Previously...
The blue door swung open and a vision of white silk and lace filled the doorway. “George, get in here. Now.”
And now, read on...
(There's a little bit of bad language in this, right at the end. Hope no-one's offended.)
“Hi, Lois. I see you’ve overcome your inhibitions,” he drawled.
“Yeah, and I need you to overcome yours,” she said, grabbing his arm and yanking him with surprising strength through the door. Off-balance, he was compelled to follow through and trip clumsily inside, nearly falling over his own feet in the process.
While he regained his balance, he heard her addressing the usher. “You, stay here. I might need you again.”
“Ma’am, may I remind you that the ceremony was due to begin five minutes-“
“It’ll start when we’re ready for it to start.” The door slammed and then she was whirling around to face George again. “Okay, here’s the deal. Perry is marrying us, as you know, so, as much as I’d have liked him to lead me up the aisle, he can’t. Fine. We agreed it would be just me and Clark, anyway. But it’s slippery out there. I might trip. Fall over my dress. Can you imagine? Clark would never let me forget it – I’d be listening to the anecdote of how Lois fell over at our wedding for the rest of my life. So I need someone to take me up the aisle, which is where you come in.”
George raised an eyebrow. “I do?”
“Yes.” She shrugged in a jerky, nervous movement. “Clark won’t mind. He likes spontaneity.”
“Yeah, right.” Boy, what a pair. George grasped her arms lightly. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to forget slipperiness and walking down the aisle and whether our hair looks okay and the fact that we’re marrying Superman and there’s a press corps waiting out there with more cameras than we can shake a stick at. We’re going to take a couple of deep breaths and we’re going to relax.”
“I am relaxed,” she snapped.
“And I’m a ballet dancer with a slight weight problem,” he retorted. “Come on, Lois, just do it.”
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t have time for this.”
“You want me to fetch Francine? She’ll give you a harder time than me.”
Lois’s eyes suddenly lit up. “Have you seen her?” she enthused. “Doesn’t she look great in that suit?”
“Yeah, she has legs,” he said. “I never knew that before.”
“George?” Her lip curled up in amusement. “Do I detect a crack in that hard-boiled, single-guy act of yours?”
“No, you do not,” he replied gruffly. “I made a scientific observation, that’s all – the woman has legs. Now, are you going to do as I ask or are we just going to stand here like we’re getting ready to dance the polka or something?”
She laughed. “I’m relaxed, George. Just tell me how the first date goes, okay?”
“I swear I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said, dropping his hands. “Okay, since you’re so relaxed, we’re going to back up a little. First, you look great. I mean, really, really great. I’d marry you if I could fly.”
She chuckled. “George, you are a man of many talents, but flying will never be one of them. But thank you.” She glanced in the mirrors over the wash hand basins and tucked an errant strand of hair behind her ear.
“You’re welcome. Next, please do not ever drag me into the ladies powder room again. You’re ruining my reputation as a hard-bitten, fast-talking alpha male.”
“Alpha male?” She raised an eyebrow and ran her gaze up and down his admittedly somewhat round body. “Okay, if you say so.”
“I do.” He shot a glance around the room. “Although, since we’re here - now I get why there’s always such a long queue for these places. Two lousy stalls for a place this size?”
She grimaced. “Welcome to our world, George.”
“Thanks, but I’ll stick to my own in future.” He tore his gaze away from the intriguing wall dispensers and looked at her. “Anyway, we have a small problem.”
“We do?” she asked warily. “How small a problem? Please don’t tell me Clark’s been called away on an emergency-“
“Nothing like that.” He sighed. “He wants me to be his best man.”
“Best man?” She tore away from him and began pacing up and down the confined space while her hands flailed around in mid-air. “Well, that’s just typical, isn’t it? We had an agreement! No best man and no bridesmaid, we said. No extras, we said. Just him and me – a simple wedding, we said. What gives him the right to change everything without so much as a word-“
“You asked him if it was okay for me to walk you down the aisle, right?” he enquired innocently.
She halted. “That’s different,” she said. “That’s necessity. I already explained about the slippery aisle-“
“Funny,” he drawled. “He said his was a necessity, too. He was concerned he’d drop the ring.”
She snorted. “He doesn’t drop things. He’s Superman!”
He shrugged. “He’s nervous.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Before answering her, George eyed one of the stalls and wondered how embarrassing it would be for both of them if he used the toilet as a seat. He could take the weight of his sodden feet, maybe take his shoes off...
“If you want to...you know...use it, go ahead,” said Lois, following his gaze. “Don’t mind me.”
“No, I...” Maybe he’d just stand after all. “Never mind. Look, I know Clark Kent better than I know myself, and that was one hell of a nervous guy I just talked to. He needs me.”
“I need you!”
“Sorry, Lois.” He shrugged. “Clark asked me first.”
She frowned. “Is there something you’re not telling me? Is he okay?”
“He’s fine. Well, relatively fine. In fact, once I gave him the red K he was-“
“George!” She glared at him. “That’s not funny.”
“Sorry.” He cleared his throat and sobered up. “Seriously, Clark is a little shaky. This is a big day for him – for both of you, I know – but he’s got half the country’s press out there waiting for Superman to screw up, and you can bet he’s also thinking about all the criminals who have good reason to wish him and, much worse, his bride serious harm. Sure, there are off-duty cops on patrol, but do you think that stops him worrying?”
“No, of course not.” She sighed. “We discussed all this, though. I thought he was okay with it.”
“Mostly, he is. But when he tells me he’s concerned that you won’t be able to handle the media intrusion, I know he’s not one hundred per cent okay.”
She sighed again. “We talked about that, too. Endlessly. I don’t know what else I can do or say to convince him.”
George smiled. “Marry him, Lois. That’s all the convincing he needs.”
“Yeah? Well, then, what are we waiting for?” She gathered up her skirts. “Let’s go.”
“So that’s a yes on me being his best man?” he asked. “You’ll manage to scramble up the aisle on your own?”
“Just tell him if he stands on my dress he’s a dead man.”
He laughed. “Sure, Lois. That’ll really make him feel better.”
“Just go,” she retorted, waving him to the exit. “You’re holding things up.”
“Okay, okay,” he muttered as he pushed the door open. “Once more into the breach...”
The route around to the bar marquee wasn’t any less unpleasant than previously. In fact, the many feet trampling the same course had turned the snow to a thick, dirty brown slush. George began to wish he’d worn galoshes.
**************
“Do you give flying lessons?”
The hunched figure perched on a stool at the bar stopped drumming his fingers and twisted around to frown at him. “Huh?”
George pointed silently to his sodden shoes.
Clark winced. “Oh. Sorry.” He looked up. “Is she okay?”
“Yeah, we’re good to go.”
“What was it?” Clark asked. “Anything I should know about?”
“Nope. You got the ring?” George pushed out his hand.
Clark fished in his pocket and gingerly handed it over. “You sure? You were gone a while.”
“Just bridal jitters,” he said, slipping the ring into his pocket. “Nothing to worry about.”
“What sort of jitters?”
“Bridal ones.” George led the way to the exit. “Come on. That usher guy will smile us to death if we don’t show up soon.”
Clark fell into step beside him as they made their way around to the pavilion. “Be funny if she’d asked you to take her up the aisle. What would you have said?”
George coughed. “I’d have said you asked first.”
Clark chuckled. “But you’d have stayed with her, wouldn’t you? Once you’d finished kidding around with her.”
“Ah...sure.” George kept his gaze on the slippery footpath. “Definitely.”
“Because I know how nervous she is.” He shrugged. “As nervous as I am, I guess.”
“Not sure that’s possible,” muttered George.
“Anyway, what am I saying? She didn’t ask you, so she must be okay.”
At last, a question he could answer truthfully. “Yeah.”
They arrived at the side entrance to the pavilion. Clark leant inside for a quick peek at the guests and then straightened up. “Well, this is it. Everyone’s there.”
“Yup.”
“Do you have the ring?”
And Lois didn’t believe her husband-to-be was nervous? “Buddy, you just gave it to me.”
“Oh, yes.” He smiled nervously. “Sorry.”
“No problem.” George watched impatiently as Clark looked through the door again. “Now, can we please go inside before I freeze my b-“
“She asked you, didn’t she?”
Uh, oh. Clark had turned to look at him with an unsettling conviction in his eyes. “Asked me what?”
“To take her up the aisle.”
George sighed. “She may have.”
“And you turned her down?” Clark exclaimed. “George, how could you do that?”
“With some difficulty, if you must know,” he confessed. “Your bride is a hard nut to crack.”
His eyebrows clamping down in stern frown, Clark pointed down the side of the building. The very snowy side of the building. “Go, right now! I’ll be fine here.”
George looked down with forlorn regret at his shoes. “What happened to ‘help, George, I might drop the ring’?”
“George, I’m Superman. I don’t drop things.”
“Funny, that’s what she said,” muttered George gloomily.
“Give me the ring and go.”
An idea dawned. “Only if you fly me.”
“What?”
George lifted up a foot and brandished it at Clark. “These are two hundred dollar real leather soles from Nordstroms. They’ve crossed the Arctic, waded through floods, sloshed through knee-deep slush, and you now want them to trudge through waist-high snow drifts in order to get to the main entrance of this building so I can take your bride up the aisle. I think the least you can do in the circumstances is spare them that last ignominy, don’t you?”
“Uh...yes. Sure.”
************
Flying through the open doors of a snow-bound pavilion in the middle of a freezing park whilst clutched in his patient’s arms was not George’s ideal way of spending a Saturday afternoon. In fact, flying anywhere in his patient’s arms was not ideal. And even less ideal was the thunderous expression on Lois’s face as he and Clark touched down just in front of her.
“What are you two playing at?” she demanded. “Get back up to the other end of the aisle at once.”
“I’m just delivering him to you,” said Clark. “I’ll get back right now.” He turned away and began to float upwards.
“What do you mean, delivering him to me?” she said. “He’s supposed to be with you.”
Clark paused in mid-air. “I don’t need him,” he said. “But I understand you do.”
“No, I don’t!” Lois made a shoo-ing motion with her hands. “Take him back.”
George cleared his throat. “If it’s okay with you, I’ll just head on back to my seat. Have a nice wedding.” He began to squelch over to the inner door leading to the guest seating.
“Hey!”
Their simultaneous cry of indignation forced him to stop in his tracks. “What now?”
“You can’t just leave us like that,” protested Clark.
“We need you,” added Lois vehemently.
“Jeez, you two will drive me insane one of these days, you know that? You,” he said, stabbing a finger at Lois, “just got through saying you didn’t need me, and you,” he pointed his finger up at Clark, who was still hovering in mid-air like some kind of over-sized butterfly, “just said the same thing. So get in there and get married before one of us dies of old age, okay? Meanwhile, I’m going to sit down and hope that I don’t contract trench foot after all this trampling around in the bloody snow.”
Without waiting for their answer, he trudged inside. Behind him, the stunned silence gave way to a whispered “Is he mad at us?”
“Nah, he’s just grumpy because he’s got cold feet.”
There was a brief pause. “I don’t have cold feet. Do you?”
“Not in the least, Lois.”
“Let’s get married, then.”
George thought he heard a very faint kiss and a whispered ‘I love you’, but it may have been the product of his impending trench foot and insipient pneumonia. Sentimentality certainly had no place in George’s menu of acceptable emotions.
Nevertheless, a broad grin spread over his face as he made his way up the aisle to Francine’s row. Pushing his way through, ignoring the muttered curses and dirty looks, he arrived at her chair. “Didn’t you save me a seat?” he asked, frowning at the occupied chairs either side of her.
“Oh! George!” she exclaimed. “I didn’t realise...”
“Here,” muttered the woman to her left. “Take mine.”
“Thanks.” He beamed at the woman as she fumbled her way to the end of the occupied seats and sat down in a flustered heap.
“So,” he said, lowering himself gingerly onto the flimsy plastic chair. “You have legs. I didn’t realise this.”
“What?” whispered Francine, the colour rising in her cheeks. “What are you talking about, George?”
He pointed downwards. “Legs. Very shapely ones, if I may say so.”
“George, be quiet-“
“Psst!”
What now? He pulled his attention away from Francine’s legs to the source of the new voice.
Clark was crouched at the end of the aisle.
He sighed. “Look buddy, you can do this, I know you can-“
“The ring!” Clark whispered urgently. “You still have it!”
Oh. He thrust a hand into his pocket and fished around. Uh, oh...
Smiling reassuringly down the aisle at an agitated Clark, he tried his other pocket. Shit...
He tried the first pocket again. Hmm. He’d never noticed that hole before... Perhaps it was in the lining of his jacket. If he could just get his finger through the hole and find it...
“Here, use this.”
A man to his left hastily pulled a ring off his finger and passed it down the row. The ring went from person to person until eventually it reached Clark, who smiled in relief and stood up.
And then froze, his gaze glued to the ring. “A Souvenir From Krypton?”
His stunned exclamation rang loudly over the quiet murmurs of the guests, causing a sudden hush to descend in the room.
The man who’d contributed the ring turned beet red. “My kids gave it to me,” he muttered. “When they heard I was coming to his wedding. They’re real big fans.”
George threw back his head and laughed. “What could be more appropriate, buddy?”
“I can’t use this!”
Clark’s appalled expression only made George laugh harder. “Yes, you can. Can’t he, Perry?”
Perry, who’d been standing patiently at the front, nodded. “Damn right, he can. Will you please step up here, Clark, before we all freeze ourselves to death?”
“Uh, sure, Chief.” A suitable chastened groom made his way hurriedly to the front of the room and took his place before Perry.
And so it was that George at last witnessed the marriage of Clark Kent to Lois Lane. Truly, neither of them needed his services any longer, and for that, he was immensely proud. Romeo had found his Juliet, and from this day on, they would love and support each other far better than any overweight, politically-incorrect psychologist could ever manage.
And if that same psychologist happened to have noticed a certain colleague’s perfume, or the shapeliness of her legs, or the fact that, when she laughed, he wanted to take her in his arms and...
Well, that was just the impending fever talking. Love was certainly not in George’s lexicon of permissible emotions. Only sentimental saps like Superman believed in love.
“George?”
“Yes, Francine?”
“Kiss me.”
“Aw, shit.”
The End
