His approach for tackling Lana was simple-direct and seemingly guileless.
He went to the detached suburban house in the late morning, and was not
disappointed when Lana opened the door. Her expression showed only genuine
surprise and gladness, and he smiled as he stepped in.
'Twice in two days? I am pleasantly surprised, Lex. And peonies! My favourite!
They had reached the living room by then and he offered to put the flowers he had brought her into a vase. This done to his satisfaction, he placed the vase on a side table and started negotiations.
'I realized yesterday I had more to convey than my commiserations. I must also give my sincerest apologies, since I am responsible for your current condition.
Her face was a picture of conflicting expressions; her countenance could be surprisingly mobile when she so chose.
'You know.' She breathed a sigh, almost of relief. 'You weren't yourself Lex, which is something we understand very well in this town.' This hurriedly, as if it had a story to tell, but the reference eluded him. 'But your dad said that you may not remember the events of those days and it would be dangerous to remind you. He took care of the medical expenses and the physical therapy. He took complete charge. We all did as we were told.'
'My father's concern for my health has been extremely. cosseting. Did he tell Miss Sullivan the same thing? A wrinkle of concentration on the smooth brow. 'I guess. I know he told Mr. Sullivan not to talk about it, and he must have told the Kents. He wouldn't need to tell very many people you know, as you hardly are the most approachable person in town.
She looked up at him, wondering if he would admonish her for her frankness. He merely smiled. 'Thank you for your concern, and for not revealing my. role in your condition.
'Hardly, Lex. You would have done the same for me.
He took his leave, well satisfied with his interview. His next port of call was the Smallville Torch, confident that he would find its editor busy at work in the office.
He got the distinct impression that his visit had disconcerted Chloe, for her expression broke into one of deep perturbation before she controlled her features into a parody of a smile.
'Lex! You don't waste much time in the niceties of knocking do you?
'I thought I should congratulate you on your story on my return.' He read from the rolled up copy of the Torch in his pocket. "Mr. Alexander Luthor, who has been a benefactor."Uncharacteristically flattering-also clever. No mention of the length of my absence. Everybody else thinks you are talking about my absence since my first return to Smallville, while the person who has just been released from the asylum thinks that he has never been back to the town since he was rescued from a deserted island.' He dropped the smooth banter, and let some of the anger seep through the words.
'You know, don't you, where I was, how long I had been there? Why then did you print this? Or has my father bought you off too? She was prepared for his frontal assault, and answered in a manner that had about it the hint of a conversation practiced many times in soliloquy. The sign of a wrestling conscience?
'Lex, there is no use shouting at me. You are the genius you figure it out. Look at you, unsure of whom you are, what you are. What you have been doing these past months, years. Yes, they told me that you would lose your short- term memory, how long is short-term Lex?' Chloe was now close to him, talking in an urgent whisper, he could see the purple shadows under her eyes. Seventeen should not be burdened with purple shadows, as indeed should not twenty-two.
'How do you know you were ever married, that you were stranded on an island. Who I am? Who Clark is, what this town is?
'Did you have to study profiles of us from the school yearbook so you would not give yourself away? Because your father said you should. "This was you life Lex, learn it so that you can carry on that nothing happened." And pretend that you have forgotten nothing, while we, all the people you ever interact with in this town are asked for love or fear, or money-to each his own fear Lex, to not let on that it's a farce. a two-way, goddamed farce.'
She was suddenly very quiet and turned her back to him as she struggled for control. When she looked at him again her face was poised but a fatal resignation had taken up residence in the once bright eyes.
'And I am not his son. Now ask me again why I printed that article.
He sat down on an available chair.
'I have asked myself all these questions Chloe, and I have never gotten the answers. But I don't intend to give up, not even if this diabolical process were to be repeated endlessly.' He spoke earnestly; commanding all the conviction and power that he knew his voice could muster, deliberately using it to get through to the trembling girl before him.
The blonde head was still bowed, the thin shoulders drooped.
'You should go. The Torch. its not safe. nowhere is. When you showed me Mason's body I only got a small a part of the danger. When I imagined you in a straitjacket.I have never been more frightened in my life.' She looked up then, eyes wide and haunted, and he knew he was seeing what probably only her bathroom mirror saw in the morning, before she put on the carefree seventeen year old on, like a face kept in a jar by the door. He recognized the vulnerability for it was mirrored in his own eyes.
'Don't worry.' said Lex forcing his voice to laugh ' notes provided by my father show that I often stopped by here to look for Clark. Also I won't show it to you, but I have on my person a scrambler that will disrupt any digital signal in a range of five meters. If questioned you can say I was speaking to you about your unfavorable mention of the Luthorcorp daycare facilities in your piece for the Planet, on which may I say your information is seriously flawed.'
She looked up at that, instinctively defensive of her writing. He caught her eye and held it.
'Cheer up Chloe; we will get through this. Now look interested and take notes on the real state of daycare at Luthorcorp. You say you knew Mason? Who was he?
'Oh! I keep forgetting that you do not remember.' She was nothing if not gallant. Her pencil was poised on her note pad and she was looking perkily inquisitive. 'Well, about a week before you were confined, Mason came here and stole the hard drive on which I had stored my research on your father.'she looked at him 'and you. I confronted you at the mansion and you showed me his body as an object lesson in the consequences of meddling with Lionel Luthor. You said if we worked together you would keep me safe.' A suppressed sob, turned midway into a grin. 'So I told you about the relation between your father and Morgan Edge.' She looked at him and he nodded in recognition at the name. 'My intention was to get something on him so that he could no longer threaten me.'
'How did you get mixed up with him in the first place?
Chloe giggled nervously before replying. 'This has nightmarish deja vu written all over it. He asked me to spy on Clark . I refused and he threatened me with sacking my dad.
There were still gaps in the story but this was a start. He stood up to leave.
'Chloe, you are well aware of the dangers of your situation. Do not relax your vigilance. Do not try to get in touch with me till I initiate contact. Do not forget to print that reworking of the daycare story. The copy of the Torch I brought with me and will conveniently forget here has all the information I have supposedly given you in the past ten minutes. I trust you will destroy it as it renders our prolonged conversation somewhat redundant.'
He smiled slightly. 'I am the phoenix, Chloe. I will rise once again from my ashes.'
Next day at work, he had a plan of action ready in his mind. He called his assistant in and asked him without evasion 'Graham, I would like to go over my personal finances and housekeeping books with you.'
He realized that most of his personal staff, including his security was probably in his father's pay with instructions as to what could and could not be revealed to him. It probably wasn't a security breach on his father's part-just another precaution to preserve the fragile mental balance of the prodigal son.
Graham did not raise an eyebrow, totally unsurprised that his boss had almost no idea of the state of his finances, and thus revealing his culpability. He brought the records and gave him the relevant file names, including his own digital key chain.
'I recommend you change your passwords', said Lex to his assistants retreating back, after having declined an offer of a meeting with his accountants.
After an instructive half hour in which it was revealed to him that he had in no way been impoverished during his stay at Belle Reve, he came across an accounting file with the details of his expenses for the previous year. He had no doubt that any sensitive information had been purged from the file, but he trusted in his own ingenuity that he had created a system to foil just such an eventuality. He found the details of the Lebrunn account, and realized that the chocolatiere was paid monthly through a personal cheque, drawn on one of his overseas accounts, all details of which were available to his assistant, and hence inevitably, to his father.
He went to the safe, for which he had been provided a new access code by his assistant earlier, the significance of which occurrence had not immediately struck him. He took out the chequebook referred to in the Lebrunn account. It looked a perfectly regular cheque, even under magnification. It had no magnetically inscribed information other than normal security marks. Which meant that the person who received the cheque was involved and information was passed through a manual process known only to him and the person at the other end. It was simple, irreproducible and had therefore survived the vitriol of his father's attention. He recalled the two-house village in the ASlps where the Lebrunn had their chalet; he doubted very much if the old frau was his trusted agent-- the only other agency involved with the cheque was the village post-office, which no doubt handled the cashing of the cheques as well, for even though a considerable amount of time had passed since the last time he remembered being there, he doubted if Credit Suisse had opened a branch behind Frau Lebrunn's chalet. Thus satisfied with his inferences, with the determination that was characteristic of him he started putting his plan into action.
'Graham, please get my father on the line. Also arrange accommodation for a week in Geneva. And a flight leaving in 48 hours.'
'Sorry to disturb you in the middle of the day, dad
'No, I am feeling quite well, as well as one might in this .the place oppresses me. No, I am afraid the bovine charm quite escapes me.
'Well, I rather thought I would take an advance on my Season's holidays and go to Switzerland. I received some Swiss chocolate yesterday and it reminded me of my misspent but very enjoyable youth. I thought it would be nice to go to a place I actually remember, and of which I have nice memories, for a change.
'No, I do not require anyone to go with me. You have the certificate, dad. I am mentally fit to take my own decisions. Yes, I might even give your regards to old Gessler if I see him, though it was not my intention to hobnob with the political crowd.
He replaced the receiver, well satisfied with his work so far. After all, the truth told with economy was the best kind of lie.
His visit to the Kent farm went along extremely unexpected lines. He drove there and was immediately pulled into a time warp where this journey was an endlessly repeated path of a weighed pendulum, destined to repeat the simple harmonic motion in a perfect world. Sense memory took over again as he had not to refer to his navigation system even once and found himself in the dusty yard before a cheerful yellow building. It felt like the house of his best friend.
The sound of his car driving up had evidently drawn the attention of the occupants of the house, for as he approached the house the screen door swung open and a red-haired woman stepped out.
Lex! She looked happy to see him and then her face expressed chagrin, trepidation-a myriad of complicated expressions he could not even begin to understand.
Mrs kent.
Ccome in. clark is out gathering the cows, he will be back shortly.
She ushered him into the small kitchen, and here too, the familiarity hit him like a bludgeon-the proximity of the walls and the ceiling, that was womblike and not claustrophobic, the feeling of sheer size and ineptitude that he had never felt save in his fathers presence till he was six. (Then he had discovered that he could solve in his head what took his father a calculator and two henchmen to do. It was only math, but it was symbolic.) It came back here-- not only the Oedipal frisson, but the sheer backdrop of time built on the basis of memory, and the unassailable conviction that this place and its occupants marked several fundamental tiers in the edifice of his being. But now that tower teetered, lacking the cement of a cohesive linear narrative.
'Sit down, Lex. You like pie with milk.' The suffixed interrogative was suppressed but he could hear its virtual lilt, don't you?
She started bustling about, getting the pie and the milk, the unspoken question poisoning the air between them. How much do you remember? Are we going to continue this game where you do not know me, but pretend that you do, and I know that you don't know me but pretend that I don't? Her silence was an entreaty, a plea to the god of awkward situations, but he did not come to her rescue.
'Twice in two days? I am pleasantly surprised, Lex. And peonies! My favourite!
They had reached the living room by then and he offered to put the flowers he had brought her into a vase. This done to his satisfaction, he placed the vase on a side table and started negotiations.
'I realized yesterday I had more to convey than my commiserations. I must also give my sincerest apologies, since I am responsible for your current condition.
Her face was a picture of conflicting expressions; her countenance could be surprisingly mobile when she so chose.
'You know.' She breathed a sigh, almost of relief. 'You weren't yourself Lex, which is something we understand very well in this town.' This hurriedly, as if it had a story to tell, but the reference eluded him. 'But your dad said that you may not remember the events of those days and it would be dangerous to remind you. He took care of the medical expenses and the physical therapy. He took complete charge. We all did as we were told.'
'My father's concern for my health has been extremely. cosseting. Did he tell Miss Sullivan the same thing? A wrinkle of concentration on the smooth brow. 'I guess. I know he told Mr. Sullivan not to talk about it, and he must have told the Kents. He wouldn't need to tell very many people you know, as you hardly are the most approachable person in town.
She looked up at him, wondering if he would admonish her for her frankness. He merely smiled. 'Thank you for your concern, and for not revealing my. role in your condition.
'Hardly, Lex. You would have done the same for me.
He took his leave, well satisfied with his interview. His next port of call was the Smallville Torch, confident that he would find its editor busy at work in the office.
He got the distinct impression that his visit had disconcerted Chloe, for her expression broke into one of deep perturbation before she controlled her features into a parody of a smile.
'Lex! You don't waste much time in the niceties of knocking do you?
'I thought I should congratulate you on your story on my return.' He read from the rolled up copy of the Torch in his pocket. "Mr. Alexander Luthor, who has been a benefactor."Uncharacteristically flattering-also clever. No mention of the length of my absence. Everybody else thinks you are talking about my absence since my first return to Smallville, while the person who has just been released from the asylum thinks that he has never been back to the town since he was rescued from a deserted island.' He dropped the smooth banter, and let some of the anger seep through the words.
'You know, don't you, where I was, how long I had been there? Why then did you print this? Or has my father bought you off too? She was prepared for his frontal assault, and answered in a manner that had about it the hint of a conversation practiced many times in soliloquy. The sign of a wrestling conscience?
'Lex, there is no use shouting at me. You are the genius you figure it out. Look at you, unsure of whom you are, what you are. What you have been doing these past months, years. Yes, they told me that you would lose your short- term memory, how long is short-term Lex?' Chloe was now close to him, talking in an urgent whisper, he could see the purple shadows under her eyes. Seventeen should not be burdened with purple shadows, as indeed should not twenty-two.
'How do you know you were ever married, that you were stranded on an island. Who I am? Who Clark is, what this town is?
'Did you have to study profiles of us from the school yearbook so you would not give yourself away? Because your father said you should. "This was you life Lex, learn it so that you can carry on that nothing happened." And pretend that you have forgotten nothing, while we, all the people you ever interact with in this town are asked for love or fear, or money-to each his own fear Lex, to not let on that it's a farce. a two-way, goddamed farce.'
She was suddenly very quiet and turned her back to him as she struggled for control. When she looked at him again her face was poised but a fatal resignation had taken up residence in the once bright eyes.
'And I am not his son. Now ask me again why I printed that article.
He sat down on an available chair.
'I have asked myself all these questions Chloe, and I have never gotten the answers. But I don't intend to give up, not even if this diabolical process were to be repeated endlessly.' He spoke earnestly; commanding all the conviction and power that he knew his voice could muster, deliberately using it to get through to the trembling girl before him.
The blonde head was still bowed, the thin shoulders drooped.
'You should go. The Torch. its not safe. nowhere is. When you showed me Mason's body I only got a small a part of the danger. When I imagined you in a straitjacket.I have never been more frightened in my life.' She looked up then, eyes wide and haunted, and he knew he was seeing what probably only her bathroom mirror saw in the morning, before she put on the carefree seventeen year old on, like a face kept in a jar by the door. He recognized the vulnerability for it was mirrored in his own eyes.
'Don't worry.' said Lex forcing his voice to laugh ' notes provided by my father show that I often stopped by here to look for Clark. Also I won't show it to you, but I have on my person a scrambler that will disrupt any digital signal in a range of five meters. If questioned you can say I was speaking to you about your unfavorable mention of the Luthorcorp daycare facilities in your piece for the Planet, on which may I say your information is seriously flawed.'
She looked up at that, instinctively defensive of her writing. He caught her eye and held it.
'Cheer up Chloe; we will get through this. Now look interested and take notes on the real state of daycare at Luthorcorp. You say you knew Mason? Who was he?
'Oh! I keep forgetting that you do not remember.' She was nothing if not gallant. Her pencil was poised on her note pad and she was looking perkily inquisitive. 'Well, about a week before you were confined, Mason came here and stole the hard drive on which I had stored my research on your father.'she looked at him 'and you. I confronted you at the mansion and you showed me his body as an object lesson in the consequences of meddling with Lionel Luthor. You said if we worked together you would keep me safe.' A suppressed sob, turned midway into a grin. 'So I told you about the relation between your father and Morgan Edge.' She looked at him and he nodded in recognition at the name. 'My intention was to get something on him so that he could no longer threaten me.'
'How did you get mixed up with him in the first place?
Chloe giggled nervously before replying. 'This has nightmarish deja vu written all over it. He asked me to spy on Clark . I refused and he threatened me with sacking my dad.
There were still gaps in the story but this was a start. He stood up to leave.
'Chloe, you are well aware of the dangers of your situation. Do not relax your vigilance. Do not try to get in touch with me till I initiate contact. Do not forget to print that reworking of the daycare story. The copy of the Torch I brought with me and will conveniently forget here has all the information I have supposedly given you in the past ten minutes. I trust you will destroy it as it renders our prolonged conversation somewhat redundant.'
He smiled slightly. 'I am the phoenix, Chloe. I will rise once again from my ashes.'
Next day at work, he had a plan of action ready in his mind. He called his assistant in and asked him without evasion 'Graham, I would like to go over my personal finances and housekeeping books with you.'
He realized that most of his personal staff, including his security was probably in his father's pay with instructions as to what could and could not be revealed to him. It probably wasn't a security breach on his father's part-just another precaution to preserve the fragile mental balance of the prodigal son.
Graham did not raise an eyebrow, totally unsurprised that his boss had almost no idea of the state of his finances, and thus revealing his culpability. He brought the records and gave him the relevant file names, including his own digital key chain.
'I recommend you change your passwords', said Lex to his assistants retreating back, after having declined an offer of a meeting with his accountants.
After an instructive half hour in which it was revealed to him that he had in no way been impoverished during his stay at Belle Reve, he came across an accounting file with the details of his expenses for the previous year. He had no doubt that any sensitive information had been purged from the file, but he trusted in his own ingenuity that he had created a system to foil just such an eventuality. He found the details of the Lebrunn account, and realized that the chocolatiere was paid monthly through a personal cheque, drawn on one of his overseas accounts, all details of which were available to his assistant, and hence inevitably, to his father.
He went to the safe, for which he had been provided a new access code by his assistant earlier, the significance of which occurrence had not immediately struck him. He took out the chequebook referred to in the Lebrunn account. It looked a perfectly regular cheque, even under magnification. It had no magnetically inscribed information other than normal security marks. Which meant that the person who received the cheque was involved and information was passed through a manual process known only to him and the person at the other end. It was simple, irreproducible and had therefore survived the vitriol of his father's attention. He recalled the two-house village in the ASlps where the Lebrunn had their chalet; he doubted very much if the old frau was his trusted agent-- the only other agency involved with the cheque was the village post-office, which no doubt handled the cashing of the cheques as well, for even though a considerable amount of time had passed since the last time he remembered being there, he doubted if Credit Suisse had opened a branch behind Frau Lebrunn's chalet. Thus satisfied with his inferences, with the determination that was characteristic of him he started putting his plan into action.
'Graham, please get my father on the line. Also arrange accommodation for a week in Geneva. And a flight leaving in 48 hours.'
'Sorry to disturb you in the middle of the day, dad
'No, I am feeling quite well, as well as one might in this .the place oppresses me. No, I am afraid the bovine charm quite escapes me.
'Well, I rather thought I would take an advance on my Season's holidays and go to Switzerland. I received some Swiss chocolate yesterday and it reminded me of my misspent but very enjoyable youth. I thought it would be nice to go to a place I actually remember, and of which I have nice memories, for a change.
'No, I do not require anyone to go with me. You have the certificate, dad. I am mentally fit to take my own decisions. Yes, I might even give your regards to old Gessler if I see him, though it was not my intention to hobnob with the political crowd.
He replaced the receiver, well satisfied with his work so far. After all, the truth told with economy was the best kind of lie.
His visit to the Kent farm went along extremely unexpected lines. He drove there and was immediately pulled into a time warp where this journey was an endlessly repeated path of a weighed pendulum, destined to repeat the simple harmonic motion in a perfect world. Sense memory took over again as he had not to refer to his navigation system even once and found himself in the dusty yard before a cheerful yellow building. It felt like the house of his best friend.
The sound of his car driving up had evidently drawn the attention of the occupants of the house, for as he approached the house the screen door swung open and a red-haired woman stepped out.
Lex! She looked happy to see him and then her face expressed chagrin, trepidation-a myriad of complicated expressions he could not even begin to understand.
Mrs kent.
Ccome in. clark is out gathering the cows, he will be back shortly.
She ushered him into the small kitchen, and here too, the familiarity hit him like a bludgeon-the proximity of the walls and the ceiling, that was womblike and not claustrophobic, the feeling of sheer size and ineptitude that he had never felt save in his fathers presence till he was six. (Then he had discovered that he could solve in his head what took his father a calculator and two henchmen to do. It was only math, but it was symbolic.) It came back here-- not only the Oedipal frisson, but the sheer backdrop of time built on the basis of memory, and the unassailable conviction that this place and its occupants marked several fundamental tiers in the edifice of his being. But now that tower teetered, lacking the cement of a cohesive linear narrative.
'Sit down, Lex. You like pie with milk.' The suffixed interrogative was suppressed but he could hear its virtual lilt, don't you?
She started bustling about, getting the pie and the milk, the unspoken question poisoning the air between them. How much do you remember? Are we going to continue this game where you do not know me, but pretend that you do, and I know that you don't know me but pretend that I don't? Her silence was an entreaty, a plea to the god of awkward situations, but he did not come to her rescue.