The Bombshell
Chapter Three
Robin slumped down in the seat. “This stupid wig stinks. It tickles my ears. And it don’t fit right.”
For the ninth time, Lois calmly intoned, “It’s important that they don’t recognize you, Robin.”
“Who’s gonna recognize me? Ain’t nobody lookin’ for me right now.”
“No, but anyone who comes looking for you later will get a description of a redhead from anyone who sees you today.”
“Red ain’t my color.”
Lois tried not to sigh. “It’s not mine, either, but it worked for me.”
“You still got spotted.”
“But not by the police. You don’t have any mad scientist types chasing you.”
Robin turned towards the window. “You don’t, do you?” asked Lois.
“No, I ain’t got no freakin’ scientists chasin’ me!”
This time Lois did sigh. She also made a decision. It wasn’t one that Clark might have made, but she believed it was necessary to let Robin in on a couple of fairly important things.
“Robin, have you ever heard of Bureau 39?”
“That a place to eat or a sexy lingerie store?”
Lois wondered yet again about the limitations in Robin’s thought processes. “Neither. It’s a rogue government agency that went after Clark. I was just wondering if they’d ever found you.”
The girl turned to face Lois. “Not that I know of.” She shifted and showed some alarm. “Hey, if they went after Clark, that means they knew somethin’ about him, right?”
“They did, but we’re pretty sure only the top man actually found out about Clark being Superman.”
“So I guess they ain’t around no more?”
Robin’s nasal Appalachian twang was starting to grate on Lois’s ears. “No. But we’ve never found out how much they really knew and how much they reported up in the chain of command.”
“So where’s this head guy now?”
“He’s dead.”
Robin’s eyes grew wide and she almost smiled. “Guess he found out you don’t tug on Superman’s cape, huh?”
Lois shot her a sharp glance and once again wished Clark had come along with them. “That’s not how it went down. A local sheriff shot him because he was pointing a gun at Clark.” They pulled into a parking lot. “And here’s the motel. I’ll go in with you and – “
“I know how to sign my name, honey.”
Lois nodded. “Okay. And what will you show them when they ask for ID?”
Robin’s face fell. “Oh. Forgot about that. I’ll hafta see if I can get another license tomorrow.” She turned to pick up the purse and overnight bag Martha had purchased for her. “Don’t usually stay in such nice places.”
Lois quickly scanned the front of the motel, thinking that ‘nice’ wouldn’t be her description of it. The building resembled the one she and Clark had stayed in when Lois had been on the run from a murder conviction and a date with the executioner. Oddly, it was also the time period from which Robin’s red wig dated.
But Robin’s standards of housing were obviously looser than her own. “Shall we get you checked in?”
“Yeah. Oh, thanks for the chicken dinner. Reminds me ‘bout home a little.”
Lois couldn’t land on an evaluation of Robin McGyver. The girl would irritate her one minute and the next she’d trigger Lois’s compassion reflex. At one moment, Robin might act so much like a snotty teenager Lois would be tempted to send her to her room, and seconds later she’d look so much like a little lost waif Lois would want to hug her and protect her from the big, bad, cruel world. They were about the same chronological age, but in so many ways, Robin was so much younger and so much more emotionally vulnerable.
And, because of her powers, vastly more dangerous.
As they pushed through the office door, Lois decided to postpone any decisions until she had more information. And, since she was one of the world’s best investigative reporters, she was sure she’d have plenty of that in the next few days.
Registering didn’t take any longer than it had to. The bored clerk tossed two actual, physical keys on the desk. Robin palmed one expertly and handed the other to Lois, then motioned with her head.
As they climbed the stairs to the third floor room – there was no elevator to be out of service – Lois asked, “Are your adoptive parents still alive, Robin?”
The girl shrugged. “Guess Pa might be. Ma got kilt on a shine run.”
Lois paused. “On a – a what?”
“She was haulin’ moonshine from the still to town. Homemade whiskey and gin and bourbon and beer and weed and some other stuff. They run it back in the West Virginia hills.” She turned and gave Lois a lopsided grin. “Ain’t a whole lot else for folks with no money or property or ambition to do up there.”
“I thought that whole Smokey and the Bandit kind of thing went out when Prohibition was repealed.”
“Naw. Just changed it. Pa don’t like workin’ so he makes shine and grows weed and sells it for what he can get. Grows some weed on the side, too.”
“I see.” Lois resumed her climb. “I’m sorry about your mother.”
Robin shrugged again. “She mashed the pickup and herself into a tree tryin’ to run from John Law. I was about fourteen at the time, been a woman for mebbe a year, so Pa tried to trade me for a new haulin’ truck to a man who wanted a new girl. Well, I was pretty strong even then, so once Pa was out of sight I beat the crap out o’ the man he gave me to and lit out. Been on my own ever since.” She chuckled. “Don’t even know if the man wanted the truck back from Pa.”
Lois was stunned. This tipped her emotional scale back to compassion again. “Are you saying that you haven’t seen your father since then?”
Robin stopped and turned. Her face was sudden granite. “He weren’t much of a father to swap me for a truck, was he?”
Lois shook her head. “No, I guess he wasn’t.”
They kept climbing. Robin snorted. “Least he got some use outta me before he traded me.”
Lois frowned, not understanding. “You mean you helped him with the moonshine business?”
Robin laughed over her shoulder as they turned onto the floor where her room was. “Yeah, that too. What I meant was that he took me to his bed and showed me how it was with a man and a woman.”
Now Lois was truly shocked. No wonder the girl was so coarse, so earthy, so much in the physicality of the moment. She tried to say something as Robin put the key in the lock, but nothing came to her mind.
Robin turned and smiled. “Hey, thanks for walkin’ me up here. You wanna come in for a while?”
Lois’s mind was racing but the clutch wasn’t engaged. “Uh – “
The girl shook her head. “Naw, never mind. I gotta get some sleep anyway. Didn’t sleep much in Louisville the last few days an’ I’m pretty tired.” She stepped into the room and slowly closed the door. “See you tomorrow at ten.”
Lois blinked herself out of her stupor. “How about I pick you up at nine and we’ll have breakfast?”
The door stopped. Robin looked Lois in the eyes, and it seemed as if she was trying to remember how to smile for real. “Yeah. I think I’d like that.” The girl nodded slowly, still smiling warmly. “See you tomorrow – at nine.”
Lois smiled back. “Good. You be hungry, okay?”
“Trust me, lady, I’m always hungry.”
*****
Lois didn’t go straight home. She stopped by the office and snared Jimmy Olsen for a search for information on Robin McGyver specifically and on sexually abused teenagers who grow to adulthood in general. This girl was looking more and more like a time bomb waiting to go off.
If she hadn’t already gone off.
The thought brought her up short. “Jimmy!”
“Yes, Lois? What else, Lois?”
“Be careful.”
He grinned impishly. “You know me, I’m always careful!”
She bored her gaze into his eyes. “No. I mean really, really careful. Don’t make a lot of noise with this one, okay?”
He lifted an eyebrow and canted his head at her. “This isn’t personal, is it?”
“No, it’s Planet business. But if certain people get wind of this investigation, these certain people might not appreciate being investigated – “ she poked him in the shoulder with her index finger “ – and they might decide to find you and discourage you from ever looking into their business again. Understand?”
His eyes slowly widened as comprehension blossomed. “Yeah. Yeah, I understand. I promise you, no one will know I was ever there.”
“Good. I’d hate to have to break in another researcher.”
He nodded, eyes still like saucers, and trotted to his computer. Lois pulled up all the news reports on the plane crash, but learned nothing she didn’t already know.
She decided to go home and see what happened next.
*****
“Clark? I’m back.”
He looked up from the newspaper he was reading. “Hi.”
“Hi yourself.” She glanced around. “Did your parents leave?”
“There’s a new movie out that Mom wanted to see, and Dad mentioned something about a late dinner for the two of them.”
“Kind of a date, huh?”
He grimaced and looked at his book again. “Something like that, yes.” Like we used to do, she almost heard him say.
She didn’t miss his expression. His thoughts were plainly written all over his face. But if he didn’t want to talk to her about them, she didn’t either. Instead she crossed the living room towards the kitchen. “That’s so sweet of them. Any coffee left?”
“About half a pot of decaf.”
“Good. I need to get up early tomorrow. Robin and I are meeting at nine.”
Clark nodded. “Just you girls for breakfast, huh?”
She carried her cup towards the bedroom. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“You’re probably right.”
He picked up the paper again. Lois took a sip and nearly asked Clark to heat it up, then stopped herself. With all that lay between them, asking him to heat her coffee seemed trivial and selfish.
So she drank the cool liquid. “What do you think of Robin?”
He hesitated, then said, “Hard to tell.”
“You talked to her more than I did.”
“Not really. She and I didn’t exchange much information before my folks got here.”
She nodded, then remembered that he wasn’t looking at her. “You must have formed some kind of impression, though. Emotions, feelings, intuition, instinct, whatever you might call it. Surely you picked up something from her.”
“Well – yes, I did. Just not what you’d think.”
She did her best not to sound like she was interrogating him, so she meandered towards the bedroom as she spoke. “So? What did you pick up?”
He sighed. “It’s – kind of weird, actually.”
Lois paused near the bedroom door. “What’s weird?”
He hesitated, then turned to face her. “She’s from my home town. In fact, it’s almost like she’s family. She’s not, of course, but she is from Krypton. I never had a brother or a sister. I always wanted a little sister, too. I never told my parents that, but I did.” He looked at her almost wistfully. “She’s the closest thing I’ve ever known to my birth family. The New Kryptonians were nearly all either born on that planet or taken there as young children. They’d lived there most their lives. I’ve never met anyone from my home town.”
Lois almost tossed off a flippant answer about Robin not even knowing there was a Smallville, then she softened. “Yeah. It makes me wish I knew more about Krypton.”
He turned on the couch. “So you could talk to Robin?”
“No.” She dropped her gaze for a moment, then faced him. “So I could talk to you.”
She turned and fled into the bedroom before he could respond.
*****
Clark sat on the couch, stunned by Lois’s last comment. Was he that insensitive? Was he shutting her out? He thought about it for a while and decided that yes, he was pushing her away. At first, he’d tried to rationalize his actions by telling himself that Lois was also pushing him away from her, but if she really wanted a firm distance between them, she wouldn’t have dropped that last statement into his lap, especially not like that.
So. She wanted to talk. He wanted to talk. So why couldn’t they? What was stopping them?
He considered that last loud argument they’d had, the one this past Monday morning at work. Lois had wanted to hold off on a story she thought they needed more confirmation on, and Clark had wanted to turn it in, a role reversal that should have raised multiple red flags in his mind. Lois had insisted that there wasn’t enough proof. Clark had angrily insisted that the facts were right. Lois had retorted that Superman wasn’t quoted in the article even though he was the source of much of the information. Clark had crossed his arms over his chest and flatly stated that Superman’s word was good enough for him. Lois had crossed her own arms and coldly replied that despite her complete trust in the hero’s testimony, even Superman’s word required corroboration for a story which made accusations of criminal conduct against elected public officials.
At that point, Clark had clamped his mouth shut and stared furiously at Lois, who had matched his stare degree for degree. Neither of them had noticed how quiet the newsroom had suddenly become until Jimmy cleared his throat and told them he’d brought the pictures and research they’d requested for another story.
Instead of talking through their disagreement and resolving their differences, Lois and Clark had avoided each other for the rest of the day. They’d done their work well, had cooperated professionally if frostily at several points during the day, and then gone home and not spoken more than twenty words each to each other for the rest of the evening.
Clark sighed. They’d done a lot of that kind of thing lately. And it all seemed to go back to the baby on the porch, and how devastated Lois had been when his parents had taken him home. Clark had hated to see the little guy go, and he really wished they’d been able to keep him. Lois, however, had acted like she’d lost a part of her soul. They’d talked about the impossibility of having their own baby, they’d discussed adopting either a baby or a young child, and the more they’d talked, the more distant and distracted and almost frantic Lois had become.
He’d quit trying to talk to her about it, and Lois had started sitting alone for extended periods of time on the porch or in parks or across from school playgrounds. So far, her obsession with children hadn’t affected her work much, but that couldn’t last. He knew that their problems had already affected his work. He’d missed an article deadline two weeks before, something that had never happened, not since he started writing for his junior high school newspaper. Without smiling, Perry had accepted the submission and warned him that he was only as good as his last story, and that his last story had been late.
If only Lois would listen to him! If only she’d believe him that his love for her would never change, no matter how many children they had, even if that number was zero. He loved Lois for who she was, not for the babies she might bring into the world.
And Lois wouldn’t hear him, wouldn’t listen to him on the subject. She told him that being a mother was part and parcel of being a wife. It was one of the many things she’d been designed to be. She told him that she wanted children so much she could taste it, and as much as he loved her it could never make up for never feeling a child nursing at her breast.
And, according to Lois, he didn’t understand her, couldn’t possibly understand her, wasn’t even trying to understand her.
Once again, Clark wished with all his might that they’d never seen that baby on the patio. He wished –
He heard the crunch and looked down. He’d destroyed yet another coffee mug.
He sighed. The girl at the stencil shop around the corner from the Daily Planet knew him by sight and would be happy to print up yet another cup that read “World’s Finest Husband” on the side.
As he cleaned up the spilled coffee, he wondered if Lois thought he still deserved that title.
*****
Lois got ready for bed and slid under the covers. Her mind, however, was racing at breakneck speed along parallel tracks which threatened to collide directly behind her eyes and explode out through her forehead.
Robin McGyver was a mystery. What little Lois already knew about her childhood would have made most any human woman an aggressive loner with sociopathic tendencies. What Robin’s diagnosis might have been was anybody’s guess.
And she was having breakfast with the girl. How smart was that?
Lois didn’t know. And she didn’t think Clark would, either.
That brought her to the other track. What was she going to do about her husband? She’d tried to make him understand that while she loved him deeply and completely, she also desperately wanted a child. She’d never felt like this before. Even though she’d wanted to bear Clark’s children almost from the beginning of their marriage, she’d never experienced the desperation that threatened to overwhelm her these days. It was almost as if she’d carried a child full term, delivered the baby, and never had the chance to see or touch or hear her child, and the sense of deep loss was no less real for being an illusion.
What should she do? Should she go along with Clark’s suggestion and try to adopt a child? She’d done her research and knew that even if the agencies in Metropolis wouldn’t approve her, they could go overseas to China or Vietnam. There were thousands of orphans and abandoned children available to parents who’d love them and would raise them as their own, and Lois knew that they could afford the extra initial expense.
She heard her husband slip into the bedroom and decided to try to talk to him.
“Clark?”
“Yes, Lois?”
His guarded tone pierced her heart. “Can we talk?”
“Sure. What do you want to talk about?”
“Let me turn on a light first. I need to see you.”
The bedside lamp revealed his presence at the foot of the bed. “Please come over here and sit next to me.”
Hesitantly, he did as she bade him. “What is it, Lois?”
She reached out and gently took his hands. He didn’t resist her touch, but he didn’t seem to welcome it either. “We have problems.”
He held her gaze and nodded without speaking.
She shook her head ruefully. “Huh. It’s funny without being funny.”
He frowned slightly. “What is?”
“That the only thing we seem to agree on lately is that we have problems.”
Instead of smiling, he ducked his head and murmured, “I’m sorry, Lois.”
As gently as she could, she asked, “For what, Clark?”
He raised his head again and she could see the pain in his chocolate brown eyes. “For knowing that we have problems and not knowing what to do about them.” He finally returned her grasp. “I love you and I couldn’t bear to be without you, but it seems that lately all we can do is disagree and argue. I can’t remember the last time I made you laugh.”
Lois freed one hand and flicked a tear from her cheek. “I know. I love you, too, Clark, and I can’t remember the last time you felt comfortable about putting your arms around me in the kitchen while I was cooking.”
He nodded. “Yeah.” He looked for a moment as if he wanted to say something but wasn’t sure how it would be received.
“Clark? Please don’t be afraid to tell me what’s on your mind. I promise I’ll listen.”
He looked into her eyes and nodded. “Okay. Do you think we need to see a marriage counselor? Maybe a third party could help us find a way out of this.”
That wasn’t what Lois was expecting to hear. But she’d already promised that she’d listen, so she controlled her first, negative reaction and thought about it for a moment.
“Maybe we should. I’m not sure how we’d handle talking to a counselor without telling him or her that you’re also Superman, but we could give it a try.”
He lifted her hands and kissed them gently. “Thank you for listening. I don’t know if we could, either, but I don’t want to continue like this. I don’t think my heart can take too much more.”
She blinked back another tear. “Come closer.” As he leaned in, Lois wrapped her arms around his neck and squeezed him for all she was worth. “I love you.”
He put his arms around her waist and returned the embrace. She barely heard his whispered, “I love you more than my own life.”
That’s what they held in their hands: each other’s lives. It was more than just their life together, it was both individual lives. The stress they’d worked through when Lois had been temporary editor was nothing compared to the weight each of them carried now. She blinked back her tears and pulled him even closer.
Lois promised herself she’d do her best to guard Clark’s heart. She only hoped it would be enough.
