Table of Contents Previously in Part 11:
“Oh, and one other thing…” Clark mentioned with an ease he did not feel. “I think you should come to my house.”
“You just promised you would quit asking me out,” Lois pointed out.
“Not for a date,” Clark clarified, “but as one friend doing a favor for another. I want you to stay at my apartment for Thanksgiving break.”
“That’s a downgrade from your previous invitations? You don’t want to date, you want to shack up?” Lois voice shot up in both tone and volume.
Clark tried to sound steady and reassuring. “It wouldn’t be like that, Lois. You can bring a chaperone, if you prefer. Invite a friend who needs a place to stay. Hire a nun. I don’t care. I just hate to see you squirrel away every penny for weeks just to throw it away on some dive that doesn’t deserve it.”
” Ahn nee yoe!” Lois shouted, her eyes afire.
“I take it that’s a ‘no’ in Japanese?”
“Korean. And I learned the moves at the dojo to back it up.”
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And now Part 12:
Lois was angry, furious, livid—but smart enough to eat every bite of her tasty lunch. She was giving him the silent treatment now, while still communicating her rage. She chewed like a tigress devouring her mate. Oh, yes, she was good and mad now!
She finished her lunch and fastidiously slammed her paper plate into the trashcan, storming from the lunchroom. When Kent fell in step at her side, she stomped past the elevator and up the stairs. Surprise, surprise! Kent was foolhardy enough to join her, as if she was simply going for a stroll. She quickened her pace, but he matched it with ease.
She needed to clear him out of her mind and get back to work. If only her work for the day held interest, but she was preparing information on zoning regulations and safety standards for houses of horror. She so hoped that some political figure was trying to skirt those standards, since it would be entirely worth her time to catch someone like the mayor trying to break the rules. But she was afraid it would be some feel-good article--like Kent wrote--to reassure the public of a safe and happy Halloween.
She sighed. This just wasn’t her day.
~*~
As he cleared off his desk Wednesday evening and shut down his computer, Clark glanced Lois’s way. Although she appeared to have cooled down since yesterday’s lunch, it was difficult to ascertain how cordial she would be. He was slow and cautious as he neared her desk for his traditional goodbye.
Then Clark heard what Lois had to say. She grumbled in a voice so low she had no way of knowing he could hear her, but it was a nasty enough insult that he was sure it would be effective down at the wharf.
“Bye Lois,” Clark tossed out as he hurried past her. She was in no mood for him to offer her anything, and he wasn’t fool enough to try.
~*~
The quiet of the bullpen was a warm welcome as the day shift cleared out. But it couldn’t quiet the unrest in her soul. As she went through the motions of processing her work, her mind continued to mull over the whole conflict with Kent. She was still angry with ‘Mr. Can’t-Take-No-For-An-Answer’, but she was also angry with herself.
It wasn’t like her to let something get under her craw like this—okay, that wasn’t quite true, but it wasn’t like her to let a
man get under her craw. Normally, she turned down any invitation painfully and decisively and moved on. It irked her to no end that she was still irked over Kent.
It meant that she was losing her edge. She didn’t care and that made her the best in the world. But now she cared enough to be angry, and that meant she cared.
But of course that wasn’t really it. In the past she had always had a good story to vent her emotions into, and now all she had was a desk job. It was like giving a starving child a job in a donut factory; she was near the news, but she couldn’t actually fill her own vital need to partake in the chaos of the news business.
She fantasized about asking Glen if she could use a bit of her time this evening to go meet some local prostitutes since she didn’t have any among the snitches she was courting. She could just envision the look on the poor man’s face. The idea was ridiculous enough to give her the giggles.
She found herself laughing until her bladder ached. She stumbled from her desk and down the hallway. The cleaning lady gave her a second glance and then mumbled under her breath in Spanish. She probably thought she could insult Lois’s intelligence all she wanted and Lois wouldn’t understand a word, but Lois graciously corrected her. She was not borracho or drunk, she was agotado or exhausted.
Yes, that was it, Lois concluded. She was simply too tired to be thinking straight. Kent had nothing to do with it.
~*~
Clark was a glutton for punishment. He was probably certifiably crazy but, since he was crazy in love, he just couldn’t help himself.
It hadn’t begun that way. He had gone through his normal nightly routine: keeping his eyes open for subtle ways to help as he walked home, stopping at the deli for a fresh salad and sandwich, and then continuing in his walk--helping wherever he could. Normally it gave him a sense of peace and accomplishment to assist those who needed a hand the most.
Yet, tonight, peace eluded him.
It was Lois.
He wasn’t sure exactly how to make it right with her, yet he somehow knew that each day in which she was mad at him was going to be worse than the day before. Never go to bed angry, his mom always said. But how could he make amends?
So with his head hanging just a tad, he found himself returning to the bullpen as bedtime neared with only a trumped-up excuse to get him in the door.
It took a few hours but with concentrated effort Lois was finally able to hit her groove. She might have a nothing job but she was the best of the best at this nothing job. She hoped by making other people look good that her own efforts would eventually be recognized and rewarded. But then again it was always possible that those other people would take all the credit and she would have to do something more drastic to get attention.
“Hey, Lois,” ‘Mr. Let’s-Shack-Up-Sometime’ casually greeted her as if he belonged in her life at this time of night.
She let out a strangled groan and walked away. She had promised herself she wasn’t going to do this. She was simply going to leave her private life at the door and lead a dignified, professional night shift.
But instead Kent showed up in her evening sanctum and followed her, so she was forced to hide out in the ladies’ room. She waited with one ear pressed to the door, but she never heard his footfall retreat.
“Lois? Are you okay?” he finally asked in an embarrassed voice.
“Of course I’m okay.”
She threw the door open and stormed back toward her desk, detouring by the coffeepot to fill another Styrofoam cup with fully caffeinated sludge.
“What do you want?” Lois asked in an accusatory tone. “We’ve already determined that it’s pitiful for you to hang out at my desk and make moon-eyes at me. And I know you’re not here with Perry and Jimmy. So why do you do this to yourself, Kent?”
“I need your help,” Kent began, but Lois cut him off before he had the opportunity to embarrass himself further. That was her job. She would cut him off cleanly and decisively and hopefully painfully enough that he would end this.
“You need more help than I can give you. This is pathetic.”
She wasn’t going to give him the opportunity to say what they both needed, so he interrupted her. He hoped to find the words that would get both her attention and her forgiveness.
“I need your help on a story.”
Lois stilled, weighing her options. On the one hand, this held the opportunity to get her name in front of the right people… if the story was big enough. On the other hand, Kent could always be plotting to have her do all the work so he could sleep with her and steal the story.
“Keep talking,” Lois instructed. She would need a lot more information before she could make a decision. Kent pulled up a chair and straddled it backwards.
“I’ve been preparing for an interview I’m doing for the business section.”
“I thought you worked for ‘On the Town’.”
“Normally, I do. But I befriended a man who normally doesn’t give interviews who works for the board of a large company that controls the interviews. I wasn’t looking for a story, but he came to me asking me to help him make a big announcement for his company. We set up an interview for a few weeks down the road when the enterprise would be ready.”
Lois grabbed a notebook as Clark began to talk details.
“You’ve only been in town for a little while, so you haven’t heard about Lex-Harbor. It’s a riverfront restoration project that began thirteen years ago. There was a street gang that specialized in arson that burned down much of the West River area. The land that was left was underinsured in a high-crime district, so when the lots were bought up and the restoration was suggested, it seemed like a good idea… to almost everyone. That is until it was held up in court cases for a dozen years. There was a fight about zoning when the city sold a small park to a private venture. Then the environmentalists sued because a rare duck lived in the park. And there was another group that got into the act because the land was declared ‘blighted’, so a different set of rules was going to be used if any sales tax was collected. But there wasn’t much the courts could do since the birds were removed from the endangered list and the laws were clear on the ‘blighted’ issue.”
“That’s quite the history,” Lois acknowledged. “So where’s the project now? Can we shop there yet?”
“Not yet. The list of opponents goes on. In the beginning, there were allegations that the city council was coerced to sign off on the deal without taking the time to do the proper studies, but nobody paid attention. Then there was the fact that it was entirely a union job, and the unions in question were infamous for how well organized they were, if you get my drift.”
“Mobsters,” Lois concluded. “But everything’s unionized in a city of this size. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”
“That’s what I thought. But then I was contacted by someone with information I couldn’t possibly pass up—information about how the mob might still be involved and might be planning on using this venture to give a legitimate front to their illegal activities. I’m sure it’s not a bad money laundering opportunity either.”
Lois threw her notebook on the table. “So what do you need me for?”
Clark felt like crossing his fingers to jinx out the lie. The truth was that he didn’t need her. Well, at least he didn’t need her for the story. But she had always underestimated him, so she couldn’t possibly know how capable he was of doing investigative journalism.
Of course, he was only here to get his foot back in the door with her. But he couldn’t exactly admit that he had an angle, so he was prepared to humiliate himself in front of her.
“I need someone with your edge, Lois. It’s been awhile since I’ve done feature stories. I was hoping you could brainstorm with me.”
Brainstorm. He wanted to brainstorm. Well, Lois Lane could brainstorm, she supposed, but she wanted to know what was in it for her, first. She wouldn’t mention that she was dying for just a taste of the old life of mobsters and danger and investigation and revelations and the stuff of life. She would pretend that this was a balanced negotiation and that she could easily walk away without a second thought. In essence, she would negotiate and she would lie. And she would get what she wanted.
~*~
Lois went to bed that night with a slight smile on her face. It was a piece of cake getting ‘Mr. Smalltime-Reporter’ to agree to putting her name on the story--‘with special assistance from Lois Lane.’ And she actually enjoyed brainstorming with him. They had talked about the story; she had given him a little bit of insight and he had walked away with some direction on where to begin an investigation of this magnitude. And after a little bit of chitchat, he had promised to keep her apprised on how the story was progressing.
All in all, it turned into a pretty good day.
It helped that ‘The Libido’ hadn’t mentioned his idea of shacking up to save a few bucks over the holidays. She was still on edge over that one, even though she had decided to set her feelings aside for the sake of professionalism.
She had actually enjoyed being with him this evening, so maybe when she finally cured him of his hormone-driven ways they could become something akin to friends. But of course, there really was no cure for that kind of thing. He could be eighty years old and still chasing around ladies with walkers and curlers in their hair.
But working together tonight had been a good time.
