Only in my dreams
Part 15
Utterly confused, I ended up in the park. My legs seemed to have chosen this path on their own volition. Tired and with puffy eyes, I squinted into the night and fought with the darkness. Rain fell as a dense curtain that completely surrounded me. Up until now I had not even realized that it was raining. The weather matched my mood. It was unusually cold and I held my arms tightly wrapped around my body. It did not help much. The cold crept into my limbs, increasing this feeling of loneliness, that almost stole my breath away. I desperately wanted to understand what had just happened. But I could not. Memories of my encounter with Clark swirled into a confusing dance of images that appeared in rapid succession. And with each repetition they made less sense.
<Because… I love you.>
<You're Superman!>
< I had really been hoping that I didn’t need to tell you, for your own sake.>
Like the colors in a kaleidoscope, the words blurred into one another. Why had he concealed all this? How could Clark be Superman? How could he treat me like this? Despite everything that had happened, I had always considered Clark as a man with more integrity. He treated women with respect, he did not torture them! I knew him, or had at least thought I did. It seemed so unreal - like a bad dream. I had seen it with my own eyes and yet I struggled desperately against this realization.
"Lois?" a low voice beside me said. Involuntarily, my heart rate soared, until I realized that it was Clark who had emerged from the darkness. I winced and looked at him, shocked. In the moonlight, he seemed even paler than before.
"Go away ..." I muttered reluctantly and turned my back on him.
"Lois ... " he pleaded with a trembling voice. His shoes made a sucking sound on the muddy road as he approached me. "I don’t want to hurt you."
"But you are, Clark," I said accusingly, trying not to let on how much he had frightened me. "More than you can imagine." I heard a weird slurping noise while Clark took a few steps around me. But I did not give him a chance to face me.
"Lois, please look at me ..." he asked helplessly, and finally laid a hand on my shoulder. I shrugged him off.
"Why should I?" I hissed, sounding angrier than I was. Truth be told, I did not know what to think. "You lied to me – you’re playing a very nasty game!" I choked. "Not even Claude would have acted like that. I should have known – after all, I had not made up my three rules for nothing. But then you enticed me into breaking them!" I accused him. I faced him at last, crossly slapping his broad chest with flat hands.
When I mentioned Claude, Clark involuntarily sucked in his breath. Maybe I was wrong, but he suddenly seemed out of it. He shook his head in despair and was no longer able to look me in the eyes. Instead, his gaze was locked on some place between my navel and the ground.
"I'm so sorry, Lois," he murmured almost inaudibly. "That was never my intention."
I opened my mouth to say something, but never got to it. Clark raised his head and his mouth opened slightly. Even though I could not see his face, I guessed that he had assumed that distant look again, like he always did just before he disappeared.
"I hear something," he said, tensely and started to scan the area. "Someone's coming ..." he lowered his voice to a point that I could barely hear him.
Clark took a step toward me and grabbed my hands. I tried to fight him off, but his grip remained firm. Unfazed, he took me with him, deep into the shadows between the trees and bushes that lined the path. It was pitch black, probably darker than it could ever get in Metropolis. As Clark's moonlit figure disappeared between the trees, he literally became invisible. If it had not been for him holding my hands, I could not have told where he was.
My heart was beating madly. I was blind with hot raging anger. Again I tried to free myself from his grip. But of course I did not stand a chance against Superman, and how was I supposed to? The feeling of helplessness made me want to cry. Why did I not yell at him and just break free? I had had enough of Clark! Without much of an effort he forced me to follow him and dragged me into the shadows. He kept concealing what was going on and then told me the next moment that he was Superman. Just like that! He now did physically to me what he had been doing emotionally to me for weeks.
"How dare you ..." I hissed, furiously. The last word was muffled by his palm as if I had never spoken.
"Shhh," he whispered and pulled me behind a few bushes. Then I heard what Clark's ears had picked up much earlier.
Footsteps crunched on the gravel, approaching in a rapid staccato sequence. Apparently someone was in a hurry. Voices came from a distance. It took a while until I had calmed down enough to listen. The words were too faint. I was about to sigh in frustration. But Clark's hand was still firmly pressed onto my mouth and effectively kept me from uttering a sound.
The voices became louder and I could discern some of what was said - but that made no sense. Clark was no more than a shape beside me, but he seemed to be staring into space. I suddenly realized how often I had watched him do that, never understanding what he actually did. How could I believe myself to be in love with someone I knew next to nothing about?
"What do you mean ‘bad news’?" a loud voice said, shattering the night.
"The couple we are observing are Lois Lane and Clark Kent of the Daily Planet," a man replied nervously. "I recognized Lois Lane from a recent photo of her in the Planet."
"So what? This hotel is famous far beyond the borders of Metropolis. It’s about time they do a feature on us. A little publicity can only benefit our cause," the other man interjected. A smile crept into his relaxed voice.
"Don’t you get it?” the first man replied. “These are not just some hacks! They’re investigative reporters. If they find out what is going on here... " His words died on his lips, but he had definitely sparked my interest.
"Then we won’t let them find out. Keep them busy! You'll think of something. So, what about this IT-guy? Will he comply?" The voices died down, while the two men walked down the gravel path, moving further away from the hotel.
I could not see whether the other man agreed to the plan. He did not voice his thoughts. The rest of the conversation was swallowed by darkness and the pouring rain, at least for me. Clark's body was still tense while he still seemed to stare at the now vanished men. I freed myself from his hand that remained over my mouth.
"Clark," I hissed, both annoyed and fascinated.
He winced and protectively raised his hands to his ears. I remembered that he had covered his ears a couple of times before. Now I knew what that meant. His super-hearing was apparently not only useful but also sensitive. I felt strangely satisfied seeing him suffer – and was instantly ashamed of myself.
"They blackmail couples," Clark blurted out as he stood up and held out a hand to assist me. "They’re using this place to spy on couples and search for the perfect victims - rich, powerful, whatever. Their mind games are probably providing them with all the information they need."
At the phrase "mind games" I almost laughed. Such a thing was more likely a part of my vocabulary than Clark’s. But my gut instinct told me that this was going to be a big story.
"Do you hear anything else?" I asked, excited and happy that for the first time in weeks my strained relationship with Clark did not matter. How could I so easily forget, what he had done to me? I had to have lost his mind. But I so desperately longed for a bit of normalcy.
He shook his head apologetically. "Too much noise ..."
"But it's very quiet," I protested, confused.
"Not for me, it isn’t. Warring couples, the piano in the bar. It’s not easy to pick up two voices from all the noise I hear," he added apologetically, and hid his hands in his trouser pockets. How could he be so casual about this now? After all, he had been hiding his secret identity for years.
Sluggishly we walked down the path back to the hotel. Why did I still follow him? Because I knew that there was more? Because I was hoping for a better explanation for his behavior than his being Superman? Now and then I looked at him from the side. The moonlight lit up his face. The situation was strange and yet familiar. Here we were again, in dark corners hunting down a new story. Everything could have been back to normal again, but it absolutely was not. I could not help feeling that the gap between us had only gotten deeper.
Clark lifted his head, again staring into space. "An airplane ..." he said softly, almost breathless and with a certain horror in his voice. "... it will crash." His eyes were clear again and he looked at me seriously. "Lois, I must ..." he trailed off, flashing me an uncertain smile. "I'm sorry."
"Go on," I murmured, relieved that I now knew why he kept disappearing. But I was also angry that each conversation had to end like that.
Clark turned and ran into the night, away from the hotel. Only moments later I heard the familiar "whoosh" when he soared into the sky. I exhaled slowly, not realizing until then that I had been holding my breath.
* * *
