Chinese takeout containers littered the coffee table, mingling with piles of wrinkled printouts. Lois surveyed the profile in her hand: the CEO of WestCorp, an import company that rented one of the burned out warehouses. Try as she might, she couldn’t find anything to link him to either of the other fires. No connection to the owners or renters, and no connection to the Churches or Toni Taylor and the Metro Club.
She set his profile in the “no” stack, and picked up another. So far she had identified a handful of loose ties between the warehouses, but nothing significant. It made sense for there to be some overlap between companies in the same industry – executives who had once worked for one company and now worked for another, parent companies that owned more than one distribution company, etc. She was looking for something more. Something obvious that linked all four fires, but so far, she had yet to find it.
In the meantime, she had also hit a wall searching for the missing weapons from the Toasters, if they in fact existed. She had spent all week digging into financials and public records to try to find out who was in charge of the Metro Club. So far, the ownership still seemed to be held by the Taylor family trust. But that didn’t help her know who was actually calling the shots.
She had convinced Cat to come with her to the club the night before, a boon since she could always be counted on to draw attention away from Lois, and because she was actually quite shrewd and an excellent observer of people. Cat had managed to chat up the bartender and get a name for the current manager, who was apparently a second cousin of Toni’s. She would have Jimmy run a search on him first thing in the morning, and see if she could find any connections.
The phone rang, shattering the silence of the room, and she looked up, startled. A glance at her watch showed it was already eight o’clock, far later than she had realized. She reached over to the end table beside her and snatched up the receiver before it could ring again.
“Hello?” she said, pressing the phone to her ear.
“Lois, hey, it’s Clark.” His voice was warm and smooth, and it sent a shiver through her.
“Hi!” she said, cringing at the excitement in her voice. She needed to get that under control.
“What are you up to? Is this a good time?” he asked, and she could hear the edge of nerves in his voice, mixed with hope.
“This is great. I could use a break. My brain is about to explode.” She settled into the corner of the couch, drawing her legs up and sitting cross legged,
He chuckled. “Well, we wouldn’t want that to happen. What are you working on? Something for work?”
“Yeah,” she confirmed. “These fires…there have been four of them now, and it seems pretty clear to me that they are linked, but I can’t figure it out. I’ve been going through a bunch of boring executive profiles and company financials looking for links between either the property owners or the companies that use the space. But so far…nothing.”
“That sounds frustrating,” he commiserated. “How did your night at the club go last night? You sound like you’re in one piece, so I’m guessing no one recognized you?”
“I made it in and out unscathed. I convinced Cat to come with me. She’s the gossip columnist who sits next me at work. She’s great for any sort of social event where I want to blend in. No one looks at me when Cat is around.”
“I find that hard to believe,” he said softly, and her cheeks flooded with heat. There was a moment of awkward silence as she fumbled for a response.
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t-”
“It’s fine,” she said quickly. “I wasn’t… I mean, well, if you met Cat you would understand. She’s… a lot. Anyway, it was great because she can schmooze anyone. She charmed the bartender and got me some information about the new manager. I’ll get Jimmy to run a full background on him tomorrow.”
“Jimmy’s another coworker?”
She nodded, and then rolled her eyes at herself, realizing he couldn’t see her. “He started out as the office gopher a couple years ago, but worked his butt off on my Luthor investigation. I don’t know if you saw the photo of Luthor in handcuffs on the roof with the city skyline behind him-”
“Lois,” Clark interrupted with a laugh. “Everyone in America saw that photo. Of course I saw it.”
She laughed, charmed by his refusal to play games and pretend he hadn’t seen it. “Anyway,” she continued. “That was his shot. He’s actually doing a lot more photography these days, and even a little writing. But he’s the only person I trust to do my research, so he still works with me a good bit.”
“He’s a friend too?” Clark asked. “It sounds like you get along well.”
“Yeah, he’s definitely a friend. But maybe sort of…in a little brother way? He’s a great kid, but…he’s still a kid. He has a new girlfriend every week and every time he wants me to meet one, I wind up having to brave some sketchy dance club with throbbing music and a questionably dressed clientele. Last month he tried to convince me to go to a rave? He’s…something.”
“That’s not your scene?” Clark teased.
“God, no. I didn’t want to hang out with twenty-one-year-olds when I was twenty-one. I definitely don’t want to hang out with them now.”
Clark made a sound of agreement, and she smiled, relaxing a little into the couch. She had worried their first phone call would feel awkward or forced, but this felt just like that night in the hotel bar.
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?” Clark asked. “You said Jimmy’s like a brother, but you’ve never mentioned any siblings.”
Lois sighed. “I have a sister. Lucy. She’s about Jimmy’s age, actually. She moved to California recently. She’s…” Lois hesitated, unsure how best to describe Lucy. From the troubled little girl who hid in her room to avoid their feuding parents, to the promiscuous teenager desperately searching for love in all the wrong places, to the flighty young woman who truly wanted to better her life but just couldn’t seem to settle down, Lucy was just, “...complicated.”
“You aren’t close?” Clark asked.
“Not everyone grew up with perfect parents in a perfect little town,” she snapped, and then immediately regretted it. There had been no judgment in his voice.
He paused, and she knew he must have been caught off guard by her overreaction.
“I’m sorry,” she said awkwardly. “That was un-”
“I was just asking,” he said gently.
“We were really close when we were young,” she said softly, offering him an olive branch. “Our parents were…not super involved. They worked a lot and…they had their own issues. Lucy’s five years younger than I am, so by the time I was nine or ten, it just was the two of us a lot of the time, and I had to take care of her. Our parents divorced when I was twelve and Lucy was seven, and she just…withdrew. And then later, by the time she came out of her shell, I was already gone. I moved out at seventeen. By the time Lucy was a teeager, I was in college. After college, when I got my own place, she moved in for a while. But she never stays in one place very long. She went to New York for a while, and then came back and stayed with me for a couple months last year. Then she started dating this bartender who was a real jerk. And finally she left him and moved to California. She seems happy out there, I guess. I try to stay in touch, but it’s hard with our schedules.”
Clark was quiet for a minute, and she cringed, wondering what had possessed her to share so much with him. What was it about him that made her completely unable to filter?
“That sounds really hard,” he said finally, his voice gentle. “It sounds like you care about her a lot. It’s hard not being able to help the people we love.”
“I should have helped her more when she was younger,” Lois confessed. “I waited too long.”
“You were a child, Lois. That wasn’t your responsibility.” His voice was tender but unequivocating.
She knew he was right, but it was impossible to think about Lucy without worrying and wondering what she might have done differently to set her on a better path.
“I bet you always wished for siblings,” she said, deflecting the conversation back to him. “I’m surprised you don’t have a whole house full of them. Isn’t that how it is on farms? Your parents didn’t want a whole gaggle? Or did they just decide they got lucky with the perfect son the first time around and didn’t want to push their luck?”
He chuckled at her “perfect son” compliment. “They would have loved to have enough kids to field a baseball team. They both dreamed of a big family. But my mom had some health issues as a child, and it turned out later they left her unable to conceive. They didn’t find out until they’d been married for a few years. They were pretty devastated.”
“Oh, no,” she said automatically. She had never really contemplated motherhood herself, but she could imagine the shock of planning a whole life and then having it yanked away. “That’s awful.”
“Yeah,” he said solemnly. “They tried to adopt through an agency, but it was so expensive and the farm was going through a rough patch. They really thought they would never be parents. And then I just sort of…fell into their laps. It was a private adoption. A complete surprise.”
“They must have been so thrilled. They must have felt so lucky,” she said.
“I’m the lucky one. They’re the best parents in the world. I can’t imagine how different my life would be if I’d have ended up somewhere else.”
She could almost feel it through the phone line, the depth of his love and his devotion to them. And she tried to imagine what it must have been like to grow up in a house full of love with parents who spoke of you as the answer to their prayers.
“I think you were both lucky. To find each other. It’s like the universe knew you were meant to be together. To be a family. And it brought you together.”
They were quiet for a moment, and she suddenly remembered standing outside her hotel room door asking him if he thought there was an alternate universe where he lived in Metropolis. And she wondered if this pull she felt toward him was the universe trying to correct its mistake and bring them together. She rolled her eyes at herself. She needed to stop spending so much time with Star.
“Tell me about the zoo,” she said. “Did Sophie have fun?”
“She had a blast,” he said, and she could hear his smile. He launched into a long, meandering tale of their day, full of descriptions of the animals and Sophie’s precocious witticisms, and she laughed comfortably, imagining their day together.
He was so different from any man she knew, voluntarily spending his Saturday at the zoo with a six-year-old.
She couldn’t remember her parents ever taking her to the zoo. After they divorced, when her father was only legally required to spend every other weekend with them, she had thought he would fill that time with outings and activities, trying to buy their affection like so many of her friends’ fathers. But he hadn’t even bothered. Weekends at his house were spent re-doing her homework to meet his expectations or babysitting Lucy while he ran back to work “for just a few minutes”.
The only time she remembered going to the zoo, aside from a school field trip in third grade, was when her father’s secretary had taken them for Lucy’s eighth birthday. He had claimed he would meet them there as soon as he finished up at work, and Lucy had insisted they wait for him, even though they were freezing and exhausted after six hours of walking around the zoo. But she wouldn’t be swayed, and they had stayed until closing time.
As they trudged back to their car, through the empty parking lot, Lois had expected tears. But her little face was impassive, and she remained stoic for the entire ride home, refusing to shed a single tear until she was alone in her room. When their mother found out, she hadn’t bothered to offer Lucy any sympathy, but they had both heard her rage at their father over the phone once they were in bed, the sound of breaking glass punctuating her demand that he never again send them off with his whore when he was supposed to be watching them.
Of course, her mother had never taken them to the zoo either.
But here was Clark, not just volunteering to take his goddaughter to the zoo once, but buying an annual pass so they could go again and again, and then laughing as he relived the day.
Their conversation wandered after that, staying on lighter topics. They talked about their weeks at work, the books they were reading, and an old television show they both loved. He told her about Sophie’s birthday party, and the way Lana berated Pete, only to melt when he whistled at her in the kitchen. And she told him about Cat’s latest conquest, a middle-aged banker with no appeal that Lois could ascertain but whom Cat insisted had “raw animal magnetism”.
He had just finished telling her a story about one of his seniors, a football player with more brawn than brains, who had gotten obliterated in a debate with Sarah during a class discussion about Lord of the Flies, when Lois stretched and caught a glimpse of her watch.
“Clark, it’s almost midnight,” she said, surprised.
“I’m sorry!” he said immediately. “I didn’t realize how late it was.”
“Don’t apologize,” she said with a laugh. “We seem to be making a habit of this. But I really should get ready for bed. And your phone bill is going to be ridiculous.”
“Don’t you worry about my phone bill. It will be worth every penny,” he said. The soft, intimate tone of his voice was back, and her heart fluttered in her chest.
For four hours they had talked nonstop, about topics from the serious to the silly. And the whole time, their tone had stayed light and friendly. They had laughed and sparred, and she had loved every minute of their conversation. But it had lulled her into a false sense of security. She had forgotten momentarily how badly she wanted him. Wanted to touch him. Wanted to hear him say her name in that sweet, soft voice. Wanted him to kiss her again.
The silence stretched between them.
“I’m really glad we did this,” she said finally.
“Me too,” he said softly. “Can I call you again? Next week, maybe?”
She should tell him no. She should tell him it was a bad idea. She should remind them both of all the reasons this wasn’t a good idea.
“I’d like that,” she said instead.
“Good,” he said, his voice warm and happy. “Thank you. Get some sleep. I’ll email you tomorrow.”
“Good night, Clark.”
“Good night, Lois.”
*****
Lois skimmed her completed article about the mayor’s new crime taskforce, charged with examining the rising rates of crime city-wide and recommending a comprehensive plan to make the city safer. She tweaked a few sentences flagged by her editor and added an end quote, then sent it off for a final edit.
It had been a long four days. Another warehouse had burned down overnight Tuesday, but this one didn’t seem to be connected to the others in any way that she could find either. Jimmy had tried his best to find anything of interest on the new manager of the Metro Club, but he was squeaky clean. And stakeouts outside Costmart on Tuesday and Wednesday had yielded nothing but a serious crick in her neck from sitting hunched over for too many hours in a row.
She glanced at the clock in the corner of her screen. Technically she was done for the day. She could go home and grab some dinner before she had to leave for taekwondo. Or…she could kill a little time looking over her Intergang research and wait…
Her inbox chimed, and her decision was made. She smiled as she clicked on his name.
From: Clark Kent [cjkent@aol.com]
To Lois Lane [lane.lois@dailyplanet.com]
Subject: Re: Never Again
Date: May 10, 1995, 5:33 pm
I’m sorry your stakeout was so miserable. I hope your neck is feeling better by now. Taekwondo tonight, right? That should stretch it out if it’s still bothering you. Anything interesting at work today?
She hit reply immediately, settling comfortably into her chair.
From: Lois Lane [lane.lois@dailyplanet.com]
To: Clark Kent [cjkent@aol.com]
Subject: Re: Re: Never Again
Date: May 10, 1995, 5:34 pm
I’ll live. I was just feeling whiny this morning. Nothing exciting at work today, just a boring story about the mayor’s new taskforce. How was your observation? Did it go well?
From: Clark Kent [cjkent@aol.com]
To Lois Lane [lane.lois@dailyplanet.com]
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Never Again
Date: May 10, 1995, 5:36 pm
It went great! The kids were really engaged and made me look good. I think my job is safe for another year.
From: Lois Lane [lane.lois@dailyplanet.com]
To: Clark Kent [cjkent@aol.com]
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Never Again
Date: May 10, 1995, 5:39 pm
Haha. As if there was ever any doubt. I’m pretty sure it’s bad form to fire the Teacher of the Year.
From: Clark Kent [cjkent@aol.com]
To Lois Lane [lane.lois@dailyplanet.com]
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Never Again
Date: May 10, 1995, 5:41 pm
You never know. There’s a first time for everything. You didn’t answer me about Taekwondo. What time is your class?
From: Lois Lane [lane.lois@dailyplanet.com]
To: Clark Kent [cjkent@aol.com]
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Never Again
Date: May 10, 1995, 5:43 pm
It’s not until seven. I have some time. Did you finish reading Beach Music?
From: Clark Kent [cjkent@aol.com]
To Lois Lane [lane.lois@dailyplanet.com]
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Never Again
Date: May 10, 1995, 5:44 pm
Not yet. I’m close. I’ll finish it tonight and we can talk about this weekend. You should eat before your class.
From: Lois Lane [lane.lois@dailyplanet.com]
To: Clark Kent [cjkent@aol.com]
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Never Again
Date: May 10, 1995, 5:45 pm
Don’t worry, Boy Scout. I’ll eat after class.
From: Clark Kent [cjkent@aol.com]
To Lois Lane [lane.lois@dailyplanet.com]
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Never Again
Date: May 10, 1995, 5:46 pm
Hey, I’m just thinking of your classmates. You know you get mean when you’re hungry.
“Whatcha doing?” Jimmy asked.
Lois’ head snapped up, and she closed the email window automatically.
“Nothing!” she said quickly.
Jimmy laughed, and held his hands up. “Hey, I’m not the principal.”
“She’s definitely not emailing her secret boyfriend,” Cat said, voice deadpan, not bothering to look up from her screen.
“I do not-”
“Have a secret boyfriend,” Cat finished. “I know. And you definitely aren’t emailing him. You definitely don’t spring to attention every time your inbox alert chimes. And you definitely don’t lurk around your computer at six-ish every night waiting for him to rapid-fire email back and forth with you.”
“That is all…conjecture,” Lois said, cheeks burning.
“Why don’t you just go home and email him from there if you want to keep it such a big secret.”
“I’m not keeping anything-” she stopped abruptly and reconsidered. “Can I check my email on my laptop at home? If I get online?”
Cat lost her battle to pretend to be uninterested and burst out laughing.
Lois rolled her eyes at her and focused her attention on Jimmy. “Can I?”
He made a face. “Probably? I could help you log into the server. But Lois, you might not want to use your work email for personal emails. You know technically these emails belong to the company. They can monitor them anytime they want.”
She cringed thinking about her emails being read by the nosy tech department at work. Even though there wasn’t anything embarrassing on them, she didn’t want anyone else to read them.
“Could I check my personal email at work?” she asked. If she could have one email address that she could check at both work and home, she and Clark could talk like this in the evenings and she wouldn’t have to wait until morning to read his emails.
“Sure. It’s really simple. I’ll help you set it up. You do have internet at home, right?”
Lois grinned at him awkwardly, and he laughed. “Ok, the first thing you need to do is sign up for internet service at home.”
“And then you’ll help me figure out how to check my email at work?”
Jimmy nodded. “If you tell me about this mystery guy you’re so desperate to email,” he teased.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lois said airily, feigning ignorance.
Her inbox chimed again, and Cat and Jimmy both burst out laughing
