"Philanthropy and Power: A Discussion"
Presented at the World Trade Organization, Seattle Washington, 30 November 1999. Entered into evidence before the House Select Committee on Impeachment, 20 November 2003:
EXCERPT:
Luthor: You should come to Metropolis sometime, Oliver, you might enjoy it.
Queen: No thanks; I'd rather not live in a police state.
[Laughter]
Luthor: Yes we create a safe world. Yes your freedoms are being abridged, but you know what lies on the opposite end of the security my city offers. Oblivion. And I'm not even saying that as hyperbole, Mister Queen. Crime, despair. This is not how Man was supposed to live. So you accuse me of a police state, I accuse you of not doing more. Your Starling City allows its crime rate to soar. You allow shootings. You allow these super-types to run rampant. You allow this all in the name of inclusion, and a moral high ground, and what I'm sure your Green Arrow thinks is a game of cat and mouse. And people keep dying. Team Luthor keeps my city safe. So does the Special Crimes Unit, indeed every man and woman in the Metropolitan Police Force. We make a city of opportunity, a where children don't have to fear anything. I ask you, Oliver, why haven't you.
[/END]
Lois.
She stepped out of the elevator. She walked through the lobby, past the rotating model of the Planet logo itself there in the center. Through the front doors, great gusts blowing in and around her.
Out on the street.
Down the few steps.
It was an odd feeling. She felt—
Not herself.
And yet.
A Lincoln town car, parked in the handcapped spot right there, bright black, and the fading daylight refracting off its smooth lines, and Jenner leaning against it, dressed in his same tacky blue suit, finished in gold-rim aviators and a ginger buzzcut.
"Richard."
"Offer you a ride?" Jenner said it and opened the back door for her in a single fluid move. She threw her purse in.
"What's the matter?" she said. "He tell you to be nice today?"
"Look," he said. "I just do what I'm paid to do."
"You might as well be taking out his garbage," she said, and got in. "Thanks for the ride anyway. Beats going down myself."
Then Jenner was driving. He craned his neck by half and spoke to the mirror after a moment: "Why are you the way you are. With him, I mean."
She turned and looked at him.
"No."
"What?"
"No," she said. "As in no I won't answer your condescending question, Rich."
He made a face and looked back at the road.
She looked at him. "Out of curiosity why do you ask." It wasn't a question.
He shook his head. "No reason."
The next moments passed in silence. They were quiet, each studying the other in turn. Finally she saw her opening. "Go on the record. Help me put him away."
Jenner laughed. "You've been trying for years and you got nothing. One driver's bitching is gonna tip the scale?"
"Every bit helps." Then she looked around the cabin. She ran one hand up the armrest and felt the leather smooth and cold underneath. "He doesn't bug the car?"
"Even if he did," Jenner said and did not look in the mirror. "Would it matter. You're still you."
She looked back out the window but her eyes lingered on him. She thought the whole effect of him reminded her of her father, and then entertained, in the half-second before she voided the thought, that Luthor had hired Jenner for just such a reason.
It was a straight shot down Fifth Avenue from the front entrance of the Planet building to the LexCorp plaza. Jenner swung the Lincoln in a wide stroke around the hedge and Lois glared ever so briefly at the juvenile redwood there in the center. The car jerked to a stop.
"Thanks, Rich. Don't let him get you down."
She flung the door open and stormed inside.
The lobby was new. Remodeled, more precisely, since the last time she had been here. She wondered if anything else was new. Ahead was a super-massive wall of Carrera marble and a white stone desk with a pert and motionless concierge behind it. A young blonde girl. On the desk there sat only a black PowerBook. She looked robotic, perfectly postured, hands clasped, tanned skin and a manufactured smile.
She heard the faint echo of background music, faint to the ear, an idea of class—Chopin she remembered. His favorite.
She forced her face blank. No expression. Neither her usual cocksure smirk nor a downward curl of fear. That would just give him too much now wouldn't it.
Aside from the plastic girl pretending to be something she wasn't there was precious little else in the lobby. To one side and far behind the Carrera wall there was an atrium, also new to her; she watched people come and go in it, a couple on a park bench by a ginkgo tree, and she did not break stride.
She kept her eyes on the concierge, and the concierge in turn seemed to finally lock on to her. In the slower time of her approach she opened her ears.
The brisk rhythmic clicking of her heels on the marble. The sound they made bouncing off the walls and the glass. The hum of the city behind her. Machine sounds to her left, power drills, jackhammers, the incessant beeps of a reversing Bobcat—she noticed a wall of drop-cloths and a sign she couldn't make out from here. Even so, it all seemed pretty obvious.
He was building a subway station. Probably run it up to the Slum and pass it off as a virtue signal. Maybe connecting to his roots.
Still she felt the lobby, at least insofar as she felt nothing. No ambient heat around her from the lack of human bodies, no chill either from the desolation.
Yes, that was the word.
The plastic concierge stood and her face did not change, even as she stumbled over the words: "Miss Lane?"
"Is he here?"
"Yes," she said.
"Good," Lois said and made for the elevators. "Tell him the bitch is back."
The doors opened.
She stepped in.
The floor bank above her tessellated into words: Welcome, Miss Lane.
She gave a little salute.
The walls of the elevator were swedish green marble with gold overlays. The cabin lurched up ever so slightly.
She looked away. Down at the floor, at her heels, but really at nothing.
She looked back at one panel, and stared at it for a long moment. Something—
This tower's been ransacked more than the law allows, he's had to rebuild so much of it, not to mention cover it all in lead like a crazy person because he's convinced Clark—
Crazy was right. She impressed herself there and made a matter of fact nod. He's an old man. A sick man. A paranoiac and a despot. He thinks he runs things. He's always thought that. He thinks he owns people. He thinks the laws don't apply.
He can do whatever he wants. The only thing that keeps him from cracking the planet in half—
She looked up at the ceiling, dark gold plates with four inset lights in a square.
Something.
All these years. All these remodels.
The elevators used to be anodized steel for walls and red digital displays, his ideas, cold and sterile.
And his voice in her memory: hit people in the face with what they want. They're simple, Lois, not like us. They only need to be shown the way.
Not a bit of design from the original tower.
He didn't just rebuild after supervillain pissing contests. He reworked the whole thing. He removed his old designs. And hers.
Son of a bitch.
She breathed.
She felt the elevator slow.
Gold panels that were doors slid open without a sound and opened into a stark white anteroom, a white shelf of a desk on one side and Teschmacher, loyal, quiet Teschmacher sitting there clacking away on her PowerBook.
Lois had almost forgotten about her.
Eve tried to say—
"Yeah, save it," Lois said and kept walking.
Through the great glass double doors open, the ones with his initials etched in a chic Deco style.
Their eyes met.
They knew each other.
They were friends and enemies. Old adversaries. Close in a way that so few humans were. Certainly closer to each other than they cared to admit. Years previous, ancient history really, they were lovers and best friends. After college and her first beat, hanging around in the stairwell of the Daily Star asking Taylor for scraps, she met him. Or he met her. Memory blurs with age, and as she reminisced she found herself remembering not specifics, but feelings. Moments. Emotions.
Pain. Sadness. And something else besides—
So here they were.
She walked up to his desk and plopped down in one of the seats, rich green velour and a flat green rug underneath. Ahead was the desk, dark cherry and a black PowerBook upon it, and a slim chrome stalk for a lamp. And him.
Always Lex to her. Sometimes Luthor. If she was pissed. But usually just—
"You."
He smiled that public smile and said, "It's nice to see you, too. Like what I've done with the place?"
"Doesn't look quite like a sick joke anymore."
"I believe some of the original designs were yours, too, were they not?"
She shook her head. "Doesn't matter."
He narrowed his eyes and leaned forward. "But it does. Don't initiate a conversation unless you want to finish it, Lois, and don't stand there pretending it doesn't grate your every nerve to see how I've changed the building without you. When was the last time you were actually in here?"
"Years ago. You were dying."
"Oh yes," he said and opened his hands. "Cadmus, you know, was a mistake."
"I'm sure they were," she said. "Almost as much of a mistake as me not reporting your illegal arms deals, or illegal cloning experiments, illegal real estate schemes—how many times can I use the word illegal? Oh, and how could I forget the bribes or the corruption or the straight up murders—not to mention the terrorists on the Sea Queen."
"Ancient history," he said and a smile crept onto his face.
"How many Cadmus scientists are you still funding, Lex?"
He just smiled and shook his head. "I miss you."
"Oh bite me."
He leaned back in his chair. Drummed idly on the armrest and stared right into her eyes. "Ride down was good?"
"Richard—"
"Is a loyal dog," he said.
She relaxed into the chair but only just. "Don't you worry that one day he'll get tired. Maybe find a journalist and start talking."
He did not move and in that moment their eyes locked and time stopped and Lois was reacquainted with one of his basic features: a cold dead stare that made your flesh crawl.
"He'd have to find a good one, wouldn't he."
She rolled her eyes.
He made a sound. "Everything I built. Everything we started. And you still give me no credit."
"I give you credit for trying," she said. "But you could be so much more."
Then he was standing, and turning, and staring out the window. Beyond it the day was fading. The sun bathed Metropolis in warm pastels. She looked around. He was still staring out the window.
"Customarily," he said. "When we meet there's no small amount of screaming. So I'd like to know what you're up to, Miss Lane."
He turned and looked at her. His eyes glowed in the dusk.
"I wanted to tell you I'll no longer be reporting on you from the City Desk."
"Decided to join the press pool have you? I'll tell Cat you said hello."
"No," she said and cleared her throat. "I won't be reporting on you at all anymore. However much it kills me. Not the campaign. Not your military contracts. Not even the Easter Egg Hunt in the plaza."
"You started that tradition," he said. "Long ago."
She looked at him and was silent.
For time uncounted.
Finally she said, "are you for real? With this. The campaign, winning, actually doing something with your miserable life. You'd take a massive pay cut, you'd have to give a shit about your fellow man—something I know you're physically incapable of doing. Not to mention you'd have to stop, oh I dunno, selling weapons to Bialyan separatists."
He looked at her. "You and your sources."
"Keeps me honest," she said.
He went back to the window. Back to surveying the city.
She waited.
"I will win, Lois."
From nowhere she said, "No you won't."
"I already have."
He looked at her.
A moment passed.
"I will be President. I've seen to it. And so has Brainiac. I will take this planet into the twenty-first century whether it likes it or not and if I have to kill you, your husband, and five billion people to do it I will. Because that's what I do. Because the planet deserve deserves Lex Luthor. The hard choice, and the only choice. You used to understand that. So here's what's going to happen. You will go back to the Planet and you'll tell Perry that your jitters are just that and that you want to stay on as campaign correspondent. Because if you don't...I swear to god. I will never. Ever. Forget. Say you understand."
She clenched her fists, her jaw, her whole body, and stared him right in his eyes, brilliant green in the gloom.
"Lois."
"I understand."
"Good. Eve will see you out."
She was at the doors again, numb from the conversation before she heard his voice again.
"Lois."
She turned. He was standing behind his desk now, a shadow in the gloom.
"One more thing."
"Yes?"
"All these years," he said. "Look at us now. All your articles. All those years of struggles and what did they achieve. Why do you persist?"
She looked him in the eyes, those brilliant greens, and felt them in turn studying her. The shadow before the window did not move.
She thought of Clark.
What's the S stand for—
Long ago.
It's not an S—
She smiled.
On my world it means—
"I hope," she said.
"For what," he said.
"For things to get better."
He made a face.
And she was gone.
Years ago.
Years ago Lana was young. Like they all were. Young and naive, and Clark somehow preeminent among them. The world hadn't seemed to beat down on him the way it did others. Pete always felt inadequate around others. Whitney also felt like he had to overcompensate, first with football, then as he aged with running the farm. It was a chip he carried on his shoulder. And there was Lana. The shrinking violet: she felt it in her heart even though she knew it was an oversimplification.
Not that she supposed it mattered. She told herself it didn't. That what people thought of her didn't matter.
They always say that, you silly corndog. Everyone cares and everyone judges and we just keep going.
She remembered calling Mrs Kent. "Oh Missus Kent, it's Lana, I was just wondering if by chance Clark was still around." "I'm sorry, Lana, he left for the train station early this morning. If you hurry you might catch him."
And hurry she did. She hung up the phone and yelled up the stairs—MOMILLBEBACKIGOTTAGOSEECLARK—and she was out the door, down the steps, bam, lickety-split. Whitney lived a half block down and she ran there first. "Whit, can I borrow your truck?" "Yeah no, Lana, why?" "I wanna see Clark before he leaves, it would mean a lot and he's already at the station. Do you think you could drive me down, I'll buy you a bite." "…Okay."
And they were off. Whitney's Custom Deluxe, used to be his dad's, colored shit-brown and the rust spots in the wheel-wells just made it all look worse. The seat was a single bench and she did her level best to be cool with it as they rumbled though town, the Custom's throaty exhaust echoing off the pavers. She looked at him. "Thank you, Whitney."
"Yeah yeah."
"No I mean it." She reached her hand out and patted his, clamped on the shifter. "It means a lot."
He glanced down at her hand on his, frowned, looked back at the road. "Here."
He turned the Custom Deluxe into the station parking lot, in those days still gravel with cement blockades on either end of the expanse. She opened the door as the truck came to a stop. "Do you want me to wait, or…"
She looked at the building, and at Whitney. "I'll meet you at Ralli's? Like, half an hour?"
"Okay," he said and made a nervous smile.
She ambled out, and marched into the building, quick apace. Right through the ticket area, through the waiting area, all empty this late in the day, and walked right out back. You could do that in the old days.
He was sitting on a bench, up against the building at the far end of the platform. Perfect posture as always, a hard side suitcase with a big ST LOUIS sticker across the side at a jaunty angle. He was wearing a houndstooth that looked about two sizes too big.
She started to walk towards him. Stuck up her hand and waved and it was so feeble. "Hey."
He looked. "Lana!"
He got up and they shared a hug.
"What are you doing here?" he asked. "I mean, is everything okay?"
"Yeah," she said. Looked away and smiled and chuckled and wiped a string of hair from her face. "Yeah. Uh. Can we—"
"Sure—"
"Thanks—"
They sat. She tucked her legs neatly under the bench, her skirt flowed out smartly, she was always very put together like that, never give anything away, Mom said, they're like orcs you know.
Clark was different. Even Whitney was different.
Whitney—
"Um," she said.
He was looking right at her. Wrapped on any word. If only she could say them. She breathed and looked him in the eye.
"Clark."
He smiled and said, "Lana."
She started shaking her head slowly, working up the courage for some invisible—
"I'm in love with you."
She was looking at the ground. At this random half circle of pebbles there on the edge of the platform. She said it and her eyes grew wide and she looked at him.
"You—"
"I love you. And I know it's not like we can do anything about it, Clark, it's not even sane, I just needed to hear myself say it. It was like a moment of strength, right?"
"Lana."
"And so yeah, there it is, Clark. I just needed to say it." She looked at him and chuckled, a cackle that tickled the back of her throat. She thumbed towards the terminal. "I should go."
"Lana," he said. "Come on."
She breathed. Her whole body kind of rose and fell.
He said, "I know."
"You—?"
He nodded and gave a sheepish face. "I can tell. But, you know."
"You're leaving," she said. "For Metropolis."
"Yeah," he said and it was hardly a whisper.
"You don't sound too excited."
"I don't know," he said and looked ahead. On the other side of the tracks was a row of maple trees, orange and wilting in the fall chill. "Maybe?"
"Maybe?"
"I think maybe it might not be the right choice," he said. And then he looked at her again. "But I think I have to try."
She was silent. Her mouth hung open a little.
He reached into his houndstooth and pulled out a beat-up envelope with his own name on it. His name in her handwriting.
"Oh my god, you kept that."
"Was I not supposed to?"
She covered half her face. "No. I dunno. I just wanted to—"
"Tell me how you feel."
She breathed. "Yeah."
"It was very nice letter, Lana," he said. "I don't mind telling you I got a little emotional. I wanted to tell you I'll carry it with me always."
She elbowed him and they shared a laugh. "Shush."
"No, I'm serious."
"Pfft. It was—it's nothing, Clark, it's—"
She bit her lip and looked away. Down the track she heard a distant whistle.
He pulled her into a hug.
She whispered into his chest. "Don't forget about me."
"Never."
She looked up at him.
"Whitney's parked down the street," Clark said, nodding towards the building. "He's waiting for you. He's a good guy. If you and Pete aren't meant to be I hope Whitney can give you what you're looking for."
"Yeah."
"I love you," he said.
"I love you, too."
"I have to go."
"I know," she said. She laughed and looked away and waved a hand, waved away tears she knew were coming. "Go. Go be you. You were...always meant for more than Smallville."
He looked down. "Are you sure about that?"
She touched his chin and brought him back up. He was taller than her so the effect was a little ruined. Still—
"As sure as I am about anything," she said and touched his face. "The world needs you."
He smiled.
"I love you, Lana. And I'll see you real soon, okay?"
He kissed her forehead. And then—
A cool breeze swept the platform.
Continued…