Superman: Dawnbreaker (DC Icons #4)(36)

Lex shot Clark a curious look.

“Relax, guys,” Clark said with a smirk. “Anything you say to me, you can say to Lana, too. She’d just find out anyway. She always does.”

Bryan and Lex grinned, and Bryan said, “Hey, no arguments here.”

The server showed up just then. She was an older Mexican woman Clark recognized from previous visits. He glanced at her name tag: Margie. She wore her graying hair tied back in a ponytail, and a bulky cross hung from a silver chain around her neck. She described the pot roast special, then took their orders and left.

“Before we get into anything too heavy,” Bryan said, looking at Lana, “you should probably know something. My brother seems to think you and him have a…thing.”

Lana frowned. “Wait, what?”

Bryan nodded. “He only went to the fake funeral party because you were going to be there.”

Lana shot Clark a look as she sipped her water. “Well, that’s, uh…flattering?”

“Unless you actually know Corey,” Lex said.

Clark didn’t exactly love the direction of the conversation, but he also saw it as his opening. “Look, Lana’s my best friend,” he said, “so I need to know a few things.”

Bryan nodded. “What’s up?”

“So, he’s not a good guy?”

Bryan set down his water glass. “My brother’s a dick.”

“I’ll go ahead and confirm that,” Lex added.

“Really,” Lana said, playing along. “He’s been nice the couple of times I’ve talked to him. Could it be that he’s just misunderstood?”

Lex scoffed. “By you, maybe.”

“He’s actually been nicer to me, too, lately,” Bryan went on. “His problem is that he’s just so consumed with proving himself to my dad. Ever since Corey came home from Switzerland, he’s been on this, like, mission to move up in the company.”

“And that’s why he’s working with this Dr. Wesley guy,” Clark said. “Who, you told me, has a super-shady past.”

Bryan motioned toward Lex. “I’ll let him tell you about Wesley. He knew him back in Metropolis.”

“He’s a really, really smart guy,” Lex said. “But he’s not in it for the science. He’s in it for the money. More power to him. But I know all the people who funded his work back home are now in jail. Which is how he ended up in a town like Smallville.”

Clark was just about to ask another question when a balding, middle-aged patron several tables away began railing at their server, Margie. Everyone in the restaurant craned their necks to watch the dramatic scene unfold. Clark recognized the man right away, though he couldn’t recall how he knew him.

“You call this rare?” the man shouted, pointing at the hunk of steak on his plate.

“Sir, we’re happy to fix it,” Margie said in a calm voice.

“Damn right you’ll fix it! And when you finish, you can go back to your own goddamn country!”

Clark sprang out of his seat and started toward the commotion. He didn’t know what he was going to do, but he couldn’t stomach seeing anyone treated so poorly.

Margie pursed her lips and tried to steady herself. “Please, sir, you will have to keep your voice down.”

“You don’t get to tell me what to do!” the man shouted, sweeping a hand across the table. His food went flying everywhere, along with plates and glasses that crashed to the floor and shattered.

The server jumped back, horrified.

The entire restaurant went silent.

You could have heard a pin drop.

“Hey,” Clark said, shifting in front of Margie. “What’s the problem over here?”

The man looked Clark up and down. “Go sit down,” he said. “This is none of your business.”

The owner, David Baez, hurried toward the table. “Sheldon, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

He reached for the man’s arm, but Sheldon knocked his hand away, growling, “Don’t you touch me!”

Clark couldn’t stand witnessing one person mistreat another. But this was even worse. This was clearly racially motivated. The man had now cursed out both the Mexican server and the Mexican owner. And all he’d said to Clark was that it wasn’t his business. It gave Clark a rare glimpse into a dark ideological minority here in his hometown. One that rarely bubbled to the surface, at least not in public.

Just as Clark was about to speak up again, the longtime restaurant manager, Mike Caulkins, who was white, came over and said something that seemed to temporarily calm the man. He took his jacket off the back of his chair and began putting it on, and his two friends did the same.

Clark pushed up his glasses and retreated to his booth, trying to slow his mind down. But he was having a hard time. It could have been Gloria taking that barrage of bigotry. He peered over at her now. She was sitting at her table with her brother, staring down at her plate of food. She didn’t look up. And it broke Clark’s heart.

He sat down at his booth, where the others were talking about the man’s outburst.

Bryan looked around the restaurant. “Please tell me someone got that on their phone,” he said. “Post it tonight and I guarantee it’ll go viral by morning.”