After taking everyone's orders and some cash from Dr. Crosby, Clark dressed in jeans and a red sweater and took the elevator up to the antique shop. He was still deep in thought when he exited the front door, and didn't notice anyone passing by on the other side until he'd thrown the door open, which collided violently with an extra large latte, sending it cascading down the front of an orange leather jacket.

Lois screamed and pulled her scalding shirt away from her skin. "What is the matter with you, were you raised in a barn or some - Clark?" She gaped at Clark open-mouthed, who looked simultaneously guilty and innocent as he shielded himself behind the glass door.

Clark stepped out from behind the door. "I'm so sorry, Lois! I didn't see you there." He bent to pick up the fallen lid and offered it to her, but she only looked quizzically at it and held up her now empty cup.

"Tell it to the four-seventy-five I just spent, apparently only for the opportunity to have my jacket cleaned again."

"I'm really sorry, I'll buy you a new cup of coffee."

"Latte."

"I'll buy you a new latte." Lois' scowl didn't fade. "And I'll pay to have your jacket cleaned."

"Oh, you bet you will, Kent." She spun on her heel and headed back the way she came.

Clark remained awkwardly where he was, holding the coffee cup lid in one hand and his self-confidence in the other.

"Well?" Lois prompted from ten yards down the block. "Are you coming?"

"Where?"

"Well, I'm not walking around all day with a triple shot on my chest, so I'm going home to change, and you're coming with me. Besides, you owe me a latte and I owe you a dry cleaning bill."

Clark threw a glance over his shoulder into the antique shop. "Um, I'm not sure…"

"Clark!"

"Okay, I'm coming," he conceded, and fell into step behind Lois.

"Try to keep up."

"I'll try," Clark submitted meekly, but snickered inwardly. I'd like to see her try to keep up with me sometime.

"So, are you in dire need of a new rocking chair for the front porch or something?"

"What?"

"You're antiquing at seven in the morning."

"Oh…" Clark scoured his brain for a reasonable excuse. "Um, this family back home makes homemade furniture and sells some of it at that shop. I was just checking it out."

"Ah, of course. I don't know a single high school boy who doesn't go slack-jawed at the thought of a well-turned table leg." Ha! I made a woodworking joke, points for me! "Here we are," Lois announced as she pulled the door open, not giving Clark a chance to do it for her. "But you knew that."

Clark stopped cold. She remembers! "Uh… how would I know that?"

Lois smiled. "I gave you my address yesterday, remember?"

"Oh, yeah." Clark stepped through the door after her.

"And, of course - you brought me home last night."

Clark froze again. "Last night?"

"Well, Chris said I was carried home by a tall, good-looking guy wearing jeans and plaid, and since that's something of an endangered species in Metropolis, I guessed it was you."

As they crossed the entrance to the elevator, Chris hobbled over to Lois from his corner, wide-eyed and leery. "That's the guy!" He stage-whispered hoarsely.

"Ten feet away, Chris," Lois said without breaking her stride. Chris dejectedly dragged himself back to his rolling office chair.

"Not fond of the doorman, are you?" Clark surmised with a raised eyebrow as the elevator opened before them.

"Defining him as a doorman is a very loose characterization," Lois snarked. "He's never actually at the door, he's in his chair reading comics or - who knows what else. He's a creepy little pervert."

"Has anyone complained about him?"

"This is Metropolis, Clark. All we do is complain. But he's never disciplined because his uncle owns the building and takes pity on him because he's the son of his dead sister, or something, and whenever anyone threatens to have him fired he says he'll sue for wrongful termination because of his disability."

"The limp?"

Lois grinned. "No, that's not a handicap, it's a work-related injury."

"Work-related?"

"Well, since the only thing he really works at is climbing the fire escapes to look into peoples' windows, I would call the risk of falling off and breaking his leg an occupational hazard - hence the "work-related" injury."

"So what's his disability?"

"He never says, but I'm betting it's mental."

Clark was feeling pretty justified in his initial judgment of Chris the doorman. "Have you considered moving?"

"Because of Chris?" The elevator opened onto the second floor. "No."

"Why not?" It seemed like reason enough to Clark.

"Because rent control is a rare and beautiful gift, and one must not squander it."

"Ah."

Lois sifted through her bag for her keys. "Yeah, I moved in here last semester when I got sick of my RA in the dorm. My friend Rachel had this place for a couple of years, and let me sublet while she went backpacking through Europe with her boyfriend. I think she dumped him in Brussels or something, but she met a new guy in Italy. Always Italy, you know?"

"Um, uh huh." Clark followed Lois into the apartment and stood timidly in the living room while she flitted around opening blinds and turning on lamps.

"Doesn't get much sunlight though, that's the only thing. Anyway, Rachel's last postcard said she was moving into a place in Florence with the Italian guy - or maybe it was a second Italian guy? Anyway, she's not coming back any time soon, so mi casa es… mi casa."

"Not bad."

"Chris said something interesting though, actually," Lois said as she tossed her coffee-stained jacket on the kitchen counter and began to unbutton her blouse.

"Hmm?" Clark was trying to imagine anything else being interesting other than Lois' back when her shirt slid off of it as she retreated into the bathroom.

"This is never going to come out!" Lois shouted in response.

"That's what Chris said?"

"No, I meant the latte - this shirt is wrecked. Anyway, yeah, Chris said something interesting."

Clark waited for her to continue, but she didn't. "And what was that?" He prompted.

"He said that you brought me home around eleven thirty."

"Uh huh." Clark had a feeling that this casual banter was only a set-up to wrangle him into an interrogation.

"But my bus left Smallville at six-fifteen, which means I should have been in Metropolis by nine-fifteen, which means I should have been home by nine-forty. So where was I between the time I got off the bus, and the time you left me in the lobby?"

Clark suddenly began to feel as if he'd grown much too large for the room, and the truth of what had happened last night would outgrow it as well. "I don't know."

Lois emerged from the bathroom wearing a faded Metropolis Sharks sweatshirt. "It's not mine, and it's laundry day. So - I wasn't with you last night?"

Clark looked at his toes and tried to hide his nervous smile. "Uh, no - you weren't with me last night."

"But you just happened to find me unconscious and bring me home?"

"Yeah, exactly that," Clark nodded.

"Where did you find me?"

"At the uh… bus station."

"What were you doing there? You got here hours before me."

"I went back to look for my keys, I dropped them."

"So, you found me unconscious, in the bus station, and you brought me home? You didn't think I needed medical attention?"

"No. I mean - you told me to bring you home, so I brought you home."

"Wasn't I unconscious?"

"Not at first - you were kind of wandering around, and I asked if you were okay, and you asked me to take you home and then you kind of fainted." Clark was afraid to exhale, as if the vein of his lie would bleed out with his breath.

Lois looked thoughtful as she digested this new information. "You brought me straight home?"

Clark nodded. "Yeah, of course."

Lois absent-mindedly smoothed her ponytail. "That couldn't have taken more than twenty minutes - so you found me around eleven-ten?"

"Sounds about right."

"So I was wandering around the bus station in a non-drunken stupor for almost two hours?"

Clark was beginning to look more and more uncomfortable. "I guess so."

"You guess so?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

Lois had no real way to prove it yet, but she was certain Clark knew more than he was letting on. How could he meet the supposition that she was mentally AWOL for almost two hours with "I guess so?" That just didn't seem quite… Clarkish. For that matter, neither did - "Hey! What about the girl?"

"The girl?"

"Yeah, Chris said you were with a girl - the two of you said we'd all been at a party, right? Why did you say I was at a party? Who was the girl?" Her tone was all at once inquisitive, teasing, and - she hoped - only slightly jealous.

We should have injected Chris with some of that EF-19. "I don't know, Marin said we were at a party. I guess she thought we should offer some explanation. I don't know."

"Marin," Lois repeated. "So, who is this Marin?"

Clark shrugged. "She's nobody, she's - "