to get to know him better. I want to hang out with him, you know do stuff with him, be his girlfriend.”
Clark raised his eyebrows again. “Do you think he wants a girlfriend? What if he’s worried about people trying to hurt his friends just to get to him, like the people that want to use Kryptonite against him. That’s already happened. Remember in Smallville when Trask tried to get us to call for Superman so he could kill him?
“The poor man,” Lois said, her heart suddenly going out to the man of steel. I wonder if he has any friends at all!”
“I'm his friend, Lois,” Clark reassured her. “But you’ve seen people try to use me to get to him. What if people started using you to get to him? Do you think he could ever live with himself if you got hurt because someone thought you could tell them something about him? Do you know how hard it would be to protect you?”
“Clark,” Lois wailed, “I just want to know. I'm a reporter. My mind just works like that. He could be someone right under our noses and how would it be if I weren’t to even bother finding out. Leave no stone unturned. That’s me, Clark. Are you saying that I should stop being who I am, stop asking questions? Stop following leads?” She felt her anger rising. “Clark, I didn’t get to be where I am by turning away from my questions.”
Clark watched her as her guard came back up. “Okay Lois, lets say your sister Lucy buys something at the store. She comes home with a package under her arm and goes into her room. She comes out and doesn’t mention it. When you ask about it, she changes the subject and distracts you. Then she leaves. You want to know what she’s got. Do you go in and look, or do you respect her privacy?”
“Well, that’s easy. I go in and look,” Lois said grinning. “I pick the lock on the door, pick the lock on the box and I find out what she’s got.”
Clark sighed. “Right. You would. I forgot I was talking to Lois.”
“Well, wouldn’t you, Clark? We’ve both broken into a heck of a lot of places to find out less interesting stuff!”
“I’d never do something that could hurt someone.” Clark retorted.
“Oh, yeah? Well what about all those people we’ve put away? You certainly hurt them!”
“Lois, you’re talking about justice. People who do bad things should have to take responsibility and pay for the crimes they’ve committed. They should be stopped when they are hurting others.”
“Humph,” Lois snorted. “How could finding out who Superman is when he’s not rescuing someone hurt him?” she exclaimed just as the waitress arrived beside their table with their drinks.
“It could certainly hurt you, Lois!” Clark responded with a concerned look on his face as the waitress appeared beside their table.
“May I take your order?” she asked, flipping the top of her booklet open.
Clark nodded to Lois to go first. “I’ll have the roast beef sandwich with a salad. Could you make that rye bread? And I’d like oil and vinegar dressing. Does it have herbs in it?” She said, smiling up at the waitress who nodded and wrote it down, then turned to Clark.
He was going to just say, “I’ll have the same,” but didn’t want to be a bother to the cook. On the other hand he didn’t want to make a point about how picky Lois was, so just said, “I’ll have the hot roast beef sandwich, too.”
“Do you want rye bread as well?” she replied.
“Only if it’s no trouble,” he admitted.
“And did you want the salad as well?”
“Yes, please,” he replied. “French dressing.”
She gathered up the menus and said, “It will be just a few minutes, we’re rather short staffed here today,” then turned toward the kitchen.
Lois was busy scribbling in her notebook. Clark pulled down his glasses and looked through the tablecloth and table to see what she was writing. He felt like a jerk and pushed his glasses back up before actually reading her notes. He wondered if she were coming up with some new ploy to uncover Superman’s secret.
‘Tracking device’, she wrote down, then looked off across the dining room, trying to figure out what sort of a device she could use. When Superman came up to her at the scene of a crime, as he always did, she’d somehow plant it on him. Depending on what it looked like, maybe she’d be able to slip it behind his belt as she hugged him, or down the back of his suit at the neck. But how would she follow it? What could she use? Where would she get such a thing? What if he found out what she was doing? He did have amazing senses.
‘Okay,’ she thought, broadening her scope. When he leaves the scene of a crime, he usually flies up into the sky. The odd time she’d seen him go through a door, usually just before Clark had come out of it. How different Clark was from Superman, she thought to herself. She looked up at him. They were practically worlds apart. Clark was usually quite relaxed, cheerful, and down-home. Superman on the other hand usually looked pretty tense. Well, was tense the right word? He usually crossed his arms as he surveyed the situation, confronted the bad guys, talked with the police and the press. He was also in a hurry. He didn’t stick around after he’d saved the day. Sometimes when he’d meet up with Lois, he’d talk for just a minute and then shoot off into the sky, often before she’d had time to respond to what he was saying. Did he go away so nobody would get to know him too well, be able to identify his gestures and body language? After all, most people did little things repeatedly, whether they were being themselves or *going incognito*. Like Clark, he was always pushing his glasses up and straightening his tie. He must have greasy kids stuff on his hair that makes his ears and glasses slip all the time, she thought idly. No, his hair was always clean. It was Superman whose hair was always slicked back. But he didn’t have glasses like Clark did. What would he look like with glasses on?
She opened her big brown bag and pulled out the large picture of Superman that she had pulled out of her desk drawer earlier that day and studied it for a moment. Black rimmed glasses, Polly had said. She took her pen and drew a pair of glasses around Superman’s eyes, leaned back and looked at it, then burst out laughing.
“What is it?” Clark’s voice startled her.
“Oh, I was just thinking about what Superman would look like with glasses on.” She pulled the picture up and turned it around so he could see it. Without watching Clark’s reaction, she turned it back around and looked at it again. “I wonder what shape the glasses are, or were a few years ago when that lady saw him.” She had drawn big squarish frames. “Perhaps they were smaller than that.” She said, and drew some smaller frames inside of the larger ones. The double frames were wrecking the picture.
Luckily for Clark, Lois had been too busy admiring her own drawing skills to watch Clark’s reaction. He had been surprised by the picture she’d drawn and had gasped slightly before catching himself. He felt very exposed, almost as if he had come into the restaurant and were sitting there naked. He wanted to leave, to hear some cry for help somewhere in the distance. My it was a slow week. ‘People are going to see what they want to see,’ he said to himself, trying to make himself maintain his cool.
Clark wanted to talk to Lois, to distract her from what she was doing, but he was at a loss for words, completely out of ideas. He picked up his spoon and began to twirl it between his fingers, sweating his demise. Surely she wouldn’t find out. She was smart, but she was too sure of herself and of her low opinion about him.
Lois pulled the picture back up, held it at arm’s length and looked at it. Across the table Clark’s face appeared beside the photo. His heart rate was 150, he figured, as it thumped loudly in his ears. “You know Clark, if you weren’t such a *hack from Nowheresville*, you could almost pass for Superman,” she said idly, barely looking at him.
The words stung a bit, just as they always had when she’d said them to him, but this time they seemed to also lift a heavy weight off his shoulders. Holding himself so upright and crossing his arms in a big macho way when he was Superman was certainly more than just a coincidence. It was part of the Superman persona. He had calculated the effect it would have on his appearance as he’d stood in front of the mirror many times. He was just a regular guy when he was in his business suit and tie, or his t-shirt and shorts. But when he was in the red and blue suit, he purposely acted like he was in total control of the situation, undefeatable, proud, but still just and true. It did make him look different.
He liked being Clark better. If he could have had his way, there wouldn’t have ever been a Superman. But it had been necessary to allow him to lead a double life, the life of the normal guy and the one with the super powers.
He wished the food would come. But he didn’t want it to. He knew that after the meal he was going to have to face the music, meet that woman, Polly what was it? Should he be there? Should he find a simple excuse to dash away? What if the woman told Lois something or showed him something he needed to know that she knew?
The sun felt good on his shoulders and his head and face. He focused on it, having given up on talking to Lois until she came out of her reverie. If only the sun could infuse his brain with knowledge and understanding the way it nourished and heightened his powers.
“I could plant a bug on him,” Lois finally stated, looking at Clark with a smile.
“What?” Clark pulled himself away from the sunshine. “Who?”
“Superman! Of course, you dimwit!” she said laying the poster on the table and folding her arms and leaning on it to get closer to Clark. “What do you think we could use?”
“We?” he nearly said, but instead remembered he was going to be in this with her so she didn’t trap him. “What do you suggest? That pretty little head of yours has probably been cooking up quite a scheme over there.”
Lois practically glowed with excitement. “Well,” she began, “you know those things they put on pets so you can find your lost cat or dog?”
Clark nodded and she continued, “Well, if I can get one of those and somehow put it on him, I don’t know, maybe slip it under the edge of his suit when I give him a hug? Or maybe stick it to his cape? Help me out here.”
Clark’s eyebrows went up. “But won’t he know you did that? I mean he’s got superhearing for one thing, and for another he has to take the suit off sometime and it’ll fall out onto the floor. What about when he washes it?”
“Does he wash it? I mean, does it come off Clark?”
“Think about it Lois, the guy’s flying into all sorts of situations, smoke, chemicals, exploding bombs, breaking glass, surely it is going to make his suit dirty.” Boy, Clark sure knew a lot about Superman’s suits and his life.
“Oh,” she said, sinking back a little. She thought about Superman taking off his suit. “Boy, it must be hard to get off, it’s awfully tight. But I didn’t think anything could affect him, I mean he doesn’t get cut or anything, bullets don’t go through the suit.”
Clark shrugged, feeling he might be giving Lois way too much to think about already.
“So you think he has more than one? Suit I mean?” she leaned forward, hanging on every detail Clark was letting her have, like morsels thrown to a starving dog.
“Lois, you’re really into doing this aren’t you? You’re totally serious, I mean?”
“Clark, just think of it. What if I can find out who he is? I wouldn’t have to let him know that I know. Let’s say I find out he’s, well say the guy at the cleaners. He wouldn’t be because that guy’s a real idiot and doesn’t have any looks or muscles or anything…”
“Lois, you’re babbling.”
“I know.” She stopped. “Okay Clark, I know you think this is really selfish and all, but I really like this guy. I may even love him. Superman I mean, not the guy at the cleaners. But I don’t know, cos I’ve never loved anybody before, not a man, I mean. I don’t like men much. I don’t mean you, Clark, you’re okay, but I don’t trust men. They take what they want and walk all over you. I trust you Clark. I didn’t when I told you about Claude, I mean afterwards when we weren’t going to die or anything anymore, but I don’t think you are really bad like that. Like I don’t think you really did anything with Cat that time when she had everyone in the newsroom thinking you’d been doing the horizontal lambada with her.”
She looked lame, as if she didn’t know where she was going with all that babbling. She took a deep breath and tried to figure out what she had been about to say.
“Oh yes, let’s say I find out who he is. What if I strike up some sort of a friendship with his alternate self? I’ve done lots of undercover stuff Clark, it’s not hard to do stuff like that. But I could really become his friend and maybe he’d even fall in love with me.” She sighed and swooned as she finished speaking and looked far away again.
Clark raised one eyebrow at her. “Should he trust you? I mean, Lois, you’ve just gone on about how trust is so important, but then you’re going to try to lure this guy into falling in love with you by deceit. He already knows Lois Lane, you know. It’s not like he’s going to simply be more interested in being friends with you on that level when he can fly into your window anytime and kiss you, is it?”
Clark had gone too far. What was he doing? Was he insane? He sure did need to fly around the planet a few times. He was even beginning to think of Superman as someone else, perhaps the man at the cleaners. He shook his head as if trying to dislodge this fog that was replacing his brain.
The waitress set their plates in front of them. Finally, Clark thought. But he did like the things Lois had said about him. But all that about trust? What was she going to think of him when she found out this lie he was living? He couldn’t think of that now. At least if Superman was his alternate self, he could still go visit her, feel her love for him. She’d never let her guard down to Clark, but she would to Superman. It was a good thing Superman was him and not the guy at the cleaners, whoever that was.
They ate in silence. Lois wondered if Jimmy would have any ideas about a tracking device of some sort. Maybe she could follow Superman when he left sometime. Only nobody ever saw him really land after he’d left, never saw him put those glasses on that Polly said he had worn.
