“Pulitzer!” Perry announced when Lorry handed in his interview with Superman. Lorry shrugged. “There’s always another story.”
A scandal. A socially relevant narrative. Every reporter wanted to be the one with the best angle, the pithiest summary. The worse competitors were those self-important reporters from New York and Washington D.C., the ones who thought their merest pronouncements on the state of the world equaled prophecy.
Still, Lorry was grinning when he returned to his desk. A plump woman in a flowered dress bounded up from a nearby chair, her purse slipping from fluttery hands.
“Mr. Lane?”
“Uh, yes,” Lorry said as he retrieved the purse and handed it back to his visitor.
“My husband is the Invisible Man!”
Why do I get all the crazies?
In this case, Lorry knew why. Six months earlier, he’d written an article about an adventurer, some hike-across-Australia guy, who returned to his family after many years abroad. The article ended with compliments to the happily reunited couple.
Mrs. Invisible Man had read the story and loved it. She said, “Being married to an eccentric takes a special spouse—but you understand that, Mr. Lane.”
Lorry didn’t have the heart to tell her that the article’s happy ending had been added by his editor, that Lorry was a cynic about relationships and generally avoided relationship-type assignments.
“He’s not really Invisible, is he?” he said, referring to the man whose antics—stealing food from caterers to give to the homeless—had appeared in the news lately.
“He made a suit,” the wife told him. “You could write an article and tell him to come home. Tell him I’ll listen more when he tells me about his inventions.”
She chattered on, promising perfect meals and unstinting attentiveness and not a trace of criticism until finally--
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll write something,” Lorry said because saying, I don’t dole out relationship advice wouldn’t get her to leave.
“Who was that?” Clark said when Lorry returned from herding his guest onto the elevator.
“Invisible Guy’s wife.”
“Oh, yeah? Sounds interesting—”
Lorry shook his head as he pulled up a piece on a politician’s ties to construction bid pay-offs. At least Clark was no competition when it came to reporting. He was way too gullible.
***
“You picked up, so I know you’re awake,” hissed the voice on the phone.
Blinking further awake, Clark said, “Uh, Lorry?”
“The Invisible Guy is in my apartment. No, I’m not calling the police. He’s not dangerous. But get over here!”
Clark got up and dressed slowly. He’d learned the hard way to not appear too abruptly at people’s doors. Lorry wouldn’t expect him to arrive for at least twenty minutes.
He went out and walked briskly towards Lorry’s side of town, listening all the while for possible crimes and problems. As Superman, he tried not to intervene when the police were already involved. He wasn’t a vigilante. There were rules. Boundaries. Niceties. They kept Clark from going too far, crossing that line from helper to bully.Besides, it wasn’t as if he could lock people up in some extra-special ice fortress. Where did those type of superheroes get their funds? Did anyone have any idea how much prisons cost?
He helped a lost teen, stopped a car from crashing, broke up a drunken fight outside a bar, and only arrived at Lorry’s ten minutes later than he thought he would.
Which Lorry seemed to find completely normal, so it was probably just as well that Clark hadn’t hurried.
Alan—the Invisible Man—was a meager, friendly man with a special suit. He needed help. Unpleasant people had stolen his extra suits of invisibility to commit crimes.
“I only wanted to play a few jokes,” Alan explained tremulously. “I wasn’t planning anything really bad.”
“Why make the suit at all?”
“I became invisible to become visible again,” Alan said.
Clark got that: Hey, look what I did! I made something! I’m clever! Just try to figure me out! Look for me!
It doesn’t work, Clark wanted to tell Alan. You wear the suit long enough, you’ll disappear entirely.
Lorry gave him a raised eyebrow, a look Clark was beginning to recognize. This is a story, and you’re going to help, right? Lorry was saying.
Only because you could probably talk me into anything.
“Alan can stay with me,” Clark said without thinking.
There was no good reason that Alan shouldn’t stay with Lorry—except that Clark, unlike Lorry, couldn’t be killed in his sleep if Alan turned out to be an insane axe murderer.
“Yeah, okay,” Lorry said quickly. “You’re better with people,” he added to Clark.
Not really, but Clark figured Lorry meant that Clark was less likely to roll his eyes at Alan’s scientific theories and borderline criminal behavior.
“Thanks,” Lorry said, then swung back to Alan. “We’ll help you,” he told the little flustered man. “People shouldn’t steal your stuff, no matter why you made it—”
You may not be good with people, Lorry, but you’ve got a big heart.
Not that Clark would say so.
He watched Alan gather up his stuff. Lorry leaned over to pick up part of the invisibility suit, and his bathrobe fell open to reveal gray sweatpants and a Superman t-shirt. “Oh, Lorry,” Clark said. “You too?”
***
Clark was staring at Lorry’s chest and not in a “hey, I like what I see” way. He looked resigned.
“It’s not an homage,” Lorry told him, pointing to the t-shirt. “It’s, ah, ironic.”
Clark looked even more resigned, and Lorry had to admit that he was coming off as little better than all those kids in high school who suddenly all liked Game of Thrones—which irritated all the kids who’d liked Game of Thrones before it became super-popular.
Not that Lorry was opposed to pop culture. But he had to admire how completely Clark distanced himself from the Superman phenomenon.
Hey, I can be detached and objective too.
Not the easiest thing to do, especially when Superman ended up rescuing Lorry and Alan from the villains who stole the invisibility suits in order to rob a bank.
“I really hope you didn’t nearly get yourself killed merely to get a story,” Clark said.
“The story is the only thing that matters,” Lorry told him.
He didn’t add anything about being smitten or overawed or whatever by Superman. He was objective. Cool. Unimpressed.
Yeah, right.
