It's Superman! A Novel (49 page)

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.

Of course.

Going directly to the other, smaller apartment he maintained under a different name at the Waldorf-Astoria (next door to Cole Porter’s), Lex changed his clothes, changed his appearance (sweeping maestro wig, Vandyke beard, pin-striped suit), then left the hotel and walked calmly over to Grand Central Terminal, where he took a sleeper on the New Haven & Hartford line.

From Connecticut, Lex takes another train, to Ohio. After withdrawing a briefcase full of cash and negotiable bonds from a long-term locker in Toledo, he pays a visit to a general science teacher at a small land-grant college in nearby Bowling Green. Great mind. Deplorable social habits.

By the following day Lex has persuaded the man to begin work developing a virtually indestructible fabric as well as an evaporation ray and a precipitation ray. One that might dry up the ocean, one that might drown the whole world.

Then Lex takes a hotel suite and sends out for the latest prospectus from the Radio Corporation of America and everything available concerning the creation of fully electronic television, which everyone knows is the Next Essential Thing.

He likes having options. As usual, he plans for both the long range and the short view, and in every plan that he makes he includes Superman.

Always.

He hasn’t felt this alive, this engaged, since he shot those three gunmen in his mother’s cemetery.

Life is good.

PART FIVE

FIRST-NIGHTERS

The cast takes a bow. Clark is (again) plagued by doubt.
Return to Smallville. Nicely-Nicely.
The conclusion is reached.
●

1

Our version of the story draws toward its conclusion a few minutes before eleven o’clock on Friday, the fourth of February 1938, with the sniffling and sobbing of a first-night audience at the Henry Miller’s Theatre in New York City. The show just finished being performed is another of those sceneryless dramas currently in vogue, this one called
Our Town.
It was written by Thornton Wilder, who is not in attendance. When the cast reassembles on the forestage to take their bows, the applause is scattered—enthusiastic, even boisterous, but definitely scattered, because so many hands are reaching for hankies or otherwise being employed: knuckling up tears, rubbing red eyes, et cetera.

Frank Carew, the veteran stage actor who has been dispensing an equal mixture of cracker-barrel and mystical philosophy all evening in his role of the Stage Manager, is clearly taken by surprise. Until this minute and despite some well-received tryout performances last month in New Jersey, he had serious doubts about the play, especially that last act in the cemetery. Too gloomy? Too bathetic? Too long? He catches the attention of pretty Martha Scott, who plays poor doomed Emily, then reaches for her hand. She takes his and they bow together. The applause grows louder.

Martha notices a large man down in the fourth row, center orchestra, so inconsolably distraught that she wishes he’d stop burying his face in his hands and look up. Look here! she wants to call out, just
look.
I’m not
really
dead.

The weeping man (whom Martha Scott fails to recognize because she has yet to work in Hollywood) is Samuel Goldwyn, the powerful movie mogul. In the seat beside his, Beatrice Lillie blows her nose again, exasperated by the fresh tears that well up and spill over.

Several rows back sits Eddie Cantor. His bottom lip quivers but he couldn’t be more welcoming of the bittersweet nostalgia that’s filled him up. Recently he’s lived with seething rage, brooding anxiety, out-and-out fear. The American Nazi Party has been threatening the sponsors of his Monday-night radio program with a boycott of their products by ten million Germans living in the United States. Kike off the air! Kike off the air! And last week Cantor received the same swastika-embellished note every day in the mail: “Get out of Los Angeles, Jew, before you are carried out in a pine box.” When he flew to New York, he told his friends, he told his wife, he told himself that he had pressing business matters there. Now he would like to fly to New Hampshire. He wants to live in Grovers Corner, the town in the play. But who is he kidding? The place doesn’t exist. Say it did, though, just say that. Would they embrace a Jew there, even one who can sing and crack good jokes?

Eddie Cantor’s is only one name in a lengthy list of famous names that Skinny Simon has jotted on her program. Throughout the evening, from her excellent seat in the loge, she has been craning her head, seeing how many celebrities she could spot. Walter Huston, Walter Winchell, Frederic March. Eddie Picaro the golfer. Fiorello La Guardia (recently re-elected mayor) and his chubby wife. Two-Ton Tony Galento, the heavyweight boxer who trains on beer and hot dogs. Frank (“Bring ’Em Back Alive”) Buck. Claudette Colbert. The list goes on. Oh! She’s just spotted another one. Constance Bennett.

Unlike most others in the theater, Skinny is unmoved by this evening’s performance. But that’s only because she has seen it so often. She attended as many rehearsals as she could manage, even though Ben Jaeger’s part ultimately became a nonspeaking one (celebrant at the wedding, cemetery resident on a camp chair).

Jed Harris, the show’s director, met Ben a week before Thanksgiving in a solarium at Bellevue. Harris was there for nervous exhaustion, Ben was nearly recovered from his gunshot wounds and multiple surgeries. Thinking Ben perfect for the role of George Gibbs (boyish looks, quick smile), Harris insisted he audition once he was released from the hospital. Despite no acting experience he did well enough to be called back twice, although the role finally was given to John Craven. Ben was disappointed of course, but grateful to Harris for the consolation job. He now thinks he might pursue acting as his livelihood.

Skinny isn’t sure that she likes that idea. Although smitten by celebrities, understandably she is still wary of the “show business life” after what happened with her
first
husband. But if it makes Ben happy . . .