CHAPTER SIX: STEEL THY HEART
A/N: I decided to try my own variation of the Lucy Lane character, since she is so underutilized in the comics and everywhere else. I still don't own whoever created her or any other recognizable characters.
Lucy Lane went downstairs and meticulously loaded her whites and her light colors into the only two washers that were available. She took out her cell phone, complete with the "Military Ambush" game that had been downloaded into it. Lucy rapidly defeated the computer's attempts to blow up her tank, her platoon and the army base; shot for shot, blow for blow. After she and the machine had almost completed their tete a tete, Selina Kyle, Lucy's neighbor, came into the room.
The younger sister in the Lane family kept her eyes seemingly riveted to the game, but out of the sides, studied Selina as she went over to check on the machines. Her dark haired neighbor was certainly built, Lucy had to give her that. She had two on her that made a man want to grab them, the blonde haired woman decided. When Selina reached up to the shelves over the machines to check a box of detergent that was always there courtesy of the landlady, her long, black tresses fell in soft waves over her curvy figure.
Lucy found herself comparing her slim, lithe figure to her neighbor's more endowed one. The younger woman had no butt, or at least, not one like her neighbor's. She also didn't have a chest that would be noticeable without, well, the Man of Steel's microscopic vision. Lucy's short, blonde hair was worn in a regulated military style and was growing out very slowly. Her hair was also showing some dark roots, making the top portion blonde, but the bottom portion brown. It was also straight and not wavy like Selina's.
The younger Lane found that her neighbor, like her older sister Lois, had a more sexy voice. Lucy's tended to be higher, whereas Lois's, and Selina's were a little throatier. It was times like this that Lucy wondered if J. William Thorpe, her husband, had divorced her not only because he was married to his career, but also because he had decided that he didn't want "Mrs. Tomboyish Looking" to be his wife. She wondered what her brilliant, news correspondent husband was doing while he was in London.
She also wondered if she would have another shot at dating and permanently securing a man any time in this millennium.
Lucy was so wrapped up in her thoughts that she didn't hear Selina's question.
"…machine?" Selina was asking. Lucy now regarded Selina's emerald green eyes with her sky blue ones.
"What?" Lucy questioned back in her higher voice. "Sorry, I was…comatose."
"No problem," Selina told her. "I was just asking if you planned to put anymore loads into this machine."
Lucy regarded the front load washer with her whites in it. "No," she replied. "After this one, I'm cool."
"Great," Selina said. "Then I'll just go and get my stuff." She grabbed the detergent, leaving Lucy alone once more.
XXXXXXXXXXX
Clark Kent knocked on Selina's apartment again and was about to leave when the object of his pursuit came up the stairs.
"Oh, sorry," he said when he saw her. "I wasn't sure if you were home or not."
Selina regarded the tall, thin looking man in the brown suit and tie for a moment. He looked like the typical nerd-who-doesn't-have-a-clue-about-a-life type. Not that she was actually qualified to judge him, she told herself.
"To what do I owe this visit?" Selina asked, brushing past him and going into her apartment. Remembering the manners Ma Kent had taught him, Clark stood in the door, waiting for her to ask him in.
"I'm Cl—" he started, extending his hand. She didn't take it.
"Clark Kent of the Daily Planet," she finished, flopping down on the sofa. "I've visited your rag. It's cute." She made no moves to say anything more. Clark lowered his hand, his momentary flash of annoyance covering his face.
"You know," he said, "this would go so much easier if I were invited in."
"It would for you, I'm sure," Selina told him. Clark had banked down his annoyance but was showing it again.
"Is there any reason why you're this rude?" he asked.
Selina retrieved a kitty treat from a plate on the coffee table in front of her and gave it to a brown haired cat. As she stroked his fur, she told the reporter, "Let's just say I have an aversion to speaking with members of the press."
Clark fired his questions rapidly. "Could that have anything to do with the theft of the jewel from the Metropolis Gemological Museum? Could it also have to do with the escape from the holding tank you were in last night?" He queried.
Selina was outwardly calm, but his super hearing detected her rapidly beating heart. He knew he had pressed some buttons. "I don't know what you're talking about," she said.
The journalist heard the distant hum of the transmitter in the card he had planted, but it didn't seem to be coming from her apartment. That cemented what he had suspected last night: that there were two Catwomen, both alike in looks enough to confuse the police. Clark still wondered, however, if the other one really was working with Selina, or if she was just some kind of copycat who didn't know that her actions were getting the real Mistress of Cats into trouble. He had to know if Selina had been telling the truth about not having a partner, or if she was lying.
Clark fixed her with his penetrating, blue eyed stare. "Then I'd say you've got a doppelganger walking around somewhere," he responded, peering at her to see her reaction.
Selina went into the kitchen to refill the water bowl for her cats, then sat back down on her couch. She regarded Clark for a brief moment, and then selected a newspaper, "The Gotham Times", from her coffee table.
"Are you fishing, Mr. Kent?" she asked, casually flipping pages.
"Are you biting, Ms. Kyle?" he returned, waiting for her answer.
"I'm not doing anything but reading my paper," she said. She closed the paper just then and stretched out on the couch, giving the reporter an eyeful of her figure. Clark was oblivious to her charms.
"Perhaps we should start again," he said. "I'll play twenty questions with you, and I'd seriously suggest that you answer."
Selina sat back up and shrugged. "We'll see, Mr. Kent, we'll see," she responded smoothly. "You might as well come in."
Clark looked at her for a moment. He thought of a jibe, but pulled a hard chair he'd seen in her kitchen into the living room and sat in it. Whipping out his trusty pad and a pen, the reporter was ready to write.
"No BlackBerry?" Selina queried. Clark shook his head.
"They seem intrusive to me," he responded, smiling for the first time. Selina smiled back; she had always felt that way, too. He cleared his throat.
"Okay, if you weren't in a holding cell at the 37th Precinct last night," he queried, "the obvious question would be: where were you?" Clark's expression gave nothing away, even though he knew exactly where she had been. He waited to see whether she would make something up, or do the right thing and tell the truth.
Selina surprised him by telling the truth. "I was here, entertaining a friend," she told him. He thought just then about the "tea party" they'd had. She did fix a mean cup of tea, just like Ma had made on many an occasion.
"And the friend's name?" Clark asked as he scribbled down her last answer.
Selina thought about the Man of Tomorrow and their verbal exchange. She could tell Clark everything, but if the reporter made it known that Superman was assisting her in any way, it could compromise his position as an upstanding hero.
She shrugged and said casually, "I'm not at liberty to say."
Clark guessed what she was thinking and mentally commented, good girl. He lowered his pad and pen and asked aloud, "What was he, anyway? Boyfriend? Husband?"
"I'm not married," she responded. "And he could have been a she, you know."
"Fair enough," he said. He took up his reporter's arsenal again. "So, you were entertaining." The usual mild mannered persona Clark used was taking a back seat. Just because Selina hadn't been involved in the robbery yesterday didn't mean that she wasn't planning something bigger, he had conjectured.
Selina's censuring look spoke volumes just then. Clark would not back down.
"Perhaps this partner you were with last night discussed the subject of gems with you recently?" he asked suggestively.
Selina grew incensed at that question. Clark felt instantly guilty; he didn't want to bait her, since she had been talking to him last night, but from everything the Batman had said about the Catwoman, the reporter knew she respected courage.
For a moment, the journalist thought he saw a flicker of hurt beneath the icy stare. Clark's guilt intensified, but he was reminded of the saying "in for a penny; in for a pound."
"I have suddenly been reminded why I don't like members of the press, Mr. Kent," Selina responded frostily, a mask of contempt on her face. "Now I want to play a game with you. It's called the, 'you leave this place right now, and don't come back, and I won't bodily throw you out' game." Her cats meowed as they sensed her distress.
"Two to one, the Metro Police will come here, and their inquiries won't be as polite," Clark responded, matter-of-factly.
"They won't come here," she said flatly. "They'll look for whoever was in the cell last night."
"But they think that she was you," he said. Selina remembered what Superman had said the night before about the inconsistencies which should not have pointed to her but did. Of course, the police were so inept in almost every town, and since her rap sheet was a mile long, why shouldn't they believe she had made off with the jewel? It was a wonder that they hadn't closed in on her already. She glanced at her cats and decided that maybe it was time to leave yet again. Selina could certainly move into one of her many hideouts until the heat was off. She could even go to her acquaintance, Oswald Cobblepot, who specialized in relocating criminals.
No, she decided just then, best not to invite more trouble. She wouldn't involve the former Penguin in her machinations. Besides, she was great at hiding on her own; it was what she had done most of her life. She started to look at her feline partners but realized Clark was waiting.
"Look, Mr. Kent," she said. "I don't know who is trying to set me up, if in fact that is what this is, and I don't have anyone working with me. I do know that even if I answered all of your questions, they'd nail me to the wall regardless of what you publish. So, maybe it would be best if you left now, at least until I figure this out."
Clark considered what she had just said. The Catwoman was right; even if she were innocent, the police would find their wrong smoking gun and either extridite her to Gotham, or lock her up for 10,000 years and throw away the key. He needed to go to the Watchtower. Maybe Wally had come up with where that substance Clark had smelled earlier had come from. The reporter scribbled his telephone number on a pad, not risking giving Selina a bugged card since her cats' hearing might pick up the frequency.
"Call me," he entreated. "Maybe I can help." Selina took the paper from him. The sometimes shy journalist stood up and left.
As he walked away, thinking about the Justice League, Lucy came up the side stairs and looked in Clark's direction. She caught a glimpse of his "Daily Planet" press card and wondered if that was her sister's coworker, Clark Kent. Lucy hadn't seen Clark in a long time. There had been something about his shy and retiring demeanor the one time Lois had introduced them that she had found refreshing. She wondered what he had been doing here, and she also wondered if she might get to meet the mild mannered reporter with the wonderful butt again under different circumstances. Lucy whistled a happy tune, letting a brief fantasy concerning nerdy men cross her mind. Her horoscope had been correct, she discovered: she would have an exciting life in a big city.