It's Superman! A Novel (52 page)

Nicely-Nicely . . .

“Clark!” says Lois. “You okay up there?”

When she is not kidding herself (now, for example), Lois will admit she’s been a thorough b-i-t-c-h to Clark Kent, and it’s not something she much likes about herself.

Okay, but he’s just so—nice!

And that’s a problem?

Yes, that is definitely a serious problem.

It’s also a problem that he is so obviously nuts about her, a
big
problem.

Take Superman: he’s all business, and except for that one time on Halloween night, she hasn’t seen as much as a trace of interest in those dark blue eyes, not a flicker. All business. Always: Miss Lane, Miss Lane, Miss Lane.

She’s
told
him to call her Lois,
please,
but always it’s Miss Lane.

They’ve been running into each other at least once or twice a week—at the fund-raising banquet for the Children’s Aid Society; at that disastrous press conference when he threatened to beat up gamblers if they didn’t behave; at a chemical-factory fire in Brooklyn, a hostage taking in Ozone Park, a train derailment in Yonkers. She just keeps running into him.

And he keeps saving her life. But it’s funny about that. She can’t remember her life ever being in any real danger
until
he showed up.

“Clark!” she says. “Hey, Clark, you okay?”

Since that robot broil, he’s plucked her out of the East River after she was trussed up, tied to an anchor, and rolled off the transom of a fishing boat (smugglers); he’s caught her midplummet off Jenny Jump Mountain in New Jersey (escaped convict); he’s lunged in front of her on Seventh Avenue, scattering machine-gun bullets (fur thieves); he’s even rescued her from a four-hundred-pound gorilla that was galloping after her at the circus (Gargantua). And it’s always been, Are you all right, Miss Lane? Are you sure you’re all right?

“Clark!”

Clark, on the other hand, isn’t the kind of a guy who’s going to snatch you from the drink or catch you when you’re falling but he
has
been, well . . . considerate—
too
damn considerate—in the aftermaths of her close calls. Appearing suddenly at pierside with a blanket, fashioning in the wilds of Jersey a splint for her sprained ankle, showing up in the Garment District with a thermos of Irish coffee when her nerves were still jangly, finding her a sweater at Madison Square Garden after her blouse was slashed immodestly to ribbons. And so on.

He
calls her Lois.

And she calls him Nicely-Nicely to hurt his feelings.

She
does
have a cold heart, she
is
a cold fish!

No, it’s not that, it’s . . . she’s fallen hard for Superman, as ridiculous and as impossible and as unwise as that is.

When she was growing up, her father told her dozens of times, “Lois, honey, a woman’s reach should exceed her grasp, but the way that you reach is just plain nuts!”

As it was with Willi Berg, it is now with Superman. Lois can never have him, not
really.

And as it was with Ben Jaeger, it is now with Clark Kent. She can have Clark. Any day she likes.

So of course she doesn’t want him.

“Clark! Hey! Clark! I’m talking to you!”

How dare that Kansas cornball ignore her when she’s trying to talk to him!

Without thinking about it she stands on one leg, bends the other one parallel to the floor, and pulls off her shoe. Then the former shortstop for the girls’ high school softball team pegs it toward the box. After it bloops over the ledge she hears it clunk.

Clark’s head pops up from his forearms. Half rising and leaning forward, he looks straight down, dramatically startled, then immediately flustered, to discover Lois standing there. His face is shiny with tears. With evident embarrassment he whips off his glasses, drying his eyes against his shoulders. First the left, then the right.

He tries a smile now.

Lois just stares up, her arms and hands tingling oddly.

Without those thick old-man spectacles he looks so
different.
Almost like another . . .

She says, “Clark?”

8

And here, at last, is the point where our version of the story merges with all of the others, the point at which Lois Lane (with one shoe on and one shoe off) peers up at Clark Kent (whose glasses are once again back on his face) with a dawning but already deep suspicion that feels strangely gleeful, almost like affection.
(Clark?)
The point at which Clark Kent pushes a hand shyly, flusteredly (but actorishly, too) back through his thick hair and smiles at Lois Lane.
(Lois?)
The point at which he is filled up with and surrounded by a plain and yet intricate awe: he came maybe a trillion miles to be
here.
This moment, this point in time, this point in space feels both destined and deserved, earned and inevitable. He is in a theater on the island of Manhattan, in the city of New York, in the state of New York, in the United States of America, on the continent of North America, on the planet Earth, in the solar system, in the universe, in the mind of God—whatever that means. Somehow he got here. Somehow he did. And somehow Lois Lane got here, too. She has the loveliest eyes he will ever see, and he wants to see those eyes every single day, forever. And if she won’t love him, love
him,
he still will love her, love her all the more. And because he will—he will go on out and do the best that he can, like everybody else.

Just like everybody else.

T
OM
D
E
H
AVEN
is the author of eight novels, including the Derby Dugan trilogy, and the nonfiction book
Our Hero: Superman on Earth.
A frequent contributor to
The New York Times,
he lives in Virginia, where he teaches creative writing at Virginia Commonwealth University.