It's Superman! A Novel (48 page)

There is nothing wrong with being a farmer.

But Clark wants to be a reporter. And he wants to work
here.

She hates me.

“Son? Step up, step up,” says the paymaster. He sits on a stool behind a banker’s grille. Has on a green visor and almond-shaped spectacles, wears old-fashioned garters on his shirtsleeves.

Clark passes him the voucher he got from Perry White.

“Signature here. And initials there,” says the paymaster, indicating with a fountain pen two places on the form. And now he counts from a sheaf of bills, counts again, a third time. “Three hundred twenty-five and no cents.”

Three hundred twenty-five
dollars
?

Clark is amazed by the amount, almost stunned, he’s never—

“Stand aside,” says the paymaster.
“Next.”

“That’s all right,” says Lois Lane, “I’m just waiting for Hayseed Harry.”

“Excuse me,” says Clark, brushing past her, stuffing the money into his pocket without counting it—something that would’ve earned him his mother’s severest reproach.

“Clark! I was only kidding. I’m
kidding
.”

He pushes through a pair of plate doors and crosses the hall to the elevators.

She catches up to him. “Forgive me?”

He presses the call button.

“I’m sorry—okay? I just thought you’d,
you know.”

“Stabbed you in the back?”

“Yeah!” She smiles.

The elevator bell rings, the doors slide open. He puts a hand out to stop them from closing right away.

He doesn’t want to leave.

“I really am sorry.”

He says, “Okay. Thanks.” With a shrug he turns to go.

“Clark! Wait!”

He turns quickly back around.

“I want to interview your friend.”

He looks at her.

“Superman. Can you arrange it?”

Clark steps into the elevator car and without turning around punches the button.

It cracks into fifty bits of hard plastic that sprinkle to the floor.

All the way down Clark stares at his vague unhappy reflection in burled walnut.

Crossing the lobby he is waylaid by a very large woman (he was taught it’s impolite to describe people as fat) who galumphs along beside him and clutches his sleeve with a manic intensity that makes him flinch. “Can you help me?” she says. “Are you a reporter?”

“I wish!” says Clark.

“All right, lady, that’s the last time you get to bother anybody tonight.” A uniformed guard is dragging her away before he’s even finished speaking. “Out you go!”

Clark says, “That’s all right, we were just having a conversation. It’s okay, really.”

“Then she’s yours, mister.” The guard turns a hard look on the woman. “And no more trouble, you.”

“What trouble?” she says. “This is supposed to be a newspaper? I should’ve picked another one.”

“We all wish you did,” says the guard.

“Aren’t you the rudest thing! I only picked
this
one because I found a copy in the back of my cab.” She turns to Clark. “I thought it was like a sign. Finding a copy of the
Daily Planet
in the back of my cab. So I came here. I should’ve picked another paper.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way, ma’am,” says Clark as if—as if what? As if he is personally distressed, even mortified, that the poor woman might leave here with an unfavorable opinion of the
Daily Planet.
Why should he care? “I’m not sure I can help you, but if I can, I will.”

The guard looks at them both. “Quack, quack,” he says, spinning a finger at his temple as he walks off. “Quack, quack, quack!”

The fat woman looks at Clark in a sidelong way. “Thank you.”

“I’m not a reporter,” he says. “To finally answer your question.”

“Well, that’s what I need. But they don’t make it easy for you. It’s easier to get into Fort Knox.”

When she laughs Clark realizes two things: she’s very pretty and she’s not drunk, no matter how cloying the alcohol smell that conveys with her.

“I’m not a reporter
now,”
says Clark. “But I
used
to be.” He is unsure why he feels a need, and he definitely does, to prolong this encounter. He feels sorry for her, yes. But that’s not it. “Would you like to sit down?”

“I’m Edith Wauters.”

“Clark Kent.”

“Good to meet you, Clark. Sure, we can sit. I’m exhausted.”

She leads him to a long varnished bench occupied by a man with thick snarled hair. His coat and trousers are filthy, his shoes are caked with tar, and he is tapping an envelope against one knee. Edith Wauters curtly nods to him, then tells Clark, “Have a seat. Nobody here except us squirrels, right, Mr. Spencer?” Then she explains, “This is where they store the nuts.”

Spencer takes umbrage. He brandishes his own envelope. “I have proof!”

“We all have proof, darling. Just nobody wants to see it.” She turns back to Clark and sighs. “I’ve been on quite an odyssey. Do you know what time it is?”

“About twelve-thirty, I’d guess.”

“Originally I was going to see the mayor. But I decided that probably wasn’t such a great idea.”

Spencer says to Clark, “Would you like to take a look at these?” He has a collection of snapshots in his hand.

“No, thank you.” Then he says, “Miss Wauters? You were going to tell me why you needed a reporter.”

Edith lowers her head, twisting it to one side, and her demeanor hardens with alarming quickness. She curls her fingers around the sides of her envelope. But she doesn’t say anything.

Seizing the opportunity presented by the woman’s silence, Mr. Spencer leans around her and tells Clark, “There’s at
least
one octopus out there in the harbor. But I could be seeing different ones.”

“Have you really seen an octopus?”

“Oh yes! Many, many times. And it’s enormous!”

His systolic pressure spurts like a thermometer dipped into boiling water.

He’s lying. Mr. Spencer hasn’t seen any such thing, he’s simply made it up. Which Clark finds sad.

And he is suddenly afraid the more he discovers about people in the world the sadder he will become.

Edith is stroking her envelope now, repetitively, almost fondly, as if it were the flank of a lapdog. “When I give this up, that’s it, he’s gone. But that’s why he left it with me. Just in case.”

“Somebody gave you that? Who did? What is it?”

Just
listen
to me, thinks Clark. All that’s left is When, Where, and Why?

I could
do
this. I really could.

Because, he thinks, I honestly don’t want to go around beating up robots night and day. Raising blisters on the back of a bully’s hand.

Carrying dead bodies down the courthouse steps.

“Edith? What’s in the envelope?”

“First, I have to tell you something else. My name is really Soda. Well, it’s not
really,
but it’s who I am. Silly name, isn’t it?”

“Not at all.”

“I’m a singer.”

“A singer! Well, I’d love to hear you one of these days.”

“I’m a night watchman,” says Mr. Spencer. “Pier A. Not anymore, but I used to be. They let me go after there was a barge collision. They said I fell asleep. But I didn’t. I couldn’t have. My eyes are always open. Last night I saw an octopus!”

“Mr. Spencer,” says Edith-now-Soda, “for the love of God, would you shut up?”

“But it could’ve been a squid.”

“The envelope,” says Clark.

“When I give it up, he’s gone.”

“Maybe not.” Clark has no idea what she’s talking about.

She unwinds the string and pulls from the envelope a sheaf of papers punched with three holes and bound together with brass fasteners.

To: The Honorable Fiorello La Guardia/From: Richard D. Sandglass, Lt. NYPD.

“Edith . . .”

“Soda.”

“Is this the man who gave you the envelope? Richard Sandglass?”

“Why, do you know him, too?”

“I never met him, no. But I know who he . . .”

“Was?”

Clark nods.

Her lips push out, pull back in.

He puts an arm around her and she leans against him. He says, “I’m so very sorry for your loss.”

Because that’s how his parents taught him to express condolences to the bereaved.

His mother also told Clark that he could add, “He (or she) is in a much better place now.”

But he never has, he doesn’t now, and he probably never will.

He and Soda sit together on the nut bench for half an hour.

It is ten minutes past one when they take an elevator to the City Room. Clark, who feels he already knows the lay of the land, confidently directs her to George Taylor’s office.

They barge in.

It is five minutes before two when both George Taylor and Perry White take turns shaking Clark’s hand and welcoming him as a new employee of the Daily Planet Company.

They are starting him off at a weekly salary of thirty-five dollars and sixty-four cents. (Why sixty-four cents, Clark has no idea and is too happy and excited to ask.)

And it is two o’clock when he picks up Soda Wauters from the little staff lounge tucked away behind Perry White’s office. She has finished crying, but each of her handkerchiefs is balled up and stuffed under a blouse cuff, just in case.

Clark puts her in a taxi, hands the driver a ten-dollar bill, and tells him, “Take the lady to Newark.” He smiles at Soda through the closed window, mouths, “Thank you,” mouths, “I’ll see you,” then touches his ear and mouths, “I want to come hear you sing.” Lightly he slaps a hand on the roof of the cab. He watches it roll away.

Clark removes his glasses, looks at them, then breathes on the lenses, polishes them with his shirt. After he puts them back on he starts walking, just walking, crossing Nassau Street, crossing Park Row, walking through his city.

He is too excited to sleep.

5

It is a quarter past six Monday morning.

“I knew you’d show up. It’s the only reason I’ve stayed around. Can we get you anything? Soda pop? Glass of milk?”

“They replaced the windows already.”

“Just so that you’ll know, so you don’t make the same mistake in the future, they’re called
French doors.
And why wouldn’t they be replaced already? This is the Waldorf-Astoria, boy. They believe in service here. Look at that wall! Plastered, painted, better than ever. And I dare you to find even a
sliver
of glass in the broadloom.”

“I shouldn’t have done that.”

“No? I thought it was marvelous, myself. Carl, here, is inclined to your position.”

“I’ll pay for the damages.”

“He’s offered to pay for the damages, Carl! Thanks for the offer, but it won’t be necessary. Please, though! Sit down. Get comfortable. Carl, why don’t you put on a record?”

“I don’t want to listen to any records. And I’ll just stand, if you don’t mind. I don’t want to soil the furniture.”

“You do look like a chimney sweep, pardon my saying! When you came in just now, I said to myself, this poor fellow looks like some cross between a chimney sweep and Peter Pan. Do you recall Peter Pan came in that way, too? By a little balcony and through the
French doors
? Didn’t he? Surely you read
Peter Pan.
Was he barefoot, as well? You do realize you’re barefoot, don’t you?”

“I’m just here to—”

“There’s a picture of your boots in the
Mirror.
So that explains the bare feet. And the missing patch. Or was that supposed to be an
insignia
? They ran a picture of that as well. I
know
why you’re here. And we’ll get to it. Are you in a big hurry?”

“Not especially. But I’m expecting the police any minute. To tell you the truth, Mr. Luthor, I’m surprised I got here first.”

“Well, you’re a pretty speedy lad. Says so in all the papers. Have you read them? I have. Carl was kind enough to bring them. Oh! Will you stop glaring?”

The living room is the largest Clark has ever seen and furnished like the ones in those lavish MGM pictures about rich people who quip and quarrel and do the Continental. There is a gas fireplace, but it’s not turned on. A glass-topped coffee table. Early-edition newspapers are scattered on top. Only the
Planet
has a picture of Clark on its front page, the rest just have pictures of incinerated automobiles, demolished house fronts, his boots, and his insignia. Also on the table are half a dozen black socketed cubes, identical to the one that Clark ripped out of the robot when he tore out its wiring.

And in the center of the table, between the cubes and the newspapers, is the crumpled robot.

Set down there like that it reminds Clark of a sculpture he saw recently in a
Life
magazine photographic essay entitled “Your Guess Is As Good As Ours . . . Abstract Art in Today’s America.”

Lex is seated on the larger of the two sofas.

The other man, Carl, is seated in an armchair but looks ready to spring to his feet at any moment. He has a nervous pallor.

Lex looks healthy, tanned, rested. And he’s grinning.

“If you intend to keep up the vaudeville act, by the way, you
have
to get a replacement costume. I’ll see what I can do. Something in asbestos, perhaps? I have resources.”

When a beeping starts in the wall, Lex goes and presses a button under the fluted edge of a piecrust lamp table. Instantly it whirls away and is replaced by a short-wave radio set with both headphones and a microphone on top. He puts on the headphones, adjusting them over his ears. “Excuse me, won’t you?” Flipping a toggle, he leans close to the microphone. “Yes?” He listens, he frowns, he sighs. “All right.” Then after a pause he says, “Don’t contact me here again after, let’s say”—glancing at the mantel clock—“half past six. Excellent. Very excellent.” He flips the toggle back to its original position, throws down the headphones, brings back the piecrust table. “Where were we?”

“I need to tell you why I came here. And then I need to go.”

“You can’t
go.
We’ve just
met.”

“I came here—”

“To meet me.”

“No.”

“Of course you did. But under the ruse of telling me that a duplicate copy of the dreaded ‘Sandglass File’ miraculously turned up last night. Well, I’m sorry, boy, but that’s old news. Telephones were calling telephones were calling telephones were calling
me
before the
Planet
called the cops.
Now, sit down and quit fidgeting!”