I have to give a great big Thank You to VirginiaR for betaing this for me. Without her discerning eye it might well have been relegated to the "too aggravated with this story to finish" category and forgotten.
“Lois, it looks like you got some sort of press invite,” Jimmy said as he slid the cream colored envelope onto her desk.
“Don’t I always?” she asked. The envelope, addressed from the Luthor Center for the Blind sat heavy in her hands. Why did she receive this? she wondered. She shrugged away the question and tore open the crisp envelope. What she saw in the note made her freeze and her heart speed with excitement.
“The Luthor Center for the Blind would like to invite you to the Charity Bachelor Auction,” it proclaimed, “featuring the Red Caped Hero himself, Superman!” Lois smiled secretively as she considered the implications of winning such an event.
* * * * *
Lois stood among the women as the Mistress of Ceremonies called out, “And now, something really special. A Super Date! A Sunday picnic in the clouds. So, Ladies, what will you give me for the Man of Steel?”
The women in the audience flocked close to the stage as they attempted to be the most visible woman up there as they made their bids. “One thousand!” one cried out.
“Fifteen hundred,” shouted another.
“Two thousand!” Cat called out.
Lois looked at Cat with a roll of her eyes before calling out, “twenty-five hundred!”
The first woman interjected with “five thousand!”
“Six!” Cat responded
“You’ve made your point, Cat, so butt out,” Lois said through gritted teeth.
Cat couldn’t help but press the amount ever higher.
‘Did she really want this? Was it worth her life savings?’ she thought as Cat and the first woman continued to try and win the date.
“Fifty-thousand dollars!” called out the debutante in front, pressing Lois out of her musings.
Lois could handle Cat bidding for his attention as she didn’t seem like Superman’s type and the first woman didn’t worry her because Superman hadn’t seemed overly interested in her. But that debutante did worry her. Lois sneered at the woman. If Lois had superpowers, the debutante might well have been dust.
“$55,000-,” Lois called out as her head inched up a little higher.
Superman turned toward her voice, startled at the amount that Lois had bid in response to the woman. She had that much money that she would spend it on one date with Superman? He seemed to be thinking.
Cat’s eyebrows when up in surprise. Somehow she didn’t believe Lois had that much money either. “Lois,” Cat finally whispered to her frantically, “don’t put yourself into the poor house over one date.” She covered her concern with her next comment, “You must really, be hard up for men in your life if you’re trying to spend that much money just to win a date.”
“$60,000,” the debutante responded.
“Seventy. Five. Thousand Dollars.” Lois ground out before responding to Cat’s barb, “You may not know it but I’ve had this money burning a hole in my account for almost five years now. It’s time I put it to a good cause.”
The debutante looked over at the modestly dressed woman. Her eyes scanned down and finally back up to her eyes. Blue met hazel in a staring contest. “Eighty thousand dollars.”
Lois took in a deep breath and mentally put every penny of her special account on the line, “One hundred thousand dollars.”
The woman dripping with diamonds flicked her eyebrows up in admiration. Perhaps a date with Superman didn’t hold as much appeal to her as she thought, sneered Lois mentally. She barely heard that she had the winning bid.
Superman made his way to Lois and gently pulled her off to one side of the room and said, “Lois, you know you don’t have to bid for my attention, don’t you?”
“How else am I going to speak to you?” she asked honestly. “I don’t know how to contact you other than to tell Clark and while I don’t mind speaking to him… I feel… I don’t know…” She shrugged, a little shy about what she was about to admit to, “a little odd going through him. Isn’t there some other way I can contact you?”
“If you’ll pardon an impertinent question, how did you get that much money?” he asked. “I know a reporter’s salary doesn’t pay that much.”
Lois’ thoughts traveled back to almost five years ago…
* * * * *
It was sunny outside, the kind of day that should have lifted her spirits. Instead Lois fumed, and ranted and cursed the man she thought she knew.
“I cannot believe I fell for that French schmuck,” Lois gritted out before she froze as she considered what she just said and slumped where she stood. “What am I saying? I’m the schmuck who not only got scooped but had her whole story plagiarized!” Her eyes held a glint of fury as she dropped to her kitchen cabinet in search of the one thing that helped to clarify things… her cleaning supplies. She stopped when she caught sight of a lonesome piece of paper looking raggedy underneath her counter. She grabbed it up and turned to her trash can, but then stopped. The piece of paper held a string of numbers and Metro Ball Lottery on the top.
“When did I buy this?” she asked the quiet room and then shrugged. “It could be worth something… or it could just be a piece of paper. There’s only one way to find out,” she said as she slid out the door.
A half-hour later Lois was staring at the attendant in shock, “You’re kidding me,” she said.
“Nope,” the man behind the counter replied, “your ticket is a winner.”
Lois stared down at the paper in front of her as she considered the implications. She could quit her job for a while. Maybe recreate Nellie Bly’s trip around the world and write a book about it. Yet, the Planet was her life. She couldn’t even imagine quitting it. No, the money would have to be used for other things; perhaps a better apartment. The one she currently lived in held too many memories of Claude and she could use the space. A trip around the world could wait.
Time passed and the dream of following the path of Nelly Bly was put on hold. She continued to write articles on gun runners and car thieves and her investigative clout grew. Soon she barely remembered she even had the money. It lay forgotten until one day when a special invitation came across her desk…
To be Continued in “A Super Date in the Clouds”
