Las Vegas’ Kerth Ceremonies, part 10
Clark sped through the clean-up process. He put his tux on, slowed down considerably to make sure his tie was straight, and pocketed his present for his wife. He looked once more in the mirror, and sped down the hall to the elevators. He was almost ready to go to the steps when the elevator finally arrived. It seemed to stop at all of the floors to either let someone on or off. As he got to the lobby of the hotel, he became aware of Susan sitting on a sofa outside the banquet room. He stopped to talk to her and when he learned she was waiting for him, he took her with him inside and located his wife. He then spoke to a member of the staff and asked if he could have an extra chair put at the table where he and his wife were assigned. Susan stood still and looked around. She spotted a woman with dark hair piled on top of her head that had a dress on that was close to the same color as hers. She followed Clark and the waiter who was moving a chair for her. When they arrived at the table, Clark stooped down and kissed his wife, and helped Susan take her chair on the other side of Lois. He then introduced Lois and Susan, and told of the mix ups they‘d had all day with mistaken identity. Lois’ eyes got big. She told Clark that she’d had the same trouble with mistaken identity with his look-alike. Susan said she had met both Clark and Casey. The three of them talked quietly until the Master of Ceremonies started to announce the categories where Lois and Clark were nominated. Then they grew silent awaiting results.
The categories of investigative reporters that they were nominated were named. Lois won one of the two individual categories she was nominated and Clark won his individual also. The crime fighting reports that they did together both won, so the family total was four wins out of five. Susan waited patiently as they went to the podium repeatedly. As the ceremony drew to a close, the table with the Kents had four beautiful Kerth Awards sitting on the table all neatly engraved with the their names. Clark leaned over to his wife and told her he needed to go back to Italy for just a second to make sure that the diversion of lava that he created was still effective. Out loud to the people at the table he announced that he would take the four awards up to their room so that he would be able to dance with his beautiful wife and not have to worry about misplacing them. He leaned over and kissed Lois, told Susan he’d be back in about ten minutes, and scooted out the door holding all four trophies in his arms. He spotted a security camera in the back hallway, and skirted it. He made a last super-blast at the entrance to the stairway, and whizzed up all nineteen floors to his floor. When he arrived at the room, he quickly put the Kerths on the dresser, changed to Superman, and super-sped through the stairs, back hallway, and out the roof entrance.
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Danny was sitting in front of the monitor bank in the security room. He thought he saw a shadow in the back stairway leading to the roof, but a person never came into view, so he recorded the time on the clock so he could review it later. When he looked back up he saw a flash of red and the roof service door slamming shut. He started an auxiliary tape running and backed up the tape of the passageway leading to the roof service entrance. There it was again. Something red for just a split second. Was he seeing things? Did he need to call Ed or Mike to check something out, or was he just having low blood sugar from not having had his supper yet? He started the tapes up and had two covering the same area.
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When the awards ceremony was over, the dance began. Lois and Susan were both without a male so they just sat there for a little while talking about their trip out to Las Vegas. When the conversation lagged, Lois asked if Susan was going to have anyone to dance with, and Susan told her about Casey. Lois looked shocked.
“You mean Casey Manning? You are planning to go to the dance with Casey? I met him when I thought he was Clark. How did you two meet?”
Susan told her that after her horrible airport experiences, missed planes, and cancelled rooms, she arrived and there was no room held for her. It had been cancelled at midnight, and Susan did not know that she needed to ask them to hold it later. She told of how he had given her a wonderful suite when there were no single rooms left. She also told of being moved out of the room, and how Casey made sure she was given another suite for this evening. Susan left out the part where Casey gave her a room in his suite, but that was not the important part of the story. Casey and she kept bumping into each other off and on all day long and he finally asked if he could come down and dance with her at the Kerths. Lois told her to go ahead and call him so she could dance with him, and when Clark got back they would introduced the two males who were often mistaken for each other.
Susan got on the casino phone and paged Casey. He was found to be in their suite, changing into his tuxedo. He told Susan that he would be down in a few minutes. When he arrived in the Ballroom, he went to the table with the two females dressed in the turquoise dresses with their hair up. He stood between the two of them, and correctly identified them by name. That surprised both women. He asked Susan if she would like to dance with him, and she said she’d love to have a dance or two. Casey asked Lois where Clark was and was assured that he would be back in a few minutes after he put their awards up in their room.
Lois watched as Casey and Susan danced. She overheard him tell her how beautiful she looked. They both looked so happy. When their first dance ended they just stayed on the dance floor and danced another. On Susan and Casey’s third dance, Clark reappeared. He stooped over and kissed his wife before giving her a small blue velvet box. When she opened the box she saw a pair of the most beautiful sapphire and opal earrings. She immediately took the hoops she was wearing out of her ears and handed them to Clark to put in his pocket. She put the earrings on and handed him the velvet box. She then took his hand and the two of them went out on the dance floor. They danced slow and close, as if there was no one else there. When the band took a break, the two couples sat at the table and had a few laughs and a long talk.
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Ed had just checked in for his shift to relieve Danny at the banks of security monitors. Danny was giving him the rundown of all the trouble he had in the last three hours of his shift. Ed was the man who always ran the tapes to see what might be missed by other security personnel. Danny showed him the times he had recorded and which corridors he thought he had seen something. Ed said he would check out all the tapes if Danny would check the back hallway and stairway to the service entrance on the roof before he left. Danny called back in on the radio that there was no evidence of tampering on the locks and no one was lurking in the back hallway or the stairway.
Ed pulled the tapes off the machines and replaced them with new, fresh tapes. He started recording the cameras again, and eased down in a chair to make himself comfortable. It was obvious that Danny was getting squirrelly.
Just as he began to relax that his world was secure, he looked over at the monitor showing the entrance to the Ballroom. He saw the boss coming out of the room with a beautiful brunette in a bright blue dress. She was busting out of her dress. Ed grinned for Casey. Then he did a double take! Coming out the same door a few steps behind the boss was his look-alike in glasses holding the hand of a lady that could be the twin sister of Casey’s friend. WHAT WAS THAT? The four of them stopped almost under the camera and talked for a few minutes, hugged each other and went in two different directions.
Ed snapped four pictures to make sure he had all the evidence that strange things were happening and he wasn’t completely crazy. He would deal with the boss and his look-alike in glasses with their twin friends tomorrow. He poured himself a stiff shot of whiskey and sat back to stare at the monitors. What a night! He wondered if being crazy was catching?
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Casey walked Susan into the lobby and asked her to sit down. He said he wouldn’t be going back into the Presidential Suite until tomorrow morning so she would feel safe. He was bound and determined to keep his promise to her that he would not pressure her at all. But he did want to talk with her. So they sat down.
“Susan, I have had a wonderful day getting to know you and to enjoy your company. I would like to see you again after we all get back home. You said you lived in Fairview, California, right? I have a condo in Los Angeles so I can be nearly in the same town as you if you would let me call on you.”
Susan put her head on his shoulder. “I’d love to see you again. But there is one question I’ve been dying to ask you. Has anyone ever told you that you look a lot like Superman? And you make wonderful things happen like him too. SO, are you Superman, or just my own private Superman?”
“Sorry to disappoint you. I’m just a mortal man who can’t fly unless I have an airplane under me. Could I take that plane and come to visit you and take you out in the future?”
“I’d love to have that happen. I’ll make sure I leave my contact information in the suite for you.” Susan was grinning like she had hit the jackpot at one of his casino tables.
Casey stood up and helped Susan stand up. Together they walked to the elevator banks that took them up to the 19th floor. Casey walked Susan to the door of his suite, opened the door for her, kissed her on the forehead, and turned around to leave her alone.
“It’s been a wonderful two days, Casey. You made all the nightmare of my journey out here vanish. Thank you.”
“Goodnight, Susan.”
“Goodnight, Casey.”
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That’s all folks, except to thank some people.
The original challenge was issued by Marcus Rowland and it
caught my attention right away. I thought it was a wonderful
idea, and I added Desperate Housewives to his challenge to
merge L&C and Las Vegas. When I finished it (or thought I’d
finished it) I asked Marcus to read it and tell me what he
thought. It was his suggestion that the security team catch
some of the mistaken identity on their monitors and use the
face recognition to the advantage of the story. And so I
added a few scenes with the security office. Thanks, Marcus.
It really helped.
My thanks to Jenni Debbage for helping me flesh out the
images of the people involved so that they had personalities
instead of meshing people together with no A plot.
Also thanks to the IRC group who helped me brainstorm some
ideas I had and wanted to use but they needed help. Thanks
to Chris, Lori, and Peggy for the hours of work on small details.
Also thanks to Lori for lending me Coco. I needed something
funny to base a child’s story on, and Coco is one funny bunny.
I also want to thank Darth Michael for his beta of this. Thanks so
much for all your hard work, Michael. If you write, you need to
experience his humor and viewpoint once! What an experience!
But he did help improve the story. It just seems that it shouldn’t
be so much fun to accomplish a rewrite. Thanks again, Michael.
