The Journalist: The Dateline [TJOURN 0.4]

The Journalist: The Dateline

He recognizes how foolish he's being. He shouldn't be so unguarded with her, shouldn't be so free with his words, with details of his life. At this very moment he should go back to pacing the small tract of open space of his suite as he attempts to memorize the changes to the script. They'll be shooting the scene tomorrow, after all.

Should. And yet...

Her laugh is resounding in his head, the hesitant laugh she used during their first interview and in sporadic moments since. He's dying to hear it to refresh the quality of the echo. Or, perhaps, be graced with the full-on show of delight that he sometimes gets as reward – the unbridled laugh that seems to bubble up from deep within her.

Anything will do. Her laugh, or hearing about her day, or maybe see if he can gain another detail – something more about her. Infuriatingly, she has been revealing the smallest of glimpses one phone call at a time.

The bio given to his team prior to the first interview, prior to his initial exposure to her, delivered minimal professional info. Nothing more. At the time the bio had contained just enough information for him to make a selection as to which journalist to interact with, more than enough insight into the lives of the journalists potentially interviewing him. Now he considers the sparse information to be woefully inadequate.

Trying to gather data via the internet wasn't as helpful as he'd hoped. Sure, there were links for the various entertainment articles she'd written for the masses, things both tied back to her current employer and others besides. He can, upon reading them, now discern what he estimates to be 'her voice' within the articles themselves.

There are a fair few things also returned in his searches that don't pertain to the entertainment industry. Wonderful reviews, news articles, on and on and on. It has become a hobby during his downtime, trying to find something with her name attached. Sometimes he daydreams about what it must be like to watch her as she works – being allowed that level of trust, allowed to observe.

Perhaps she is one to silently mouth out the words as she reads and writes, her lips moving to phantom mutter the words as they appear on the page. Or perhaps as she compiles information she reads aloud, arguing point and counterpoint to better familiarize herself with the material. He tends to imagine her surrounded, by electronics and hard copies of research alike, buried in her work and content.

He's even caught himself muttering under his breath while scanning the web for any small bit of additional information about her.

"Does she have family here? No - well, none that have the same last name. Mmmm, unless she's had it changed it for professional reasons. I wonder... Did she follow someone? Moved to London and... No, no, she said that it had been a job offer that hadn't panned out as she anticipated. Well done, though, Tom. Perfect. Imagine a scenario where she's madly in love with another man and you've repeatedly made yourself look an absolute tit. It's a wonder she hasn't... No - she - she would have spelled it out in no uncertain terms by now. Wonder what her original intention was for her career? No engagement announcements – just to be thorough. Hmmm, there might be hope yet..."

All he has to go on regarding her past are the sparse details she has offered up. There's the story she relayed of her aunt and uncle – suggesting she lived with them for a time – and then there is the more recent revelation, the tale about her misadventure with bees – but there is little in the manner of conveyed information to link those stories together. Every time they talk she manages to tell him things without telling him much of anything. It is, in a word, maddening.

He huffs and stares at the typed words on the page, not reading a single syllable. He had needed to participate in the interview those many months ago – needed to participate in an exclusive interview in order to drum up interest, according to the backers of the project. He'd dragged his feet, remembering the past all too well, and found reason after reason to refuse to work with those suggested.