That nagging voice I’d heard before was now shouting at me, but I tried not to let my fears come through in my voice. “Oh, Alex, I’m so glad for you. It sounds like everything is really turning your way.”
“I know,” he said, “but I don’t want to rush into this and make a decision I’ll come to regret.” He gave a wry laugh. “I already did that once with Glenda.”
I offered to help him any way I could, but then another call came in for him and he had to ring off. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” he promised.
When I went home that evening I felt oddly depressed. I was glad for the success coming Alex’s way, but all I could see was him wearing that Superman suit for years to come. What kind of future could he and I have if he was headed out on the talk show circuit, or even worse, to Hollywood? I felt like he cared for me, but I saw myself becoming nothing more than a footnote in his story.
The hopeful side of me kept imploring me not to get ahead of myself, but the pessimist in me said that trouble was already here and piling up on my doorstep. Writing is one of the ways I relax, but that night I couldn’t find it in myself even to do that.
Terri poked her head in the door and demanded to know what was troubling me, and I broke down and tearfully told her my fears.
“If you ask me,” Terri said, “the real problem is that Glenda woman. She’s his kryptonite: he can’t stop wearing the suit because she still has the power to hurt him. You want me to put out a contract on her?”
I laughed and shooed her out of my room.
Two days later I was working on a routine assignment at my office when a colleague came over and caught my attention. “Hey, Elle, aren’t you the one dating Superman?”
When I blushed and admitted that we’d gone out together, he pointed to my computer and said, “Well, take a look at Gawker today, because there’s an article that mentions him.”
The first time I checked the news and gossip blog, I didn’t see the story because I was looking for a picture of Alex, but on second look I found it. Underneath the headline “The Woman Who Broke Superman’s Heart” was a picture of a woman stalking angrily down the street trying to fend off the camera. I suddenly realized that it was Glenda Preston, Alex’s ex-wife.
According to the reporter, who was clearly sympathetic to Alex, “Everyone in New York is asking who hurt Superman so badly.” She then went on to reveal “in a Gawker exclusive” the whole story about how Glenda had been cheating on Alex with attorney Connor James for months before finally leaving Alex. There were enough juicy details to make it clear that someone in the know had ratted Glenda out.
I immediately tried to call Alex but once again couldn’t get through. He didn’t call me that night either, which made me a little more apprehensive, and I decided not to bug him. Maybe it was my imagination, but I felt a distance growing between us, and the courage I’d begun to feel when I was with him seemed to dissipate.
One of the things we do regularly at the newspaper is to check to see what stories our competitors are running. Of course, we at the Times don’t admit that we have any competition, but we check the other news media anyway, just in case. To make it worse, on this day I was checking out the Daily News, which people at the Times don’t even admit is a legitimate newspaper.