Chapter 8
Rory was on a mission. Since Logan had mentioned looking up her number - she couldn't even begin to guess where he'd eventually gotten it from - she also assumed he by now knew her last name. After all Doyle had said it at the newsroom the day when they'd both been there. That made her wonder what else did he knew about her and about her family. He'd also mentioned she knew her schedule, which actually felt a little creepy considering she knew very little. She wondered what else he knew.
And to prove that she had even the slightest bit of reporter in her, despite struggling to find herself a story that didn't make herself yawn, she decided to dig.
As the first order of business she typed Logan's name into the Yale Daily News Archives. Naturally, she found his stories - which, while not as abundant as Paris had by now managed in a much shorter time, working as intensely as she could, Logan definitely had gotten some pretty decent work done when he had. On that part she was actually kind of impressed - Logan could write. Unless of course he'd had someone else write his stories for him.
Rory also ran his last name through the database and as expected a bunch of things popped up - a lot of the things his father had once written, and also someone named Elias, whom she assumed to be his grandfather or some other elder relative.
There were some stuff up in the photo archives as well, and she popped up many of the images at once, knowing they'd take a while to load. In the meanwhile, she remembered Logan having said their classes overlapped, hence she wanted to have that information on him equally. Rory opened up the Yale course catalog online, the system not being known for its greatest reliability at the time, but she hoped it would at least give her some direction.
Rory realized, she didn't even know his major. But she took a fair guess - from all the juridical references and Colin's overall banter, she assumed he was the law major or something in the pre-law track at least, Finn seemed all over the place - though he too sounded like he'd do well in management or economics or something of the sort. And just - she couldn't imagine Logan being anywhere else either from what she knew of him, recalling his words about how he was supposed to come this big shot CEO when he graduated.
From the earlier articles Rory had found on him, she learned Logan had started Yale two years prior, a year earlier than she had - at least it was then his articles started getting published.
It was then a sudden voice from behind her jolted Rory out of her thoughts.
"Gilmore? What's you working on?" Doyle demanded, standing there with his hands on his hips, looking all important.
"Um.. just looking for a new story. I did a small piece on the illegal downloading stuff, mostly the legal side, like what are the repercussions and how some small-time musicians think of it," Rory explained, having gotten the comment of Lane and some of her friends on it. "But it wasn't quite facinating enough to make it into a full length piece. And now… I'm just looking through some new leads," Rory explained, fibbing a little. She had once written a piece about laying concrete, so getting something done on the downloading wasn't an issue - but mostly she just didn't like to disappoint, treating this as any homework.
"You're telling me. I got bored just hearing you pitch it. So what do you got now?" Doyle inquired.
"What?" Rory asked confusedly, suddenly feeling very conflicted about getting Doyle opinion on anything. "Nothing concrete yet," Rory replied.
"Now this looks interesting," Doyle said, leaning forward, seeing a photograph on her screen Rory had not even looked at yet properly. The photograph was of people jumping off a bridge in gorilla masks, holding umbrellas.
It was only Rory read the caption, seeing the name Elias Huntzberger written below. Strangely enough instead of showing the caption to Doyle, she swiftly moved another image on top of its caption to hide it.
"Well that would make an interesting story," Doyle suggested. "At least… it's something for your to try to dig into a little. I've heard of them - The Life And Death Brigade, apparently they're more elusive than the Skull and Bones crowd. Apparently dating back to the 1800s. Of course it'd help if you were actually in it and could tell us all the inside scoop," Doyle continued.
"So, some kind of a secret society kind of thing?" Rory asked, pretending to be clueless.
"Yup. God, I hate those stupid clubs," Doyle mumbled.
"But I don't know anything about secret societies," Rory sighed, really not wanting Doyle to have expectations for her concerning this particular story.
"Well it's time for you to study up then, isn't it? That's what being a journalist is all about!" Doyle encouraged, clearly not taking 'no' for an answer.
Rory groaned internally, not liking this one bit.
Rory returned looking over Logan's potential class schedule but could not find any that overlapped entirely with hers, which only led her to believe that he either wasn't majoring in what she thought he would be or that he was taking a lot of extra classes, which also seemed like a viable option considering he'd been traveling the whole last year. Either way, in that moment, other than having Logan's number to call him on, she didn't really know a whole lot of other options how to conveniently run into him by 'accident' like her mother had suggested.
So she stuck to reading up about the Life and Death Brigade, and also other more or less secret societies at Yale, truly learning a lot about things she had never thought about before. She found some notes from the 1996 article that discussed whether or not the club actually existed but really all they had were some weak leads. Rory knew more already, even if she'd never really heard them mention the club by name - and even if the party she'd been a part of had been just the after party, she knew a lot more than the former journalist had.
After a couple of hours reading up on the topic, her general idea being to write more generally about different clubs, sort of like a Freshman guide to clubs at Yale, which sounded a lot more boring that she'd imagine it, she decided to head out for a cup of coffee and head back to her dorm before dinner.
Rory's financial situation wasn't at its high point these days, having spent most of her last year's birthday money and the money she'd made throughout odd jobs last year in Europe. There had been too many amazing antique books stores around and naturally what kind of a Gilmore girl would she be if she hadn't wanted to shop her way through outlet stores in Paris and Milan and at least partly do it independently of her grandmother's funds and to actually buy something that wasn't overly convervative or suitable for a cocktail party.
"Um… one large caramel macchiato with extra whip cream," Rory began to place an order, looking through her coin purse for change. "Wait, how much is that?" she replied, hesitantly.
"Four eighty-five," the coffee boy replied.
"Better make it a small. How much is that?" she replied, hopefully.
"Three thirty," the coffee boy said.
"Drop the whip cream?" Rory said, hesitantly, only finding about three dollars in her purse.
"Same price, less calories," he replied.
"Just plain old small coffee, please," Rory replied, but suddenly dropped most of the coins in her hands. "D'oh," she replied anc crocuched down to pick up the coins.
"Hey, let me help," an all-too-familiar voice said, and a second later Rory found herself crouching down, picking up her coins, which was embarrassing enough, with Logan who was smiling widely.
"Logan, hey," Rory replied, standing up again. "This is nice… and embarrassing," she replied, blushing a little.
"Are we going after the roller? A couple of them were headed into the bushes?" Logan teased.
"No, I think I've supplied people with a sufficient amount of silly images for one day," Rory replied, laughing awkwardly
"Small coffee for me, and put the lady's on my tab too," Logan replied, being the perfect gentleman.
"No, Logan, you don't have to do that," Rory objected. She still thought back to what Logan had said about 'wining and dining' girls having become his norm, and she wanted to stay as far away from his 'normal' way of things as she could.
"I can't take a chance of you pulling out that purse again. Someone might get hurt," Logan teased and paid for the coffee.
"Okay, well. Thank you," Rory replied, humbly and took a first sip.
"So, how have you been?" Logan asked.
"Good, busy…," Rory replied, knowing this was as close to running into him by accident as she was going to get now. Technically it had been an accident, they seemed to be having a lot of those - their entire acquaintance was based on coincidences come to think of it.
"Good," Logan replied, sounding again just a little nervous. Damn, he was cute like that - Rory thought and genuinely seemed to like this Logan a million times better than the cocky one.
"How about you?" Rory replied, taking sips of her coffee, providing some distraction from the awkwardness of this conversation.
"I've been great. A little anxious perhaps, wondering whether you'd ever call me back," Logan smiled humbly.
Rory raised the corner of her mouth, loving to see him squirm a little.
"You know what?" Rory suddenly decided.
"What?" Logan replied, sounding entertained.
"I think….," Rory began, quickly thinking of a plan. "I will go out with you, but on one condition...," she said.
"And that would be?" Logan inquired, expectantly.
"You can't spend more than 20 dollars on the date. If you can do it in less you get bonus points," Rory requested, pushing her nose ever so slightly up into the air.
"Ah-ah," Logan replied, really not having expected that. "Well, your wish is my command," Logan replied, bowing theatrically.