Chapter 3: The Fortress of Solitude

The apartment wasn’t much of anything.  A small, studio-sized place on the twentieth floor of a co-op was about all Clark could maintain.  In contrast to his office space, which was notoriously clean and uncluttered, his humble abode was a disaster.  The few people who had ever visited him at home were astonished at how much junk could fit within six hundred square feet.  But there was something more than just the condition of the living area that was of concern to Clark’s entrusted few.  The apartment seemed to be a metaphor for his troubled life.

Upon entering, a small kitchen could be seen to the left through an archway and the living room area was straight ahead.  The kitchen smelled of the unwashed dishes that were piled in the sink and stale food.  Little white boxes with half eaten fried rice were kept company by pizza boxes, hamburger wrappers, empty chip bags, and empty bottles of milk, soda, and whiskey.  The kitchen had a pass through window over the breakfast bar that joined with the main living space.  Over the mess on the bar, a café sized dining table was barely visible through its shell of old newspapers and unopened mail.  The only empty space was where a lap-top sat with the chair pushed out, covered in a blanket.  Clark spent many nights asleep at this computer with the mouse in one hand, a bottle in the other, and the keyboard as his pillow.

Directly behind the table was the apartment’s only window.  Four feet by four feet, it looked directly at the building next door and had no fire escape or balcony.  There was no view, other than the occasional glimpse of the severely over-weight man in the room across the alley screaming at his wife or punching holes in the wall.  Mostly, the blinds stayed closed.

The rest of the place had only enough room for a bed, a couch, and a weight bench.  There was no television or radio, no stereo or music collection, no portraits or knick-knacks.  The bed looked as if it had never been made.  The portions of the sheets not on the floor were disheveled, dirty, pushed to the right side, and there was no pillow.  The left side of the bed was a collection of opened and unopened dry-cleaning bags.  The only sign of any organization was the stack of freshly pressed shirts, pants, and suit jackets were laid very neatly across the bottom corner of the mattress in their plastic covers.

The couch, on the other hand, was nothing more than a huge hamper.  Dirty clothing found its resting place there among still more newspapers, magazines, and food wrappers.  It was safe to say that the cushions had not been used for human relaxation in some time.  Without a coffee table or end tables there was nowhere to put a lamp, so it sat on the floor directly in front of the couch (not that its location mattered; the light bulb had been burned out for months.)

Only feet away from the couch was the weight bench and possibly the most disturbing scene in the room.  Anyone who had met Clark probably assumed that he had a gym membership because he was, after all, in noticeably good shape for a man of fifty-seven years of age.  The truth, however, was that his morning run was usually brought on by the need to burn off a hang-over and his weight lifting took place late at night, fueled by rage and alcohol.  The bench itself was rusted and the padded top was held on by duct-tape.  All shapes, sizes, and denominations of free weights and bars were strewn about the floor in no order whatsoever.

Behind this catastrophe of manic fitness was the inspiration for all of Clark’s personal anguish: his wall of love and hate.  His wall of drive and forfeit.  The wall of shame and horror: his sad life story.  Newspaper articles and magazine clippings covered all aspects of the hectic world in which only he lived: slashed and tattered posters from Superman movies, cut-out pieces of comic book pages featuring the cartoon Clark, countless editorials that chronicled Elaine’s life and tragic death, still more features with details about the hunt for her killers, then the follow-up news that the trail had gone cold.  All together, the media jumble covered an area of wall seven feet wide by eight feet tall, from floor to ceiling.  It looked like the collection and work of a mad man with all of the individual pieces being held to the wall by tape, tacks, and gum.  Forward of that were the hundreds of yellow sticky notes on which Clark had scribbled frantic notes to himself in moments of drunken enlightenment.  He had jotted down simple expressions to his dead wife like, “I love you” and much more complex ideas about where he thought the terrorist cell may be, who was leading them, and how they could be located.  But the sad truth that faced him every time he looked at this collage of heartbreak was that no one knew anything about anything.  No one really knew Elaine like he did.  Certainly no one knew her killers or where they could be found.  And no one, not even his mother or his only friend James, knew the real Clark.

This was it: his fortress of solitary confinement.  Clark Kent’s apartment had become his own private phantom zone from which escape seemed impossible and inside which happiness seemed out of reach.  Regardless, it was where he found himself at the end of each work day and where he woke up each morning, so he called it “home.”

_

This had been a typical work day.  Clark awoke in a haze to the alarm he had set on his cell phone.  He rode by subway from his place into the city where he met James for their daily coffee and bagel.  They walked the remaining two blocks to WTC 2 and started work five minutes early at the New Rep.  Their morning diligence was only once interrupted by their division manager popping in to say “hi.”  Then lunch, a fairly light afternoon writing load, and the subway ride home.  It was on this forty-five minute ride each night, through the different neighborhoods and twenty-odd stops, that Clark’s mind would start to wander and he would invariably drift to thoughts of Elaine.  Her face would flash on his mind as the buildings whipped by and the daylight faded so that by the time he arrived at his station he was already in a state of depression.  Like clockwork he would breeze through the liquor store on the corner and then stop at either Tim’s Magic Wok or Luigi’s to pick up the rest of his dinner.  He was a regular at all three places, but no one knew or cared who he was.  He always paid with cash so he didn‘t have to show his name.  He preferred it that way.

It was 2:45 a.m. and the pizza was gone.  The only light in the room was the blue glow of the computer screen which had been turned in a way that somewhat illuminated the exercise area.  Clark sat in a heap on the weight bench in his dress pants, mahogany wing tips, and tee shirt with his head almost between his knees.  In one hand were his glasses and in the other an empty bottle of Jack Daniels.  He was incoherently mumbling to himself and swaying slightly as the room shifted around him.  The whole place stank of sweat and booze.

The dim light cast by the computer screen was casting a weak shadow on the wall behind the weight bench.  Clark’s slow rocking made the light play with the articles and clippings on the wall in a way that made them seem to crawl.  With one more grumble of discontent he fell onto the floor and rolled onto his back.  As he tried to regain focus, the only thing he could see clearly was Elaine’s picture in an article he had cut from Newsweek.  Tomorrow would be fifteen years since her death.  The mumbling moved to a sob, then a hard wail.  The neighbor down stairs banged on the ceiling in protest but Clark had no perception of that.  Then, turned away from the wall with his forearm over his eyes and the apartment spinning, he finally cried himself to sleep around quarter after three.  He had to be up for work in three hours.