[Well, since Terry brought it up...]
An hour later Lois stepped off the elevator into the familiar bull-pen of the Daily Planet. The place had undergone a major renovation some time in the last ten years, but she easily spotted her desk. Hoping that no one would notice how lost she was feeling, she started toward it at what she hoped was her usual brisk pace. She was only half-way down the ramp to the bull-pen floor when Jimmy Olsen jogged up to fall in step with her.
“Hey, Lois! Have you got your acceptance speech ready for the Kerth Awards tonight? Or is it CK’s turn this year? You gave the speech last time, didn’t you? You know, you two could at least pretend to leave a little room for the competition,” he finished with a grin.
Wow. Ten years had made a big difference in Jimmy Olsen. He’d be almost thirty now. The blue jeans and cowboy boots were gone, replaced by khaki trousers and a navy-blue sport coat. She stopped staring when she realized that he was waiting for a response.
“Yep, we’re all set!” she said, trying to match his friendly tone. Jimmy returned her smile and headed for a desk on the far side of the room.
Kerth Awards--that would explain what Superman meant by “the ceremony.” But what did Kent have to do with it? Why would it be “his turn” to give an acceptance speech? And what did Jimmy mean by “you two?” There was no “you two”—there was “he,” there was “I,”—or was there? Had Perry actually foisted Mr. Greenjeans on her as a permanent partner? She looked around for Clark Kent. There was his desk, and his suit jacket hanging over his chair. So he was around the office somewhere, but she didn’t see him. She had to get to her desk and start getting a handle on this new life.
But first, come to think of it, she needed a detour to the coffee area. She was in serious need of caffeine to kick her spinning brain into gear. And that cheese sandwich. She was stirring the milk into her coffee when a voice she didn’t recognize spoke a little too close to her left ear.
“Flying solo today, Lois? It seems to me that partner of yours is gone half the time. Maybe you should be looking for a more reliable man. Someone you can count on to be there when you need him.”
She turned and came face-to-face with the most revolting leer she’d seen since Ralph got drunk at the last office Christmas party. She was trying to think of an appropriate come-back when Pete Turner from sports saved her the trouble.
“Watch it, Guthrie, you’re about to learn the hard way why Lane and Kent are the last people on Earth you want to be messing with!” He turned to Lois with a sympathetic smile, “Go easy on him, Lois, he’s new.”
Guthrie was backing off with his hands raised in apology, “Jeez! Sorry! No offense meant!”
Lois just glared until he retreated back to his desk.
“That partner of yours”…”Lane and Kent”…well, it was looking more and more like her foisting theory was on the money. Come to think of it, hadn’t “Clark” been one of the contacts on that list in her phone? And yet, she couldn’t help noticing the note of respect with which her colleagues spoke of Clark Kent. No, not of Clark Kent. Of “you two,” “Lane and Kent,” “the last people on Earth you want to be messing with.” Maybe Kent had improved in the last ten years. Well, he would have, wouldn’t he, if he’d been working under her for that long? Otherwise, she would have ditched him long ago, no matter what Perry said.
She finally sank into her desk chair. Trying to look like a woman busily at work on a hot story, rather than a lost kitten, she started rifling through the papers on her desk. There it was: an embossed invitation to the 40th annual Kerth Award dinner to be held at 7:00 that evening at the Lexor Hotel. Enclosed was a list of this year’s nominees, including, under the category of Best Investigative Journalist, “Lois Lane and Clark Kent, The Daily Planet, for the series titled The Education of Robert Jakes; The Making of an American Terrorist.”
As she glanced up from the invitation, her eye was caught by a photograph half-hidden behind a pile of paper. The frame was printed with the words “Three Generations,” and smiling out at her from their perches on someone’s front porch steps were three familiar, if older, faces—her mother, her sister, Lucy, and herself—and two small faces she’d never seen before. The new faces belonged to two dark-haired little girls, maybe two or three years old. Lucy had children? Or----no, it couldn’t be---one of those girls did have the same almond eyes as---Superman. She was a mother? The mother of Superman’s child? No, she couldn’t be sure. Lucy had dark hair, too, and who knew what Lucy’s husband might look like. Maybe he was Asian.
