Chapter 21: How can You Lose what You Never Had?
‘How can you lose what you never had?’
I tell myself when I’m feeling sad.
--“How can You Lose what You Never Had?”
****
In the morning, I went to the Planet earlier than usual, my notes and quotes from my rescues nestled in my briefcase. Jimmy soon found me. He was all excitement.
“C.K.! You will never believe this. Superman has a superdog!”
I smiled at him. “I know—I got a tip from a source, and I talked to some witnesses about some of the rescues they’ve done in the past twelve hours or so. I was never able to make it on the scene in time to see them, though.”
“Well, then I have a perfect picture to go with your story!” he exclaimed, taking me to his desk. Several different pictures were scattered all over it. “The Chief loves them. Maybe one of these can go with your piece.”
“I bet it’ll be perfect, Jimmy,” I told him with a grin. After hesitating, I gave him a congenial pat on the shoulder. His smile just grew wider, and I found myself glad I had made the physical contact. It was hard to get used to touching people again, but I was hopeful it would get easier.
I went back to my desk and wrote up the piece. By the time Lois arrived, I had already submitted the story—and the name “Krypto” for the dog.
Before long, the Chief Editor approached my desk with the story in hand. “Great stuff, Clark!”
“What’s great?” Lois ventured with a frown.
“There’s a new superhero in town,” Perry White told her. “Only this one’s a dog.”
“What?” she gaped. She was obviously surprised that she hadn’t heard anything about it.
He shook my story at her. “You’ll be able to read about it in the Planet. Clark, here, went out and covered some Superman rescues, and Jimmy got us some great pictures for the front page.”
As the Editor-in-Chief left, Lois turned to me in anger, and I steeled myself. She was obviously unhappy.
“You covered Superman?” she demanded.
I crossed my arms and sat back in my chair. “You don’t own him.”
“He’s my story—you know, story mine?”
I blinked at her in disbelief. “You can’t really think you’re the only reporter allowed to cover him?”
“But I had the first one-on-one interview with him!”
“The first—but not the only,” I pointed out, shaking my head. “He’s going to talk to people other than you.”
She muttered something unintelligible, banging at her keyboard like a five year-old. The rest of that day, she was a pain to be around.
****
Lois became more pleasant the next day. She was able to write a story about a save made by Superman and Krypto, and it improved her demeanor greatly. One thing of interest she noted in the article was that humane societies were having a run on white—or mostly white—dogs. I wasn’t sure whether to be glad about or wary of that news—it was great that people were adopting dogs, but pet ownership was not something that should just be rushed in to . . . particularly in a big city.
At some point that day, I started staring at Lois without quite knowing why. She had a smile tugging at the corners of her eyes and lips as she typed something on her computer screen. A hand reached up to tuck her hair behind her ear, and then she crossed her legs, the action inching her skirt up a little higher and revealing a little more of her long legs. I started to trace the curves of those legs with my eyes but then caught myself and flushed. As I brought my gaze up, Lois glanced at me.
“Do you want to come to my place for dinner and a movie?” I blurted.
I immediately knew my impromptu request was a bad idea—especially since I had just been admiring the shapeliness of her anatomy—but I couldn’t retract it without arousing suspicion. And unfortunately for me, Lois was actually considering my question.
“What movie?” she asked at last.
“Lethal Weapon 2?” I suggested. A Mel Gibson movie seemed to be a safe enough choice. An action movie wasn’t too dangerous, was it? Even if she had a habit of nearly falling asleep during movies . . .
She gave me a small smile. “I guess that would be good. I’m getting tired of operas and ballets. Sometimes the arts just can’t beat an action flick . . . . I guess Lex doesn’t really understand that.”
I averted my eyes from her, uneasy about her reference to Lex Luthor. It seemed she was spending more and more time with the suave billionaire. I was glad she was involved in something other than work and Tae Kwon Do lessons—but I wished Lex Luthor hadn’t been the one she was getting so close to. Why the man repulsed me so much, I didn’t know. He was just an acquaintance . . . not an enemy.
So, instead of saying something derogatory about Luthor—which my heart was begging for me to do—I just smiled gently and told her, “Well, this farmboy understands.”
****
I was a bit nervous about our get-together—it wasn’t a date (she was involved with Luthor, after all, and I wouldn’t have called it a “date” even if she hadn’t been)—and not just because Lois was coming over. It would be the first time she had been to my apartment when Jericho was there . . . . And it would be a test of his identity.
She would probably be annoyed I had gotten a dog and not told her. She would be even more annoyed—and justifiably so—if she realized he was connected with the Sallya Technologies story and I simply hadn’t told her about him.
As I cooked our meal—spaghetti and meatballs, garlic bread, green beans, salad, and chocolate pie—I prepared what I would say to her. I would tell her Jericho had belonged to my parents and I had fallen in love with him—but I hadn’t been able to take him home until I found my apartment. Then, I had to wait for him to be brought by a friend of my parents who was coming to Metropolis to visit some family . . . . At least, that was the story I was going to give her.
She knocked on my door a few minutes earlier than I had expected, and in a panic I hunted for a pot holder. After finding one and setting it on the counter, I jogged to the door, a barking Jericho at my heels. “Quiet,” I told him sternly, and he shut up.
I opened the door to Lois, prepared with a smile. But she was wearing a pair of jeans and a lacey white blouse, and I faltered. Unlike her business suits for the Planet, the outfit she was wearing did nothing to hide her curves . . . . But it also didn’t scream “pull me into a passionate embrace right now,” so I shut my jaw and gestured her forward.
Jericho was prepared to greet her, and he jumped up gently onto her legs, standing there and craning his neck upward, his tail wagging. She smiled down at him and scratched his head. “I wasn’t aware you had a dog, Clark.” There was almost a questioning tone in her voice.
I readied myself to give her my spiel, but she kept speaking.
“Of course, I’m not surprised you’ve joined in the white dog craze that has swept half this city,” she commented, scratching one of Jericho’s black ears. “What’s his name?”
“Ah, Jericho,” I told her, feeling a little taken aback. Evidently, I didn’t even need to explain myself. So why did I feel guilty?
She walked further inside, the dog eagerly following her. I knelt on the ground and called him over. “Jericho,” I said firmly, “this is Lois.” I pointed toward her, and he turned to look at her. “Lois,” I repeated softly.
Lois wasn’t paying any attention to me—she was investigating the aromas coming from the kitchen. “Smells great, farmboy.”
Giving Jericho a pat, I stood. “Thanks. It’ll be just a few minutes.”
The dog scurried over to Lois and sat at her feet, looking up at her with pleading eyes. She scratched his ears briefly.
“Looks like he really likes you,” I told her as I started tending to the food.
“I’m not surprised—I am pretty likeable,” she jested.
I laughed. “If that’s what you would call it.”
She hit my shoulder. “What is that supposed to mean?”
I brought a hand up to rub where she had hit me. Though it hadn’t hurt, there was a strange tingling sensation there. But a part of me really enjoyed such casual contact with Lois—I was glad she had so easily made the transition into occasionally touching me.
In reply to Lois, I said in a snarky voice, “Nothing. Absolutely nothing.” I threw a grin at her over my shoulder to ameliorate my comment and noted her glare. “Go ahead and sit down. I’ll bring the food out.”
She obliged, pulling out a chair and sitting in it. Watching me move around in the kitchen, she remarked, “You didn’t have to cook, you know . . . . You could have just bought something and slapped it on a plate.”
“It’s no big deal. Cooking’s easy.”
Lois snorted. “It is if you aren’t the kind of person who burns water. I can handle popcorn, hot dogs, macaroni and cheese . . . and not much else.”
I turned to her with a raised eyebrow. “Surely, it’s not that bad.”
“Oh, but it is,” she muttered. “Whatever else I make comes out charred at best . . . unrecognizable at worst.”
“Well, this isn’t anything special, but I do like to cook from time to time,” I told her as I set food on the table. Suddenly, I realized pasta was frequently associated with romance, and I nearly panicked. My thoughts turned to Luthor—the man she was dating—and I told her, “I’m sure this isn’t anything compared to Luthor’s private cooks.” I had meant it to sound casual, but a slight note of bitterness made its way into my tone.
Fortunately, Lois appeared not to have picked it up. “Their food can be too rich sometimes. It can be nice to just have something a little more down to earth . . . . Of course, that doesn’t apply to desserts.” She grinned. “Desserts have to be heavenly.”
Laughing to cover my unease, I said, “Well, I hope my dessert lives up to your high standards.”
“It’d better,” she agreed, picking up a fork and pointing it at me, “or else I won’t let you cook for me again.”
“I’ll remember that,” I acknowledged wryly as I sat. “Now, let’s eat.”
****
My dessert did live up to her standards, it turned out. In fact, we both managed to finish off half the chocolate pie before we realized how much we’d eaten. Then, amid our laughter and a few comments from Lois about how her stomach would soon be blowing up like a balloon, we sat on the couch and popped in Lethal Weapon 2. Jericho promptly got up on the sofa on the other side of Lois and sat his chin on her legs. She smiled and gently scratched his ears.
When Lois’s head found my shoulder less than halfway through the movie, my heart pounded, though it did so in a different way than it had during the first Lethal Weapon movie. The great fear I had felt last time had dwindled down to a vague uncertainness. I was immensely conscious of her closeness as a woman, and that put a different sort of fear in my heart. She was warm and soft, and I wanted so desperately to put my arm around her. But I knew it was best that I didn’t, so I just allowed myself to smile down at her as she watched the movie. It felt so right for her head to be there. It was strange how I didn’t want her to ever move, yet not long before I had wanted to bolt from the room at the prospect of touching another person. Lois Lane did something to me. She somehow managed to fill me with confidence and uncertainty and aggressiveness and passiveness all at once. She was an enigma. She made me see my life through a kaleidoscope of colors rather than the glowing green hue that had dominated my perception for so long. She burned brightly like fire—struck passionately like lightning—touched everything like rain. She had become my best friend at a time in my life where I hadn’t truly believed I could have a real friend.
But at last she shifted and looked up at me—and then she realized what she was doing and suddenly pulled away. “Oh, Clark, I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking about—”
“It’s fine,” I told her quickly, already feeling the loss of her closeness. “I can tolerate touch now, remember? I’m . . . getting therapy.” My “therapy” might have been rescuing people from the jaws of death, but it was a form of therapy nonetheless.
Lois returned to watching the movie, but I felt as if something crucial was missing until she moved her head back and linked her arms over my right arm. As I stared down at her brown hair, I reflected on how Lois seemed to be a very tactile person. Even before I had decided to become Superman, Lois had tried to touch me a lot. Sometimes, she had caught herself and apologized; other times, she didn’t even notice. And sometimes, she had touched me, removed her hand, and then given me an annoyed look as if my phobia was a terrible inconvenience for her. I had never known quite how to respond, as her touch had conjured up so many different emotions in me—part of me had wanted to recoil, but the other part had wanted to simply enjoy the brief connection to her. Now, however, in this moment, I would allow myself the pleasure of her touch with no regrets . . . . If only for one night.
To allow myself that pleasure more than once would be dangerous. She was dating Lex Luthor—and I would need to support her if they became more serious. I couldn’t be having daydreams about something I could never let happen.
