It's Superman! A Novel

by Tom De Haven

  “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 shortwave 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!”

  He’s fidgeting?

  Out in the hallway a telephone rings.

  “Carl, get that. I expect it’ll be the police. Tell them I can’t speak to them now.”

  Carl leaves the room.

  Speaking with a deliberate, confidential air, Lex says, “He used to be a priest. But he lost his faith. Or perhaps he never had any. Till now. Now he believes in me. Give him time and he’ll believe in you, too. He’ll believe in the both of us. As will everyone else.”

  Carl returns.

  “Was I right?”

  “Yes, sir. They want you to come down to Police Headquarters right now.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “They’re going to come here and arrest you at seven o’clock this morning.”

  “Which means they’ll be here by twenty of. If not sooner.”

  “You think?”

  “Oh, Carl, Carl …” He winks at Clark. “Carl, why don’t you go into my bedroom and bring out my luggage?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And set it down by the door.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m not going to let you leave,” says Clark.

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “I’m going to leave, but you’re going to jail.”

  Lex’s eyebrows lower. “What’s that accent? Nebraska?”

  Clark flinches.

  “Missouri? Kansas? Off some farm, I’d wager.”

  Clark swallows.

  “I know that you’re trying your very hardest, boy, but I have to tell you: it’s just not working. You still sound like a yokel.”

  A warmth starts to rise in Clark’s neck, moving up from under his jaws, suffusing his cheeks, climbing through his temples, crawling into his scalp, making it prickle. He doesn’t trust himself to speak again.

  Lex reaches over and touches the grapefruit-size ball of crumpled metal. “But it’s all right that you’re stupid. You’ll have me for brains!”

  With great difficulty—cords standing out in his neck, face turning red, a vein rising, quivering above an eyebrow—Lex hoists up the compacted robot. He staggers to one side but manages to push it through the air at Clark.

  Who catches it, snatching it tranquilly, as though it weighed no more than a dime-store pink ball.

  Calling in from the hall, Carl says, “Is there anything else you need me to do right now?” He sets down a pair of strapped leather suitcases.

  “Actually, there is. Why don’t you go stand outside on the balcony?”

  “The balcony?”

  “Through the French doors, there. The balcony.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You can keep an eye out on the street, let us know when any police cars arrive. Could you do that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Paler than before, Carl steps out on the balcony.

  “I’m sorry we keep being interrupted,” Lex says to Clark.

  Whose face still feels warm. Does it show?

  “That was a wonderful idea,” says Lex, indicating the compacted robot in Clark’s hand. “But there’ll be other ideas. As you’ll come to realize the longer we’re together.”

  “Together.” Clark has to smile; half smile.

  “I’m going to save you a lot of time, boy. Spare you the step-by-step stages of development I had to pass through to get where I am. I regret none of it, of course, since it all led me here. But there’s no reason that you should go through it. Why repeat? And as stupid as you are, boy, you must realize you have nothing in common with them.”

  “Them?”

  He points to Carl, using him as an example. “Them.”

  Clark smiles at the metal ball, then pegs it abruptly at Lex, missing his head by half an inch. It smashes through an oil painting of a girl in a red hat watering flowers, and sticks into the wall.

  Lex turns and looks, looks back at Clark. “One hundred fifty thousand dollars. Sotheby’s,” he says. “You need to learn self-control. I’ll teach you.”

  Clark has to say it. He has to. It’s sizzling on his tongue, pushing at his lips, and he just has to say it: “You’re crazy.”

  “And you are so obviously stupid. But I’m willing to be patient with you.”

  “And what are we supposed to do together exactly? I mean, after you’ve taught me everything—rule the world? Go bother Hitler, why don’t you, and leave me alone.”

  “Mr. Luthor!” says Carl from the balcony. “There’s about … five, six—there’s seven cop cars pulling up down front.”

  Luthor rises from the sofa. “Take me out of here. Now.”

  “You are crazy.”

  “I won’t bother asking you now who injected you with what, there’ll be plenty of time for all of that later.” He brings his palms together. “But one look at you and I can see you don’t have the brains to survive. I have those, boy.”

  Clark says nothing.

  “Mr. Luthor!” says Carl. “They’re in the building!”

  Luthor comes and stands three, four feet away from Clark. “You need me.”

  “Why?”

  “You know why. Come on, boy.”

  “Don’t call me that. Don’t call me that again.”

  Carl steps back into the room. “Mr. Luthor, are we gonna go or what?”

  Without taking his eyes from Clark’s face, Lex raises an arm and points to the balcony. “Get back out there, Carl, where I told you to stay.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The doorbell rings.

  “Take me from here. Now.”

  Pounding begins. “Police! Open the door!”

  “Take me from here now and I’ll give you the world.”

  Clark says, “Shall I let them in or will you?”

  “You really are stupid.”

  “Then I guess that makes two of us.”

  “Carl!”

  Carl steps back into the room. His face is ashen.

  “You trust me, Carl, don’t you?”

  “Yes, sir. But, Mr. Luthor, what do we—?”

  “If you trust me, Carl, if you believe in me …”

  “Mr. Luthor, what do we do?”

  “Police! Open the door now or we kick it in!”

  “Mr. Luthor!”

  “Jump, Carl.”

  “Mr. Luthor!”

  Clark looks from one to the other, from Carl to Lex, from Lex back to Carl.

  “Jump! And I promise you won’t die!”


  “Mr. Luthor!”

  “Jump!”

  And Carl does.

  Steps back out onto the balcony and simply flings himself over the rail.

  By the time Clark catches him he’s already passed the ninth floor.

  And by the time he delivers him back to Lex’s apartment and lays him down on the longer of the two white sofas, Carl’s heart has stopped.

  Clark shakes him and pounds him on his chest, angrily, furiously.

  Not again!

  He drops to his knees and presses his forehead against the couch cushion.

  “Up! On your feet!”

  When he looks around, Clark finds himself, for the second time in only a few hours, confronted by armed policemen.

  Others are moving swiftly through the apartment.

  “Not in here!”

  “Not back here!”

  Not anywhere.

  Lex Luthor is gone.

  So is his luggage.

  “You! ” says one of the officers, fishing handcuffs from his belt with one hand, grabbing Clark’s wrist with an other. “Behind your back.”

  Mutely, Clark does as he’s told and is handcuffed.

  “Let’s go.” The cop grips him by his left arm. “Move it.”

  But Clark plants himself, refuses to budge.

  The cop tries dragging him. Another cop comes over, takes hold of Clark’s right arm, and they both try dragging him.

  Finally they stop trying and step back.

  “You’re under arrest,” says the first cop, “and I am hereby ordering you to submit to our custody. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

  “Yes.” What’s he think, Clark doesn’t speak English?

  “And are you willing to comply with my lawful command?”

  Clark thinks about it.

  “No,” he says, and twitches each fist in an opposite direction, snapping the handcuff links. He thinks to apologize but does not. Then he walks to the windows—the stupid French doors. Nobody tries to stop him. Going out onto the balcony, Clark estimates how much leg thrust he’ll need to clear the top of the Park Lane Hotel across the street.

  And then he flies away.

  6

  Lex Luthor escaped from his apartment by means of a concealed wall panel.