In Character
Clark used his thumb to snap his credit card against a countertop in the cosmetics section of Vanders & Co., which halted all conversation in a ten foot radius. He smiled as three female heads turned in his direction, conversation in progress frozen as they tried to politely acknowledge his interruption. The general environment of a classy department store and the impeccable application of makeup made it seem like he was being regarded by three mannequins.
A maze of countertops circled in all directions, and the random canister of coffee beans threw his left nostril for a trip. The combined scent of a hundred perfumes filled his senses and for not the first time, Clark wondered how many shades of blush there really could be.
"Good-" Clark glanced at his watch, "-afternoon."
"Good afternoon," two of them chorused, "May we help you?" asked the third.
"I was wondering if you would care to take on a challenge?" Clark stepped back from the counter, opening his arms a little and inviting them to assess his whole self. He gave them a sheepish look.
The youngest was a brunette with highlights and a gold ring on her right middle finger that kept her thumb busy in nervous spinning. Closer to the countertop was an older woman, the kind of raven-haired 40-something that always walked like she was holding a glass of wine. She eyed Clark like an expert, ignoring the credit card and seeking out his cufflinks (which, luckily, were his best pair). The third was a redhead who looked both annoyed and amused.
Three identical smiles started crawling up cheekbones. He assumed they worked on commission.
"Hey! HEY! HEY!"
The flurry of shuffling paper, ringing phones, and multiple news feeds battled with Peter-from-Business's cries.
"I've got six bucks says Floyd only submits a personal statement to that subcommittee hearing. Who wants it?"
"Sit down, Hollins."
"Who carries singles anymore? I haven't seen a dollar bill in two years."
"No, come on, seriously!"
Guy picked up his phone and started punching numbers, the receiver between his ear and shoulder, "Leave me alone."
A line of people was making their way through her aisle and Lois had to keep moving her legs for them to pass. After the eighth time that she was forced to bend one ankle in a weird direction and get her other foot kicked, Lois had enough.
"Can't you go another way? Out, out of my aisle, stop it!"
"Lois! I say Floyd-"
Lois never looked away from her monitor, "I have a car payment, no thank you."
A moment passed. Peter sighed.
"Wait, you said what?" Lois looked over, "I'll raise you to ten, his entire reputation rests on this testimony."
"Double or nothing."
"Fine. Will SOMEONE answer Clark's phone! And find an intern to go to an ATM for me."
"I also haven't seen a ten dollar bill in two years."
"Well, we've got to do something about the hair."
"Do you always wear black shoes? Get Tom."
"It's Tom's day off."
"Damn. Call... no.. never mind. Fine, I'll do shoes."
"We haven't even established a color yet, Kitty..."
Kitty? The woman who acted like a modern Dame was named Kitty?
"You said this was a casual affair?" Kitty asked.
"Um, yes."
"Casual-lunch-at-a-bistro-casual or casual-drinks-after-work-casual?" clarified the women with red hair.
Clark blinked.
"Shush, Cecilia," said the matron with the sharp eyes, "Start from the beginning, we need context."
Having been shuffled over to the men's section Clark now found himself surrounded by subtle colors and had one pair of pants thrown over his left shoulder for "an idea." The brunette was trying to get Clark out of his suit jacket while Cecilia moved towards the display to his left; Clark struggled to concentrate.
"Well, I... don't have a very varied wardrobe. There's someone that I'm seeing outside the office, at her home, and all she knows is one thing," half true, as he gestured down at himself, "I want her to see someone else. I want to look unrecognizable."
The little Superman on Jason's birthday card had not stopped mocking him from where it flew on Clark's dresser. Ever since he had seen the poor illustration that, frankly, looked constipated, he had felt the concept of looking eternally the same snipping at the edge of his mind.
'This is you,' the little Superman said to him, 'This is who you are to them.'
He looked forever the same.
It was so important.
It was so vital as both Clark Kent and Superman.
It was a layer upon layer of identity and secrets wrapped in visual trademarks...
If he had learned one thing as a young "actor," terrified of college and really quite unused to the crowd he suddenly found himself in, those crazy free-spirited people who had lived their flaws like men sing opera...
He had learned to stay in costume...
Stay in character.
But recently, Clark would roll out of bed in the morning, groggy and true to himself, rumbled and pissed at the sun and just a man. He would moan as he stretched his body towards the sky and scratched his chest. Hre would turn and catch the little Superman staring at him.
'You are an icon,' it said to him.
Clark would falter, images of holy men and women surrounded by gold, painted on boards in an empire long ago.
"And that is no way to be a father," he would say back, his voice rough in the morning air.
A father could not be a flag, a logo, a symbol... a father had to be a person. He wanted, for the first time since he had decided upon his course in life, to flesh out his alter ego, give voice to the concept, be a man in Superman's shoes and gaze down into the eyes of a little boy and know...
"Unrecognizable?"
...that he had a son.
"Yes. Unrecognizable."
And of course he was already an ordinary man that Lois saw almost every day, a guy in pants, shirts, ties... a man in the midst of the same ordinary life and with the same ordinary clothes as everyone else...
So he could not afford to grace her doorstep looking like her partner, either. And so he was here, asking these women to transform both of him.
"Hmmm, that's a fun one."
"I know, we-!"
"We start with short sleeves-"
"-rolled sleeves-"
"-we add accessories-"
"-lose the glasses-"
"-get away from pants-"
"-sandals!-"
"I know just the pair-"
"- how do you feel about wrist cuffs?"
"- but only in the Summer collection, we don't want to go black-"
"So, our color is 'not black?'"
"Well, no gray either, I think he's done gray to death."
Clark went to open his mouth-
"Yes belts or no belts?"
Lois sighed and pushed away from her desk, slamming the keyboard tray back under the surface and sighing. "This is nowhere man, I need a break. JIMMY!"
She sometimes resurrected this old-fashioned language, something jazzy and bohemian like heroin in the fifties.
"Hold on," came Jimmy's less than enthusiastic response.
"I don't need you to move. Just watch my phone, will you?" Lois was bending in half in her chair, reaching out for her purse. Her hangover had reached its plateau and now she just felt like fog in the harbor: sweaty, dull, and not helping anybody.
"That does require me to move."
And sometimes Jimmy would engage Lois in a dialog that sounded like having a conversation with herself.
"You know James, I do favors for you all the time."
"Not as many as I do for you. It's constant with you," Jimmy was moving things around on his desk, seemingly desperate to find something. Everyone in this office lost at least three important things on a daily basis. It was inevitable. Even with the age of computers it had not changed; a lot of this searching time came with typing article *.doc into the search box and getting 300 results.
"Oh come on!"
"For how long, I'm busy, you get fifty calls an hour! And here I am, looking for those pictures."
"Holy shit Jimmy, which pictures?" Lois finally spun around, almost elbowing the crotch of the most recent Bullpen denizen to try and squeeze past her on the way to somewhere else.
"Don't worry, they're here," answered Jimmy as a stack of file folders slipped helplessly in an avalanche towards the edge of his desk.
"WHAT?"
Lois stood at once, coming to attention in her concern.
"I only made it to my mom's last night. I sat through dinner and two episodes of M.A.S.H. before I managed to go to my room. It took me 45 minutes and a bowl of rice pudding but I found every one I could remember." He was flipping through each stack of photographs and negatives he found with the expert thumb of a creator.
"And now they're lost? In this office?" Panic started running through her, tinting her voice with the steely tone she was famous for. She crossed her arms and took a step forward, yet still back from the steady stream of people through the aisle that separated their desks. Jimmy sat behind Lois, across an artery aisle. Clark's desk was to her left, across a smaller vein.
"They're lost on my desk," Jimmy snapped back impatiently.
"And you're sure about that?" Lois asked with wondering sarcasm.
"Yes, because I found them. HA!" Jimmy turned to face her, holding up a file folder.
"Fuck. Now I really need a break. Please show me those later," Lois let out a breath, "And lock them in your drawer, damnit!"
Lois was moving stuff around in her purse, searching in eternity for everything. No matter what she was looking for, she couldn't find it. Everything in her life was lost, all the time. Rush, rush, rush!
Ahh, there it was.
Lois pulled her tape recorder out of her bag, the wires getting caught on her wallet and pulling three things out with it. She fumbled for a few more seconds before throwing the bag down in disgust and glaring at it while she unraveled the ear buds.
She had been forcing herself through the whole morning, just trying to stave off work until she could have a moment like this one. Her head hurt so much.
Lois often daydreamed that she could go to Mexico, harvest some agave and distill her own tequila in a copper pot somewhere, talking to it like a horse whisperer, because that was the only way she would ever be able to drink the stuff. Tequila was like placing a penny-sized Lois on a track and then waiting for a train.
She let her head fall back against the wall, the pain of it waking her up a little and reminding her why she was here. Finally she felt slightly better, the morning's black coffee a little uneasy inside her.
Recently she had found one of their more casual conversations, and a long one, at least by his standards. She had saved it for a time when she could really listen to it. She took a deep breath, surrendered to the privacy, and hit play.
A few seconds later his voice filled her mind. It helped shut out the light and made her want to sit down. Lois smiled in satisfaction as she let herself slide down the wall to sit. Memories of the previous night ran through her. Other than the few scant hours of restless sleep, she hadn't been able to shake the sound of his voice out of her no matter what she tried to think about.
Lois wasn't used to new memories of Superman haunting her days. That daydreaming had faded long ago with his absence. Her life had changed in every way possible in the meantime, and getting this rare look at her past was disturbing and alluring. She was becoming addicted to it.
"Can you imagine a world before music? I mean, in the modern sense of radios and MP3s and satellites and mass media..."
Lois made a small noise, probably a sarcastic prompt to his rambling, a little sound out of the back of her throat.
"Imagine when music was a band of people, only a few men banging rocks or playing instruments and singing in a medieval court or the Greek chorus or around an Iron Age fire... thousands of years of small snippets of music being played here and there across the planet, outdoors, in taverns or around a fire and by one, two, or a small group of people... And then, Lois, imagine 13th century Austria!"
Lois listened to herself laughing at what was probably an elaborate hand gesture. She smiled. Now she absolutely loved it when he rambled on about life, the universe, everything.
"So what kind of music do you listen to?"
"Every kind. I love music history, I've studied it for years."
Lois laughed into the stairwell. 'What a fantastic answer from an alien.' He was a pleasure in every way.
"What do you listen to?"
"My father was very into classic rock, which of course wasn't classic when he was listening to it. But it's interesting anyway since he was in the military during the sixties."
"I had quite a sixties collection."
"Had? What happened to it? What do you have now?"
He sighed. "I'm afraid you'll have to forgive me, but my time is limited..." He was inviting her back to the post-disaster interview. He was very good at deflecting her questioning, and had been since the day she met him. It was a remarkable talent in someone so open and honest. She often wondered at the mischief in him, and his almost uncanny knack to sabotage her questioning before it even began.
But Lois remembered this conversation. She had let him change topics, but hadn't let him stop talking.
"Alright, fine. Too personal. Why don't you pick a topic."
There was a hiss from the microphone as his silence created a gap in the recording. Lois could imagine him weighing it. Remembered him weighing it. But this time, unlike so many others, he stayed.
He picked a topic.
"What's your favorite national park?"
She laughed, but went with it.
"What's yours? Yours is going to be Yosemite, isn't it. Or the Grand Canyon."
"Those are both beautiful places."
"I knew it."
"But, not my favorite."
"Yellowstone?"
"Didn't I ask you for your favorite park?"
"Fine. Zion. My father brought me there a whole bunch of times."
"Did you ever hike the Narrows?"
Lois of now sighed, as did her younger self.
"I'm a little embarrassed to admit this, but I'm terrified of the Narrows. And Angel Trail."
Superman didn't make any noise, so his reaction was not recorded, but Lois could imagine it anyway. He looked confused, in a way that a superhuman might, and then it occurred to him. Almost like he needed to remember that something so beautiful could be so dangerous for mere mortals.
He had looked like he wanted to help.
The moment passed.
"The Dry Tortugas tied with Volcanoes."
The answer to the question.
"The first because if you've never heard of them, you should, and volcanoes are fascinating. Hawaii is like all of biology in one place."
"Do you like it there?"
"Yes, I do. It's like being inside the origin of life itself."
"I've never been."
Again, memory of him wanting to help. As if to say, 'Well, let me take you there.'
"Anyway, I don't know much about the origin of life, I guess I cut that bio class in college."
Superman laughed, but he laughed at what she really meant: the reference to how much of a stoner Lois had been in college, and how she hadn't attempted anything near serious academic study, nevermind science. That was the joke, but Superman didn't really know that.
But he laughed anyway, as if he did. She could hear it. And then he proved it with: "You would have appreciated the equipment."
Lois of the past laughed back, really laughed, her voice ringing out-
Lois of now hit pause.
'How did he know that?' Her mind raced, picking up on this small moment a full seven years after it happened, 'I never told him much about college. And he wasn't just saying it, he was calling me out on it.'
Lois stared down at the tape recorder.
"How did he know that?"
"So we're going with something looser, maybe off your hips instead of the usual belt... oh but wait, Maureen wanted the belt... we can go something braided... Maureen!"
The older woman's expensive perfume was now easily identifiable over here and away from the cosmetics section.
"Okay," Maureen turned away and Clark felt sorry for her. Could you tip salespeople?
"A shirt... a shirt. So we didn't decide on short sleeves, but you'd be amazed what forearms do to a woman..." Kitty had long ago asked Clark to pocket his cufflinks and had rolled his sleeves up, remarking on the nice lines of his wrists.
Clark was trying to imagine himself in loose "summery" pants and a short-sleeved shirt. It was a difficult image. That was probably good.
"...and we need a loose jacket for evening wear..."
Evening wear?
Wait a second, he had only meant-
"Excuse me," they looked around, "This isn't meant to be..."
He paused.
'...more than one night. One night. With my son. With Lois.'
He paused, looking at a rack of jackets. How many moments could these different shades and textures represent? How many times could he pull this off? What were the possibilities with a second pair of pants, a second pair of shoes, two more shirts...
But it was only supposed to be one night. A night Lois had arranged for them... as a family. Hiding. A rushing sound filled his ears.
Clark wanted more than that. More than a solitary night in this existence. He wanted it all. Some irrational part of him was screaming, and against his very will, as if speaking with knowledge of a Divine plan, Clark finished with:
"...Actually, yes. Make that a few nights of formal wear."
"LOIS!" Perry bellowed.
"Yes?" she didn't raise her voice, only responding in the same bored groan she would have had he been standing next to her and not in his doorway.
"A minute?"
"Now?"
"YES!"
"Ugh, fine!"
He watched from his office door as she threw her pad down on the desk and jabbed a finger out to turn off her monitor. Lois hated to be interrupted, and even though she knew it was part of a day she still acted as inconvenienced as ever everytime it happened.
"What, Chief?" That same, bored tone.
"I'm not allowed to call an employee into my office for a little chat? Get in!" Perry gestured to the inside of his headquarters as he moved backwards into the space, impatient himself.
"Sit down!"
"Chief, just tell me what-"
"Damnit woman, sit down!"
She rolled her eyes and moved around to the chair, flopping down and crossing her legs. She watched as Perry moved to his chair, swinging it around from behind his desk.
"Nice weather we're having," Lois made a mocking attempt at conversation.
"How's the story going?" He sat down.
"Henderson? Oh just fine. Why?" She gestured with her hand, demanding.
"No reason, just curious," he responded quickly, with an even tone.
There was an obvious silence.
"How do you like working with Kent again?"
"I'm sorry?" That had apparently hit a nerve quicker than expected, and Perry watched as the tell-tale signs of Lois on Edge started to wrinkle their way through her demeanor. Lois was like a brick wall, but it didn't mean that her friends could not get to know her. Perry could tell when Lois cracked, and so could Clark and Jimmy. It was true of all of them, really.
"Is he rusty, is he helping, have you broken anything on him yet?" These were pointless questions, Perry knew the answers.
"He's fine. What do you really want?" She was back to annoyed.
"I want to know about Kent," his voice sounded final.
"Chief, he's the same man he's always been: he's crazy and naive and funny and writes a damn good article in half the time it takes an average reporter..." She sighed, looking exhausted at the question.
Perry nodded, satisfied with this answer.
"Why does everyone keep asking me about Clark? Richard, you, and even Jason," she did sound truly exasperated.
Perry didn't want to do harm, so he went with the safest follow-up. "Jason?"
"Yes. He apparently really took a liking to Clark, you know how kids get heroes?"
"Clark is his hero?" An interesting thought for a man so modest.
"They talk about Superman. Jason likes that Clark will answer his questions forever."
Perry chuckled, memories of ceaselessly barraging his uncles with questions about old time baseball players rising to mind. He imagined that most young boys had come to admire Superman in his second coming.
"They do get along," he nodded to the Bullpen, alluding to Clark's stints as Jason's best playmate in the evenings, "It figures that Clark would be good with kids."
Lois laughed on cue to this observation, shaking her head at Clark as so many do.
"It's funny that he doesn't seem to attract anyone."
"Not true, Janet had a huge crush on him. He's much more the marrying type than what's-his-face anyway."
Perry guffawed, memories of Janet's ex-husband all very fresh, "Would you marry someone like Clark one day?"
"Me? What? No. I don't want to marry anyone."
He wondered if she had slipped, or if she had wanted to finally say it. A shocked expression crossed her face a second later, and then Lois gave Perry a wary look. He let the silence speak for itself.
"You always knew I didn't want to marry Richard."
"Lois, you let the man raise his son!" Perry whispered without needing to, the muted Bullpen only white noise beyond the glass.
Her expression blanked, a sure sign that Perry had hit at something.
"You don't understand, Perry." Her voice was steely, and with that, Lois Lane was back.
"Of course I don't," he sighed, regretting that she had closed up on him. Well, this was progress none-the-less.
"Are you trying to analyze me? Did Richard put you up to this?"
"No one put me up to anything. I've just decided to start paying attention for the first time in awhile. You, if you haven't noticed, have fired back up."
"Oh?"
"Lois, it starts very small on you, it really does, but I can sense when you're having a crisis and I'm trying to find out what it's-"
"What the hell, Perry? I live the same perfectly ordinary daily life, nothing has changed!"
"It starts small," she gave him a truly nasty look, "I realize it's been years, but-"
Lois stood up, apparently enraged at him, "You have no idea what you're talking about. My life is complicated beyond a level even YOU, with your two mistresses, could imagine and I will thank you to stay OUT of my business. I may be temporarily engaged to your nephew and you can go ahead and tell him so if you feel sadistic enough, but I will not sit here and be asked soul-searching questions about Clark Kent or ANYONE for that matter. So piss off!"
Perry sat back, scolded for an instant and oddly proud of her.
The next few moments found her sweeping out the door, her face set in a straight line and headed straight for Jimmy. He watched her go, worried.
"Give me these goddamn photographs!" Lois yanked open Jimmy's drawer without a second's notice and nearly knocked it into Jimmy's knee when he jumped in his seat. She had come from behind him and he was caught off guard, looking up at her with startled eyes and pressing his hand to his phone receiver.
"What?"
"Get off the phone!" Lois was already flipping open the flap and trying to peer inside.
"I'm in the middle of something!"
"Fine, meet me in the stairwell. You have three minutes."
Lois clicked away from Jimmy, her feet aching but her temper flaring. She danced her way through the legs and desks and people, and was aimed straight for the stairs.
"God damn you people!" she yelled at the Bullpen, her frustration flaring again at the thought of being interrogated left and right.
"Rip apart whoever you're assigned to, BUT LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE!"
Richard had already stepped out of his office and was watching her retreating back from where he hung forward off his door frame. He saw her gesture in the air with a large envelope as if brandishing a sword into battle.
"And since everyone is so keen to remark on how 'fired up' I've been, remember who exactly you're dealing with!"
She spun on her heel to face the Bullpen at large, her hair landing delicately on her shoulders.
"I will take on the next person who decides to be interested in my life and slam his name down in ink so fast and thorough that his own mother will resent him."
She lifted her purse onto her shoulder, turned around, and proceeded to give the finger as she walked away, a trademark exit by Lois Lane.
"Piss off!" she cried one last time, banging into the stairwell with most of the Bullpen in a state of mild surprise as they watched her go. Richard appreciated how difficult it was to startle these people.
"Except you, Jimmy," she yelled, the words echoing in the stairwell, her quick heels clicking up the concrete steps as the door swung shut.
Richard watched as Jimmy rushed someone off the phone and stood up. He took two steps before spinning around and grabbing the loop of his camera bag off his desk in a practiced motion. The younger man trotted across the room, weaving in and out in the same path Lois had taken, and opened the door at a normal speed before walking up the steps.
Richard turned his head, confusion mingling with some distant, constant anger. He saw his uncle standing in his own door frame.
"Uncle Perry?"
THe older man grunted.
"What was that?"
A reporter Richard recognized but could never name turned around from where he was at the copy machine. He regarded Richard from over the top of his glasses and flicked his eyes over to the Editor and back again.
"Lois is upset," the man responded, as if offering the answer to a math question.
"You're fired!" snapped Perry.
"I mean in general, about everything."
"And you think this because...?" Richard prompted.
"Lois always wants to be alone when she's upset."
"You were hiding quite a body under there."
Clark had always attracted older women. In addition to making a very awkward first impression with every set of parents he ever had the chance to "be taken home to," it often led to moments like this. Lois once suggested it was because he had a 'masculine baby face,' and that had quite disturbed him. But, then again, she had been talking to Superman.
"I um," am I really going to say this? "I work out."
"Apparently. Maureen, he's going to need a bigger neck size than that."
"Okay," the brunette with the highlights turned away.
"You wear a size thirteen well," the pseudo-Kennedy purred from beside him. Clark gave a mental sigh.
"Thank you." Was she talking about his shoes?
A long silence reigned.
Clark found himself staring at himself in the three-sided mirror that donned the inside of the woman's dressing room at Vanders & Co. His consultant team found it easier to work on him here. He thought it was rather funny.
It was a surprisingly large space decorated with muted colors and patterns and he was envious on behalf of men everywhere. There was furniture, a nice assortment of art reproductions, and magazines. Fresh flowers surrounded him, the overwhelming scent of them invading his entire mind. His eyes kept glancing at his surroundings through the mirror, trying to avoid the attempted conversation at hand; the three angled panes and gave him a 180 degree look at the room... with him standing in the way.
He felt dizzy, and took a deep breath, closing his eyes. These moments used to happen to him when he was younger, and notably when he arrived in Metropolis to live full-time. It was just a matter of his senses overloading. It must be all the flowers in the room, or the infinity of reflections in the mirror when he looked a certain way.
Clark used these few moments to breathe, to try and relax his senses back to normal. But it wasn't working. He opened his eyes again, and the infinity of reflections stared back at him. He stared back at him. He blinked, confused, his senses flaring.
He could smell everything: every carpet fiber, every petal of every flower, every bit of Kitty and the rest of the store. It all entered through his nostrils and swirled there, the essence of everything that had ever bloomed stuck inside him.
He could usually tailor his range, hem in the ability to experience everything. But now the hundreds of scents barraged him, stole his consciousness as he attempted to process every taste, every flavor on the air. He ran through a list of roses, naming as many as he could, his eyes moved from color to color as fast as possible, seeking out the scents and somehow managing to accomplish this backwards in a mirror.
His brain was on its side, peering at that reality with one eye closed as if trying to see a lopsided picture on a screen. Carpet, polyester fill, beneath your feet. Roses, in a vase behind you, in a vase to the right of you, there, to the left of you. A mirror, in front of you, you, before you. A mirror, to the left of you, your eyes, inside you, you, in front of you.
He felt like a computer, its processor clicking away, data streams racing through his synapses, rendering every image and association as fast as it could, and then more.
He couldn't stop. His eyes were shifting, blurring, and he couldn't stop.
He slammed his eyes shut, panicking, and then opened them quickly, compelled to. He met his own gaze, his eyes now finally holding still, and he stared, frozen in horror at the chaos within him. It was like realizing that he had gone insane, and was looking out at the world for the first time in ages.
'Stop!' he took a deep breath, staring at himself trapped in the mirror.
'Stop!' a cold chill settled in the middle of his chest, his breath turning to fog.
"STOP!"
A woman shrieked from behind him, the cloud burst. Clark fell forward against the mirror, a hand coming out in a blur to support his fall against the glass. Amazingly, given his state of mind, he managed to catch himself without shattering it, and then he stood rooted to the spot, his forehead pressed against the cool surface. His knees buckled for only an instant.
"Are you okay?" someone asked, urgent. Clark realized it was the redhead, Cecilia.
"Yes," Clark whispered, a catch in his throat. He swallowed and took a deep breath.
He was not okay.
He heard her come up to his left just as he moved to lean away from the glass, putting his feet back under him.
"I'm fine," he said quickly.
He was not fine.
Jimmy was watching Lois pace, her shadow mingling with the shadow of the globe above them. She was billowing smoke and angry.
"Damnit Jimmy, what am I going to do? Damnit."
He didn't answer her or even ask what she meant, because this was how Lois answered her own questions, by asking them to other people she trusted and then answering for them.
"How am I going to raise Jason and not tell Richard? How could I NOT tell Richard? How could Richard not find out, which is even worse, because it means I should just do it!"
She waved her cigarette around, looking quite frantic.
"Jimmy, the man never did a thing wrong, he just was in the wrong hotel at the wrong time. None of this should have ever been his responsibility, he never needed to have had put up with me, what the fuck did he ever do wrong? The man has been a SAINT to me!" she turned to Jimmy, "I'm not stupid, I know exactly who I am and that means I'm impossible."
She resumed pacing, broad certain strides across the tarred roof.
"But I can't do it. I can not do it. I cannot risk Jason losing Richard; my baby deserves a father."
Jimmy's heart broke a little at the strength of Lois' words. Jimmy hadn't had a father, and he loved her in that moment. Lois could be so pure sometimes.
"And Richard is a good man, he always has been."
Lois stopped pacing. She sighed, dropping her cigarette, rubbing it out ,and then resting her face in her hand. Her other arm came around her waist and she rested her elbow there, taking on the posture of the truly woeful.
"That's why I'm doing what I'm doing."
Jimmy waited for her to elaborate, but she did not. They stood there in the stillness, listening to the city below them and basking in the August sun. The winds up here were just strong enough to cool.
"Let me see the pictures."
"Come inside," he said softly.
Jimmy turned and heard Lois following him.
He pushed into the dark, steel enclosure, the surroundings very familiar again despite the fact that Lois hadn't haunted the roof stairwell in years. Jimmy had once joked that she should move her desk up here.
They turned to face each other, Lois stooping to lean a hand on the floor and plop down onto the concrete. She scooted back up against a wall and bent a leg, looking up at him.
Jimmy sighed and sat down, scooting to the same wall so they could both look in the same direction. Lois opened the envelope, slipped out the file folder and tossed it onto the bridge created by their two outstretched legs, Lois' right and Jimmy's left. She waited.
"The first one is my favorite," he reached out and picked up the cover of the folder, flipping it open and letting it fall.
It could have been the cover of a comic book. It was an iconic and symmetrical image: Lois and Superman standing back to back, side by side, facing in two different directions and both looking deadly serious. Lois was facing right, one heeled shoe back and her hair in a messy bun; Superman towered above her, facing left, his eyes narrowed and about to speak. There were win expressions of shock and surprise on their faces, strength in their alliance towards both threats, whatever they may be
Lois let out a small chuckle, "That's awesome, Jimmy."
He laughed, a surge of delicate pride at her praise.
"Yeah, that's why it's my favorite. I was across the street. It was during-"
"Oh please Jimmy, I remember," she sighed, "That was so long ago."
"It was also the first TV press conference."
"Yup. I had to share him for the first time, a shitty feeling for any reporter."
She laughed down at the picture anyway, an open smile on her face.
"Didn't Perry want to use this?"
"Yeah, but there was no room for it. And RayRay said it was cheesy."
"It is a little cheesy," admitted Lois, still smiling through her words.
"It's still awesome," Jimmy said back, the finality of this statement clear to them both. He reached out and flipped that photo onto the opposite page, exposing the next.
"Ho-ly crap, Jimmy, I can not believe I forgot about this one."
It was, for lack of a better comparison, like the cover of a Playgirl (except for form fitting spandex). Wet and dripping from having saved a drowning victim, Superman stood in the midst of a thousand glimmering drops of water, the sunlight highlighting every one of them where it was drying on his body. Everything managed to stick tighter than usual, and nothing was left to the imagination except skin tone. Every muscle, every dip and weave of tissue was highlighted and shadowed by pure sunlight.
Lois eyes were moving across the picture without any conscious effort, a primal curiosity as old as humanity letting her appreciate what she saw. From the sweep of his exposed neck and down the muscles of his chest, Lois looked at every plane. She imagined her fingers running along the material stretched wet and tight across him, and the tips of her fingers actually tingled with memories as she saw familiar spots.
Her mind played with her body as she sat there, lost in these few seconds, not being able to help herself as her eyes went lower, looking for the dark promise that rested dormant behind a few layers of clothing. Lois almost licked her lips as she imagined her hand over him, seeking him out, making him react…
Her eyes snapped back to his face: His hair was mussed, squinting into the sun with more ease than a human being could, looking absolutely gorgeous.
Jimmy started snickering. Lois was staring with her mouth open.
"Oh man I can not believe I took that picture," he was outright laughing now, averting his eyes from the onslaught of virility that could not help but make his heterosexually squirm back in the suburb that Jimmy came from.
"Look at that," Lois sighed, "Damn."
Jimmy looked at her, still staring down.
"That is quite a prize," she said all too seriously, a dangerous look coming into her eye.
Jimmy picked up on her tone immediately and reached out to turn the picture over as if enthused by seeing the next one rather than removing the last one...
Superman was standing with his shoulders hunched, his posture bent a little with Lois sitting on the back of a police car next to him, wrapped in a blanket. She was pointing a finger up at him, peeking out from behind the heavy state-issued material and her face laughing. Superman was hiding a large grin with one hand, tilting his head away from the surrounding people even though none of them were paying attention. It looked like a shy reaction to ongoing teasing, reminiscent of a funny conversation already in progress.
"I have no idea what you were saying, but he could not stop laughing."
Jimmy watched a huge smile move across Lois' face, and he recognized it as the grin she wore when it didn't occur to her to laugh.
"I don't remember, I mean I don't remember the joke. I think it had something to do with different colored buttons? Like on a panel, not on a shirt?" Lois was thinking out loud, trying to connect the memory to the image.
"I wanted to have a caption contest for this one," Jimmy deadpanned at her, mimicking her and not realizing it.
Lois threw her head back and laughed, now really amused. It took a lot to get Lois to openly laugh, to render her truly overwhelmed by hilarity. You had to be satisfied with a smile or a raised eyebrow to be friends with Lois, and Jimmy had heard her complain in a meaner moment that it was because everyone was so damned predictable. It needed to be new, sincere, or just damn funny.
Lois grinned at him. He grinned back.
Jimmy reached out again, flipping that photo aside.
The next picture had Lois as the victim, and it was also quite funny. It was a tight shot of the two of them, the frame only tall enough to capture Lois' shoulder and the space to the top of Superman's head. They were standing directly in front of each other, and Superman was pointing down to Lois with a look of barely contained triumph. Lois, opposite him and staring wide-eyed into his face, had her hand clapped over her mouth in a gesture of utter shock. It looked as if Lois had just that very second heard something amazing or scandalous, and the moment caught her flustered shock and Superman's poised satisfaction in perfect clarity.
Lois let out a small, "Huh!" at the photo, as if starting an argument with it.
"I have always wanted to know what he said to you," Jimmy could barely contain his smile.
He watched as a blush, red and deep swept across Lois' whole face. She sneaked a quick look at him, horrified at her uncharacteristic reaction.
"He said," she paused, swallowing,"'I heard you last night.'"