Where we left off in part 1:
Perry was glad to learn Lois was not the only new employee. That meant she had not created the opening at hosting by making one of the older employees too sick for the job. He wouldn’t put it past her. With Crandall’s investigation so recent, Perry just knew that Lois was hoping Met U would be the next Stanford and probably that Clark Kent was the next Julian Davis, although who would be providing the alcohol was not clear. At Stanford, it was most directly Mary Walters. Well alcohol was not the only thing she gave Julian. The person in Mary Walters position here was Lois Lane. Certainly she was not planning to be directly involved in creating the scandal. Perry most feared that a lot of readers would see Lois Lane as the next Mary Walters if any story broke with Met U’s recruiting.
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Perry opened his door and yelled into the busy newsroom, “Lane, in my office, now!” The newsroom was noisy and congested, but Lois had clearly heard his shouting. She looked up from where she was conversing with Valdez, and ran to his door. Perry returned to behind his desk. Lois seemed to be anticipating another exciting assignment.
As Lois came in Perry looked over her outfit. This was the first time he had ever seen her wear a skirt. It was light green, with a white blouse. It was also a little shorter than her normal skirts. Light green and white were Met U’s colors. Since Lois seemed to prefer dark colors, this was a noticeable change.
Since Lois’s father was on the Met U board of directors her wearing this color, which was well recognized in Metropolis, would not cause many to notice. Except people like Perry who had heard Lois say many times she would go to Harvard so as to rid herself of Met U entirely.
“You seem to have gone to lighter colors and a more professional look, Lois,” Perry began. “What’s the occasion?”
“Well, Mr. White,” Lois began hesitantly while settling into a guest seat. “I decided I would lighten things up a bit here.”
“So, this new outfit doesn’t have anything to do with your declaration of intent to go to Metropolis University,” Perry responded.
Lois looked at him in shock. Her eyes bugging out. “How did you know about that Mr. White?”
“Don’t underestimate Professor Manheim,” Perry said. “He is more aggressive at recruiting than any NFL scout,”
“Manheim? As in the guy who stopped the renaming of the Mary Hatch Bailey School of Humanities, Library Science and Journalism at Met U,” Lois said. “I have to agree with him, leaving the school named after that alumna who wrote such an incisive work that brought down a corrupt political boss, is much better than having it named after Cecilia Jane Dalton Luthor, whose only claim to fame is that she married an up and coming businessman. Manheim is a powerful writer. His stuff almost made me cry,” She brought her hand to her chest. “So he called you and wants me to meet with him. Does he want to make sure I will write at the Scroll?”
Perry had to smile at Lois’s appreciation of Manheim’s editorial. He was torn between thinking that Lois was good at thinking on her feet to realize Manheim wanted to see her, and thinking she was egotistical in assuming that he wanted to see her.
Perry knew that Lois idolized Mary Bailey and all she stood for because Lois had told him before Joe had broken her heart. That she hoped to one day write a work as earth-shattering as Bailey’s It’s a Wonderful Life. He had loved how much he was able to tease her.
“Lois,” Perry had said, catching her attention as she was heading out of the newsroom. “Why are you so happy today?” This had been back in September, before things had really gone horrible for her.
“Oh, Mr. White. Today is just a wonderful day. It is my best birthday ever. I just got my aunt Olive’s autographed copy of It’s a Wonderful Life, which was autographed by Mary Bailey herself. My aunt lived up in Rochester, not far from Bedford Falls.” Lois had said in a way that made it so Perry could not help feeling more excited.
“I didn’t know you were into fantasy Lois,” Perry had responded with a gleam in his eye.
“Mr. White you are so lucky I value my copy of the book, because that was a low blow.” Lois had said. “Granted, Bailey took some artistic license to make the story more exciting,” Lois paused to pull the book they spoke of out of her bag, probably so she could read it on her subway ride home. “Just having her husband go to the bridge and think about how jumping would be bad was not as exciting as showing how horrible the world would be without him. Still, it is a historically accurate book where things count, more so even than Capra’s film, which takes a lot of artistic license, like making up some state called New York to set everything in. Still, this is the Mary Bailey whose work singlehandedly brought down New Troy’s most crooked political boss, Henry Potter. I so want to follow in her footsteps. She's my hero.”
“So,” Perry had begun, a big smile developing on his face. “You want to become famous for writing about your husband?”
“No, Mr. White,” Lois had said with frustration in her voice. “I want to become famous for exposing criminals.”
Recalling that conversation reminded Perry that he still needed to explain to Lois what Manheim wanted. It might eventually be exposing criminals, but not yet.
“That is one of his reasons,” Perry said. “However, Manheim is also interested in making sure that you use your new job to convince his other ‘top recruit’, as he calls you guys, to come to Met U. I assume this suit is part of your new job as well, an issue which you seem to want to really not discuss, maybe because you are using a false name on your job.”
“It isn’t so much a false name, as a different name,” Lois said. “Lots of people use different names in different situations. At school they call me Lolo, but no one calls me that here. Yet neither place do they say I am lying.”
“So you admit that this suit is for the job. Manheim wants to prep you for interacting with his other top recruit in your new job,” Perry said, hoping to get Lois back to the main issue at hand.
“And who is this other ‘top recruit’?” Lois asked.
“Clark Kent,” Perry said. “Although if you were really an observant journalist you would have already figured that out. You still have a lot to learn Lois. That is why Manheim thinks you will be able to convince him to come in your new job, because you only defined task in your job is to convince Clark to come.”
“Actually, not really. When they hired me they were very adamant that our job was not to convince the players to come, just tell them about the school,” Lois explained. “Wait, why does Manheim care about some football player?”
“Because Clark Kent is also a fairly good journalist.” Perry responded. “On top of being the top rated potential recruit Coach Targon will have come to Met U all season. You were hand-picked to make it most likely Kent would come here. They may say you don’t have to convince, but don’t tell me they have you saying anything but positives about Met U. Someone in athletic recruiting said to themselves ‘a journalist would be the best to entice another journalist here’. Whether they were right or not, I don’t know, but that is what they thought. There is a high level of focus on Kent.”
“Mr. White, it doesn’t feel as if I’m ‘hand-picked’. They gave me a mere five page report on Kent. The other girls all got 20-page reports on the prospective recruits they’ll be working with. If Coach Targon considers Kent his ‘number one recruit’, why do they have the least material on him?”
“Because,” Perry said, looking her straight in the eye. “Kent only agreed to come to tour Met U a week ago. Until then, he was almost a lock for Kansas State.” This was also, why Perry was so sure Nate was needlessly worried about rival journalism schools. Missouri was not on the radar at all for Kent. He had been close to agreeing to go to Kansas State and no other school had really cared until he made that record-breaking pass last month. Since then, other schools had tried to get him to come on tours. Met U was the first offer he had accepted, so it had been mentioned in the sports section of many papers, even the Daily Planet. Okay, it was on the front page of the Metropolis Star, but the Daily Planet led with real news, unlike the Star.
“So Mr. White, I will have the best chance to expose this egotistical, self-absorbed Kent for what he really is.” Lois punched her hands forward to emphasize the negative adjectives she was attributing to Kent. “Not that exposing Kent is the main goal. The main goal is to expose Coach Targon, athletic recruiting and anyone else involved for criminal behavior, for breaking NCAA rules and probably laws, and who knows what else. Taking another self-absorbed football player down in the process is a side bonus, but not the real point at all.”
“Lois,” Perry cut in again. “We are not talking about your father, or Joe Maloy who you broke up with a month ago. Other males do not deserve to suffer for Mr. Lane’s and Joe’s shortcomings.”
“Yeah, but if I can save another woman from suffering the same fate as my mother, all the better. It’s best to expose these two-timing unfaithful males now, instead of later,” Lois shot back.
“Lois, have you even thought this plan through? Does Kent even have a girlfriend back in Kansas? And if so, are you ready to be the other woman?” Perry was more worried yet. He hoped Lois could tell that he had genuine concern for her.
“What are you talking about?” Lois shouted, as she rose to her feet. “I have ethics. I don’t sleep around to get stories. You should be ashamed of yourself for even suggesting it, Mr. White.”
“I just want you to think through what might happen, that is all, Lois,” Perry responded, trying to calm her down. “After what Mary Walters did, and its being exposed by David Crandal, no matter what you write, some people will suspect you of doing what she did. To even write this story you will need evidence to point to lots of wrong doing.”
Lois sat down with almost a defeated air about her. “Right, I am trying to go for a bigger issue. The main goal is to expose criminal activity by Met U or its boosters, such as Lex Luthor. Still I guess I just feel some odd connection with Kent’s girlfriend.”
“How exactly do you know he has a girlfriend, you havn’t explained that,” Perry cut in.
“I’ll get to that in a bit, Mr. White,” Lois said, with a note of frustration in her voice. “As I was saying, she’s a journalist too, if not a very good one. She writes the high school sports column for the Smallville Gazette.”
“Post,” Perry interjected.
“Post, Gazette, whatever,” Lois mumbled, waving off the issue as a minor detail. “The point is it’s some minor paper, which keeps up a never ending stream of praise for Clark Kent. Mainly from some sycophant high school sports reporter named Lana Lang, who happens to be Kent’s girlfriend. It is sickening how much she fawns over him in her writing. I just worry she is blind like I was about Joe.” Perry could hear real worry in her voice.
“Lois,” Perry said softly, “How do you know this writer is his girlfriend? Maybe she is just some overly enthusiastic fan.”
“I found a photo of them at the junior prom together last year in the Smallville ‘Post’. See, I can get it right. Seems Lana’s from the richest family in Smallville. Her father, Matthew Lang, owns the Bank of Smallville, which under his aggressive direction has grown to being the third largest bank in Kansas. He built Lang Tower in Smallville, which at seven stories they consider a skyscraper.” Lois rolled her eyes at this notion.
“Lois, how do you know so much about Smallville?” Perry hoped the answer might give him a chance to show Lois she was rushing to conclusions.
“Well, I started doing research on it when I was trying to increase my knowledge of Kent. I found some really exciting articles, even if the subject was small town politics. The reporter was a super writer.”
Perry figured he should have known that Lois would dig as deep as she could on a story.
“There was even a move to rename the town Langtown.” As Lois went on Perry could tell that she was enjoying telling this story. “Phobius Small led the opposition to this movement. It was the central issue in the city council election that happened three weeks ago. Anyway, that excellent writer,” Lois smiled as she mentioned this reporter. “Some guy named C. J. Kent, pointed out that really the name was not the issue. It was symbolic of a larger set of issues dividing the city, such as annexation of three more square miles into the city. Whether land annexed back in 1964 should remain taxed at agricultural rates or be taxed on residential property value calculations. Whether Smallville should still be billed as ‘home of the Midwest’s Greatest Corn Festival’, or if they should instead bill themselves as the home of ‘the Langtown Modern Arts Fair’. It was an interesting article; I will give C. J. Kent that.”
Perry was glad to see that Lois actually liked Clark Kent in some ways. Now he just had to find a way to point this out to her gently. She obviously had not figured out the identity of this written, who Perry could tell she really admired a lot. “You have done good work so far, Lois,” were his first words.
“So, Mr. White, have I convinced you that I should go ahead and use Kent as the point to expose the larger criminal operations?” Lois asked.
