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It didn’t look all that interesting, but this piece was soft and peaceful. In my opinion, ’Winter’ and ‘Autumn’ photographed better – with the string sections’ bows blurring to show the piece was moving fast. That was everyone’s favorite moment if you could catch it. A moment that told the story of a musician enjoying their time with the music.
As I was taking the photographs, I caught sight of a man in the crowd, perhaps a couple of years older than me. However, it wasn’t his age or his handsome features that caught my attention. It was his face as a whole. I recognized it. The newspaper had featured him in an interview a few months ago.
Gabriel Delaney was one of the few private pilots in Tulsa who didn’t mind going to the smaller airports around the country. In fact, if I remember correctly, he preferred the smaller airports because he could get everyone in and out of those a lot faster than one of the larger ones like Salt Lake or Raleigh. And he charged decently enough for what he did.
And I needed a private pilot to get me to Corinth.
I’d have to wait until the concert was over to talk to him, as then my duty would finish until the conductor was ready for his close-up. I always waited about ten minutes to let the orchestra cool off and put their instruments away before taking any photos I needed of the orchestra members when they weren’t playing.
I continued to move towards the left of the concert hall, hoping to get an interesting shot if I was careful and observant. From time to time, I could get a very good one from the back if there weren’t a lot of people in the middle. If no one was seated in the upper balconies, I could get decent photos from up there, too. However, this had been an entirely sold-out performance from opening to closing night, so the balcony would be useless to me. The concert ended without much of anything exciting happening in my photos. While that wasn’t entirely a shock, I was at least thankful that I had been able to get good photos of the orchestra playing the various songs. I had tried my best to get photos of them during the most boisterous parts of the songs because that was when it was most evident that they were playing in the photographs.
As the applause echoed through the hall, I put my camera back in the bag. There was nothing more to do until the conductor was ready for his close-up, and experience told me he probably wanted a few minutes to talk to his musicians first.
“Miss?”
I was wrong; the conductor came over to me as soon as he was done taking his bows with his orchestra.
“Yes?”
“You are the one that is supposed to take photos of us?”
“Indeed. Grace Overstreet, at your service,” I said with a smile. I reached out, and he accepted my handshake. “Are you ready to do them?”
“I’d like to get them out of the way and let my orchestra – and myself – go home as soon as possible. We’ve been here all day, and most of my members are ready for a good night’s rest.”
“Of course.”
With that, I walked with him toward the orchestra. We took a few staged photos so that I would have one to put at the top of the article, and then, I took a few of the conductor by himself. It wasn’t hard since they were all willing to comply and give me polite, fatigued smiles.
“I do wish I could have gotten here this morning to do these when you all were fresh so that you could go home without doing them now,” I said as I finished the last of the photos, “but things did not work out that way. My apologies for keeping you an extra few minutes after the concert. I hope you all drive home safely. And thank you so much for the amazing concert; it was one of the most enjoyable I’ve been to here.”
They all smiled at me when I finished, and I went to go find Gabriel Delaney. Hopefully, he hadn’t left by now, and I would be able to introduce myself, tell him what I wanted, and figure out how much it would cost to get out to Corinth, Oregon this time of year. While the coast was supposed to be beautiful, I understood that perhaps the country between here and Corinth wouldn’t be as agreeable right now. Some of those areas still struggled with late spring snow.
I couldn’t locate him in the crowd, but it didn’t take long for me to realize that he might have had to use the bathroom after the concert. There would likely be a mad rush for the bathroom once it ended because this concert hadn’t had an intermission.
I walked out to the lobby and found a line at both bathrooms. A quick scan of the line for the men’s room revealed that Mr. Delaney was not there. I decided to wait a few minutes outside the bathrooms, looking at the marvelous building as a guise for doing so.
Eventually, Mr. Delaney appeared not from the bathroom, but an office off to the side. Maybe he knew someone here and was giving them a ride later. Either way, I decided that this would be the best chance for me to make my move.
I walked over to him.
“Mr. Delaney?”
“Yes?” He looked around as if trying to find who’d spoken. When his eyes finally landed on me, a frown creased his face. “Do I know you?” He looked at me with a raised eyebrow.
“Not yet. I’m Grace Overstreet; I work at the paper here in Tulsa,” I replied, extending my right hand. He didn’t even seem to notice, so I let it drop back at my side. “And I’d like to talk to you about getting a ride out to Corinth, Oregon sometime this week or next.”
I kept my tone as even as possible, hoping that he would take me seriously.
Chapter three
Gabe
I looked in shock at the woman standing in front of me. Then I noticed I was still staring, and abruptly tried to mask my awkwardness. Miss Overstreet’s request was shocking in itself but it was her voice that really stuck out to me. It had the same qualities that put me to sleep when I put on the news – in a good way. With sparkling green eyes and scarlet-colored hair, I couldn’t exactly say it wasn’t her looks that kept me here in the conversation.
Her request to go to Corinth, Oregon, on the other hand… confused me. Quite a bit. It took everything in me to stifle a confused snort of laughter.
“May I ask why you want to go to Corinth this time of year?” I somehow managed to keep the conversation from stalling out.
