The sounds of the crowd around her seemed to fade into nothingness. Lois felt as though the entire world was condensing down into a single point. She could have sworn he was looking directly at her, but before she could call out to him, he was in the air.
It was a breathtaking sight, more than she would have imagined. The cape billowed out around him, and it gave him the look of something otherworldly.
A moment later, he was gone.
Lois felt numb. They’d driven two thousand miles over the space of two and a half days, and it was all for nothing.
She felt Lisa’s hand tighten on hers, and she looked down at her daughter.
This wasn’t the end. They’d contact him one way or another.
************
High in the darkness, Clark stared down at them as they left the crowd. The woman and the young girl looked frazzled and weary. They looked as though they hadn’t slept in days, as though they’d been traveling and had slept in their car.
He couldn’t believe how clear her face was. She’d been the face in his dreams for years, the one person who had haunted him after all this time.
She’d been his first introduction to the poison that had come to define his life, and yet he didn’t blame her. As far as he could see, she was the one person he’d known who hadn’t had an agenda. She hadn’t asked anything of him, and he’d known instinctively that what they were doing wasn’t something she’d done before.
It had been awkward, clumsy, wonderful. There had been something about it that made it different than later, more skilled encounters. She’d had a vulnerability about her, a feeling that all it would take would be a single tap, and her whole world would shatter into a thousand tiny pieces.
He’d flown for the first time that night, buoyed by the unfeeling sensations of new love. His joy had only grown. This was the woman he was going to spend the rest of his life with. She was going to be the one.
Of course, away from the red poison, he’d gotten sick, and his memory had gotten fuzzy. He couldn’t remember exactly where he’d taken her that night.
Worse, the next morning the other guys on the team had talked about it, turned what had been a beautiful encounter into something ugly and tawdry.
He hadn’t even known her first name, but that was going to change.
He took a quick note of the license plate number on the battered brown station wagon that was parked haphazardly.
The girl spoke. “What are we going to do, mom?”
“We’re going to get in contact with Mr. Kent. He set up this foundation. Surely he has some way of getting in contact with…him.”
They were trying to contact Superman? For a moment Clark was tempted to simply land beside them, but his native caution prevented it. He wasn’t sure why they’d traveled this far to find him, and he wanted to know more before committing himself.
“I thought he saw you,” the girl said.
“I did too, honey.” The sound of defeat in that familiar voice was almost enough for him to reconsider.
Before he could reconsider again, he was off.
With her, of all women, he couldn’t trust himself.
***********
Wearily, Lois staggered into the tiny motel. Switching the lights on, she was relieved to see that it was at least clean, although there was a faint scent of mildew. The tiles in the bathroom were cracked, and the bed had a slight sag to the middle, but on her limited funds, it was all they could afford.
It had been a foolish idea, coming all the way out here to find Lisa’s father. What had she expected was going to happen? Did she think he was going to be rich and famous and that he would instantly fall head over heels for her and take her away from her mundane life?
Back child support would have been nice. It would be nice to be able to buy Lisa the things she wanted without having to worry about the bank balance.
By saving diligently, Lois had created a tidy little nest egg…one that had been wiped out by the bricklayer’s bill.
It was frustrating, seeing all the things she wanted slip away. Biting her tongue at work because she needed her job, because her daughter needed to eat and have money for clothes. If she’d only had to worry about herself, she’d have said to hell with it. She’d have taken risks, jumped at chances.
Lois wouldn’t have been stuck after two years in a dead end job as a researcher. At the very least she’d have demanded to be put to work full time so that she could have gotten benefits.
The pay wasn’t so bad, but the crushing cost of living in even a suburb of Metropolis ate every penny and then some. Being able to afford even a smallish house in a poorer neighborhood of town had been a minor miracle.
It was a bitter pill, sometimes, editing the work of people she knew had far less potential than she. Unfortunately, being a reporter required dedication, talent and a willingness to work hours that Lois just couldn’t afford.
She was all Lisa had.
Still, she wasn’t without skills. She’d start work tomorrow at getting in contact with the head of the Superman Foundation, Clark Kent.
*********************
Clark read the license plate number into the telephone. In a few hours, he’d have the name of the mystery woman and along with it her life story. It paid to keep an agency on retainer for that sort of thing.
He wasn’t sure why she’d brought the girl. Whatever business she had with him wouldn’t include anyone else. They’d shared a night together a long time ago, and while it had been mind blowing and earth moving, it wasn’t the sort of thing that people crossed mountains and oceans to find again.
He’d been that naïve once, and part of him still missed that innocence. Believing in the innate goodness of human beings; that had been his parents’ lesson to him. Part of him still believed it. If it didn’t, he wouldn’t be taking the risk of going through the whole Superman rigmarole.
Inspiring people to find the goodness they’d lost. That had been the sales pitch, and there had been something to it that had appealed to Clark. Perhaps it was his own twisted need for redemption, or perhaps it was just that it seemed like something his parents would have wanted.
Deep in his soul he wanted to believe that people were good, that who he became when exposed to the red poison wasn’t his true nature, but that it was some sort of aberration.
He stared at the awards on the walls. Making money while under the effects of the red poison was the easiest thing in the world.
Finding gold, oil, even diamonds was child’s play to someone with his abilities, and buying the land up cheap before testing the area had been even easier.
It had been getting the money for the first mine that had been the hardest. Clark wondered if he was still banned from Las Vegas casinos, even ten years later. No one had ever been able to prove that he was cheating, yet the results had been impossible to ignore. He’d taken the money and run, staring a business empire.
It pained him, the thought of all the people he’d cheated along with way. People had been sitting with fortunes and they’d let them go for pennies on the dollar.
He wasn’t sure how he was ever going to be able to make amends.
Closing his eyes, he sighed. All he could do was hope that it would be enough.
***************
“My name is Lois Lane,” Lois said into the telephone. “And I would like to speak to the President of the Superman Foundation.”
“The President is a busy man, Ms. Lane. He is currently in a meeting, and he will be unavailable for several hours.” The voice on the other end of the line was cool and professional, obviously well versed in screening the assortment of crackpots and greedy money seekers who were likely to try to talk to someone of Clark Kent’s wealth and position.
Inwardly, Lois sighed. This was going to be as difficult as she had feared. She’d amassed a file on the Superman Foundation before she’d left the paper; there were advantages to working as a fact checker after all. She’d hoped to be able to set up a straight forward meeting, but…
The tone of the woman’s voice changed. “I see that we’ve had a cancellation at noon. Perhaps you would like to schedule a meeting for twelve o’clock today.”
“I…ah…I’d like that.”
Lois felt a little stunned as she let the telephone receiver drop. Now she just had to figure out a way to convince the President of a charitable foundation worth millions if not billions of dollars to let her contact his cash cow, without revealing the true reasons for the visit.
The last thing she needed was the media firestorm that would erupt if the world learned that Superman had a love child.
*****************
Clark stared at the file in front of him. Lois Lane, age 29. Resident of New Troy throughout her life. Graduated with an Associate’s degree, current employee of the Daily Planet. They had her listed as a contract employee, as a fact checker. He wondered if they were somehow hiding the fact that she was a reporter.
Although Superman sought the limelight, and encouraged publicity, the last thing Clark Kent needed was any time in the press. He’d been refusing interviews for years. For a copy editor looking to break into the big time as a reporter, this would be a major first step.
By all rights, he ought to send her away and avoid her as much as possible. It was the sensible, safe thing to do.
He could go back to his dual life; lonely and secretive on the one hand, and always playing a role on the other.
If he wasn’t looking forward to this interview more than he’d looked forward to anything in years, he’d be on the next plane out of state within the hour. He had people who were experts at canceling appointments.
But after what seemed a lifetime of being alone, he finally was being given a chance to relive the one night that had been a splash of unforgettable color.
He couldn’t miss that, not for anything.
