Table of Contents
From Part 1:Clark was shifting awkwardly, she realised; the movement drew her attention back to him. "I'm sorry," he said abruptly. "I'm intruding. I'll leave you alone."
"Clark..." she began to protest, but he was already standing up.
"Good luck with your novel. And it was really nice meeting you."
He turned and began striding away. And a few moments later, while Lois was still struggling between wanting to call him back and thinking that maybe it was just as well that he was leaving, he disappeared from view.
He was gone. And she knew that she would never see him again.
**********
Now read on...It was just as well, Lois told herself later that night, sitting in the lounge of the beach house and gazing out the large picture window, watching the waves of the lake hit the shore, then roll back, then hit the shore again. Over and over, an endless cycle of advance, retreat, advance. Neither the lake nor the shore ever seemed to gain the advantage in the skirmish, she thought idly, then castigated herself for her foolishness.
Save your imagination for your novel, Lois!Yes, she repeated silently. It was a very good thing that Clark had left when he had. She'd almost been in danger of...
Of what?
Of making it into more than it was. An encounter with a drifter. A transient. A man who, if she'd actually got to know him for more than fifteen minutes, would probably have bored her rigid. And for whom she couldn't possibly feel any sort of respect. After all, he was about her age, wasn't he? And what had he done with his life? He didn't even have a real job yet. He'd been about to apply for a job at the Daily Planet. So what? She'd worked there for years!
He was obviously lazy, uncommitted, unable to stay in the same place for long enough to act like an adult and build a life.
But he'd just happened to catch her at a bad time. A low moment, when she was already feeling lonely and unchallenged, and made worse by what she'd realised about her marriage. About herself.
And so, if Clark had stayed a little longer, she might have been lonely enough to...
To... what? Do something stupid? Break her marriage vows? No way!
No, that wouldn't have been the real risk, Lois admitted, staring unseeing at the water as it lapped at the shore. She had never been the type to go to bed with a stranger, and she wouldn't have done that with Clark. No; the greater risk would have been to find herself
liking him. Wanting to spend time with him. Getting to know him... and finding that she had more in common with him than she had with her husband. That she laughed with him more easily than she did with her husband. That she enjoyed simply being with him much more than she enjoyed being with her husband.
That, in fact, no matter whether she ever saw Clark again after today or not, she would have realised that she'd married the wrong man.
**********
"Hi, Lois. Mind if I join you for a minute?"
Lois's head shot up. How had she missed his approach? And, just like yesterday, where had he come from?
Tell him to go away, the voice in her head said.
You know it's for the best. He shouldn't be here anyway. He's a distraction - and it's only going to lead to trouble."Sure. I wasn't doing much anyway." She smiled at him and waved towards the empty chair.
"Yeah, I didn't exactly see any keys being pounded." He grinned at her as he sat, giving her a flash of white teeth - very clean but, unlike her husband's, not perfect. Clark's teeth hadn’t been capped to an inch of their life; they had some ragged edges and crookedness.
Today, he was wearing a blue cotton shirt, tucked into charcoal shorts. It struck her that his clothes were of better quality than yesterday. Though, of course, still not designer - more Old Navy than Polo Ralph Lauren.
"I didn't think you'd come back." The words escaped before Lois could stop them.
He shrugged. "I hadn't planned to. But then I couldn't get the way you looked just before I left out of my head. And I had to come back - to find out if you were okay."
"What do you mean, if I was okay?" Lois stared at him, horrified. What had he seen?
"You looked really unhappy. And I know it's none of my business. You don't even know me, and I don't know you - but I hated to think of you all alone and unhappy. So I had to come back." He glanced down at his lap as he finished his short speech, almost as if it embarrassed him to have said it.
She should lie. Tell him that she didn’t know what he was talking about. That of course she was happy - how could she possibly not be? She had every possible advantage in life. Everything she wanted, she could have at the wave of a hand.
As a delaying tactic, she poured Clark a glass of iced tea from the cooler by her chair. He smiled his thanks and accepted it.
"I... guess I'm just feeling a little frustrated," she said in the end, unable to pretend to complete bliss.
"Frustrated? Still not making much progress, huh? Did you get anything written today?" Clark asked, his tone wryly sympathetic.
Lois shrugged. "I sat out here for three hours and I typed two pages."
"Hey, that's a start!" Now he was being encouraging; the over-bright smile gave him away.
"I deleted it all a half-hour ago when I came back out after lunch."
"Oh." He grinned, rueful amusement this time. "That good, huh?"
Lois shrugged again. "I guess I'm just not ready to write the next New York Times bestseller."
He took a sip of his tea, then said casually, "So why not write about something different instead? Play to your strengths."
"Such as?" she asked, puzzled.
"Lois, you're a Kerth-winning reporter. You were the youngest Kerth winner ever, weren't you? And now you're married to one of the most powerful men in America. Why not write about that?"
"An autobiography?" Lois stared at him, feeling oddly horrified. "I'm only 27, Clark! You make it sound as if my life is over!"
And isn't it? a tiny voice taunted.
You're not Lois Lane, investigative reporter, any more. You're not anything
any more - you're just a billionaire's accessory, tucked away on a remote beach miles from anywhere, more than a thousand miles from Metropolis - a place where you were somebody. You call this having a life?She bit her lip. Acid churned in her stomach. It wasn't true. It wasn't! She was here for a month, that was all. Just to make a start on her novel, without distractions.
Clark shook his head. "That's not what I meant. I mean, I have no idea whether you'll work again as a reporter or not. I do know that I'm confident that whatever you do you'll be a success at it. The point is that you’ve already been a success. Do you know how many aspiring reporters, or people at the beginning of their journalistic career, would find you an inspiration?
Do already find you an inspiration?"
That hadn't occurred to her. But it was an interesting idea, and definitely worth thinking about. Not an autobiography as such, but a book about making it as a reporter, with her own experience as an example.
Looking across at Clark again, she gave him a broad smile. "I like the sound of that. I might even give it a try. Thank you!"
"You're welcome," he said, smiling in return. "Now, I guess I should leave you to your keyboard." And he began to stand up.
"No!"
What was she thinking? Of course she should let him go. Just as she'd decided last night, she really didn't need to have someone like him hanging around. A drifter. Someone who didn't understand the importance of hard work. Not like her - or Lex.
Someone who was far too attractive, and far too
nice, for her, a married woman, to be spending time with.
"No?" He paused in the act of standing and gave her a quizzical look.
Okay, Lois, tell him he must have heard you wrong. You were saying 'Oh'. Or anything - it doesn't matter. Just tell him goodbye and let him go."No... I mean, you don't have to go yet. Do you?" She glanced around, seeking inspiration for a reason as to why he shouldn't leave. "I feel like taking a walk. Why don't you come with me?"
He tilted his head to one side. "Not quite ready for your laptop's company just yet?" Smiling, he nodded. "Okay, if that's what you'd like."
He waited as she stood, then allowed her to lead the way down to the water's edge. Lois kicked off her flip-flops; the sand here was soft and the lake-water clean.
"Good idea," Clark commented, and he bent to remove the tennis shoes he was wearing, leaving them beside her footwear. The two pairs of shoes, side by side, looked alarmingly intimate, Lois thought - but she pushed that reflection away. An idiotic figment of her imagination, she told herself.
"So, you're on your own here at the moment?" he asked, the question clearly casual by his tone. Unless, of course, he was being deceptively casual... he could still be a tabloid reporter looking for dirt on the Luthor marriage, couldn’t he? "Your husband's not with you?"
Clark didn't seem like a tabloid reporter. And anyway, Lex would sic his lawyers onto any tabloid which tried to print some made-up scandal so fast they wouldn’t see it coming. And Clark would be out of a job before he'd had time to blink.
"Lex is working," she said, making her answer casual. "He'll be back at the weekend. He's too busy to take a proper vacation right now, which is actually ideal for me because I can work on my book during the week while he's gone."
Yes, she could work on the book, with which she was making no progress whatsoever, and she could brood about what was wrong with her marriage...
There was
nothing wrong with her marriage! she told herself immediately.
"Sounds ideal in theory - bet it gets a bit lonely in practice."
Just the kind of thing a sleaze reporter would say in order to encourage confidences, Lois told herself. And in just that sympathetic tone, too. She swallowed the bile which had suddenly appeared in her throat. "I'm perfectly happy. I speak to my husband several times a day. I'm the lucky one - who'd want to be stuck in an office in Metropolis in August when they could be here?"
"Oh, I'll bet Metropolis is unbearable right now," Clark agreed. "I've never been there in the summer, but I've been in New York and Chicago. The humidity's awful. Okay, it's not Florida, but still..."
"Yeah," Lois agreed, grimacing. "All through July and August I'm counting the days until September. Though every year I tell myself I should be used to it by now."
"Where did you grow up?" Clark asked. He sounded genuinely interested - and as if he didn't know.
"Metropolis," she told him. "In the suburbs - my dad's a doctor so we had a pretty nice place."
Now she'd done it, she told herself, inwardly rolling her eyes. As good as told him that she was a spoilt little rich girl - and he'd draw the conclusion that she'd grown up to be a spoilt rich man's wife. That she'd only played at being a reporter for a few years in order to achieve her aim...
"Doctor's daughter, huh? You didn't want to go into medicine yourself? Or did your dad's long hours put you off?"
Lois raised her eyebrows at him. "You really haven't had a proper reporting job yet, have you? There's no such thing as regular hours as a journalist - not if you want to get the best stories before anyone else."
"Yeah, I guess that was a pretty stupid thing to say, huh?" He gave her a rueful grimace. "Believe it or not, I have been on the payroll of a few papers. Mind you, two of those were weeklies, so the pressure wasn't the same. But I worked for the newsdesk of a national daily in London - England, not Canada - for a while. I didn't get much sleep while I worked there!"
Again, Lois found herself pushing her doubts away. Clark was just an ordinary guy who'd obviously drifted in and out of reporting jobs around the country - around parts of the world, it seemed. He'd probably been using his journalism degree - if he had one - to earn his way on a round-the-world trip.
Though there was a good way to test him... change the subject, and see if he tried to bring it back to her.
"So, you're from Kansas, you said. Whereabouts?"
He grinned. "You won't have heard of it. It's a small town about 150 miles west of Wichita."
"Try me," she suggested.
"Smallville," he answered.
She stopped dead. "Now you're just trying to kid me."
"No, really!" he protested. "It's called Smallville. Look it up - it's on the map. It's even on the Rand-McNally US atlas! Anyway, I grew up on my folks' farm about three miles outside town."
Smallville, Kansas. Yeah, right.
"I can see you don't believe me." He grinned again, giving her another flash of those brilliant white teeth. "I swear to you - when you go back to your house, look it up. You'll see I'm not kidding."
Lois shrugged. It really didn't matter if Smallville existed or not. It wasn't as if she was ever planning to go there. "And you grew up on a farm," she said. "You didn't think of becoming a farmer yourself?"
He smiled. "Touche. But no - I mean, I'm always happy to help out whenever I'm home, but farming's not for me. I edited my high school newspaper, and that's when I decided I wanted to be a reporter - so I majored in journalism at Midwestern State. I guess my dad would've liked it if I'd majored in agriculture, but he knew it wasn't what I wanted."
Lois made no comment, waiting for him to turn the conversation back to her, to take the opportunity he'd offered himself to ask her about her own college degree and how she'd got into reporting. But he didn't.
"Midwestern's got a good journalism programme," she said after several moments' silence had passed.
"Yeah, it's pretty well-rated. Not as good as some places on the east coast, but I couldn’t afford the fees or the living expenses to go anywhere else. I'm not sorry - I was lucky enough to have some great professors."
"I went to MetU," Lois said, feeling somehow that she should contribute something to the conversation - and wanting to swap college experiences. She didn't often, these days, get the opportunity to talk to someone with a similar background to hers - someone who wouldn't just give her a bemused look if she started talking about leads and making deadlines and irritating subs and forty-point headlines. And anyway, her college education was a matter of public record. Anyone could find out where she'd studied, what classes she'd taken, what her grade-point average was and even what she'd come top in with about ten minutes' research.
Clark gave her a crooked smile. "Thought you might have. I mean, why would you go anywhere else when one of the top journalism schools in the country is right on your doorstep?"
And Lex had asked her several times whether she regretted not having gone to Harvard or Smith... Yes, Clark understood in a way that non-reporters didn't.
And for the next hour, as they strolled in and out of the water's edge, they swapped reminiscences of journalism classes, college newspapers and student life generally. Lois squashed the disloyal thought that this wasn’t a conversation she could ever have with Lex. She hadn't married her husband because they had a college degree in common, after all. Their marriage was based on different things entirely.
Like the fact that he offered you an escape-route after the Planet was gone?
No! she objected.
Like the fact that we have all sorts of interests in common... we share the same ideals, we like the same things... good books, good conversation, the theatre, music...Lois gazed out across the lake, trying to swallow the lump that had suddenly appeared in her throat. Why was it so hard to think of things that she had in common with her husband? Why was it so easy to see how many things she had in common with Clark?
"Hey." A gentle touch on her arm, together with the softly-voiced word, drew her attention back to Clark. "Are you okay? You... uh, you looked pretty sad just there."
In that moment, Lois yearned to be able to tell him everything. To ignore the consequences for her marriage and just tell Clark how she really felt. How alone she was. How she'd begun to question whether she'd really made the right choice. How scared she was that the man she'd married was little more than a stranger to her. How she was very sure that she didn’t love her husband... and that she had no idea what that meant for her marriage or her future.
And then sanity returned. How could she possibly tell Clark anything of the kind? She didn't know him. Okay, in one way that was a good thing; who better to open her heart to than to someone she was never going to see again once he, or she, left this place by the lake? But that was a dangerous trap to fall into. She was Lois Lane, now Mrs Lex Luthor. Information about her was highly saleable. Any tabloid, or even newspaper, in North America, if not the world, would pay big money to know that Lois Luthor was regretting her marriage.
And it wasn’t true anyway. Was it? She wasn't really regretting her marriage. She was just going through a bit of a wobbly patch, that was all. After all, this was the first time she and Lex had been apart since they'd married. And she'd been alone for two nights. She was going through a bit of separation anxiety. That was all.
So she summoned a smile, turning it on Clark. "I'm fine."
He hesitated, his expression showing uncertainty. "I don’t want to intrude," he said slowly. "I know it’s none of my business. But you don't look fine, Lois. And if there's anything at all I can do to help..."
She shook her head, maintaining the over-bright smile. "There's nothing. But thank you for offering. And we're back where we started!" she exclaimed, bending to pick up her flip-flops and then walking towards the table. "Can I get you some more iced tea?"
He stood where she'd left him, at the water's edge, his expression suggesting that he saw much more than she wanted him to. "Like I said, I don’t want to intrude. And no, thank you. I really should be going - I've invaded your privacy long enough." And he crouched down, putting his tennis shoes back on.
Lois stood, watching him, unable to move. In that instant, she felt as if she'd lost something - something fleeting, something she'd never even had. She had no idea what it was, and yet she felt its absence keenly.
And in that same moment, she realised that she didn't want Clark just to disappear; she didn't want never to see him again. But he was going; that much was obvious. He'd clearly taken her pretence - which must have been apparent to him - as a 'butt out' message; the Lois Lane walls had slammed firmly into place, and she'd scared him off.
All the same, it was probably for the best that he left now. She couldn’t really see them regaining the easy companionship they'd shared during their walk along the shore.
And that... saddened her.
"Clark," she began slowly. "How long will you be in the area?"
He stood, shading his eyes from the sun as he did so. "I'm not sure. A couple of days, maybe."
"Will I see you tomorrow?" she asked, suddenly not caring if she sounded... well, desperate for his company. Needy. As if she... liked him.
He looked surprised. "Would you like to?"
"Yes," she answered honestly.
"I thought..." he began. Then he shrugged and smiled at her. "Okay. Same time, same place? And I promise not to ask you anything personal, all right?"
Lois let go of the breath she hadn't known she'd been holding, relief she hadn't been expecting flooding through her. "Okay."
*********
Much later that evening, Lois sat back and re-read the paragraph she'd just written. Even if she said it herself, it was darned good writing. Clark's suggestion had been just what she needed - having written precisely two and a half pages on her novel in two days, most of which she'd ended up deleting, she now had over thirty pages of a semi-autobiographical analysis of working in journalism.
Best of all, it had been easy - and fun - to write. She hadn't been torturing herself trying to get a sentence that didn't sound forced, or read like purple prose. She hadn't been rehearsing every line in her head in order to ask herself if real people actually sounded like that. The words had just flowed. And they'd kept on flowing. Just as they had when she'd been back in the bullpen, writing up stories on her old computer.
The narrative had also conjured up lots of fond memories: of being in the newsroom every day, of pounding the pavement looking for a story, of the sources she used to work with and the odd, sometimes bizarre, characters who would wander in off the street claiming that they had a scoop for her. It had also brought back bittersweet memories of the people she'd worked with: Perry, Jimmy, Eduardo and even Cat. She missed her former colleagues, especially Perry - in fact, it was about time she called him. They hadn't spoken since the wedding.
She stretched and reached for the cup of coffee Betty, the housekeeper, had brought her half an hour ago. It was cold; Lois grimaced as she swallowed. Though even that took her back to the old days at the Planet, where she would frequently get so involved in writing up a story, or planning her strategy to get the scoop, that she'd forget to drink her coffee and end up downing it tepid.
She missed the Daily Planet.
But, as Lex would say, the Planet was gone and she had to move on. Looking backwards didn't get anyone anywhere. It was a time in her life which she certainly should remember fondly, but it was over. She had a new and exciting life now. And, as he'd reminded her on Sunday evening before he'd left, she was going to be a best-selling writer.
Press Pass: the scoop on journalism, by Lois Lane. She could see the front jacket now, Lois thought: a photograph of herself receiving her first Kerth award. Of course, Lex would probably want her byline - author name, she corrected herself - to be Lois Lane Luthor, but they could discuss that.
Lois bit her lip and stared out into the middle distance. Why was she trying to fool herself? They wouldn’t discuss it. Lex would tell her what he wanted, as he always did. And he would expect her to comply. He wouldn't shout or argue; that wasn't Lex's way. He would simply turn on her that expression he used sometimes, which suggested that she was really being rather foolish and irrational, and that he was being extremely patient with her, just waiting for her to come to her senses. That he was tolerating her idiocy, but he really wished that she would understand reality.
Lex.
Her husband. The man whom she’d promised, mere weeks ago, to love and cherish until death did them part.
Lois stood and walked across to the window of the large living-room. The lake was stormy tonight; in the light of the moon she could see little white-capped waves eddying their way across the surface. It was windy - perhaps there would be a thunderstorm later. That would be spectacular to watch.
"Do you need anything else for tonight, Mrs Luthor?"
The housekeeper's voice from the doorway made her turn. "No, I'm fine, thank you. Goodnight, Betty."
"You too, Mrs Luthor. I'll see you at breakfast, as usual."
Lois merely nodded before turning back to the window. She was getting as bad as Lex, she reflected: beginning to treat household staff as if they were just part of the furniture. She should know better - after all, she'd waited tables during her college years, and she knew how it felt to be given orders one minute and then treated as invisible the next.
She sighed. For some reason, she was very dissatisfied tonight. And restless.
You know why. You're not happy. You already admitted this, didn't you?Lois turned away from the window and started pacing the room. This was all Clark's doing. She should never have invited him to stay and talk with her the previous day - and she should definitely have sent him away today. He was, by his very presence, making her question every decision she'd made in the last few months. And that was just crazy. After all, the man was a nobody. Plus his very lack of achievement went against everything she believed in: hard work, dedication and success.
So what if he was good-looking? So what if he was amusing company for an hour or so? Anyone could seem appealing on short acquaintance, especially in this sort of setting and when she'd been trying to write without success. If she'd met Clark in Metropolis, say, when she'd still been at the Planet, she probably wouldn't have given him a second glance.
And she'd been crazy enough to ask him to come again tomorrow? Well, she'd just have to tell him that she'd made a mistake and ask him to leave.
Maybe that solves one problem, but what are you going to do about your biggest problem? The fact that you don't love your husband?*********
...tbc
